The Fall (2006) with Ali

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Bechdel Cast, the questions ask if movies have
women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, Zephyn, best
start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Hey, Caitlin, Hey Jamie, here's the thing I want to die,
but maybe we should do some sort of bartering thing first.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Well, you have to tell me your story first.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Okay, but like make sure you're doing some like petty
crime for me. Okay, okay. The many ways in which
Lee peys acts completely out of pocket this movie. He's like,
it's a too urgent. I have to od in front
of this kid, Oh, who is addicted to lying and
definitely will not leave the room. Lee, Lee, Lee, all right,

(00:49):
Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
My name's Jamie, my name is Caitlin. This is our
show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens,
using the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point. Yeah,
and what pray tell is that, Jamie.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Well, it's a media metric created by our dear friend
Alison Bechdel, who originally put the metric in a comic
in her iconic comic collection Dice to watch out for
in the eighties, lots of versions of this test. Here's
the version we use. We require that there be two
characters of a marginalized gender with names who speak to

(01:25):
each other about something other than a man for more
than two lines of meaningful dialogue. I was I was
a little worried about this. I have to say Bechdel
test wise, I was worried. But we we get there.
It would have been it would have been objectively a
bad look twenty nine countries and it doesn't pass the
Bechdel test. That would be pretty incredible. But Spoilerer, we're fine.

(01:49):
And yeah, we have a sticky, little but in yet
gigantic movie that we're covering today. Yes, The Fall two
thousand and six. Ever heard of it?

Speaker 3 (01:59):
You may not have.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
And it's such an interesting story. Why it's basically like
this director's Megalopolis, except.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Except it's actually watchable.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Except when I watch it, I'm like, Okay, I basically
know what's happening, right, And we have an incredible guest
to discuss with us.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Indeed, he is the editor at film Slop.

Speaker 4 (02:24):
It's Ali, Hello, how's it going?

Speaker 5 (02:27):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Well, thank you for joining us and bringing us the fall.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
Yeah, truly what a moment. I was thinking as well,
because I know you're a fellow minion's head. I was
thinking as I was watching this, I was like, okay,
kind of a love letter to old Hollywood, not unlike.

Speaker 5 (02:46):
Maybe this is Actually this is a really good segue.
Because I was thinking about this. I have something unlike
the Beckadul test, called the menion test that I run
in my head, and this is one of the few
move because that passes. The test is essentially, if you
replace a main character with a minion, will the movie

(03:06):
get better or worse? And most of the time the
movie will get better if you're a place of a minion.
But this is the one movie I can like just
completely say if you replace a character with a minion,
the movie will be worse. So I'm pretty excited to
get into that. I think the little girl, if you
replace her with a minion, you can't do that. She's
better than Anyia.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
No, I can't do that. She's irreplaceable.

Speaker 3 (03:24):
You can't replace Roy with a minion.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
No, because minions can't die, right, And I mean it's
much lower like you can give a minion all the
morphine you want, nothing's going to happen.

Speaker 5 (03:35):
I mean, they'll probably go to sleep for a while.
I feel like they're not a milliono morphin and they're
gonna like it.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
That's true, They're just gonna get hooked.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
Okay. I love the minion test.

Speaker 5 (03:45):
I try to think about it. Usually when there's a
child actor, if you can replace I think, because most
most child actors are pretty replaceable with minions.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
But I mean, I don't disagree.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
You could replace it with a poopy situation.

Speaker 5 (03:58):
Yeah likely. I also, I mean, not to get into
the plot of the movie, the little girl at the
center of the movie is basically a median. She's like
attached herself to a kind of terrible person.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
It's kind of her growth.

Speaker 5 (04:09):
Does his bidding with whatever he wants. WHOA Wow, that's
why I like this movie above all.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
Well, yeah, tell us your your relationship, your history with
this movie.

Speaker 5 (04:20):
I have a pretty deep history of this movie. I
think I came across it randomly. Honestly, don't remember how
I came across it, but it's one of the movies
that I watched and it really made me unlock why
I loved movies I like, I think honestly, before I
became a cinephile. Sorry I just said that out lot.
I really don't like.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
The word cinophil Okay, brag.

Speaker 5 (04:41):
Maybe maybe maybe a better term for cinephile movie lover.
But like before I became a movie perfer, I think
it was one of the first better maybe just branding
cinephile to movie perfer. It's like one of the first
ever movies that I saw that just really unlocked the
medium for me, maybe six years ago. And then I
remember I was having a really stressful day a week

(05:01):
after at work, and I started googling pretty shots from
The Fall just to destress, and then all of a sudden,
I found myself watching three hours of content from The Falls.
I was like, might as well just watch the movie,
and I continued watching it, and then it just became
something really special to me. And whenever I tell people
that I love movies, that always asked me, what is
your favorite movie? This is one of the top three.

(05:22):
And there's a huge issue I have with doing this
because there is that movie that came out in twenty
twenty two called Fall, which is just a terrible movie
about rock climbers. I think I don't get the premise.
They're like trying to climb a thing. But everyone's like, oh,
you love that movie, and then I have to end
up in this hole. No, not that one, it's the
one from two thousand and six, and then I sound
like a pretentious juice bag, which I really don't like doing.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
But oh, there's also that show called The Fall. Yeah, Jamie,
what is his name?

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (05:50):
I was like, what the fifty Shades of great guy?

Speaker 5 (05:53):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (05:55):
Yeah, right, he's in that.

Speaker 5 (05:57):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
I looked at the post and I was like, I
bet my mom would have something to say about this show.
It just looks like a Jill a show for Jill,
which generally means that it's none of my business.

Speaker 5 (06:10):
But yeah, every time I tell people I like The Fall,
I always have to coffee out with actually that one.
And I feel like, if you're gonna name your movie
something related to The Fall, it has to be a
good movie, because then I walk out embarrassed, feeling like
someone thinks that I'm a huge fan of the rock
climbing movie, which rock climbing is a concept, is just
something I don't condone or support or believe in.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Heavy as the crown that lies on the letterbox user,
you know it is. It's a tough it's a tough
world out there. Yeah, I feel like this movie is
not well. And also if you're a fan of this movie,
I feel like it's inherently you have to explain it
because it was not available to watch for so long

(06:52):
until the last couple of years.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Yeah, it wasn't on streaming. It wasn't even rentable digitally.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, how did did you watch it six years ago?

Speaker 5 (07:04):
I have to fund some redacted channels of sorts.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
Nice.

Speaker 5 (07:08):
But then they did the re release in theaters, which
I remember that day because everybody was posting on their
Instagram stories and they got to see the Northern Lights,
and I was really bummed about it because I wanted
to see the Northern Lights. All my friends in New
York are like wherever else we're posting it. And then
I remember I saw the Fall after I was just like,
you know what, you can have your Northern rights. I
got to see one of the most beautiful things in
the world to put the screen and it made me
really happy. So I think that's I'm so bummed about

(07:31):
not seeing the Northern Lights, but you know, yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
But the Northern Lights, they happened more. But you'd wait
like eighteen years to see this in a theater, the
Northern Lights. I'll be back, I think, so, yeah.

Speaker 5 (07:43):
I would take this over. I remember the first time
I watched it, I wrote on a piece of paper
that I would sacrifice my firstborn to be able to
see it in theaters because I think it's it's.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
Like a pretty good you don't have to know, well,
I mean.

Speaker 5 (07:56):
I did see it in theater, so I do have
to sacrifice.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
My first born reactively.

Speaker 5 (08:01):
Like, whatever I have, I'm gonna have to get rid
of them, which isn't isn't great?

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Wow, that really does change the dynamic of sacrificer. You're
first born, doesn't it.

Speaker 5 (08:12):
That's not ideal. I mean I was just like, they
have to be born and I have to sacrifice them.
I originally was like, I don't know if I want kids,
but I think I have to have a child now,
so I could sacrifice them.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
So you have to sacrifice into the fall gods, the
powers that be.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Jamie, what's your history with this movie?

Speaker 2 (08:28):
My history with this movie? I had not seen it,
but I have a history of being aware of it,
which is normally I wouldn't even mention, but it does
feel relevant here because I'm a lee pace head. Because
I my brother and I watched Pushing Daisies when it
first when it was airing. We loved, loved, loved Pushing Daisies,

(08:52):
and I was like, who is this? Who is this
handsomest man in the world that I'm looking at, And
to this day, I think he is. He's got to
be cracking the top ten, like of handsomest men I've
ever seen. And yeah, so I was obsessed with ly
Paced and was like, what else has he been in?
And at that point the answer was not much. But

(09:12):
this movie had come out the year before, and I
remember being like, oh, I want to see that. And
then because of all these reasons, I now understand it
just never really happened, because it turns out it like
couldn't really have happened unless I got unless I pirated it,
which I am not ethically opposed to, but I just
kind of forgot that existed. So it just took it

(09:35):
took a really long time for me to get around
to watching it. And it's so uh, there's so much
going on, there's so much. It's weird because it's so
beautiful and it's not it wouldn't normally be my kind
of movie, but you can just feel I don't know,
it's like hard to explain that, Like you can just
feel the passion and insincerity. Like it's impossible not to

(09:56):
get on board with this movie. It's so beautiful, especially
learning that there is barely any cgi. It's the kind
of movie where I don't know, there's so many movies
we've covered on the show that learning about the backstory
makes you like it way less, and this is the opposite.
Like I watched it the first time and I was like, WHOA,
that was really impressive. That was really cool. It reminded

(10:18):
me of a George Miller movie that no one saw
a couple of years ago, three thousand years of longing.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
I saw it, brag.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
I think we were in too. The only wait I'll
eat Did.

Speaker 4 (10:28):
You see I watched?

Speaker 5 (10:30):
I have a condition where I have to watch every
single movie that shows look in theaters.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
So there, so you were there, you're seated.

Speaker 5 (10:36):
I was there.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
It was if you haven't seen it, I don't even
know if I would recommend it, but it was just
like I was the only person sitting in the theater
and was like, I don't know, this feels like a
movie where it's both gigantic and it feels like a
secret at the same time. So anyways, it reminded me
a lot of that, and I'm so glad I finally
saw it. You can see how influential this movie is

(10:59):
in spite of the fact that probably statistically you haven't
seen it. Yeah, what was your history with this, Caitlin?

Speaker 3 (11:05):
Kind of similar. I had not seen it before prepping
for this episode, but I knew of it, and I
don't remember exactly when it came on to my radar,
but I've known about it for a while. I knew
what the poster looked like, and I knew that friends
of mine who had seen it generally loved it and

(11:27):
thought it was beautiful and like a feat of filmmaking.

Speaker 2 (11:32):
It's got like a five hundred odd letter box.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, but I didn't really know anything else about it,
but I was eager to watch it for this episode.
It is so visually impressive, especially because I love anything practical,
practical sets practical effects. This movie is that all the
way down. Yeah, we'll talk more about the production of it,

(11:58):
but I also generally like a kind of like story
within a story. It reminded me kind of of Princess
Bride in the sense that it's an adult relaying a
story to a child. It reminded me a bit of
a Little Princess, where that's not quite as big of

(12:19):
a component of that movie as far as like a
person relaying a story and then we flash to images
from that story, But the visuals that you do see
when we flash to the story and a Little Princess
feel kind of similar to some of what we see
in The Fall. So it was just it felt kind
of like familiar even though I had never seen it before,

(12:42):
and I was really charmed, Yeah, by the movie.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
How many epic films because this is and I don't
mean that in the cringe sense. I mean truly this
is epic, not epic, random sauce epic, just to clarify, right,
but how many epic can say that they were shot
immediately after a Mountain Dew commercial. I just loved learning

(13:07):
about the background for this movie. Yeah, it's so there's
so much like five d chs being played, just the
fact I want to see the Mountain Dew commercial. Why
the hell were they filming such an expensive mountain dew commercial.
We used to you know, we used to make movies
for mountain dew.

Speaker 3 (13:27):
I guess because the director, Tarsuan had mostly a history
of directing commercials and I think some music videos. He
had also directed The Cell, which I've seen but only
once and it was long ago and I don't really
remember it. And then he would go on to direct
Mirror Mirror, the twenty twelve Snow White adaptation.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
He also want un to direct a movie called Immortals,
but not that one again, another not that one kind
of movie for Tarsa, Like, yeah, people just keep using
his titles. Although the Fall, you know, kind of asking
for it no offense.

Speaker 3 (14:05):
I mean, it is a generic word.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
Anyone's movie could be this. I also think there might
be a famous book called The Fall. Anyways. Also, I
just love a mononymous director. You could already if someone's mononymous,
You're like, Okay, we're dealing with a level of confidence
that I am not going to find relatable, and that's exciting, right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
He is also sometimes referred to as his full name
Tarsum Singh, but at least in this movie, he's credited
as Tarsum. But yeah, I'm so excited to talk about it.
Let's take a quick break and then we'll come back
for the recap. And we're back. First, we'll place a

(14:57):
content warning at the top for attempted suicide and suicidality. Also,
this movie is is hard to recap, and there's a
lot that happens, So I'm gonna be leaving out some details,
but I'll do my very best.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah, feel free to jump in if they're relevant to
you personally.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Yeah, okay. So we open on dramatic black and white
slow mo images and music of a train stopped on
the tracks on a bridge, and it seems as though
some people, possibly and also a horse, has fallen off

(15:40):
the bridge into the water below. We will get more
insight on that later. But is this perhaps the titular fall?
Maybe yes, but also there are there are other falls
throughout the movie that could be.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
There are the fall. It's true, it depends on who
you are, but I guess I guess I was like, oh, well,
there's a fall, I can relax.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
Sure. We cut to a hospital in Los Angeles. Ever
heard of it? It's the nineteen twenties. We meet a
five year old girl named Alexandria played by Katinka Untaru,
who is there because she has broken her arm because
she also had a the fall off screen in the backstory.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
And Ali, you referenced this earlier but great child performance.

Speaker 5 (16:34):
Maybe one of the best, Like, I don't think there
is a better child performance. I'm gonna go on a
record and say that it's.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Really up there.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
It's so good. And I think it's because she's like
kind of not acting. I mean she is, but like
a lot of her dialogue was improvised or like just
the director kind of created scenarios where what was happening
in the scene was like kind of happening in real life.
So she was just like responding to Lee Pace telling

(17:02):
her things and then she was just yeah, like kind
of reacting naturally.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
They're like shooting through like holes in the in like
a sheet so that it doesn't feel too much like
I just I was so impressed by how he shot
that because you're because it does feel like how it
feels to have a conversation with a kid totally, and
the fact that she learned English to do this movie basically,

(17:26):
and there's scenes where I read that she had to
like mostly talk with Lee pace in English, because when
she was talking to Tarsum, she started talking in English
that had a slight Indian accent, which you can't hear
in a couple of scenes too. It's just like, it's
so fun, it's so cool, so collaborative.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yeah, I do have. I watched the two documentaries that
are about this movie. They're each pretty short. They're both
like twenty eight minutes long. One is called wonder Lust
and one is called Nostalgia. And although Tarsum's direction is
very impressive and the movie he made is very impressive,
there are moments that he doesn't come off looking great

(18:07):
in the way that he is treating, particularly Katinka, in
different moments.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
Sometimes he is compassionate and patient, other times not so much.
I can talk more about that later. But yeah, especially
considering she was like six years old when they were
shooting this.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
I literally learned an entire language to do the movie.

Speaker 5 (18:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean she's the Lebron James of
child acting. I feel like you're not patient with her.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Can't condona In any case, we meet Alexandria. She's in
this hospital because she has broken her arm and is
in this big cast she tries to drop a note
from the window of the hospital down to her pal,
nurse Evelyn played by Justine Waddell, but the paper fled

(19:00):
down into the room of a man named Roy played
by Lee Pace. Alexandria and Roy kind of befriend each
other after she goes into his room to retrieve the note,
and he starts to tell her the story of Alexander
the Great, and we cut to the tale that he's telling,

(19:23):
which Alexandria periodically interrupts and like questions the various details
and logic of the story, which is something that will
happen throughout the rest of the movie, and then Roy
tells her to come back the following day so that
he can tell her a different story. In the meantime,
we learn that Roy has sustained an injury that has

(19:45):
left him paralyzed from the waist down. I believe the
details are a little foggy around this at this point,
but it seems like he is a stuntman and fell
during a stunt that went wrong. It becomes clear that
it's that the images that we saw at the beginning
of the movie with like the train that was the stunt.

(20:07):
Like he had tried to jump from the train onto
a horse below and things went terribly wrong. We pieced
that information together. We also learned that he is very
depressed and it is possibly about a woman, and then
we'll get more insight on that later as well. Alexandria

(20:28):
comes back the next day and Roy starts telling her
a story about five men, and we cut to their
story on screen. The men are Oda Benga, a former
enslaved man, Luigi, an expert in explosives, a man from
India whose character's name is the Indian. There's also famous

(20:53):
naturalist Charles Darwin and his monkey friend Wallace.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
Also a real person. Like it's so, where the hea
they're doing there? Like, yeah, the the Avengers of the
history question mark, the avengers of lee Pace's morphine brain.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
Right, and we can talk more about Odebanga yes later.

Speaker 5 (21:18):
I will say of everybody, Charles Darwin maybe is the
most dressed person in the world in this movie. Just
the things that he has on are unreal.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
The big red like fur coat.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
It's kind of iconic.

Speaker 5 (21:34):
It's I think there's a lot of hyperbole that I'm
going to speak in, but genuinely, Lee Pace might be
the best looking a man has ever looked, and Charles
Darwin might be the best dressed a man has ever
been in this movie and just a lot of great.

Speaker 2 (21:49):
Lee Pace is just he's something else. I just love
to see him.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Especially as the Masked Bandit. When he takes his mask
off and he's wearing this like he has like smoky
eyes and like this like modern haircut, You're just like, oh.

Speaker 4 (22:05):
Yep, it's just hot.

Speaker 5 (22:07):
That's the guy. There's this is This is a complete tangent.
But there's a movie that came out with Lee Pace recently,
The Running Man with Glenn Powell, and I hated it
so much for one reason, which is they cast Lee Pace,
but they made him wear a mask for most of
the movie. It's like, why are you gonna put a
man this beautiful If I'm not even gonna be able
to look into his.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Eyes, don't waste his time. There are certain actors that
I should be masked Ryan Reynolds, and there are certain
masks that there are certain actors who you cannot, under
any circumstances mask Lee Pace.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
What does what does his character look like in the MCU.
I forget if he's got like a like heavy makeup
on like prosthetics, or if we actually see Lee Pace
Lee Pace's face. Yeah, is he not in the MCU.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
You're asking the wrong guy.

Speaker 5 (22:55):
Oh yeah he is. I'm googling him right now. He's blue.

Speaker 3 (22:58):
He's blue, right, I thought.

Speaker 5 (22:59):
He Why would you make him blue?

Speaker 3 (23:01):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Wow, Avatar, Avatar, your influence is felt.

Speaker 5 (23:08):
All this. There are tasteful ways to mask Lee Pace,
and this movie does it tastefully.

Speaker 3 (23:13):
It enhances the Wi Pace right because the final character
is the Masked Bandit, who isn't played by Lee Pace
at first, but then it becomes Lee Pace. Well we'll
get there. But the thing with all of these men
who we've just met is that they hate a man

(23:33):
named Governor Odius, and they have all sworn to kill
him because of various injustices that Odius has committed against them.
But right now they are stranded on an island until
they escape the island via an elephant that's carrying the
masked Bandit because he can't swim, And then the others

(23:54):
are swimming alongside the elephant and they end up in
some remote desert place where they encounter a man who
kind of like magically comes out of a tree. This
is the mystic who tells them that he's been sent
by his mystic cult to help them defeat Governor Odius.

(24:19):
So they all head to a fort where Governor Odius
is holding the Masked Bandit's twin brother, the Blue Bandit,
and they launch an attack against Odius's soldiers, but it's
too late. Odius had already killed the Blue Bandit. And
then the story that Roy is telling is interrupted because

(24:41):
we periodically cut back to Alexandria and Roy. Sometimes it's
because she's interjecting, sometimes it's because someone else interrupts them.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
I love her interjections are so it just is so
authentically kid like, where she's like, I just yeah, she's incredible.
She reminds me of my neighbors because they're just letting
her be a kid. Totally.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
Yeah. She'll be like, wait a minute, didn't you say this?
Your story is inconsistent, Or she'll make an assumption that
Roy then incorporates into the rest of the story. Stuff
like that. So the story resumes the Masked Bandit, who
is revealed to be played by Lee Pace, although again

(25:30):
I'm pretty sure it was a different actor when we
initially saw him. I think it's the same actor who
plays Alexandria's father, who we meet via a photograph, but
he had passed away some time ago. But anyway, the
masked bandit swears to avenge his brother, but the men

(25:50):
aren't sure where to find their sworn enemy, Odious, so
the mystic and his tribe do some sort of ritual
that gives them directions via a like tattoo map that
appears on the body of the mystic, and the men
follow the map and find Odius's carriage crossing the desert,

(26:15):
which is pulled by a bunch of enslaved people. But
before this story continues, Roy stops and asks Alexandria to
go to the pharmacy or like the dispensary at the
hospital and get him some morphine pills to help him
sleep so that he can more effectively finish the story.

(26:37):
So she sneaks into the dispensary procures a bottle, but
only gives him three pills and then throws the rest
away due to a misunderstanding.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
That I think was like it wasn't that, like an
actual misunderstanding by the childacker and then they changed it.
That's so sweet.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
Yeah, So Roy spells out morphine, but his e at
the end looks like a three, so she thinks he
only wanted three pills and it morphin three.

Speaker 5 (27:07):
It makes perfect sense.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yeah, anyone could have made this mistake.

Speaker 5 (27:11):
This is me at work whenever someone gives me directions that.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
You wrote so kind of on her.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
Yeah, totally. So she brings him the three pills and
Roy is disappointed because he wanted the whole bottle for
reasons that will soon become more clear. So back to
the story. The men free the enslaved people and stop
Odius's carriage, but Odious turns out not to be inside. Instead,

(27:42):
it's a woman who he has captured to be his bride.
The masked bandit claims this woman as his future wife.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
I know, which is pretty rich given that he just
was like, I'm anti slave Frey, except for this woman
who will may Amy or else.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yes. Yeah, And this woman turns out to look a
lot like Nurse Evelyn, who we've met before. Because the
characters in this story look like Slash are inspired by
Slash are the same actors who play other characters in
the hospital setting, which I just.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Love how they approach like how the I don't know,
I've never seen anything like this because it must have
been so hard to do. Is like that we're seeing
a combination of what Roy is talking about, but we're
also seeing ideas that could have only come from Alexandria,
and in how she's like populating this world or even

(28:44):
just misunderstandings around Indian means two different things to each
of them, and that like affects the entire story. It's
just it's I've never seen anything like it.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
It's really cool. It's very like Wizard of Ozian in
the sense that all the characters Scarecrow, ten Man, the Lion,
the Wicked Witch, they're played by actors who also play
the characters that Dorothy knows in real life, like around
her farm, in town and stuff like that. And she's
mapping the people that she knows onto the characters in

(29:15):
her dream, and Alexandria is doing the same thing with
the people she knows and mapping them onto the characters
in Roy's story.

Speaker 5 (29:25):
Yeah, I was telling Caitlin about this, but this is
like kind of a literalization of how I relate to
movies and why I love film. It's also like essentially
why I started film slot, and that a lot of
film criticism to me is here's why this shot is beautiful,
Here's why this is stunning. But for me, it's always
been about where you see yourself in the context of
a movie, and I kind of just wanted to space
to engage with that. I think this is the first

(29:47):
movie that was like whoa. You can actually literally see
people insert themselves into stories and how they understand their
own world through that, and that's I do think it's magical.
I think this movie has a lot of flaws that
I'm excited to unpack with you. I do think if
you love something, the best way to love it is
to see it for its laws and to help it grow.
But in like the understanding of where you see yourself

(30:11):
with in the context of a story, I don't think
anything does it better than this movie. And that is
truly like how I've learned to love and grow with movies.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
It's so cool, it really is. I just whenever a
movie can pull the magic trick of like showing you,
like literalizing how people think, even if they're like thinking
in a direction that does not make linear sense, it's
just like it's the coolest thing in the world and
it happens a million times in this movie, to the
point where you're like, oh, right, if this was just

(30:40):
like a linear story, that wouldn't have happened, but it
made sense when I don't know, I don't know how
you do that and shoot across twenty nine countries over
four years, and at some point you're like, I'm sure
that they're just mistakes in there. That it's like, well,
you can't fly leepas everywhere.

Speaker 5 (30:58):
It's awfully. I think the story as the characters evolve
their thinking, Like as the relationship becomes clearer, the characters
and the stories become clearer. The people that the child
inserts Alexandria's she's seen different people that she grows relationships too,
and things change. It doesn't make sense in the context
of the story, but yeah, you realize at some point
the story really isn't the point. You're there to hang
out inside both of their brains and see how they.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Think they need each other.

Speaker 5 (31:21):
Yeah, yeah, that's sweet, it's awesome.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
Yeah. Okay, So then we meet Alexandria's mom and sister
who come to visit her in the hospital. They are
all immigrants from Romania, I believe, and we learn that
Alexandria broke her arm when she fell while picking fruit

(31:43):
in an orange grove. Keep in mind that she is
five years old, and we're like, right, this is taking
place before the Fair Labor Standards Act of nineteen thirty eight,
which significantly regulated child labor in the US, but is
taking place in the nineteen twenties. There were not really

(32:04):
child labor laws at this time. Then we see Alexandria
observing a woman crying in a car outside the hospital,
as well as a man who is a famous movie star.
This is Sinclair, and we pieced together that this woman

(32:24):
was Roy's former beloved but that she left him for Sinclair,
and this is why Roy is deeply depressed and perhaps suicidal.
And then Roy has Alexandria steal more morphine pills from
his neighbor's cabinet. Like the guy a few hospital beds over,

(32:48):
great guy, Yeah, he's really awesome. Roy resumes his story.
The masked bandit takes the woman who he has captured,
whose name is also Evelyn, takes her with him and
they fall in love as the bandit and the other

(33:09):
men plan their attack on Odius's palace, but then Evelyn
learns that they intend to kill her fiance odious. So
the masked bandit has to kill her for some reason,
so he shoots her, but the locket she's wearing stops
the bullet and she survives. And it seems like it's

(33:29):
because Alexandria says, no, she can't die, so Roy's like, Okay,
I guess well, I have to make sure she lives.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
So it's like watching someone write a Marvel movie.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
In real time.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
No, no, no, no, we got to bring it back.

Speaker 5 (33:43):
Yeah, this action figure is import it. I think it's
so special that the love interest takes the form of
the nurse because you're seeing it through a kid's eyes.
And so teach. I teach third grade sometimes on Sundays.
And the ultimate way I can tell that they like
me is if some them have older sisters. They'll be like,
you should marry my sister, and I'll be like, no,

(34:04):
but I appreciate that I've like ingratiated myself with you.
I think it's for like Alexandria, she sees the nurse,
and she sees leepaes as the two adults that she likes,
and naturally, in child logic, they need to be together.
And it's I think it's really special that she sees
the love interest as the nurse rather than Liepes's ex
who is in slish fantasy of that story.

Speaker 2 (34:26):
It plaisa I love and I love the character the nurse,
like her relationship with the nurse is so sweet and nurturing,
and yeah, I really like that because that's like like
the first major detail where you're like, oh, this is
not just his We're not just seeing his version of events.

Speaker 3 (34:44):
So then the Bandit opens the locket that he had
just shot with a bullet and reads the inscription inside,
and all of this is taken as a sign that
the Bandit and Evelyn are destined to be together. So
they go to get married. But a priest character not

(35:07):
unlike the priest who's at the hospital because this hospital
is also sort of like a mission because there's like
nuns there and a priest and the nuns are also
the nurses or something. I wasn't really sure exactly.

Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, I mean he's got a lot of colonial energy
about it, right.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
So anyway, the priest who is supposed to marry these
characters betrays the bandit and sells him out to Odious.
So the Bandit and his friends are once again banished
to the desert and like tied up and things seem
pretty hopeless. There's no one left to save them until

(35:48):
a new masked bandit appears a little one played by Alexandria,
and so she unties the men from their restraints. But
before the story continues, Roy has taken a full bottle
of the morphine pills, intending to die by suicide, and

(36:10):
he tells Alexandria to leave when he quote unquote falls asleep.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Now, Roy, that's the most diabolical thing you can.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
Really fucked up, Roy, not great, not great.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
Not great. He's like, he knows, like he's like, so
I can definitely trust this six year old to do
what I say, even though that's never once happened. It's truly, yes,
he's he's kind of growing out there, that is. I
don't even think Grew would have done that. Grew would
not have done that to Kevin.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
No, Wait, that's such a that's just my stomach just
dropped considering that.

Speaker 5 (36:49):
That's really sad.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Oh boy, God, no, You've got so much to live.

Speaker 5 (36:53):
For, dude to spile me twelve and when they release
that version of Old Grew, feeling suicidal grew.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
God, greath and Asia plot. Oh my god, something to
consider so that he consider anything.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
To think about anyway.

Speaker 5 (37:13):
Sorry, you're doing such a good job of telling this,
like amazing story. It's like this is like impossible to
summarize by the way. I'm just I'm watching a master
at work right now, Jamie and I are going about.

Speaker 3 (37:27):
No, it's it's the little interjections like this that make
the recap so special.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
No, you worked very hard at this.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
We'll stop talking, Okay. So Roy loses consciousness after taking
the pills. Alexandria tries to wake him up. She thinks
that he has died and is devastated, but twist he's alive.
He wakes up and discovers that the morphine was actually

(37:55):
placebo pills that the doctors had been giving his neighbor Guy.
And I wasn't sure if it was implied that he
was a hypochondriac or that he was maybe an addict
who is sort of like drug seeking. I'm not sure
what exactly was going on there.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
I don't know either way.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
They're giving him placbos.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
I sort of resigned myself to disx and placebo pill right.
He just can't die.

Speaker 5 (38:22):
Much like the minions.

Speaker 2 (38:25):
So sometimes Roy is grew, sometimes he is a minion.
Life is complicated, right. There are relationships where you're the
minion and relationships where you grew in this life.

Speaker 5 (38:35):
And the most beautiful ones are when you're both true.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
And that's the relationship you have with yourself. A kind
of really makes you think, I am my own minion.

Speaker 5 (38:45):
I did that on a shirt.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
WHOA Okay. So Roy is furious because he was expecting
to die and he didn't, so he lashes out. Alexandria
runs off. He's kind of frightened. That night, she sneaks
back into the dispensary to try to retrieve more pills
for Roy, thinking that he needs them to sleep, but

(39:11):
she slips and falls another the fall she the falls yes,
and as she's she has fallen and injured herself. It
seems like she sustains a head injury. We see flashes
from the story that Roy has been telling, We see
flashes from Alexandria's backstory, and then this like surreal stop

(39:34):
animation sequence.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
Oh, it's so good, it's so good, so good.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
And then eventually Alexandria wakes up and Roy is there
and She begs him to tell her the rest of
the story, but he is despondent and he also feels
responsible for Alexandria's the fall.

Speaker 2 (39:54):
Well, I can tell you why it feels that way,
because fall as he is.

Speaker 3 (40:01):
But he tearfully resumes the story, where the Masked Bandit
and friends spot Evelyn with Odius, who I think this
is the first time we are seeing Odius on screen
and he is the same guy as Sinclair, that famous
movie star. So they plan their attack on Odius, but

(40:23):
things go awry and one by one the members of
the group die, starting with Wallace the Monkey, then Darwin Luigi,
Ode Benga, the Mystic, and the Indian. They're either killed
by Odius's army or they sacrifice themselves until the only

(40:44):
ones left are the Masked Bandit and the Little Masked
Bandit played by Alexandria.

Speaker 5 (40:51):
I don't know what this says about me, but I
think I'm not much of a movie crier. But like,
the only time I teared up watching this movie, which
is really sposhible me, is when the monkey dies.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
I mean that is very moving.

Speaker 5 (41:02):
It was like a hard watch.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah, hard agree that monkey was acting his ass off.

Speaker 5 (41:08):
Yeah, could not replace him with a minion either.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
No, No, minyas can't emote like that.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
Well I think they can, but they can.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
They can't.

Speaker 5 (41:18):
It depends which minion you're using.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
There's a Spectrum James, maybe Crime, James.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
Mary James.

Speaker 5 (41:25):
AD's the one who got me.

Speaker 2 (41:26):
Oh my god, and you gotta love Ed. It's so
wild that they created three new, amazing minions. I didn't
think they could do it.

Speaker 3 (41:34):
Oh, I forgot what So this is the Minions and
Monsters Minions. Yes, yes, I loved Dick.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Dick, Dick. That's and you might be alone there there, Dick,
I don't remember.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
I love Dick.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Is my favorite moment Indias and Monsters was like when
the Minions are passing the Christoph Waltz producer character and
he and Dick have a moment where he goes Dick
Max and it made me laugh so much I laughed
for the rest of the movie.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
It was great.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
That should have happened in the fall.

Speaker 5 (42:10):
It should have kind of happens in the fall. There's
like a lot of producers and moments.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
It's sort of right.

Speaker 2 (42:17):
It's true. There's no Dick the minion. I guess I
been again. Like, is Roy Dick the Minion?

Speaker 5 (42:21):
Sometimes Alexander Dickmanion most of the time.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
It's also true the neighbor maybe is Dick the Minion?

Speaker 5 (42:30):
He was?

Speaker 4 (42:31):
He actually behaves like Dick the Minion, Yes he does.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Wow, what a powerful character. We see him everywhere.

Speaker 5 (42:39):
I think we just both have broken friends.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
And that's okay, okay. So, so most of the characters
have died. And then Alexandria, both in the story that
Roy is telling and in real life in the hospital,
she is sobbing and asking, like, why are you killing everyone?

(43:04):
Why is this how the story is going? And it's
because Roy is so depressed. And then Odious appears and
attacks the bandit, who falls in the pool and he's drowning.
He's completely given up again, kind of the way that
Roy has. He doesn't even try to fight back. And

(43:26):
Alexandria again like begs Roy to let the bandit live.
She's also kind of like projecting her father onto the bandit,
and like everyone is crying, and so Roy decides to
let the bandit live in the story, and the character
starts fighting back and he punches Odius, who accidentally impales

(43:48):
himself on a sword and dies. Though the line where
he says, I'm not feeling very well, it's so funny
because he's got a sword through his chest. We've been there,
tis but to scratch. And then the story ends triumphantly
for the Bandit and the Little Bandit. We cut back

(44:13):
to Alexandria, Roy, and other patients in the hospital watching
a film with some characters that kind of resemble characters
from Roy's story, and I think it's implied that the
film that they're watching is the one that Roy was
working on when he was injured, and we see his

(44:35):
stunt kind of it.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Got basically cut for time. Yeah, it seems like tough business.

Speaker 3 (44:44):
And then we cut to Alexandria and her family working
in the Orange Grove after Alexandria has fully recovered, and
her voiceover says that she misses Roy, that he has
gone back to work as a stuntman, and that she
has seen him in a film and that she like

(45:05):
kind of watched it over and over again to make
sure that it was him. And then the movie that
we are watching ends with a montage of impressive stunts
from silent films, including a lot of people falling.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
The end, I mean makes you think makes you think,
kind of reminded me of the end of Babylon. I'm like,
this movie is so I punched just a little bit,
and also the beginning of Many and Monsters. Okay, it's right,
So that's the movie.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.
We're back, Ollie. Where would you like to start?

Speaker 5 (45:55):
Yeah, I mean, I think this is the first time
I've actually watched this through a Bechdel CASTI feminist lens.
I think every time I was kind of swept in
by the magic of cinema. This is like maybe round
four or five for me watching it, so I could
be a little bit more critical, and I am very
excited to hear your thoughts because I think this movie

(46:16):
is rather lacking in some of the feminist readings. There
is one lens that I think I have crafted. I'm
not sure if it's accurate. It's me inserting something trying
to make an excuse for something that I love dearly.
But I do think that Roy's original rendition of the
story is kind of an insult fantasy where he's this
guy who has been rejected and now he's just kind

(46:38):
of lashing out. He is using vengeance as this shield
and doesn't know how to accept being rejected. He is
kind of a loser, unfortunately. But I think with Alexandria,
she has inserted herself into this male dominated story and
with the inclusion of a child slash female voice, there's

(47:01):
like a break from this toxic masculinity that dominates stories,
and it is more of like an invitation to add
more diverse voices into the stories we tell. So I
think that's my one way of like, here's how I
can make this a little bit more tasteful too myself.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
I like it. Yeah, I totally agree with you, especially
with the Alexandria stuff, where I the performance is so great.
And I also was, as I was like looking into
the extensive backstory for this movie, that this movie was
not written for a child of a specific gender, and
I feel like you can really feel that in the story,

(47:41):
and it made me actually think and challenge a little
more how like young Girls are written specifically because children
are like genderless, like genders of contract. Children are genderless weirdos.
They just like they're flop it around. It's fun. Being
a kid is fun, And like I like that because

(48:01):
Katinka was encouraged to and I'm very curious to hear
more about this documentary, Caitlin. But it seems that Katinka
was encouraged to just act like a kid and not
be acting out this like coming of age young girl
plot that I love, but like you can feel how
free it is, and that because it's just a kid

(48:23):
being a kid, it is kind of like inherently like
a genderless performance because that's how kids are. And I
just I loved that she seemed free to behave and
think like a kid in the way that the story
rolls out because she's still she's still so young that
I think the ways in which gender will shape her

(48:44):
life are maybe not quite.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
Clear to her yet. Yeah, which is cool. I'm thinking
of the moment where the Evelyn character enters the story
as as the woman who who the masked bandit has
kidnapped and sort of like made into his bride to be,

(49:08):
but they're also kind of like falling in love whatever,
and Alexandria is like, make them kiss, make them kiss,
And I was thinking about how a lot of like
gender socialization encourages little girls to latch onto romance, and
it also conditions little boys to think that that's gross

(49:30):
because going back to, for example, The Princess Bride, there
are parts in that story when you know the grandfather
who's relaying the story of the Princess Bride to the
little Fred Savage character, and he's like, ooh, gross, they're kissing.
Can't you skip over the kissing parts? Because he has
been socialized to find that stuff yucky and that's and

(49:51):
romance is for girls, that kind of thing. So I
was thinking about that. But Alexandria also says that she
has never seen a movie before, so I'm just like,
it's not like she was like influenced by at least films,
maybe by books or other stories. She might have received
some sort of conditioning, but it could also just be

(50:12):
that she wants to see these two characters kiss and
that's just coming from her without any kind of like
external influence. I don't know exactly what to make of that,
but but I found that interesting.

Speaker 2 (50:25):
I liked it. It just felt more like and I'm like,
who knows how scripted or unscripted that was, but like
it just feels like a thing that a curious kid says,
right because they've heard of kissing and it looks fun
like mm, hmm, yeah, I don't know. I totally agree
because I don't know, it's so hard to get a

(50:47):
performance like this. It's so singular, so it's not like
this could just be how kids perform. Not everyone is
Katinka and Taro.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
But is.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
So it's such a cool experiment kind of, but also
it sounds could we talk about that really quick, because
I just it's like, in the back of my head,
I'm very curious about how she was treated, because we've
talked a lot on the show about how just in general, like,
I have very mixed feelings on I mean, there's just
still not enough protections in place for kid actors and

(51:23):
the whole like whatever, the whole classic mentalities don't work
with kids or animals. When I feel like the question
should be like, well, maybe that's because there's not proper
protections in place for kids and animals and that's why
it tends to not go well anyways.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
Yeah, So the documentaries that I watched, wonder Lust and Nostalgia,
they're pretty similar. They both are just behind the scenes footage,
so there's no like interviews or anything. There's no like
talking heads describing oh this was my vision for this
scene or anything like that. It's just a kind of
a series of behind the scenes shots that are strung together.

(52:07):
What we gather from it is that it seems like
this movie was difficult to shoot because there are all
these tough locations, there's harsh weather, there's a lot of
practical effects and stunts and things like that, so we
see bits of that. There's a part with an elephant
that's like on a boat and like being shipped to

(52:28):
this island, and it just it made me feel so
bad for the elephant. I don't know how many protections
were put in place in the production for this elephant,
but I was just like, oh man, this poor elephant
is like how I was feeling as I was watching it.
In addition to that, you get insight into how Tarsum
is as a director, for like the cast in general,

(52:51):
but also particularly how he directed young Katinka. So as
I said before, sometimes he seems patient and calm and
pleasant to work with toward her, and then other times
he is just cruel and berating her. There's a moment

(53:14):
where she's crying and it seems it's because something isn't
going quite right on the set or I don't know
exactly the context, but she's crying, not her character is crying,
but like it's clear that the actor is crying because
she's frustrated or her feelings have been hurt or something

(53:35):
like that. And Harson says something like, don't do that
crap here, do it over there in front of the camera.
Stuff like that. He's yelling. There's another scene where he
has her do nineteen takes of something, stuff like that.
So again, he doesn't come off great in these documentaries.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
And I wonder how, I mean, I genuinely don't know
the answer to this. It's like how child I mean,
it's weird that this story touches on child labor and
seems to come down antie and then this is how
the child star of the movie is treated. Yeah, but
how those laws differ from country to country, I actually

(54:16):
don't know. But in the US they're definitely still a lot.
I mean, so much of child labor laws and entertainment
have and this is exclusive, but like it has a
lot to do with like what the parents are willing
to tolerate on behalf of the child, not necessarily what
the child themselves wants or needs, which is how you

(54:38):
get into all these horrific stage parent things. That's why,
like cougan laws exist to protect their money, but I
don't know that it necessarily protects them. And then you
heard stories about child actors that had parents that were
doing their best and were very careful and the child
is still harmed or abused behind the scenes, and that's

(54:59):
I I don't know what the solution to that is.
Like it's because it's like you can be a great
director and that doesn't mean that you should be directing children,
and like how do you make that distinction?

Speaker 3 (55:10):
And I don't know, right it's Yeah, it was disheartening
to see footage of Tarsan's behavior toward Katinka in those
two documentaries. The other notable thing about what I learned
from Wanderlust and Nostalgia was that Tarsum had lee Pace

(55:34):
pretend to not be able to walk during the whole shoot,
to the point where Katinka and most of the crew
thought he was actually disabled. And Tarsan did this to
I guess, like help with the authenticity, particularly for Katinka's

(55:54):
reactions to things and her behavior where she was like
really careful around lee Pace's legs, if she was like
sitting in bed with him or something like that, and
then like I think maybe on the last day of
shooting they reveal to her that he actually can walk.
So there's a discussion to be had around ableism.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
Here, not only in the psychological torture yes of a child, right,
because it's like it's so many layers.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
It's an able bodied actor playing a disabled character. It
is an able bodied actor pretending to be disabled, not
only for the sake of the story that unfolds on screen,
but also for the like behind the scenes. And then
there's the like lying to a child in order to

(56:48):
elicit a more authentic reaction and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 (56:52):
So it's also the gravity of what you're kind of
lying to a child about, where this is a child
who is learning English, is developing a really close relationship
with this actor, who I think on set is very
caring and you come to learn to love him in
your own way, and you just like have this understanding
that the person who care about is hurt. It is
very devastating to be a kid and to have to

(57:14):
think about it in my context for sure.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Yeah, and I don't I mean Lee Pece very much
obviously an adult during this movie, but that I feel
like does sort of lay firmly with Tarsum, especially because
I don't know, like, yeah, this was like very early
into Leepece's career, like you're whatever. I and also with
her parents, like your parents have to be involved in

(57:38):
this high level of deception if you're that young, like
they have to. It's not like you know, because it's
a non starter if her parents are like, no, that
that's fucked up, like on all of these different levels
we're gonna tell her like then there's no point in
doing it. So it's like there there's sort of a
multiple levels of people that are okay with a deceitful

(58:03):
and ablest setup that is required for this to happen.
And again I think it's it's it's ablest in the
ways that like they're treating I mean, the story treats uh,
I don't know, I mean not that the story is
inherently the casting is somewhat ablest, right, but like the

(58:23):
story itself, Like I understand that he wanted an able
bodied actor to be able to play the other character, right,
but surely you know, we have we have a lot
of great writers on this movie. There's an interesting way
to subvert that in a way that doesn't make it
necessary for this to happen in the first place.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
But writers like Dan Gilroy.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
Man, some of our some of our strongest NEPO soldiers
are the Gilroys. Like, they're so cool Dan Gilroy, He's
the Nightcrawler Gilroy, Right, Yes, I believe, so good Gilroy,
strong Gilroy.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
And then Tony Gilroy's mister and or Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
And then there's John Gilroy who I think edits like
both of their movies. Oh yeah, good for him Gilroy Nation. Yeah.
I guess getting back to the characters, like gave it
to the character. I think that Alexandria is a really
interesting and layered character. And now talking about how the

(59:24):
actress was treated on set, it is interacting directly with
Alexandria's story in a way that probably was not intentional.
Where she is she was injured working. That is like
why she's in this hospital in the first place. She
was injured doing a job that she shouldn't have had
to have been doing, which child labor is like all

(59:44):
in conversation with obviously like class and the ability to survive.
It's not just like her parents, I mean, And I
like that the movie goes out of its way to
introduce us to her mom. We don't get to know
her mom especially well, but we do get to I
don't know. I think that there is a tendency, at
least in the US, to reduce very large issues to

(01:00:05):
like an individual family or person and have the thinking
be like, oh, this child was sent to work, How
cruel of their parents, when it's like, well, that was
the only situation that would have allowed this family to
even remotely thrive. That was like how the system was built.
And I like that. You do get a moment with
her and her mom, and then she's still being a

(01:00:26):
bit of a minion in that scene because she has
all the power in that scene. She's the translator and
she's like hmm, like she I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:00:33):
Did you see the Bulgarian movie that this is based on.
It's called Yoho Ho I have not known. It's like
the same kind of promise, but instead of a little girl,
it's a little boy, and the story is about like pirates,
and it's a little bit more simplistic, but it's kind
of the same. Broken arm in the hospital befriends a
paraplegic and then they make up a story and the

(01:00:54):
paraplegic is also suicidal, but they kind of resist the
villain in the room at the end.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Interesting. Okay, Yeah, I knew it was based on because
I know that that, like lore wise with the production
of this movie. Was that a movie that Tarsum saw
when he was young and like wanted to create his
version of right, it seems like it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:19):
Yeah, So Tarsan went to film school in oh I
forget the name of the school, but it's in Pasadena.
His classmates included Michael Bay and Zack Snyder.

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Okay, but a lot of really strong, weird guy energy.
Of course, of course, he wasn't writing very strong women characters.
Look at his peersmates.

Speaker 5 (01:01:44):
I'm on his his Wikipedia page right now, and the
last sentence is Singh also acted in a student film
of Bay and Snyder, including Gannazi and one of the.

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Latter's works, Wow, and You're like and the less set
about whatever the hell that is? It's like cool, Sure,
why the hell not?

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
Like, but it seems like Tarsum saw the Bulgarian film
when he was in film school, which I'm guessing would
have been like late eighties, early nineties, and from that
point on he was like I'm making I'm adapting this,
I'm making my own version of this. He and I'm
pulling a lot of this information from an Indie wire

(01:02:25):
oral history of the Fall that was published in twenty
twenty four.

Speaker 2 (01:02:29):
And I know this is so pedantic, but I read
that same article and I was like, this isn't a
damn oral history. This is an article with an interview
in it. Yeah, right, nice, try Layla Jordan.

Speaker 3 (01:02:42):
Yeah, get her ass.

Speaker 5 (01:02:44):
But it's funny you mentioned that article because Lila and
I went to college together.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Oh but oh, okay, okay, Charsa Michael bay vibes.

Speaker 5 (01:02:53):
She's great, She's cool.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Okay, I'm sure. I'm sure she did. She didn't write
the headline either. But I was like, I was. I
love oral histories, and I was like, but this is
it's a good article, but an article. Nonetheless, pray, let
me tell you.

Speaker 5 (01:03:06):
Film Slop would not be publishing titles like that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:08):
No, and that's why every one should read film Slop.
You hear that?

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
Yeah, multiple plugs listeners for the record, I was being
unfair there. Writers rarely get to pick their headlines. But whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
In any case, Tarsan saw the film early on wanted
to make his own version of it, and basically throughout
the nineties was like figuring out ways to do this.
It seems like when he got his first big paycheck
after directing a big commercial, he bought the rights to
the Bulgarian film. From that point on he was working

(01:03:43):
with writers, production designers, things like that to develop the movie,
and then it went into production finally. I don't know
exactly when, but I do know that it took four
years to film. Tarsan funded the whole thing himself.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
Which I guess is like part of how he did that,
which is pretty clever, is like would take gigs like
Mountain Dew commercials be in a great location already keep
the same crew, like, pay to retain the same crew
from the commercial, so he didn't need to actually assemble
his own international crews in every single country and then

(01:04:23):
just fly the actress out. Yeah, kind of something only
he could have done at this exact moment, But I
was like, pretty pretty cool. Five D Chessi's playing scheduling
was for sure.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
I also read that he paid the entire cast and
crew the same rate, no matter what their role was,
which meant that some people got paid a greater rate
than they might have otherwise on a different production. It
seems that other people would have taken a pay cut.
But from what I read, anyone who took a pay

(01:04:56):
cut was just like, I'll gladly do it because I
believe so in my in this project.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
That's called I've That's how I made my movie Smiley Face.
It's called a Most Favored Nations setup that is designed
to it's I don't know if this is how Tarsome
did it, but I think that I only learned about
this to do this movie. But that everyone has paid
the same day rate and everyone gets back points. So

(01:05:24):
for people who are taking a pay cut, it's and
on my movie is kind of who wasn't taking a
pay cut? That there is like potential for more revenue
on the on the back end, I guess not that
anyone in the Fall would have ever gotten the opportunity
to get back in points because this movie was not
financially successful, but.

Speaker 5 (01:05:43):
Sure it is coming back kind of. I think they've
had a little bit of a run. So I wonder
if the new movie stuff has come to the actor terms.

Speaker 2 (01:05:52):
How wild would that be if you started getting residuals
like twenty plus years after the movie first, after you
shaw something. I mean, that's how residual should work. It's
just wild to think that for a movie that you
very much had given up on ever seeing a cent
from right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:10):
Best wishes to the cast and crew. Yeah, for that,
I had a point to all this context I was providing,
But now I forget what it was.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
We were talking about the international. I think we started
in the international, right, Yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (01:06:26):
Guess just that Tarsan would take commercial directing jobs only
in countries that he wanted to use locations for in
his movie. Oh right, I was just saying, how basically
the development and the production of this movie, so he
funded it himself by accepting these commercial directing gigs, and
it happened over a four year period, and so I'm

(01:06:49):
guessing it went into production in the early two thousands.
Because this movie premiered at TIFF in two thousand and six.
Tarsan was hoping that Roger Ebert would champion his film
as he did for The Cell, and that because of
that kind of testimonial from Roger Ebert, he would get

(01:07:10):
distribution for the movie after TIFF aka the Toronto International
Film Festival. But Roger Ebert was sick and didn't attend
the festival, and then Harvey Weinstein, World's Greatest Villain, basically
was just like, this movie sucks. He walked out of
it after fifteen minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:07:31):
He literally balled his fist up and was like I'm
convinced and like.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
And stormed out. And because of that, like public rejection
of the film, no one wanted to touch it, no one
wanted to buy it for distribution. And that's part of
why this movie basically never came out and was so
hard to for anyone to get their hands on. And

(01:07:56):
I mean not that it was impossible, because obviously people
did see this movie and it developed up a cult following,
but it was very not accessible for most of the
time this movie has existed. The end of my little story.

Speaker 2 (01:08:12):
It is, I mean, there's so well getting into the
woman of it all, because I guess that's a job.
I do think it's interesting we see these stories of
various I mean, and it's not like Tarson was like
a world famous director. I think he was a very
wealthy director because he directed so many commercials, So it

(01:08:34):
is there is kind of a distinction there totally. But
people who financed their like dream projects on a very
large scale. I was looking at the list of directors
that have done this through the years and they and
you won't believe what they all have in common. They're
all men. Only men have ever been able to it

(01:08:54):
seems like afford to take a swing like this, which
I think just like gets back into convers stations we've
had before about you know, who's big swings get the
chance to even be I mean, I think it is
pretty upsetting, like the way that The Fall hit basically
every like setback it could have hit. But that doesn't

(01:09:15):
mean that Tarzan didn't get to realize through a lot
of like fifteen is it, but he could have. I mean,
to be able to afford to make this movie is
pretty staggering.

Speaker 3 (01:09:23):
He spent somewhere around twenty to thirty million dollars of
his own money, yeah, on the production.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
And I liked in the in the in that article
in the Indie Wire article by Leila Jordan, innocent, he
was like told his brother not to tell him how
much money he had lost, but like to be in
that position, you know, is very few directors have ever
been in that position. Obviously. Our most recent example is
Megalopolis and I'm not even opposed, Like I'm not opposed

(01:09:51):
to that conceptually, it's like if sure, but yeah, I
don't know it just I was I was like, maybe
maybe there's a sequel woman that I that could have
afforded to do this, but so far it doesn't seem
that that was the case. And also, I mean, this
movie opens on David Fincher and Spike Jones, presents two

(01:10:14):
fellow male auteurs, and it turns out they had absolutely
nothing to do with it, and they just put their
names on it to increase its chances of being seen
because they liked Tar's previous work. So nice of them
to do, and also funny that they had nothing to
do with it.

Speaker 5 (01:10:30):
Have you have you read the Vulture article that's like
the hundred most powerful directors in Hollywood that came out
like a week ago.

Speaker 2 (01:10:36):
I didn't for my own safety.

Speaker 5 (01:10:39):
What I mean, it really does fall into the fingers
saying I think there's like three women on that list.
It's like, and I don't think it's a reflection of
Vulture or reflection of the time. It's like there truly
is like no power except outside of like Gretigerwigan closure
out who've had to kind of do every thing and

(01:11:00):
endure so much hate.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
Yeah, okay, I haven't pulled up now. I yeah, there's
certain articles where I'm like, maybe in a year, I
don't want to be reminded of how how low my
chances are for success are.

Speaker 5 (01:11:14):
But it's also it's like a fun contrast because there's
like twenty twenty year old guys on there who you know,
maybe maybe aren't the most of deserved, but I guess
that's just how power moves.

Speaker 2 (01:11:25):
Which look kN Parsons get behind me. I will protect
my nephew, King Parson.

Speaker 5 (01:11:31):
I'm not talking about him till I don't think he
makes the lest yet.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
It is fascinating. Yeah, I've we got greteger where at
number four, but even she's stuck in franchise world, like
it's just I don't know. I'm very glad that The
Fall is able to exist. I think that a lot
of the conversation around this movie is it's wild that
it was able to exist, because this is not the
kind of movie that anyone asks for, And it's like
Tarsum realizing his perfect art, which is like amazing, And

(01:11:58):
I just wish that more women got the chance to
do something equally unhinged as to what Tarsam has done here.

Speaker 3 (01:12:06):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
Also, the Mountain Dew commercials fun.

Speaker 1 (01:12:09):
That was that was?

Speaker 3 (01:12:10):
What did you watch it?

Speaker 2 (01:12:10):
I did, Samurai Fi. It's pretty fun.

Speaker 3 (01:12:15):
We'll link it in the description.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
Yes, if you want to see the titular Rutin Dew commercial.

Speaker 3 (01:12:20):
But going back to your initial remark, ALI about like,
this is a movie about a man relaying this story
that he's making up as he goes that he's drawing
inspiration from his real life as well as kind of
like historical events that were like in the news at

(01:12:42):
the time. And then it's this young girl populating the
version of the story that we're actually seeing unfold on screen.
So while he's narrating it, she's like filling in the
gaps and influencing the story, like we said earlier, because
sometimes she'll like question story logic or react to a

(01:13:03):
specific detail that he either then like emphasizes or changes
depending on her reactions. So she has a lot of
influence over this story. And a part that I thought
was so moving was toward the end, it's after Alexandria
has fallen trying to retrieve more pills for Roy, and

(01:13:24):
she has a head injury and she's crying and begging
Roy to finish the story and he's like, I don't
want to. It's my story. I can do whatever with it.
And she's like, no, it's my story too, and she's
absolutely right because she's had so much influence over it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:40):
And Roy is so frustrating at this point in the
story where I'm like, Hm, can you fucking grow up
for what? This kid cracked her head open trying to
help you, trying to help you, and You're like, no, no, friend,
shut up, dude, a child could have died.

Speaker 5 (01:14:00):
Also, like the story that he's telling at first kind
of sucks. It's just a guy who has been spurned
and now he's going revenge mode. And I love our
revenge story. I think when I was twelve, I found
a copy of an abridged version of The Count of
Monic Cristo and made it my personality. In third grade,
I was like having my friends on the playground. I
was teaching them about vengeance at the right page of
twelve and we were like going, We're going at it.

(01:14:21):
But this story is just like he's just I got rejected,
so now I'm going to kill every single person. And
there's even the characters that he inserts, like I think
you mentioned Darwin and Atamanga, who are both representations of
social Darwinism. It's like a very man strong, survival fittest
better I destroy thing. And then until Alexandria begins to
like input her lines, there's a softness and more nuanced

(01:14:45):
to it, which I think is really funny that like
the seven year old is coming in with so much.

Speaker 3 (01:14:50):
Like just a five year old, she's even younger.

Speaker 4 (01:14:53):
Yeah, I've just been throwing out numbers randomly.

Speaker 5 (01:14:56):
I'm like twelve seven.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
Yeah. I think that that's something that like the script
in the story does very well. Is like it does
clear like this story is enhanced the moment she gets involved,
and that the end, she kind of saves the story
on multiple levels where she you know, like reassures Roy
like no, you're awesome, dude, because that's what has happened,

(01:15:22):
but also like it becomes a better story for her
having been involved. It's not just the tantrum ending that
Roy wants it to be. But yeah, within that story
it's we are I guess, subjected to Roy's conception of
women and rejection quite a bit and like you're saying, Ali,
like Alexandria's pushback on that sort of ends up giving

(01:15:45):
the story more depth than it would have had otherwise,
but there's still not really until Alexandria shows up in
the story little bandit style, which I kind of.

Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
Wish had happened earlier. She had maybe inserted herself in earlier,
but sorry, go on.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
But before then, Yeah, it's it's very like he's creating
these and I still want to talk about the historic
people that he chooses, specifically Ota Banga, but he's assembling
his you know, nineteen twenties avengers, his morphine avengers, and
you know, of course, of course they are all men.
And there is it sticks out to me most of

(01:16:24):
like this character's conception of women in Yeah, in the
scene where first of all, there's like, oh, sort of
a white savior thing going where a group of enslaved
people are liberated, but then immediately after he sees a
woman and is like, I will marry her. She's mine,
and you're like, all right, So we're playing with a
bunch of different rules in here, and that character never

(01:16:46):
like fails to ever fully take shape, which corresponds with
how that like whatever. Clearly, even though we see her
as nurse Evelyn in the story world, I think, to Roy,
it's his ex girlfriend who sure dumped him for a
Hollywood guy, a movie star. And I do feel like

(01:17:06):
this story, like we only really get one glimpse of her.
She's crying, she's at the hospital, like, but we never
get to know who this woman is. Perhaps maybe she
had a good reason for Britt, Like it's never conceived of.
We're told she left me for a richer, more successful man,

(01:17:27):
and it does seem like he's an asshole, but perhaps
she has a type and Roy was also an asshole,
Like we're I think that the way the story works,
we're left to believe, you know, kind of in the
more classic broad storytelling sense, she left him because he
was less powerful, not because maybe his personality sucked.

Speaker 5 (01:17:49):
Roy does objectively suck, Like this is a guy who
he's not a good dude. Also, can we talk about
how the first chance he gets, he's like, oh, she
doesn't want me, I have to kill her now.

Speaker 4 (01:17:57):
That's like a yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:00):
And for a character that he's like has clearly like
he is, the storyteller has no interest in her inferiority.
He's like, she's beautiful, she is mine.

Speaker 5 (01:18:09):
And then she's not mine. Time to die.

Speaker 3 (01:18:13):
And then the other woman who appears very very briefly
toward the beginning of his story is the character whose
name is the Indian. His wife is kidnapped and then
fridged to motivate the Indian's narrative and like story of
revenge for the rest of the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
So right, which is like, in the context of like
the time this story is taking place in might make sense,
but it's also being written in the early two thousands,
and we have this little girl here who's never seen
a movie before. Like that's a great opportunity to have
pushback on a plot point like that. If there's a
little girl that's like, there's no girls in this story,

(01:18:57):
you know, maybe the direction actually changes. Like I don't
think it needed to be like a one to one
of like what the conception of women in movies in
the twenties would have been, which wasn't even exclusively that.
But yeah, yeah, there's we do have Nurse Evelyn, who,
as we said, we're fans she we don't get I

(01:19:20):
mean again, we don't get a ton of we get
a fair amount of time with her. I don't think
we get like a she doesn't really have much of
her own story, but we do get some time with her.
We get one scene with Alexandria's mom that I appreciated.
But again, like, except for Alexandria, there's not really a

(01:19:42):
girl or woman in the story that you get to
know or that like the movie seems to have interest
in outside of a symbol of something else. Because I
think while I really like Nurse Evelyn, she ultimately kind
of symbolizes a maternal figure for Alexandria, and like a
maternal figure specifically because she takes care of her. She

(01:20:04):
puts her at ease, and she shows her how to
put on makeup, and those are kind of the things
that Nurseblin does.

Speaker 5 (01:20:08):
I also, I think Nurse Evelyn's perception, even in Alexandria's mind,
kind of shows a little bit of a normalization. And oh,
that is the pretty woman who takes care of me.
Her purpose is to marry the nice man that I
have met in the hospital, and I put them together.
And this is what society has taught me to belief,
which I mean it's a it is a reflection of
how people think unfortunately but not great.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
Yeah, yeah I did. Yeah, but like going back to
your original point, Ellie, like it is kind of an
in cell revenge story on Roy's part that I don't
think the movie is pushing back off, like not commenting
on enough to just I kind of am like, maybe
this is where like Tarzan's like, yeah, exactly, anyone in
his position would do the same.

Speaker 5 (01:20:51):
How dare she like, yeah, maybe you should have gotten
dumped Roy. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):
Yeah, I don't know based on Roy's Oh, I mean
I understand, like whoever, I'll show Roy, this man who
doesn't exist grace, why not that he is recently paralyzed
and like the whole shape of his life is going
to change. He is feeling upset that this is going
to cost him the career path he was on all
this stuff, Like he's at a low point. Obviously he's

(01:21:23):
he's suicidal, but I don't but I don't think that
that makes his Like, but it seems like he's blaming
his ex girlfriend for all of this in the story
and in his attitude towards her. Yeah, maybe not maybe
not our best movie for women, But again, like Alexandria

(01:21:44):
saves so much of it. I'm so glad that they
cast a young girl in this role.

Speaker 5 (01:21:48):
Also, not to objectify Lee Pace, but do you realize
how massively you probably fucked up to be dumped when
you look likely Pace for a hee. He's like a
decently attractive man. I'll give him that odios or whatever
the sinclair, but to break up with Lee Pace for him,
has to have a really terrible personality.

Speaker 2 (01:22:10):
For a second, I thought that the famous actor was
played by Jason Schwartzmin but I was wrong. I don't know.
I think I've just seen him wear a little hat
like that in a different movie and my men. But yes, yeah,
that I think maybe confirms that that Roy had a
shitty personality because he is Lee Pace. He's a gainfully

(01:22:33):
employed Lee Pace, Like, what's the problem.

Speaker 5 (01:22:35):
What's going on here? He can do stunts, he can
he's able to convince children to give him the devices
to kill him songs.

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
He's clearly although if you have to manipulate a child,
maybe you're not the guy.

Speaker 5 (01:22:50):
But he knows how to do a solution. But yeah,
you were you were saying that you're glad you cast
a they cast a girl, and I think your credit
the original version of the story was a ten year
old boy and a grown man, So I think this iteration.
I'm curious about why Tarsum went for this, and I'm
not sure it's with the same nuances and motivations that

(01:23:11):
we're talking about. But I'm really intrigued to see what
his intentions are of I need to bring a girl
into what kind of norms are out the foundation of thought?

Speaker 2 (01:23:20):
Yeah, because I think without Alexandria, this movie is almost
completely essentialist about gender and gender roles and who's entitled
to who as literal property. Well, he calls DIBs. He
literally calls divs.

Speaker 3 (01:23:34):
From what I learned, and I can't remember if this
was from the Indie Wire article or it must have
been that when they were casting for the child, they
weren't looking for any specific gender. They were more looking
for children that responded very like emphatically to stories that

(01:23:58):
were being told. So in the travels, as they were
doing location scouting or prep work or something like that,
they were in Romania and they went to a school
and observed a teacher or some adult telling a story
to a group of children, and the person who fit
the bill the best was this young girl Katinka, who

(01:24:21):
I think was four and a half at the time.
By the time they shot her scenes she was I
believe six, But yeah, she was just cast because she
gave such like animated responses to hearing a story.

Speaker 2 (01:24:38):
She's awesome, and her casting I feel like saves what
at least from a gender respective what otherwise would have
been saying not very much.

Speaker 3 (01:24:48):
And then there are some other things to consider about
this story that Roy tells that are perhaps not super great,
such as again the character who is just called the Indian,
who is also completely silent. I think he never has

(01:25:09):
any dialogue and feels very underdeveloped as a character as
a result. There's the odebannga character who does say some things,
but he similarly doesn't have a ton of dialogue.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
Well, and Odabanga is also it's such a I'm curious
why they pull this specific historical figure because Odabanga would
have been probably someone who Roy, living in the twenties,
would have been aware of, but had an extremely tragic
life that I know that. I think that the idea

(01:25:45):
of the story is to bring this historical figure into
a story and have him have more of a triumphant moment,
but without any context. It's just it's so the background
with Odebango is that he was a formerly enslaved person
from the Congo who was brought to the US as

(01:26:05):
an exhibit, so basically treated throughout his life, first as
an exhibit of an enslaved person from the Congo at
the nineteen oh four Louisiana Purchase Exposition, and then later
was brought to the Bronx Zoo and literally exhibited as
a zoo animal.

Speaker 3 (01:26:23):
Like put in cages with monkeys and.

Speaker 2 (01:26:25):
Apes, and then eventually just made quote unquote an exhibit
of his own And this is I mean, this was
happening in the early nineteen hundreds and he eventually took
his own life in nineteen sixteen, so horrific. Like I
don't even know where to begin. So for I don't know,
I just feel like this is I'm not object to

(01:26:48):
Odabanga being like awareness being brought to him, but it's like,
if you're bringing ode Beka into the conversation, I feel
like you really have a responsibility to do so carefully
and like thoughtfully, because by two thousand and six, you know,
this is not someone who we really discuss and not
someone who I would imagine the US is willing to

(01:27:09):
acknowledge that this happened, not to mention, just one hundred
years before this movie was being filmed. So while it
doesn't seem to be like an openly antagonistically I don't
think that this is being done, that this historical figure
is being brought into the story in a way that
is intended to cause harm. But I just didn't seem
given who Odebka is and how tragic his story was,

(01:27:32):
I don't know. I don't know, because that choice was
confusing to.

Speaker 3 (01:27:38):
Me, especially because so the other historical figure that is
referenced by name as a character in Roy's story is
Charles Darwin, and he gets a whole story, and it's
and the monkey, and it's referencing the dispute between Charles
Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace regards darting like the credit

(01:28:02):
for the ideas that were put forth in on the
Origin of Species, which is again directly reference in the
sense that the Charles Darwin character is often seen stealing
ideas that Wallace the monkey gave him and then taking
sole credit for them. So his story is like specifically referenced.
But then ode Benga the only references about the real

(01:28:27):
historical person that you see in the character in this
movie is that he's a former enslaved person. And then
he also carries a bow and arrow, which is a
reference to when real life Odebannga was literally put in
a cage alongside an orangutan. He was given a functional

(01:28:48):
bow and arrow in case he needed to use it
against the ape for his protection, but instead of doing that,
Odebannga would shoot people who mocked him at the exhibit.
So the bow and arrow is referenced, but again you
don't know any of the context for it if you
were just watching this movie. Yeah, yeah, it's just very

(01:29:12):
yeah bizarre.

Speaker 2 (01:29:14):
It feels pretty I mean, especially because Charles Darwin is
a historical figure that most Western audiences are like, he's
taught in schools. But for this movie to go, yeah,
out of its way to like reference some like kind
of b side Charles Darwin lore and give that historical figure.

(01:29:34):
I mean we also have Alexander the Great at the
beginning as well, but to have that historical figure given
more depth and more references and like this like kind
of I think, like beautiful tragic scene at the end,
the monkey see at the end is so sad, And
I wasn't able to find the name of the actor
who played Wallace. He's not creditor, he's not credited in

(01:29:56):
the movie. I was hoping for a Jimmy the Raven
kind of situation. But anyways, that is Sally Seagull. If
you have listened to a recent Lighthouse episode on our
Matreon legend Sally Segull scene Steeler. But all that to say, yeah,
like this movie clearly does have the time space and
energy to build out the historical characters there invoke and

(01:30:19):
do not do that for Odebanka. And it's like, if
you're not able to contend with the history of what
Odebanka went through and how tragic history was, then why
choose him to include in.

Speaker 3 (01:30:32):
The first place.

Speaker 2 (01:30:33):
Like I just was confused by that choice.

Speaker 3 (01:30:35):
It's bizarre. And then in addition to that, again regarding
Roy's story and the details he chooses to include, you've
also got the mystic played by a white actor who
various points in the movie has like different shades of

(01:30:57):
darkened skin ak he's in like black and brown face.
And then for that character and like his quote unquote
mystic cult, it felt to me like they were coded
as an indigenous tribe, and it feels like tropes around
indigenous characters were present, especially because we never really learn

(01:31:18):
anything about any of these characters, so we're just seeing
stereotypical imagery. But then you think about who is conceiving
and telling this story, and it's Roy, who is a
CIS white man in the nineteen twenties, so it's not
gonna be a progressive, inclusive story. But also this movie

(01:31:44):
was made in the early two thousands, so there can
also be.

Speaker 2 (01:31:49):
There's also a specific kind of early two thousands, like
any periodies, you're like, okay, so there's the prejudices of
the time we're talking about, and also whatever the hell
was going when they made it.

Speaker 5 (01:32:02):
Right, I was doing I was doing some side reading
on Ode Benga, and I found something kind of interesting.
So the movie The Fall takes place in nineteen fifteen
Oda Benga.

Speaker 2 (01:32:12):
Okay, yeah, he would have still been alive.

Speaker 5 (01:32:15):
Yeah, but he died of suicide in nineteen sixty and
due to depression, which I think is a really interesting
parallel too with a leapaced character, and potentially maybe why
Tersa included it. But I don't know if the description
there is, because I think there's a lot of parallel
but I just don't think it's handled as gently right.

Speaker 3 (01:32:35):
I feel like we don't have enough information.

Speaker 5 (01:32:38):
Maybe I do want to know the psychology of why he.

Speaker 2 (01:32:41):
Included that, yeah, because it's not not that like Odebga
is like a historical figure who we should talk about.
But I'm just like in this movie, it's just like
it just feels like a weird choice and it's a
yeah for him to take on and then actually not
take on. Just there are so many choices made in

(01:33:02):
the movie The Fall two thousand and six, and a
movie of choices, it's so, so, so many choices.

Speaker 3 (01:33:10):
Yeah, does anyone have anything else they want to talk
about regarding all these choices? I know there any choices to.

Speaker 5 (01:33:19):
Talk about the choices. I would love to see Minion
James's version of The Fall. I'll say, oh my god,
I don't know what he would be doing, but I
do think it would be problematic in its own life.

Speaker 2 (01:33:32):
It's I mean, yeah, I think you know, James. And
also the fact that the choice not to spoilers for
millions and monsters, don't let it ruin it for you.
At the end, we find out that the movie we've
just watched was written and directed by James, and so
possibly none of it happened at all, and it's just
James's rewriting of history, meaning that all of you know,

(01:33:54):
any any tropes, any harmful tropes presented in Millions and Monsters.
Well that's kind of on James.

Speaker 3 (01:34:00):
James le Mignon.

Speaker 2 (01:34:02):
Yes, so you know it's male auteurs. They're gonna do
it every single time, even James.

Speaker 3 (01:34:10):
Again, they're they're making choices out there.

Speaker 5 (01:34:12):
A lot of pressure to be a male au tour
and dominion.

Speaker 2 (01:34:16):
I it is kind of scary to be that James,
the Minion is ranked higher than Greta Girlwig on Vultures
one hundred most Powerful Directors. But how many Imax screens?

Speaker 3 (01:34:25):
That's Hollywood baby.

Speaker 5 (01:34:28):
To be fair to the Minions, I guess they don't
have a nuanced understanding of gender because they're all male.

Speaker 4 (01:34:32):
So yeah, kind of that's a weird, weird true.

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
But they're word for Scarlett overkill, you know, like they
know a powerful woman when they see one of them.
It's God, bring Scarlett Overkill back. If there's one Minions
expanded universe character, I want back it's her anyways. Okay,
that's all my thoughts I have on this movie end same.
If we're back to dominions.

Speaker 5 (01:34:55):
Yeah, they'll be brought up the minions more times than
the fall in this conversation. Fine, every movie comes back eventually.

Speaker 3 (01:35:02):
Of course. Of course, does this movie pass the Bechdel test?

Speaker 2 (01:35:07):
Yes it does. It passes between Alexandria and Nusanbalin a
couple different times. I think it also passes between Alexandria
and her mom, although I cannot be totally sure because
I do not speak the language that Alexandria's mom does.

Speaker 3 (01:35:23):
But well, when when Alexandria is translating for her mother,
it seems as though one of the one of the
things that her mother wants to know is like how
much longer Alexandria needs to be there? Slash, what is
that going to cost?

Speaker 4 (01:35:38):
Her?

Speaker 3 (01:35:39):
Which goes back to class Ye, but yeah, we don't.
We don't know exactly what the conversation is, but we
glean bits here in there. But yes, that conversation does
seem to pass. I would say, I think so.

Speaker 2 (01:35:53):
Yeah. I guess the reason I said I couldn't say
for sure is because it seems like she's mistranslating her
mom at several points in that conversation. But yeah, either way,
it does pass the Bactels hast not handily. And I
don't think, you know, there's a retroactive feminist argument to
be made for this particular movie. But Alexandria, I mean,

(01:36:13):
she's the saving grace of this movie.

Speaker 3 (01:36:17):
Definitely, Yes. And then as far as our nipple scale,
the scale where we rate the movie zero to five
nipples based on examining it through an intersectional feminist lens,
this is tricky, said, Yeah, it's a tough one. You know,
it's it's not doing great, I would say, especially if

(01:36:41):
we're considering the nature of Roy's story and his failure
to include women meaningfully.

Speaker 2 (01:36:51):
And the fact that we haven't really said this, but
at the end of the movie, it doesn't seem like
he's really meaningfully even though like he clearly has formed
a strong connection with this awesome kid, it doesn't seem
like he's meaningfully grown as a person. He's still kind
of like boohoo boo, who my GF dumped me? Like
that's kind of his thing the whole movie.

Speaker 5 (01:37:10):
Yeah, it seems like I'm not gonna commit suicide, but
I will still see woman asks what I've seen them
first wise.

Speaker 2 (01:37:19):
Yeah she did, but she I still I don't have
any reason to believe that he doesn't blame her fully
at the end of the movie. Also, I think he
just feels worse because it is he seems aware that
it's his fault of what happened Alexandria. But I think
he still blames his ex girlfriend for basically everything else.

Speaker 3 (01:37:37):
Because the way he ends like her arc in his
story is that she comes back up to him and says,
this was all just an elaborate test to get you
to prove how much you loved.

Speaker 2 (01:37:51):
Me, projecting yeah, he's right, and.

Speaker 3 (01:37:53):
Then he says something like hah no, thanks by forever,
as if like it almost seems like I'm not fired,
I quit kind of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:38:02):
It's also middle school. Like when I was in middle school,
the way that people would break up with each other
is they'd get in each other's face and go, you're cut.
And that's sort of like what he's doing there. He's like,
n uh, you're cut. Wow, I know you are, but
what am I every breakup I've been through, I'm like,
what if I just said you're cut?

Speaker 3 (01:38:23):
There there you move out.

Speaker 5 (01:38:26):
I feeling you should do that. It's just clear communication.
It seems like that's your duty when you're breaking up
with someone. Really clear.

Speaker 2 (01:38:32):
I can't like there's there's no there's no road for reconciliation.
As I said, you're cut cut.

Speaker 5 (01:38:37):
You can't really misinterpret that. It's very clear.

Speaker 3 (01:38:40):
Yeah, in any case, So, yeah, Roy's story plays into
a lot of tropes surrounding women being damsels or being fridged,
tropes surrounding the various characters of color and characters who
I feel like are coded as in digital But again
we're not really sure what's going on there a lot

(01:39:03):
of the time. But yeah, Roy's story that he's telling
does not farewell on the Bechdel cast Nipple scale. The
larger movie is a little bit more complicated because again,
it is a story that this little girl is populating
and interpreting through her lens, and so we see sort

(01:39:25):
of like a more interesting and more nuanced version of
the story that Roy is telling. But she's also five
years old, so it's not gonna be too nuanced. Yeah,
but I do appreciate that the child character is a
little girl and she is like inserting her sensibilities into

(01:39:47):
the story. So I don't know, like two nipples, I
have no idea. I almost want to like differ.

Speaker 2 (01:39:58):
I'm gonna rate it because if he wants this to
be viewed as a movie and so and so, I
must rate it fair. Okay, I'll go with who nipples?
Then I'm gonna go. I think I'm gonna go. And
this is again I guess qualifying up. I say, I
feel like so often if we're going to it, if
there's like a criticism of this show, they're like, they
gave it such a low rating, and it's like, well,

(01:40:19):
but look at the framing of the rating. We're never
writing it on how much we liked it, except if
it's a Minion's movie they were giving it five, which
of course, but you know, the point of the show
is we're talking about a very specific subject within movies
that we like. I say that because I am going
to give this a one point five I and I

(01:40:39):
really really really liked the.

Speaker 3 (01:40:40):
Movie, and I will be saying it's stunning, it's incredible,
it's moving, it's great.

Speaker 2 (01:40:47):
It's going in the rotation. However, this movie doesn't I mean,
outside of Alexandria's very strong characterization, which we know has
a lot more to do with the performer than maybe
the writing. This movie is pretty essential in the way
that it views gender. And also, I mean, I think
just knowing how Katinka and Taro was sort of spoken

(01:41:08):
down to by the director also just leaves a bad
taste in my mouth, especially because one of the points
it does seem to try to be making about this
character is that she shouldn't be like that. It's dangerous
for children to be working and overworked. So it feels
a little dissident in that way, and then everything else

(01:41:29):
we've talked about. So, yeah, I'm gonna go one point
five and I'm giving them both to my good friend
Katinka who did not who who elected to not really
go on to do very much acting, And I'd be
I haven't seen any interviews with her, so I'd be
curious as to like why she made that decision. Yeah, Ollie,
how about you?

Speaker 5 (01:41:49):
I think I'm with Caitlin and just pure medal of
the Road. This is kind of a two nipple movie,
five star movie in general for me, because it's one
of the most beautiful things as Yeah, but at the
end of the day, it is like it does. It
does push the message of you need more diversity in
the stories that you tell, But it is kind of
unfortunate to put all that weight on relying on a

(01:42:12):
five year old, a child to be the voice of diversity,
when it should kind of come from the adults. And
there are a lot of questionable decisions made in lenses
of acceptance that I don't necessarily think are the greatest.
Perhaps also, apparently El Fanning was in talks to be

(01:42:33):
the child.

Speaker 3 (01:42:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:42:35):
The Fanning sisters are so iconic, Like, it is wild,
how I forget that El Fanning. I think she may
have recently turned thirty, which is wild because I cannot
know she's twenty eight. I can't conceive of a world
in which Elf Fanning is not is doing three movies
a year. It's wild.

Speaker 3 (01:42:53):
I also I am just like, is she not still
a child?

Speaker 2 (01:42:57):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:42:57):
I guess not.

Speaker 2 (01:42:58):
She's not many for an Oscar less year, Oh my
gosh for sentimental value.

Speaker 4 (01:43:02):
Oh yeah, good movie.

Speaker 3 (01:43:03):
Which I saw, And she was very clearly an adult
in that movie. So I don't know what I'm talking
about anyway. Ollie, thank you so much for joining us
for this discussion and giving us an excuse to finally
watch this movie.

Speaker 5 (01:43:17):
Yes, thank you, thank you for having me.

Speaker 3 (01:43:19):
Tell us what you'd like to plug where people can
follow your work, etc.

Speaker 5 (01:43:26):
Yeah. I think I've talked a lot about film Slop,
but film Slop is my child. It is a film
review site that I kind of started because I used
to freelance and I liked writing about movies, but I
never felt like I was writing things in my own voice.
And now it just become a space where you can
engage with movies in the same way that kind of
The Fall does, where our ethos is blending personal narrative

(01:43:49):
and films. As an editor, I don't really care about
what you thought of the technical craft of the movie.
I care more about where it exists within the lived
experience of yourself. So yeah, if anyone ever wants a
starting point in terms of writing or interviews, are kind
of getting into the world of film journalism and wants
to build a portfolio, we are very happy to work

(01:44:11):
with you. And yeah, and then I think the other
thing I would like to promote is my sister runs
a human rights foundation based on in the Middle East
called t I m EP Time Up. So if any
of you are fans of human rights. That is a
place to go. She's doing cool things and she has
my older sister, so it would be bad of me

(01:44:32):
to not mention it at every opportunity that.

Speaker 2 (01:44:35):
I got so cool and you're yeah, everyone, check out
film slap. You're a great writer. I'm like, I just
love following along and check.

Speaker 3 (01:44:45):
Out all these interview with a with a certain couple
people named Caitlin and Jamie.

Speaker 2 (01:44:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:44:53):
Check out we are film slop fil m s l
o P on Instagram and filmslop dot com on the internet.
Yy sorry, you can find.

Speaker 2 (01:45:03):
Us and you can find us in all the normal
places on Instagram as well as on our Patreon aka
maatreon patreon dot com. Slash The Bechdel Cast five dollars
a month gets you access to two new episodes a
month on a theme of sometimes Yours Sometimes are Choosing,
as well as a back log of over two hundred

(01:45:25):
bonus episodes going back nearly I think eight years now.
And keep your eyes peeled because we'll be announcing tour
dates very soon.

Speaker 3 (01:45:33):
Yes, yeah, And with that Google googly googly be gone,
bye bye bye.

Speaker 2 (01:45:47):
The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia. Hosted and
produced by Me Jamie Loftus and.

Speaker 3 (01:45:52):
Me Caitlyn Dorante. The podcast is also produced by Sophie
Lichtermann and.

Speaker 2 (01:45:57):
Edited by Caitlyn Dorante. Ever heard of Them?

Speaker 3 (01:46:00):
That's Me and our logo and merch and all of
our artwork in fact are designed by Jamie Loftus, Ever
heard of her?

Speaker 2 (01:46:08):
Oh My God? And our theme song, by the way,
was composed by Mike Kaplan.

Speaker 3 (01:46:13):
With vocals by Katherine Voskrasinski.

Speaker 2 (01:46:15):
Iconic and especial thanks to the one and only Aristotle Ascevedo.

Speaker 3 (01:46:20):
For more information about the podcast, please visit Linktree Slash
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