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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm your host, Mike White
Speaker 1: Jimney once again is mister Keith Gordon. Hello, Hello, Also
Speaker 1: back in the booth this Ms Rain Alexander.
Speaker 8: Hey, glad to be back.
Speaker 1: We are starting a month of mostly listener requests, with
Speaker 1: one from Jordan Nash that's Fatig Aiken's head On, released
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, The film stars bear with
Speaker 1: me here and bear with me with all these names,
Speaker 1: Barol Unel as Kahit and Sibel Kakhille as Sibel, two
Speaker 1: Turkish people living in Germany. They also share a desire
Speaker 1: to end it all, Sibel by slashing her wrists and
Speaker 1: Kahit by giving us the title of the film as
Speaker 1: he crashes his car head on into a wall after
Speaker 1: a drunken night. Sibel is in need of a husband
Speaker 1: in name only to get her parents off her back,
Speaker 1: while Kahil needs to torture himself some more. We will
Speaker 1: be spoiling this film as we go along, so if
Speaker 1: you don't want anything ruined, please turn off the podcast
Speaker 1: and come back after you've seen it. So, Rain, when
Speaker 1: was the first time you saw head On? And what
Speaker 1: did you think?
Speaker 8: I saw this pretty soon after it came out. It's
Speaker 8: hard to put a finger on it because I feel
Speaker 8: like I saw it earlier than it was available, right
Speaker 8: sometime in that early two thousands, but it was probably
Speaker 8: around two thousand and five, you know, probably on Home video,
Speaker 8: and I loved this film instantly for many, many reasons
Speaker 8: that I think we'll get into in the longer discussion.
Speaker 8: It scratches a particular itch that I feel like I
Speaker 8: get less and less of in cinema. You know that
Speaker 8: fast spender itch. You know these really bleak and yet
Speaker 8: sweeping romances.
Speaker 1: Right and Keith, how about yourself?
Speaker 5: Can I just say diddo? It's actually kind of simpl
Speaker 5: you know. As a film fan person, I'm always geting
Speaker 5: my eyes out for things and ears up for things.
Speaker 5: And I don't remember I read some articles that mentioned it.
Speaker 5: I think it might have been a Jonson Rosenbaum review
Speaker 5: of something else that mentioned it, or so it was
Speaker 5: something that mentioned it. Oh that sounds interesting, and in
Speaker 5: my way I tracked down. I think it was the
Speaker 5: UK DVD because it was the only one that was out,
Speaker 5: and it just blew me away. I mean, this is
Speaker 5: became in his state, one of my very favorite films.
Speaker 5: It's more for all those wonderful, ineffable qualities than for
Speaker 5: anything about the plot. It's one of those movies if
Speaker 5: you try to describe can sell, Oh that sounds okay.
Speaker 5: I mean it sounds a little like this or a
Speaker 5: little like that, but it's not like anything, and that
Speaker 5: it made me vall love with not just this film,
Speaker 5: but I don't know if it's Achen or a Keens.
Speaker 5: I think it's a keen, but I embarrassed. I don't
Speaker 5: know the right connunciation. But it fell in love with all.
Speaker 5: I started working my way through all his films and
Speaker 5: realizing just what an amazingly protean and talented filmmaker is.
Speaker 5: But this one's my very favorite. The mix of humor
Speaker 5: and darkness and pain and light and hopelessness and hopefulness
Speaker 5: and cool music and wonderful editing and somebody. This is
Speaker 5: one of those things where all the elements fit each
Speaker 5: other and made something even bigger than the some of
Speaker 5: its parts. And I found deeply, deeply moving and haunted me.
Speaker 5: And I just you know, seen it now a whole
Speaker 5: bunch of times. And I'm really glad we're getting talked
Speaker 5: about it, because it's one of those movies that I
Speaker 5: always tell people about, Like people say, well, what's a
Speaker 5: good movie I don't know about? This is on my
Speaker 5: short list, So I'm really glad we're getting to maybe
Speaker 5: get a few more people who want to see it.
Speaker 1: I think you're right. I think it is a keen
Speaker 1: And if I said aichin like Klayak and earlier, I apologize.
Speaker 1: But reading versus hearing, you know, I read those intros
Speaker 1: and I knew his name walking into this, and then
Speaker 1: of course screwed it up. And I'm really glad that
Speaker 1: Jordan Nash asked for this one, because I had heard
Speaker 1: of this film, but I had never seen it, and
Speaker 1: so this was a real treat for me to be
Speaker 1: able to experience this for the first time for the show.
Speaker 1: And yeah, this kind of star cross lovers kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and yeah, just the misery shared by a couple, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's right there. I love that kind of stuff too.
Speaker 1: And this is so much better than I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a really nice book written about this movie, and the
Speaker 1: author is talking about other films that are somewhat similar,
Speaker 1: and they brought up Green Card. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember Green Card. This is a lot better than
Speaker 1: Green Card. Not to say that Green Card is a
Speaker 1: bad movie, but this was so much better and so
Speaker 1: much what I'm looking for. And I just love these
Speaker 1: kind of self destructive characters who are clinging to each
Speaker 1: other and yet pushing each other away. This whole idea
Speaker 1: of Sabelle trying to I don't know, she just wants
Speaker 1: to get married to get her family off of her back,
Speaker 1: and they want this well, I don't know how much
Speaker 1: he wants it, but she definitely wants this open relationship
Speaker 1: where she can go and mess around with anybody, encourages
Speaker 1: him to mess around with anybody. But of course the
Speaker 1: inevitable happens and they start to fall in love and
Speaker 1: then a bigger tragedy ensues. I just love stories.
Speaker 5: Like this, you know.
Speaker 8: I hndited that at this when I made my first remarks,
Speaker 8: But this is a film that I kind of went
Speaker 8: into it with a misreading of it as a as
Speaker 8: a queer film, right and specifically as a trans film
Speaker 8: for many many reasons. I had had a friend in
Speaker 8: the early two thousands who had been in Europe and
Speaker 8: who had started a relationship with a Turkish trans woman
Speaker 8: who was really trying to get away from what her
Speaker 8: life was in Turkey, and so it was a little
Speaker 8: bit informed by that, but I had also been tipped off.
Speaker 8: I'm not sure how I received this, but you know,
Speaker 8: I think as we see in the film, there is
Speaker 8: a lot of you know, kind of push pull against
Speaker 8: the restrictions of gender, restrictions of the patriarchy. And so
Speaker 8: I went into this with this like weird understanding that
Speaker 8: I was watching a film about a man and a
Speaker 8: trans woman in a relationship. And obviously this is not
Speaker 8: what the film is. But it's really hard for It
Speaker 8: was really hard for me to let go of that,
Speaker 8: especially as we get to see this kind of trans
Speaker 8: masculinization that happens to Sibelle's character throughout the film, and
Speaker 8: even watching it through this time knowing and especially after
Speaker 8: hearing the commentary and realizing like this is not an
Speaker 8: intention of the filmmakers at all. Right, there did not
Speaker 8: go in to make a trans film, but I think
Speaker 8: this is the place where they kind of inadvertently did.
Speaker 8: I really can see a reading of this character, Sabelle
Speaker 8: as a trans man, as we might understand this kind
Speaker 8: of character now, who wants to get out of this
Speaker 8: family restrictions, who may still want to be a parent,
Speaker 8: but kind of do it on for lack of you know,
Speaker 8: like to do it on his terms. Right, If we
Speaker 8: think about this character as a trans masculine character, there's
Speaker 8: lots of evidence to point against that but I think that,
Speaker 8: you know, there's a reading in that that I think
Speaker 8: is really potentially, really complete, and it's I'm waiting for
Speaker 8: somebody who's a little smarter than me to put that
Speaker 8: into a film journal.
Speaker 1: The transformation of these characters, her with the shorter hair
Speaker 1: later on him at the beginning, where he's got that
Speaker 1: beard and has to get himself cleaned up so that
Speaker 1: he can eventually ask for her hand in marriage in
Speaker 1: one of the most awkward scenes that I've seen in
Speaker 1: a long damn time. I'm just that whole thing with
Speaker 1: the family and his buddy who's pretending it is just
Speaker 1: his buddy, right, he's no relationship, but they're pretending to
Speaker 1: be relations and they can't get their stories straight, and
Speaker 1: they're contradicting each other. But I have to say, our
Speaker 1: main character once he this is no shame to anybody
Speaker 1: who wears a beer here, I wear facial hair as well.
Speaker 1: But when he gets shaved at the beginning, oh my god,
Speaker 1: he becomes one of the most handsome people I've seen
Speaker 1: in a long damn time. He looks amazing.
Speaker 5: You raise a really interesting point, and it's not an
Speaker 5: I focused on, but clearly, yes, there is a real
Speaker 5: play with gender roles in this that I think is
Speaker 5: an interesting element in terms of she is much more
Speaker 5: the sexual aggressor, she's much more sexual. You know, they
Speaker 5: what they fall into in terms of their behaviors. Definitely
Speaker 5: each of them has you know, he has a really
Speaker 5: feminine eye. For this guy that comes off is very
Speaker 5: masculine when we meet him, and he's kind of got
Speaker 5: the beard and he's edgy, and you know, she's very
Speaker 5: pretty and slight physically, and yet their personalities. She has
Speaker 5: a strong masculine side, he has a strong feminine side,
Speaker 5: and it's part of what makes some such rich people.
Speaker 5: I mean, what I love about the film in general
Speaker 5: is the characters. Their two characters particularly are incredibly complicated,
Speaker 5: you know, in a way you just don't get in
Speaker 5: movies very often. You know, they're suicidal but life affirming.
Speaker 5: They are tragic and funny. They're shy and they're open,
Speaker 5: they're they're both very complicated, and I do think that
Speaker 5: among them richnesses of them is that, yeah, they don't
Speaker 5: fit neatly into our gender suppositions about how this is
Speaker 5: going to go. Because there have been a million movies
Speaker 5: about Star course lovers have been a million movies about
Speaker 5: people getting married for convenience have been a million. Everything
Speaker 5: about this sort of feels like, oh, I've seen that,
Speaker 5: and yet there's nothing about this movie that feels like, oh,
Speaker 5: I've seen that. And I think that it's part of
Speaker 5: what the brilliance of the filmmaking is is that the
Speaker 5: way those elements are mashed up, and the complexity and
Speaker 5: richness of the filmmaking and the acting and the writing,
Speaker 5: everybody's breaking all these cliches, and among them are definitely
Speaker 5: gender cliches. And that's really it is an interesting way
Speaker 5: to think about the movie because it goes all the
Speaker 5: way through the movie that neither of these people stick
Speaker 5: to what we would presuppose about how they behave in
Speaker 5: the world in their gender roles. From the first thirty
Speaker 5: seconds we see them, you know, we would we make
Speaker 5: all such about suppositions. They look very much in certain ways,
Speaker 5: and then the whole movie is them not being the
Speaker 5: way we think they're going to be.
Speaker 8: We hear so early on a Kahitas asked if he's
Speaker 8: a faggot and like, it's like met with aggression, and
Speaker 8: his response is, I like, I like I only have
Speaker 8: sex with men. I believe is the actual response. And
Speaker 8: I mean from my very first watch of this, I'm like, oh, okay,
Speaker 8: so this is going to be about him like negotiating
Speaker 8: that maybe internalized homophobia. I'm not entirely sure, but of
Speaker 8: course this is not what he seems to do for
Speaker 8: the rest of the film, apart from the fact that,
Speaker 8: like as we see in his sexual relations with Maren,
Speaker 8: he loves an aggressive sexual encounter. You know, it's hard
Speaker 8: hardcore is like.
Speaker 5: It seems like not quite the right term for it.
Speaker 8: It's just they're wild, they go wild, they go ham I've.
Speaker 1: Never seen one of these star Cross lover movies where
Speaker 1: when he turns down her marriage proposal that the person
Speaker 1: breaks a beer bottle and slices their wrist right there
Speaker 1: and blood sprays all over his face. I'm like, oh
Speaker 1: my god.
Speaker 5: Well, it's a very punky film in that way. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's the thing. I mean, there's a lot of violence
Speaker 5: in the movie. There's a lot of violence. There's a
Speaker 5: lot of intense sex and intense sexuality. I mean, that's
Speaker 5: the thing. It's sort of like taking like a movie
Speaker 5: like Green Card and going okay, now, yeah, what would
Speaker 5: fastbend your meets punk meets you know, do with this movie,
Speaker 5: and it gives it this whole other richness. And then
Speaker 5: underneath all that when the tenderness comes out, I mean,
Speaker 5: the difference between our main characters sex when he has
Speaker 5: it with this woman who he has a very mixed
Speaker 5: relationship with, and it's very it's intense, but it's also
Speaker 5: kind of weird and almost violent and not very emotional.
Speaker 5: And then when there's the emotional connected tender sex, it's
Speaker 5: like a real interesting contrast. It's like, got this really
Speaker 5: tough punk veneer and this really soft heart of this movie.
Speaker 5: And I think that's part of why it's I find
Speaker 5: it so affecting because it captures both sides as and
Speaker 5: we all have that. You know, we're all we all
Speaker 5: have our fucked up, weird, angry whatever bad parts of
Speaker 5: us that don't work. And you know, here's these suicidal
Speaker 5: people who are desperately trying to find ways to feel alive.
Speaker 5: I mean, everything is contradiction, and I think that that's
Speaker 5: something that Akin really plugs into in human beings, that
Speaker 5: you know, whatever we have, we also have the opposite.
Speaker 5: And the whole film keeps doing it, and it keeps
Speaker 5: you off balance, because because there's enough different and contradictory
Speaker 5: truths about these people that every time you think you
Speaker 5: know where the movie is going to go, where the
Speaker 5: story's going to go, and where the character is going
Speaker 5: to go, it's like, no, they're not. They're going to
Speaker 5: go somewhere new, and you're gonna have to readjust again
Speaker 5: and open up to a new side of themselves as
Speaker 5: they're having to do, which I think is really interesting.
Speaker 8: I've got my trans reading of this, but we've got
Speaker 8: this immigration upon immigration layering that's going in here, and
Speaker 8: we hear this repeated, this idea repeated in a film. Effectively,
Speaker 8: if you don't like where you are, go somewhere else.
Speaker 8: Always be moving seems to be like the key of that,
Speaker 8: even if it does end up in the end that
Speaker 8: you know, he goes back to the place of his birth,
Speaker 8: which is also kind of like an interesting thing if
Speaker 8: you're looking at this from a trans narrative, because so
Speaker 8: many of us who are trans are always going to
Speaker 8: be tied back in uncomfortable ways to the places that
Speaker 8: we're born, even with if we're still in the same
Speaker 8: nation that we are in, because a birth certificate, and
Speaker 8: that's increasingly the case with the Trump administration. But you know, like,
Speaker 8: but we hear this throughout the film goes somewhere else,
Speaker 8: like if you don't like this reality, do something else.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit of a misnomer. We keep saying
Speaker 1: starcross lovers, and they do eventually seem to fall in
Speaker 1: love with each other, but they don't end up together.
Speaker 1: Like the end of this movie is a tragedy. You
Speaker 1: could say it's a tragedy, like she eventually kind of
Speaker 1: has this moment of self realization. It's just like, no,
Speaker 1: you know, I have this daughter, i have this husband
Speaker 1: or lover, and I'm just not going to go back
Speaker 1: with this guy and really start a life because they
Speaker 1: never really started their life together despite them being married
Speaker 1: in Germany. So it yeah, it's very fascinating that they
Speaker 1: eventually share a love, but they can never really express
Speaker 1: it to one another, and they really shouldn't be together.
Speaker 1: I mean, they're probably going to be terrible for each other.
Speaker 1: If they were a couple, they would probably be a
Speaker 1: horrible couple. I would like to think that they would
Speaker 1: be fine. Happiness and wonderment and all that. They're very
Speaker 1: damaged people and they live in this damaged world and
Speaker 1: this whole idea of them being you know, foreigners in
Speaker 1: another world, in another land, and yeah, this whole like, oh,
Speaker 1: if you don't like it, go home. And they're trying
Speaker 1: their best to make it here in Germany. And I
Speaker 1: want to say, like, she's well, she seems like she's
Speaker 1: second generation. She's got her folks there. It feels like
Speaker 1: they have emigrated, you know, in their lifetime. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure about him. I guess so, because I guess he
Speaker 1: does say that he was born in Turkey, so he's
Speaker 1: immigrated in his lifetime. But yeah, it got to be
Speaker 1: so rough for these people to be in this foreign
Speaker 1: land where you know, they talk about how he knows
Speaker 1: German better than he knows his own language. They talk
Speaker 1: about how awful he isn't even speaking Turkish.
Speaker 5: Well, that's the thing. They're both in way, strangers in
Speaker 5: strange lands. Wherever they go. They're both neither truly Turkish
Speaker 5: nor truly German, both and neither you know, they're both.
Speaker 5: They don't belong to either society in a neat way,
Speaker 5: and that is part of the lost quality of the characters.
Speaker 5: But what I love about this film, and it something
Speaker 5: that a Keen does with a lot of his movies
Speaker 5: in different ways, is he finds very specific things that
Speaker 5: his characters are trapped in or dealing with, but they've
Speaker 5: managed to be very generalizable to all of us. You know,
Speaker 5: that sense of being lost, that sense of not belonging.
Speaker 5: You know, he's very specific to the immigrant experience. And
Speaker 5: yet somehow the film why does it so that somebody
Speaker 5: like me who was born in America and grew up
Speaker 5: in America completely gets it and completely emotionally goes ah,
Speaker 5: I know that feeling and feeling I don't belong where
Speaker 5: I am? I mean right now in America. A certain way,
Speaker 5: I feel like I really don't belong where I am.
Speaker 5: But I feel like really good storytellers, filmmakers, but novelists,
Speaker 5: whatever can make it something very specific about a very
Speaker 5: different experience than yours. But yet somehow it universalizes. And
Speaker 5: I think this film does that wonderfully, that their lostness
Speaker 5: is all of our lostness, And I also, I do
Speaker 5: I think it avoids the thing of being either a tragedy.
Speaker 5: It's a truly, for me, a truly deeply bittersweet film,
Speaker 5: and that's a quality that I feel like we'd yet rarely.
Speaker 5: Things are often either truly tragic or they are happy endings.
Speaker 5: And I feel like this movie, I think he really
Speaker 5: caught something that I don't know that they belong together.
Speaker 5: I don't know that they would live happily ever after.
Speaker 5: I think she makes probably the right choice for her,
Speaker 5: and I think it may free him too. But it's
Speaker 5: really sad. It's really sad that they don't end up together,
Speaker 5: but it doesn't feel tragic, because tragic can be implies wrong,
Speaker 5: like that something bad happen. And what I love about
Speaker 5: the end of the film is it breaks my heart,
Speaker 5: it makes me cry, but it doesn't feel like they're
Speaker 5: making a terrible mistake. And I feel like that's a
Speaker 5: rare quality in movies, one that I deeply appreciate because
Speaker 5: I feel like that's more true to what most of
Speaker 5: experience in life. You know, we part from people, relationships,
Speaker 5: fall apart, things, and it's really sad, but it doesn't
Speaker 5: mean that it's wrong or tragic.
Speaker 8: This notion of love comes up right. And so in
Speaker 8: the film, Savelle's family is trying to approve of this
Speaker 8: choice for a husband and keeps asking, you know, are
Speaker 8: you in love? Are you in love? But kind of
Speaker 8: nothing that the family seems to do to her seems
Speaker 8: to be out of love. Like it all seems to
Speaker 8: be about restriction and obedience and these kinds of things
Speaker 8: certainly not things that I look at as loving. And
Speaker 8: you know, and she's under these other, like really extreme
Speaker 8: cultural weights. They're carried over from Turkey to Germany. So
Speaker 8: if she's a German citizen, she's you know, ostensibly playing
Speaker 8: by what German rules, Western rules, but it's still under
Speaker 8: these Turkish familial restrictions where she must marry, and she
Speaker 8: must marry a turt there has to be love involved.
Speaker 8: Killing herself makes her, you know, a pariah in her family.
Speaker 8: She will be, you know, she's She slashes herrist a
Speaker 8: couple of times in this film. The second time her
Speaker 8: father burns all of her photos, which again speaks to
Speaker 8: some of this trance familiarity, the textual aspects of it,
Speaker 8: where you know, shutting off a like all depictions of
Speaker 8: a past self is what's happening when these photos are
Speaker 8: being burned. So she becomes this persona non grata with
Speaker 8: her family. There's a point even before the photos are
Speaker 8: burned where her own brother says, if you do this again.
Speaker 8: If you try to kill yourself again, I will kill you.
Speaker 8: So like this is a lose lose situation across the board,
Speaker 8: and it really leaves this question of like what is
Speaker 8: love to this family? What does to love mean for
Speaker 8: all this? And like you know, so we have we
Speaker 8: have Sabelle, I think really kind of like trying to
Speaker 8: determine what their own definitions of love are. They're approximating it,
Speaker 8: and I think we do see this in the end
Speaker 8: that like making peace with yourself, I think is a
Speaker 8: piece of that, you know, finding out what love is
Speaker 8: and you know, but you can't always rely on this
Speaker 8: external these external cultural forces to bring happiness along with
Speaker 8: that that individual clarity.
Speaker 1: Well, the reason why they burn the photos and she
Speaker 1: slashes her wrists that last time, isn't that after he
Speaker 1: kills her lover and they find out that she had
Speaker 1: a lover, And like this whole idea of this marriage
Speaker 1: being a sham that really comes out and suddenly they're
Speaker 1: disowning her, which is the thing that she was trying
Speaker 1: to not have happened the entire time time, But she
Speaker 1: needed to live her life. She wanted to have that freedom,
Speaker 1: whether it was with Khita or not, and Khita is
Speaker 1: just this passageway for her to have that freedom. And
Speaker 1: really I love that she knows what she wants and
Speaker 1: she's out there trying to get it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it's one of the films I think the
Speaker 5: film deals with wonderfully. I mean, it is her sexuality,
Speaker 5: and is that she wants to have sex, she wants
Speaker 5: to get laid, she wants to have fun, she wants
Speaker 5: to enjoy her body. And she comes from a culture
Speaker 5: where and the film really depicts it with a complete hypocrisy.
Speaker 5: I mean that's in all cultures. But you know that
Speaker 5: the male characters in the Turkish culture in the film
Speaker 5: are expected to go to brothels and have sex with
Speaker 5: all these be married, but have sex with as many
Speaker 5: women as they want, and that's fine. And if she,
Speaker 5: as a woman, even dares to want any sexuality in
Speaker 5: her life, she is a whore and she is dishonoring
Speaker 5: the family and she should die. I mean, better to
Speaker 5: have a dead daughter than a daughter who actually sleeps
Speaker 5: with more than one man. And it really captures the
Speaker 5: ugliness of that which is I think runs through a
Speaker 5: lot of cultures in the world. And you know, it's
Speaker 5: amazing I mean, it's an amazing moment in the film
Speaker 5: when after this marriage she goes and sleeps with a stranger,
Speaker 5: and rather than dealing with it the way you'd see
Speaker 5: in an American film where it's kind of she doesn't
Speaker 5: know how she feels about it or it's weird or what,
Speaker 5: she's just walking through the street glowing. I mean, she
Speaker 5: had the best time. And it's so cool to see
Speaker 5: a film where a female character goes and gets laid
Speaker 5: and is like, I feel great and there's no shame,
Speaker 5: there's no and it's everything that her culture wouldn't allow,
Speaker 5: but by extention, let's face it, Western culture in general
Speaker 5: also doesn't allow. I mean, it's still changing. And it
Speaker 5: was such a sweet moment because I was used to
Speaker 5: from American films that we'd see her the next day
Speaker 5: and she'd go, oh, I slept with this guy didn't
Speaker 5: even know. I'm this is weird, and hews like, no,
Speaker 5: it was great. So I love that. I was like
Speaker 5: one of my favorite moments of the movie. But I
Speaker 5: do feel like, yeah, it really captures the complete hypocrisy
Speaker 5: about how we see sexuality, and certainly the Turkish sort
Speaker 5: of cultural stuff is very extreme versions of it, but
Speaker 5: once again it seems generalizable out to how we judge
Speaker 5: other people's sexualities and how as a culture we still
Speaker 5: live by very strict lines of oh, this is okay sexuality,
Speaker 5: this isn't, and you know it's I mean, the film
Speaker 5: is very wonderfully subversive in a lot of ways because
Speaker 5: it will show an extreme case, but it's always like yeah,
Speaker 5: and that's not only in Turkish families in Germany. It's
Speaker 5: kind of the world, you know, which is why I
Speaker 5: think you know your points about it being reading as
Speaker 5: a trans film is like, yeah, absolutely anything that doesn't
Speaker 5: fit neatly in the margins of what we're supposed to
Speaker 5: all be like, or that somebody decided that wasn't any
Speaker 5: of us. This film is about that and about not
Speaker 5: fitting in and that being what makes us great, and
Speaker 5: yet a world that tells us that's which makes us wrong.
Speaker 8: And it is about slow transformation. I mean, one of
Speaker 8: the things I love about that scene of her walking
Speaker 8: and glowing she's in her wedding dress, and this really
Speaker 8: hit me this last time through watching this that you know,
Speaker 8: in that moment she's like in complete, you know, a
Speaker 8: cloud of white as she's doing her quote unquote walk
Speaker 8: of shame back, but it really starts this. It's her
Speaker 8: first moment of like complete independence, and as we see
Speaker 8: her do these walks. We see her do several walks
Speaker 8: throughout the rest of the film, but her clothing becomes
Speaker 8: progressively darker. So she's usually got like an element of light,
Speaker 8: you know, up to when she kind of disguises herself
Speaker 8: in a more very masking, like a crew cut, kind
Speaker 8: of a tough guy kind of presentation. You know, she's
Speaker 8: like in a white a shirt with black pants and
Speaker 8: you know, maybe a gray pullover. So progressively throughout that,
Speaker 8: like as she's walking, her demeanor is just getting darker.
Speaker 8: And I mean there's I think also an aspect of confidence.
Speaker 8: I think that goes along with that, but certainly removing
Speaker 8: that the purity, and I think that the white is
Speaker 8: often meant to convey.
Speaker 1: It's funny that there's this real world involvement as well
Speaker 1: when it comes to so they ended up she wasn't
Speaker 1: a really professional actress, and they ended up changing the
Speaker 1: character name to her name to make a little bit
Speaker 1: easier on her. And so you already have that kind
Speaker 1: of mixing of the fictional and the nonfictional. And then
Speaker 1: right before I think actually they were getting the film
Speaker 1: ready and we're submitting it to film festivals and things,
Speaker 1: and there was a story in a German newspaper about
Speaker 1: oh my god, this woman in this movie she had
Speaker 1: done adult before and how terrible is this, and so
Speaker 1: they actually used that though I like that, the filmmakers
Speaker 1: kind of were like, oh, well, now we have all
Speaker 1: of this quote unquote free press because it is such
Speaker 1: a scandal that this Turkish woman had been in porn.
Speaker 1: Well let's put this movie out. And they just kind
Speaker 1: of use that to parlay it into some free publicity,
Speaker 1: which was good for them. I'm really glad for that.
Speaker 1: And then it was such a major coup when they
Speaker 1: ended up winning the Golden Bear. They did not expect
Speaker 1: that whatsoever and helped jettison this movie into the consciousness
Speaker 1: so that I mean, I'm not going to say that
Speaker 1: we wouldn't be talking about it right now if it
Speaker 1: hadn't won the Golden Bear, but it becomes became such
Speaker 1: a major hit in Germany and Turkey, not necessarily in
Speaker 1: English speaking countries, but at least we know of it now,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty darn easy to find Keen.
Speaker 5: Is one of I think a number of filmmakers like this,
Speaker 5: you know where he's My perception lease is that he's
Speaker 5: incredibly well known and respected in Europe. I mean that
Speaker 5: he's like a famous filmmaker. And yet you talk to
Speaker 5: people here in the States and a lot of people,
Speaker 5: I mean even film lover people have either never heard
Speaker 5: of him, were like, well I've heard the name, but
Speaker 5: I mean, and you do see that with a lot
Speaker 5: of amazing European or not used to European, but it's
Speaker 5: non US filmmakers that we just don't get those films
Speaker 5: here unless you really seek them out. And it's it's why,
Speaker 5: it's why I was doing a show like this is
Speaker 5: great because hopefully gets a few more people interested. But
Speaker 5: it's shocking to me how many filmmakers I'm only discovering
Speaker 5: in my forties, fifties, sixties, you know that, Like you
Speaker 5: go to Europe and they're like, oh yeah, I love
Speaker 5: their films and you're like, okay, we don't even know
Speaker 5: they exist. And you know, he's one of those people
Speaker 5: who he's won a lot of awards, he's gotten a
Speaker 5: lot of attention, His films are are are events. I
Speaker 5: think much more in Europe, and they're like just not
Speaker 5: even on the radar here, which is just really sad.
Speaker 1: I love that she tries to fit into this domestic
Speaker 1: space when she gets married, the actually starts to clean
Speaker 1: up the shithole apartment that he's in. I love he's
Speaker 1: so oh he's just filthy. The way that he puts
Speaker 1: out his cigarette out his own fucking floor. It's like,
Speaker 1: what kind of an animal are you? And you just
Speaker 1: see the dishes and the beer cans and all that
Speaker 1: stuff just overflowing. And I liked on the commentary they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we had to leave the Susie in the Bancheese poster
Speaker 1: there so people knew that it was the same apartment
Speaker 1: because it gets transformed so radically after she kind of
Speaker 1: comes in. And that was the moment where I was
Speaker 1: just like, oh, okay, she's here. She's making her nest
Speaker 1: or whatever, like she's here to stay and you know,
Speaker 1: going to be this you know, tame woman. No she's not.
Speaker 1: And I'm so glad for that. And going back to
Speaker 1: this Susie and the Banshees's poster, I'm glad at the
Speaker 1: way that music plays such a role in this movie.
Speaker 1: And I love that mention on the commentary too, where
Speaker 1: he's like, I'm not just here making the greatest Hits mixtape.
Speaker 1: I'm not Quentin Tarantino playing all of my favorite songs.
Speaker 1: I will play songs that the characters would listen to
Speaker 1: rather than what I like to listen to.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the music is just fantastic. There's so many wonderful
Speaker 8: needle drops. And the one that I'm sitting with right
Speaker 8: now is when After Laughter hits. It's toward the end
Speaker 8: of the film and she she's in the carnival and
Speaker 8: she's about to experience like a horrible tragedy. It's like, really,
Speaker 8: you know, it's really really coming. But you know, in
Speaker 8: the meantime, we get to see her ride in the
Speaker 8: tilta Whirl. Well after Laughter, you know this jaunty, little
Speaker 8: nostalgic number, which is a little out of step with
Speaker 8: the other like post punk soundtrack, we get.
Speaker 5: The lyrics of that. After Laughter Comes Tears completely foreshadows
Speaker 5: where the film is going. Yeah, but the tone doesn't.
Speaker 5: So it's a really neat choice because it feels like, oh, well,
Speaker 5: everything is great. But if you actually listen to the song,
Speaker 5: or when you've seen the film before you go where
Speaker 5: you're about to go, it's like, oh no, it's actually
Speaker 5: enjoy this because it's about to get really dark. And
Speaker 5: there's an interesting thing when you talked about her cleaning
Speaker 5: up the apartment that struck me, which is that there's
Speaker 5: such a there's a similarity. They shared that they're both suicidal,
Speaker 5: but there's also a complete difference. Her suicidalness is somehow
Speaker 5: an act of wanting to live. It's like, I don't
Speaker 5: want to live if I can't be free. But she
Speaker 5: doesn't want to just die. She's actually somebody who wants
Speaker 5: to live, and it's almost an act of rebellion. It's like, well,
Speaker 5: if I can't live, then i'll die, but I would
Speaker 5: much rather live, and so like to me cleaning up
Speaker 5: the apartment. She takes care of herself. She keeps herself together.
Speaker 5: He is somebody who has given up. He's a wreck,
Speaker 5: he's a mess. He is truly, I think, a depressive person,
Speaker 5: or truly somebody without hope. Her suicidalness comes from a whole.
Speaker 5: They're both suicidal, but for completely different reasons. She's suicidal
Speaker 5: because she desperately wants to live and isn't being allowed
Speaker 5: too he's suicidal because he sees no reason to live.
Speaker 5: So in a way, it's fascinating because there are sort
Speaker 5: of these twins, but there really were very different reasons.
Speaker 5: And so her trying to find a way to take
Speaker 5: that shithole and make it nice to me fits that
Speaker 5: she doesn't want to be miserable. She's just lived in
Speaker 5: a family where she's had no choice but to be
Speaker 5: miserable and sees no future but to be miserable, which
Speaker 5: is so different than he who does have a choice
Speaker 5: and is made It is clearly you know, alcoholic, and
Speaker 5: just you know, he he's lost his wife, and I
Speaker 5: have the feeling that that's what happened, is that he
Speaker 5: was in love and we're told really with this woman
Speaker 5: who sounds great, and she died we don't ever quite,
Speaker 5: I don't think know how, and that left him broken.
Speaker 5: But I think with that he doesn't see like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I might as well die because I lost the love
Speaker 5: of my life, so there's no point. So it's a
Speaker 5: fascinating thing because they're both very similar in some ways,
Speaker 5: but a boy, it comes from very different roots.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And as you're speaking, I'm thinking about the generational
Speaker 8: difference between these characters because there's whatever at least a
Speaker 8: micro generation between them age wise, and you know, so
Speaker 8: I'm looking at him and so he's probably a little
Speaker 8: bit older than I am, but probably still in that
Speaker 8: kind of Generation X kind of mindset that like neilist like,
Speaker 8: you know, I wear black because black is how I
Speaker 8: feel a kind of a kind of a place which
Speaker 8: you know, kind of comes with this, you know, kind
Speaker 8: of a sense of cultural cynicism and which you know,
Speaker 8: for me, I feel like I've had to you know,
Speaker 8: push back on to unlearn in any ways, because like,
Speaker 8: what's what's on the other side of citizens It's just
Speaker 8: like there's nothingness, there's no there's really no hope, and
Speaker 8: she's not coming from that same place at all. You know,
Speaker 8: it's frustration and it's desperation for sure.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 8: I feel like if this was said in the US
Speaker 8: and it was dealing with with, you know, characters that
Speaker 8: were in more of an environment that I'm familiar with,
Speaker 8: I would wonder if that generational divide would be a
Speaker 8: little more clear to me as opposed to being again
Speaker 8: you know, kind of removed into this like Turkish German space,
Speaker 8: limital space that they're inhabiting.
Speaker 1: Going back to the music thing too, I've really liked
Speaker 1: those little transitions that they have where they show the legit,
Speaker 1: you know, traditional musicians and the singer and they're they're
Speaker 1: on the banks of the river and you get to
Speaker 1: see the mosque behind them, all of the carpets that
Speaker 1: they rented from the bazaar all below them and everything.
Speaker 1: I really was not sure what to think about those
Speaker 1: the first time I saw them, but I'm just like, well,
Speaker 1: these are more than just act breaks.
Speaker 5: But I.
Speaker 1: Really like what they're doing there, and especially that you
Speaker 1: can see time passing with them that you know, we
Speaker 1: start in the morning and then the last one I
Speaker 1: believe is in the evening, so you get to see
Speaker 1: this whole you know, shifted that and it's such a
Speaker 1: nice way to kind of bring all this together. I'm
Speaker 1: kind of amazed at how well this movie works when
Speaker 1: you hear that audio commentary and hear them talking about how,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, the original version and I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: an assembly cut. They're like, the original version of this
Speaker 1: was like four hours long, and then we started to
Speaker 1: trim it back and just to hear all of the
Speaker 1: scenes and there, I believe they are deleted scenes on
Speaker 1: at least one of the DVD versions of this. I
Speaker 1: think I ended up buying three, which was a real
Speaker 1: shame that I.
Speaker 4: Had to do that.
Speaker 1: But you know, one's got this feature, one's got that,
Speaker 1: one's got the commentary, so good luck. Maybe they'll finally
Speaker 1: put this out someplace with all of those features all together.
Speaker 1: But to hear them talking about like, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 1: had to trim this, and this scene is out, and
Speaker 1: this scene is out, and just the way that that
Speaker 1: also helped. There's a lot of jump cuts in this,
Speaker 1: Like you're talking about that very violent sex scene between
Speaker 1: Khat and Zimaran, I think the woman that was kind
Speaker 1: of in his life for a while too, and just
Speaker 1: like we were jumping through there like crazy or some
Speaker 1: of the violence that they are able to just really
Speaker 1: amp it up with those harsh cuts as well, because yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of violence in this, and so much
Speaker 1: of it has to do with Kahat and just he
Speaker 1: seems to be a walking fist most of the time.
Speaker 5: And there's a suddenness to the violence that I feel
Speaker 5: like isn't what it feels like in most movies. I
Speaker 5: feel like movies with I guess with some reason. You know,
Speaker 5: there's often a build up device. It's a way that
Speaker 5: filmmakers will create tension. It's like, oh, this is getting worse,
Speaker 5: and you know, this movie feels more like my experience
Speaker 5: of life. It's just when something shockingly violent or it
Speaker 5: short of was like what just happened? I mean, whether
Speaker 5: it's your cutting her wrists in that bar, or when
Speaker 5: he does kill the guy in.
Speaker 10: The bar, I mean, it's like it happens before you
Speaker 10: even have a chance to go what And that feels
Speaker 10: very real to me, and it's not very something we
Speaker 10: see in films a lot, just because I think it's
Speaker 10: traditional and it makes sense that you'd want to build
Speaker 10: those moments.
Speaker 5: But by merely refuting that, I think it makes the
Speaker 5: violence in the still very real in a very disturbing way,
Speaker 5: because it feels like, oh, that's kind of almost too
Speaker 5: close to the way you probably experience it in real life.
Speaker 8: Listening to the commentary that charts out some of the
Speaker 8: things that happen some of the scenes, the nightclub scene
Speaker 8: in particular, where you know they didn't really inform every
Speaker 8: participant about what was going to happen. So it really
Speaker 8: makes me wonder you know in the you know, in
Speaker 8: the scene where ca heat punches Nico and kills him
Speaker 8: in one punch. By the way, speaking of a walking fist,
Speaker 8: did everybody in the room know that was going to happen?
Speaker 5: Right? Like?
Speaker 8: Did they inform that? Is that energy of the other
Speaker 8: people who are in the scene not quite understanding what
Speaker 8: they're seeing, is that coming through? I would imagine probably so, right, Like,
Speaker 8: it really adds to the tension of the nightclub scene
Speaker 8: for sure, and you know, and it's just so it's
Speaker 8: this is not a direct relation, but I can't. I'm
Speaker 8: reminded of like how many times we see bloody hands.
Speaker 8: I mean we see both gay heat and about like
Speaker 8: their hands or bloody constantly in this film. Well, just
Speaker 8: what an interesting interesting motif that is?
Speaker 5: You hear you say that? And I've seen the film like, yeah,
Speaker 5: six times. I think. Now. Part of what makes this
Speaker 5: a great film, and I think a lot of great
Speaker 5: films have this is the density of detail where you
Speaker 5: can keep seeing things. Because I'm listening to you guys
Speaker 5: talking about it, and I'm going, oh, I hadn't thought
Speaker 5: about that. Oh, I hadn't noticed that. And any film
Speaker 5: that I can have seen this many times and then
Speaker 5: go oh yeah, blood on hands. That is definitely an
Speaker 5: intentional motif to keep being able to keep discovering layers,
Speaker 5: I think is something that really wonderful films often have
Speaker 5: because there's so much in them that there's always a
Speaker 5: new way. I mean, you're reading of it as a
Speaker 5: trans story is like, wow, I want to go back,
Speaker 5: and you watch the film with that in mind, and
Speaker 5: I think this film is so rich. The characters are
Speaker 5: so rich, what they go through is so rich that
Speaker 5: it and the way it's told that it affords that
Speaker 5: it affords the ability to go back and go wow.
Speaker 5: I hadn't even noticed that whole element, and that's exciting.
Speaker 5: I think that as a film viewer, I love that, and.
Speaker 8: Especially for a film that's what twenty twenty three years
Speaker 8: old at this.
Speaker 5: Point, right, that booke ending thing of the songs. It's
Speaker 5: one of the other things about the movie that I love,
Speaker 5: among the many things, is how it does things that
Speaker 5: I would think would make me feel a certain way
Speaker 5: and don't like that's a very recdian thing in a way.
Speaker 5: To have the whole story, this very naturalistic story, about
Speaker 5: this intense emotional story of these two people book ended
Speaker 5: by traditional sounding Turkish music being performed right into camera
Speaker 5: in a very theatrical stagy way on the banks of
Speaker 5: the river with Istanbul in the back. It's like you
Speaker 5: would think of that as a distancing technique. If somebody
Speaker 5: describe it would sound like, oh, that's going to take
Speaker 5: you out of the movie, intentionally as the filmmaker saying,
Speaker 5: we're telling you a story, this isn't real, and yet
Speaker 5: its actual effect is the opposite, instead of being this
Speaker 5: weird distancing grief chorus, to me, it sort of goes
Speaker 5: it makes it more real and brings it into it
Speaker 5: and makes you feel like, yes, we're telling you a story,
Speaker 5: but come into our story. And it's something that I
Speaker 5: feel like. The film was full of things that if
Speaker 5: I read a description and review, I would think I
Speaker 5: would feel one way, and seeing the movie, it operates
Speaker 5: in just the opposite. And I think that's also one
Speaker 5: of the most interesting things filmmakers can do is take
Speaker 5: a device and not have it make you feel what
Speaker 5: you think you would. And I love that those songs
Speaker 5: and somehow they add the emotion and somehow they make
Speaker 5: the film feel more real and more complete instead of
Speaker 5: feeling like, oh, of the filmmaker commenting on the story
Speaker 5: I'm telling. And I don't even know why. It's the
Speaker 5: nature of the music, it's the way he shot it.
Speaker 5: It's the humanity and passion in the music.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Oh, I can't even give great reasons, but I know
Speaker 5: that that's the kind of thing. If I read about it,
Speaker 5: I would go, oh, yeah, that kind of Greek chorusy thing.
Speaker 5: And it isn't. And I don't know why it is.
Speaker 8: It there's a musical journey that's happening here where you know,
Speaker 8: he's got his world of post punk and arguably danceable
Speaker 8: post punk, because he's listening to pesche Mode, right, He's
Speaker 8: listening to Sisters of Mercy. But he says, I don't dance,
Speaker 8: you know, and he refuses to dance to more traditional
Speaker 8: Turkish music. During the wedding, she makes him dance. Cocaine helps, obviously,
Speaker 8: but she makes him dance up to you know, and
Speaker 8: he dances more and more and more as the film goes,
Speaker 8: and we're you know, going between his you know, his
Speaker 8: Western ideals. This band that we see is kind of
Speaker 8: the you know, the Turkish chorus throughout the entire film,
Speaker 8: but then it all comes together over this end closing sequence,
Speaker 8: you know, the end credits where we've got talk Talks,
Speaker 8: Life's what you make it performed by a Turkish musician, right,
Speaker 8: and so like really like bringing this all together in
Speaker 8: this unified presentation over those closing credits is Wow. What
Speaker 8: a way to end that musical journey of this film.
Speaker 1: Well, and a nice callback too, because it's the psychiatrist
Speaker 1: at the hospitals, like have you ever heard of the
Speaker 1: the And I love that It's like you don't expect
Speaker 1: that coming out of a doctor's mouth, where it's like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, you know this song. It's like what sir,
Speaker 1: you know these songs? But yeah, the older I get,
Speaker 1: the more I'm like, oh yeah, these people are my contemporaries. Okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: You're talking about the tension, And I think the most
Speaker 1: tense scene for me is when it's Kahat and I
Speaker 1: think his brother in law who's played by the director's
Speaker 1: real brother I think in the film, and two other
Speaker 1: guys and they are playing some game and all the
Speaker 1: guys except for Kahit, are just like talking about these
Speaker 1: women and you know who they want to go with,
Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff, and he's just like, hey,
Speaker 1: whant you go back to your wives or whatever, and
Speaker 1: they just it's like, all of a sudden, the tension,
Speaker 1: like you said, just goes from zero to one hundred.
Speaker 1: It's like, what the fuck did you just say? And
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that this weren't flying in that scene, but man,
Speaker 1: oh man, there's another guy who just immediately stands up
Speaker 1: and it starts putting his finger into Khit's face, and
Speaker 1: it's like, wow, that is is pretty telling you. You
Speaker 1: were talking Keith about the whole like, oh, yeah, the
Speaker 1: guys go to the whorehouses, but the women know they
Speaker 1: have to stay as pure as the driven snow. I
Speaker 1: love that immediate scene afterwards with Sabelle and all of
Speaker 1: the women and them talking and really talking shit. And
Speaker 1: then I loved Dow on the commentary where Fatima was
Speaker 1: saying like, yeah, people didn't believe this, They didn't want
Speaker 1: to know that women actually talk this way, and he's like,
Speaker 1: they probably talk worse in real life than we had
Speaker 1: on this film.
Speaker 5: I do love that moment where the women are talking about,
Speaker 5: you know, with like the other women saying, you know,
Speaker 5: they're talking about her new husband. They say does he
Speaker 5: lick and she says like a cat and they're like, oh,
Speaker 5: my mind doesn't like a cow. It is booing and
Speaker 5: it is great because again, yes, the film is this
Speaker 5: embrace of female sexuality and like the fact that men
Speaker 5: don't want to deal with female sexuality and don't want
Speaker 5: to think it exists, and the film is saying, not
Speaker 5: only does it exist, it's ecstatic and amazing and wonderful
Speaker 5: and you know, get the fuck over it. And that
Speaker 5: scene is yeah, encapsulates that because it's like all these
Speaker 5: Turkish women who've had to pretend that, yeah, they are
Speaker 5: like not sexual beings and they get together and they're like,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, like they're they're the men. It feels like
Speaker 5: the male sexuality is very posturing. It feels like, you know,
Speaker 5: in the film in general, particularly the Turkish male sexuality
Speaker 5: is very like it's not really about loving sex. It's
Speaker 5: about it's about like proving to other men what a
Speaker 5: man you are, much more than it's about enjoying sex.
Speaker 5: Whereas the women in the film, it's like, no, they
Speaker 5: like sex, it's not about proving anything to anybody. They like,
Speaker 5: feel it good and that it is just yeah. I
Speaker 5: think that probably again, transcends culture. I see that in
Speaker 5: our culture, you know, that male sexuality as defined by
Speaker 5: certainly the culture I grew up, it is a lot
Speaker 5: of it's very performative, and I think the film captures
Speaker 5: that and that, whereas hers is not at all, and
Speaker 5: the little glimpse we get of the other women is
Speaker 5: not at all, and the women in general are just
Speaker 5: so much more human in the film. I mean, the
Speaker 5: Sabelle's mother, you know, is the one person in her
Speaker 5: family who doesn't want isn't in judging her sexuality, but
Speaker 5: also just in judging her period. She just wants to
Speaker 5: love her, you know. And it's the men who can't
Speaker 5: get past image and honor and and being a man,
Speaker 5: and you know, and and the women are all like, yeah,
Speaker 5: that's all bullshit. I don't care about that. I want
Speaker 5: to deal on a human level, which again, yes, I
Speaker 5: think that's probably a big thing in urch of society,
Speaker 5: but certainly a big thing in American society. So you know,
Speaker 5: I feel like that's kind of wonderful. I mean, it's funny.
Speaker 5: The film is full of very political and social and
Speaker 5: and you know, subversive and the best way ideas without
Speaker 5: ever feeling like a tract or ever feeling it's actually
Speaker 5: making a point. You know, so many of the best
Speaker 5: films that make a lot of great points never feel like,
Speaker 5: you know, we're teaching you a lesson, and then at
Speaker 5: the end of the movie they've actually made you think
Speaker 5: about a lot of stuff. And this is one of
Speaker 5: those movies. It's completely fun I mean, that's the other thing.
Speaker 5: It's a really tragic film full of violence, it's really funny,
Speaker 5: and it really enjoyable, and it's actually an enjoyable film
Speaker 5: to watch, and yet at the end of it you're
Speaker 5: heartbroken and having to think about the world you live in,
Speaker 5: and that, to me is a remarkable thing when any
Speaker 5: kind of story or art can.
Speaker 8: Do that, and then you get to go back in
Speaker 8: and dig in. One of the things I enjoyed about
Speaker 8: being able to really take my time at this time
Speaker 8: is being able to stop it and look up what
Speaker 8: the names meant. So there's a scene early on where
Speaker 8: they say, you know, first names are very like more
Speaker 8: meaningful than last names in Turkish culture, and I was like, huh,
Speaker 8: I think that might be kind of counter to what
Speaker 8: I'm understanding about Western culture, right, Like, it seems like
Speaker 8: your family name, that tradition seems to be more important
Speaker 8: than whatever your actual first name is. So it made
Speaker 8: me like go in and look up what does Kahait mean?
Speaker 8: It means work, effort, you know, perseverance. What does Sabel mean?
Speaker 8: It means oracle, right, a revealer. So like we've got
Speaker 8: Kahit like the worker, and we've got Sabel who's like
Speaker 8: the revealer, you know, the shower. You know, that dynamic
Speaker 8: was so interesting to think about looking at the journeys
Speaker 8: of these characters as they go through, even to look
Speaker 8: at you know, as there's a scene in mid film
Speaker 8: as they're driving together and there's something written on the
Speaker 8: back of window of their cars like a volks on
Speaker 8: a wagon rabbit or something like that, right, and it
Speaker 8: says HEPSI sending me h G P s I s
Speaker 8: E n I N m I, which means is it
Speaker 8: all yours? And if you can read more about what
Speaker 8: that means, there's songs called that like, you know, so
Speaker 8: there's there's much more rich text to go in into
Speaker 8: with with that, but you know, it is like there
Speaker 8: for a significant part of that scene, you're being asked
Speaker 8: by the screen directly in front of your face, is
Speaker 8: this all yours. It's confrontational to you, the viewer.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating about his name meaning worker, because I know
Speaker 1: that there's this whole concept in Germany of gastarbeiter. I
Speaker 1: believe it is my German is worse than my English,
Speaker 1: and it's this whole program of oh, we are having
Speaker 1: this big economic boom, we need to bring in foreigners
Speaker 1: with ways different from our own to work in our country.
Speaker 1: And a lot of them were Turks, and this brought
Speaker 1: up the whole idea, like in the media when they
Speaker 1: were talking about this film, it's like, is this about
Speaker 1: guest workers? And then people are just like guest works,
Speaker 1: it doesn't even exist. We're German, Like, get over it.
Speaker 1: We're fricking German. We're not guests in your country. We're
Speaker 1: part of this country.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 5: Certainly is timely for us here, absolutely, absolutely, somehow most
Speaker 5: great art is like really timely whenever you see it,
Speaker 5: wherever you see it. That's what makes it kind of amazing,
Speaker 5: is like, probably this movie fifty years from now will
Speaker 5: still be completely meaningful and completely speak to whatever culture
Speaker 5: you see it in. And you know, if you saw
Speaker 5: this movie in the UK, or if you saw it
Speaker 5: in whatever South Africa or Japan or it would be
Speaker 5: speaking to something about because it's on working on such
Speaker 5: a deep human level. And I think the deeper something
Speaker 5: goes on a human level, the more it transcends and
Speaker 5: like applies to wherever you are. And it's that weird
Speaker 5: contradiction that art has, like the more specific to a character,
Speaker 5: more speific to a time or to a place it gets,
Speaker 5: the more universal becomes not less, which is kind of
Speaker 5: one of those amazing paradoxes I've never fully understood, but
Speaker 5: it does seem to be true that, you know, really
Speaker 5: great art that is very specific somehow then becomes very universal.
Speaker 5: And if it's not very specific, it also often fails
Speaker 5: to be universal too. It just feels like, oh, blah,
Speaker 5: it doesn't doesn't mean something.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 5: But I've been read some like Charles Dickens lately and
Speaker 5: it's like it's so specific to England in that moment,
Speaker 5: and yet because of that, I'm seeing all this uff
Speaker 5: about you know, the United States in twenty twenty six,
Speaker 5: and this still has that feeling of like, yeah, whenever
Speaker 5: and wherever you see it, it's going to speak about
Speaker 5: your culture and your people and people you know.
Speaker 1: Well, well, I just got a text from Vin Vendors.
Speaker 1: He says you're talking way too much about politics and art.
Speaker 5: Oh damn, that was such a strange. I have not
Speaker 5: done a deep dive into that. I just was like, what,
Speaker 5: just what do you say? What happened? It was a
Speaker 5: little disturbing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then yeah, I think somebody else man might
Speaker 1: have been to Michelle Yo is just like, oh no, no,
Speaker 1: we don't talk about politics and this stuff. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: what is the problem here? Folks? Are you not twice
Speaker 1: if you're under threat?
Speaker 5: Right now?
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's go ahead and take a break
Speaker 1: and play a preview for next week's show right after
Speaker 1: these brief messages, Manier, Spruit.
Speaker 2: Medaddy h So meet up?
Speaker 9: No Pas, got your said.
Speaker 6: Kiskis, Regaters, sp.
Speaker 4: Your morning Man, capture, what's.
Speaker 2: The co.
Speaker 6: City comming? Ne Se Nation crime and net let Rebels?
Speaker 6: Are you see us?
Speaker 1: That's right, We'll be back next week with a look
Speaker 1: at bertrand Mindico's the Wild Boys. Until then, I want
Speaker 1: to think my host Keith and rain So, Keith, what
Speaker 1: has been keeping you busy?
Speaker 5: Sir?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 5: You know, trying to be a happy person that's been
Speaker 5: the biggest thing I've got to been in this kind
Speaker 5: of quasi semi retired part of my life where I'm
Speaker 5: not chasing work. I'm like, when things are happening, I'm
Speaker 5: working with friends or teaching or doing stuff like that,
Speaker 5: and you know, standing on bridges with signs opposing ice
Speaker 5: and it's actually been as much as part of my
Speaker 5: time as anything right now. As you know, my wonderful
Speaker 5: wife is very much an activist, and so I let
Speaker 5: her find what's going on. I'm like, Okay, I'll go
Speaker 5: along see if there's any way to help our country
Speaker 5: start to go in a better direction. Is sort of
Speaker 5: the best thing I can be doing. So doing some
Speaker 5: of that, you know, I'm just trying to look out
Speaker 5: the window and enjoy what's good out there in the
Speaker 5: face of a lot of things that are creepy in
Speaker 5: bad head.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for doing that, and keep fighting the
Speaker 1: good fight, sir.
Speaker 11: I do.
Speaker 5: I hope that that there'll be more resistance that can
Speaker 5: happen now. I think what happened in Minneapolis is incredibly
Speaker 5: moving and powerful, and I have the whole nation can
Speaker 5: take on that energy. Maybe we can come through this. Okay,
Speaker 5: So anyway. Sorry, don't mean to get preachy or whatever,
Speaker 5: but you know, we are at a time where I
Speaker 5: wish we had what Europe has terms the history of
Speaker 5: general strikes or things like that, but you know, I'm
Speaker 5: hoping there'll be more of that kind of organizational stuff
Speaker 5: going on. Anyway. Sorry, lecture ended. Sorry, No, it's.
Speaker 1: Okay, And my phone's blowing up. Vim is really mad
Speaker 1: right now. Just stop him from talking, put him mute
Speaker 1: and rain. What's going on in charm City.
Speaker 8: Well, Baltimore is continuing to be We're just finally thawing
Speaker 8: out of a really, really really deep freeze, you know,
Speaker 8: the longest stretch of cold weather we've had in a
Speaker 8: long time. So starting to get out into the streets,
Speaker 8: which is nice because you know, as as noted, that's
Speaker 8: more and more necessary. And you know, I'm feeling pretty
Speaker 8: optimistic about the if youture given everything. There's a lot
Speaker 8: of work ahead of us, and I've got a lot
Speaker 8: of cool things coming up this year, and by the
Speaker 8: time this comes out, I should have my blog back
Speaker 8: up and running. I'm continuing to do the Hopkins Press podcast,
Speaker 8: and I'm looking at starting a new radio show and
Speaker 8: interview situation that you can find on my website, which
Speaker 8: is just at rain dot com r Ahne dot com.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you so much folks for being on the show.
Speaker 1: Thanks to everybody for listening. Do you want to support
Speaker 1: physical media and get great movies in the mail, head
Speaker 1: over to scarecrow dot com and try Scarecrow Videos incredible
Speaker 1: rent by mail service, the largest publicly accessible collection in
Speaker 1: the world. You'll find films there entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get
Speaker 1: what you want when you want it without the scrolling.
Speaker 1: And yes they have head on. If you want to
Speaker 1: hear more of me shooting off my mouth, check out
Speaker 1: some of the other shows that I work on. They
Speaker 1: are all available at Wardingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to
Speaker 1: our Patreon community. If you want to join the community,
Speaker 1: visit patrion dot com slash Projection Booth. Every donation we
Speaker 1: get helps the Projection Booth take over the world.
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