April 24, 2025 • 42 mins
Warning: Contains Spoilerd
The White Lotus Season 3 masterfully explores how paradise corrupts and reveals our darkest impulses through the perfect metaphor of Thailand, where serene Buddhism exists alongside raw danger. This season weaves Buddhist philosophy into its narrative, using the white lotus flower – growing beautiful and pure from muddy waters – as a symbol for examining human nature and karma.
• Explores wealthy American tourists visiting the White Lotus resort in Thailand, continuing the upstairs-downstairs theme of previous seasons
• Features three distinct groups: the wealthy Ratcliffe family from Texas, three former college friends reuniting, and two couples with hidden motives
• Incorporates Buddhist concepts like the "monkey mind" to examine how characters struggle with inner dialogues and impulses
• Uses cinematography with shallow depth of field to visually represent character isolation and miscommunication
• Examines how characters are trapped in their identities and karma cycles, with only some finding transcendence
• Contrasts Rick and Chelsea's tragic ending with Tim Ratcliffe's moment of clarity when he nearly loses his son
• Reveals how corruption spreads from wealthy visitors to local staff who compromise their principles
• Sets up Season 4 in a Nordic setting, shifting from Thailand's heat to a colder environment
We hope you enjoyed our analysis of White Lotus Season 3. If you're intrigued by this discussion, be sure to watch the show on HBO and join us next week for another episode of The Final Cut.
Please contact us here: https://the-final-cut-podcast.b12sites.com/index#services
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Final Cut, the show where film and
television meet expert insightand passionate discussion.
Hosted by Professor John Cook,Emeritus Professor of Media Film
and Television at GlasgowCaledonian University, and
Charlotte Buren, amateurfilmmaker and devoted cinephile,
the Final Cut brings freshperspectives to everything on
screen.
Each episode explores thelatest releases, iconic classics
(00:24):
and the trends shaping theworld of storytelling, through
spirited debate, academic depthand a shared love for the art of
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Whether you're a seasonedcritic or just here for the
drama, this is your place forscreen talk that cuts deeper.
This is the Final Cut.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Welcome back to another episode of the Final Cut
, the show where we discuss thelatest in film and television.
Today we're going to talk aboutthe White Lotus and in
particular now season three andmaybe a bit also focus on the
final episode.
So it has been an interestingseason and all of them has a
(01:03):
sort of all of the shows have asort of similar theme.
It's always the affluentAmerican or affluent people from
various worlds that come andvisit these White Lotus resorts,
upstairs-downstairs theme to it, whereby the guests, who
(01:28):
sometimes have certain negativecharacteristics perhaps, are
visiting this very polite staffand the same, obviously, in this
episode and in this season it'sset in Thailand, in Kusumui, at
one of their wealthy WhiteSeasons resort, and we are
(01:51):
invited in to see various guestscoming.
And for this discussion todaywe have dressed up appropriately
in Lutus-style fashion and, asyou can see, our background here
is mirroring and so we arepresented with it's certainly
three families or people fromthree parties are coming in and
(02:16):
for example, for the first wehave the Ratcliffe's family,
which is a wealthy taxon familywho, tim Rathcliffe, is bringing
his whole family and they havethis sort of Dallas appeal kind
of wealthy family and hisdaughter is interested in
(02:37):
Buddhism, which is the pretextfor going to Thailand.
And we have the girls, which isa three girls who obviously
were students together and nowhave a reunion here in Thailand.
And we also have Rick andChelsea, which is a part of a
(03:00):
sort of two kind of odd couples,where he is kind of an older
man who has found this youngerwoman that he has brought over
to Thailand and he is here inthis pretext to show Thailand,
but actually it's more ofsolving a sort of family dilemma
.
(03:21):
And we have a final couple withGreg and Chloe chloe, where we
know greg is hiding secret buthe's also hiding it from chloe,
and again under the pretext ofhaving a lovely romantic trip in
thailand.
So overall I thought it was a,it was a great episode, it was a
great season, uh, I think,actually a lot stronger than
(03:41):
season two.
I think, uh, I loved season oneand I think this is on par or
even better than season one, andit's an interesting showing,
kind of a traditional format,but it had an interesting twist
and turn to it.
But, moreover, so with me heretoday, obviously I am joined by
(04:04):
my co-host, professor John Cook,who is an miraculous professor
in film and media.
So what was your feeling aboutseason three and the White Lotus
?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Well, hi, charlotte.
Welcome everybody to thispodcast on the White Lotus,
season three.
You'll see that we're alldolled up in our tie gear here.
Uh, appropriately for the forthe show.
So what did I think?
Well, because I hadn't reallyseen the previous seasons, I
came to this fairly raw and newto it.
I'd seen a little bit of seasonone but I'd completely
(04:37):
literally missed the boat withseason two.
So I actually enjoyed it andenjoyed the experience and the
immersion of it.
Um, I've noticed online quite alot of criticisms that it was a
bit of a slow burner, that thepacing some people criticise the
pacing of it as being ratherslow, but on the other hand it
suited the pace of an experiencein Thailand that is supposed to
(05:00):
well, on the surface wassupposed to be relaxed and
things were supposed to be slow.
But the key, fundamental premiseof this show and I think of the
entire three seasons of theshow, is that what looks
initially idyllic starts to getdarker and darker and the guests
(05:20):
bring the kind of corruption ofthe outside world into this
sense of paradise, thisparadise-style resort.
And you have to remember thatthe title of the show is called
the White Lotus, and a whitelotus is.
If you look up the meaning ofwhite lotus, it's obviously a
(05:42):
flower but has been attached tothe idea of purity and
enlightenment.
But notice that the way, theway that the white lotus grows,
is it grows in muddy water.
So it's actually, in that sense, a product of corruption.
Quote-unquote.
That's the metaphor that you'vegot a yin and a yang.
You You've got the muddy waterthat produces this wonderful
(06:04):
flower of purity andenlightenment.
But at the same time, is thatflower all that it necessarily
looks?
Is it as pure and enlightened?
Has it not got a sort of filthysoil underneath?
So that's very much, I think,the theme of the premise of the
show sorry, the premise of WhiteLotus and it was very much the
(06:25):
theme, I think, of season threethat we've just watched.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, and also there's of course, quite a
strong Buddhist theme aboutmindfulness.
This idea of the monkey mind,the monkeys that's interesting,
I think has kind of two kind ofmeaning.
One is about the monkey mind,that we can't actually sort of
switch off that inner dialogue.
I don't know if people arefamiliar with one for less, but
uh, so.
(06:50):
So I think the monkeys was arepresentation of that, but at
the same time I feel the monkeyshad also slightly evil streak
to them, so you didn't reallyknow whether they were going to
have, um, any more part.
Another thing that I thought wasquite interesting was this
about the revolver you see inall the scenes, um, and whether
(07:12):
it's a check of gun, this ideathat something is placed and
then you don't know whether ornot it's going to be used, and
it's in many um.
It comes up first with timratcliffe about whether or not
he's going to kill his familywhen he actually steals the gun
that is then stolen from him,and then obviously with the Thai
(07:34):
gentleman, the bodyguard, whosorry the security guard whether
or not he's feel able to usethe gun and impress that lady.
But it's, it's.
I think it's quite tense, a lotof it.
You sort of sit on your edge ofa seat, kind of be worried.
But you know, is he going tokill her?
(07:55):
I mean with with him there?
Is he going to kill the family?
Is that he's going toresolution?
Um, and another thing I alsowant to bring up is this idea of
miscommunication.
I think there's a difficultsomething that is permanent to
go serious, and particularlythis season, is this idea that
people are unable to communicate.
(08:16):
So and and this could maybe bebecause of the within Tim's case
, maybe the idea of shame hehe's embarrassed about if his
wife finds out about the factthey are bankrupt because of the
FBI raid and he's not unable tocommunicate that.
(08:38):
And it's the same with Rick andChelsea.
This miscommunication, how didyou find that?
The Chekhov's gun andmiscommunication.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yes.
Well, the gun motif, of course,is key.
So we're going to obviouslygive away a few spoilers, so
spoiler warning for those thathaven't seen the entire eight
episodes.
But towards the final episodesof of the series, we have all
this literally gun play, if youlike, playing around with the
(09:10):
the.
You know, hitchcock called itthe mcguffin um, the thing
that's introduced into the plot,that um may or may not lead
somewhere, and mcguffin oftenleads nowhere.
So the initial placing of thegun, uh, and the security guard
trying to trying to locate thegun, and who does find the gun
and takes it away.
So that particular threatevaporates, of course, in the
(09:32):
case of the Rattler family, tobe replaced with the threat of
poisoning.
So the father first of alltries to think about shooting
himself, and then he thinkshorrifically about trying to
poison his own family, with theexception of his youngest son
who said he wasn't so muchinterested in material
possessions.
But in the end, tragically, andwe think in the final episode
(09:53):
that unfortunately he's killedhis own son and this is the deep
tragedy of it.
But in fact it's not.
So that whole story justresolves itself, but the real
meat is actually in the finalepisode, with the character,
rick, who starts the gun warthat we've known about and has
(10:15):
built a sense of tension aboutright throughout the season,
because the season opens withmayhem in the resort, which is a
perfect metaphor, by the way,for the show, the idea that I
mean it's a lovely sceneactually where one character is
in a meditation session and istold to shut out all sense of
(10:37):
the world, to have this sense ofpeacefulness, and suddenly
realises that there's cracks inthe air which sound like
gunshots and then the theso-called guru quickly does a
bunk and a runner, showing thatthe whole thing is actually, um,
a little bit of a facade thatit gives the resort gives the
(10:57):
illusion of wellness, butactually, um, there's a lot of
danger in that locationunderneath, and that could
actually be a wider metaphor forThailand as well actually which
we can maybe return to in thisbit later in this discussion.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Mike.
So, mike, why talk a bit aboutthis metaphor, the Greek
metaphor, the Greek tragedy ofyou kill what you love, and I
think it's coming in twoinstances.
It's the first, obviously,between Rick and Chelsea,
whereby he in the end sort of Ican't spoil it tragically ended
(11:34):
up killing her because of tryingeffectively to save her, and
then, with Tim Ratcliffe, thathe's effectively killing his
time inadvertently.
I don't think he purposelesslyput the rest of the milk there
(11:54):
as to drink, there for him tofind, so that he couldn't
probably foresee that the boy,or could he?
It's a bit ambivalent, butthere is this method of killing
what you love.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, to just come back to your idea before about
miscommunication, one of the keythings I think is that all the
characters, when they're in theresort, are very much isolated,
so they can't really communicatewith each other very well.
I mean, they talk, obviously,but they're not necessarily on
(12:33):
the same level.
So, for example, the veryentitled character played by
Patrick Schwarzenegger, he SaxonSaxon.
He is very much trying toobviously get off with the women
, but the women are operating ona different level to him,
certainly the character Chelsea,and so the people are
(12:55):
miscommunicating.
They're not working together onthe same level.
Only really towards the enddoes he have a little bit more,
but not much, but a little bitmore understanding.
So he's seen towards the end ofthe show reading books about
Buddhism that Chelsea hadrecommended him.
But this actually is carriedover into the cinematography and
the visual look of the show andthis is why we've got the
(13:18):
background that we have of thefocus on the grass and the wet
grass as our background, becausethat very much mirrors I mean
it's actually almost mirroringexactly some of the key shots
from the show.
And if you look at the show verycarefully over the eight weeks
when the characters are in theresort, they're shot with a very
(13:38):
shallow depth of field.
The cinematography has ashallow depth of field, in other
words, only the figuresthemselves, the main characters,
are in focus and the backgroundis out of focus.
This compares to some films,for example the films of Stanley
Kubrick, who have a wide depthof field where both foreground
(13:59):
and background are sharply in.
You know, you have a sharpimage, sharply in shot.
So in the White Lotus it'scomplete opposite.
There's a lot of blurrybackground with only sort of
foreground figures or objectssharply in shot, and it's only
actually when the charactersstep outside of the resort that
(14:21):
that changes.
So I think it's the idea thatonce you're in one of those sort
of tranquil wellness resorts,you're sort of locked away from
the rest of the world, butcrucially as well from the rest
of your fellow men and women,and so that is an interesting
visual aspect that emphasiseswhat you were saying, charlotte,
(14:41):
about miscommunication.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
The other thing, absolutely, and the other thing
I also want to talk about is, asa psychologist, I'm most
interested in miscommunicationin terms of realization of
trauma and the inability ofbeing resilient.
So both Ratcliffe's family, theRatcliffe family and Rick and
(15:06):
Chelsea are experiencing trauma,but their experience is quite
differently and in both casesthey're both hiding something
from their families, respectivefamilies.
And in Timberlake it's that hehas gone bankrupt.
In Ricks it's that he wants tofind the man who shot his father
(15:28):
and ultimately kill him.
Okay, but when things goescompletely wrong, etc.
Their ability to be resilientto this is because in some sense
, both are men, are sort offalling apart, whereas we find
with with tim, he he's he, hehas some sort of resilience in
(15:50):
him in the sense that he's ableto deal with situation in terms
of that he doesn't poison hisfamily and he's able to still
have resilience to not act out,whereas in the situation with
Chelsea and Rick, it'scompletely obvious that Rick has
(16:11):
no resilience.
He cannot cope with that anger,despite sort of Chelsea trying,
you know, maybe give him thisman from us trying to, you know,
love conquers all, etc.
Whereas he cannot deal with itand that ultimately, I think
what leads to this tragedy.
(16:32):
And another thing that struck meand is this idea of Chelsea as,
almost like one of these womenwho loves too much, that she
believes and many, I think,women believe that they can
change the man.
They can.
Just enough love.
Or you know, we she's trying tomake it seem that you have
(16:53):
enough love here.
You know you don't have to, youknow you don't have to go after
something, you'll be fine,you're okay, and ultimately
still try to get it to happen.
What is your response?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yes, yes, I mean, it's actually there in one of
the lines in the episodes whereshe's trying to explain, I think
, to Saxon the basis of herrelationship with Rick, because,
saxon, you know themiscommunication, he can't
understand why she would be withsomeone like that.
And she says that it's the yinand yang thing.
(17:25):
Again, he is pain and sherepresents hope, and so in many
ways these characters are quiteheavily symbolic and they are
the yin and yang.
You know, if we go back to thewhole sort of Buddhist backdrop,
they're the yin and yang thatcontend throughout this series.
You know the dark and light,pain and hope, and it's quite
(17:48):
noticeable that throughout theseries we see shots of Buddha or
certain Buddhist gods where thegenus faced, which is the Latin
term, where they're looking.
One is looking in one direction.
One isred in the deaths of Rickand Chelsea, in which, for the
(18:13):
first time ever, rick's pain hasbeen alleviated and he's almost
staring up at the sky as helies there dead in the pond with
almost a beatific smile on hisface, as if he's seen God,
whereas poor Chelsea is lyingface down in the water in an
opposite direction.
So the idea that they're inopposite directions and, in some
(18:35):
sense her hope at the very endhas been transposed to Rick, who
is finally liberated from hispain as a result of death.
So it's a pretty bleak message,but it's the idea that it's
karma.
So Rick is someone who cannotescape from his past and he's
(18:55):
locked in that karmic cycle.
Um, chelsea tries to intervene,tries to create.
You know, he's got.
He rick is is, is mourningsomeone that is gone, um, and
not realizing that there'ssomeone there right now that
that he could have love with,but he's unable to do it.
There's a moment where we thinkhe's transcended it, but he
(19:17):
doesn't, and in the end he'scaught in that karmic cycle.
Ratliff Tim Ratliff, thebusinessman character gets that
moment of hope.
He could have gone down thatpath, but he gets that moment of
hope and it's the moment whenhe realises that he had almost
lost his son and suddenlyeverything else just pales into
insignificance.
So he gets his own form oftranscendence by realizing that
(19:41):
whatever's going on with hisbusiness and the possibility of
him going to prison, it'snothing compared to the loss of
his son.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And hopefully they're able to communicate better
after coming on the boat.
That's right, we don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
We don't know.
It's left hanging the idea thatthey may all be changed by
their experiences, those atleast who've lived and survived.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
I want to talk a bit about the girls and the trio.
It's quite interesting becauseit's something that actually
reminds me a bit of some of theSwedish writing about girls or
your old classmates how peoplechange, and I think initially,
you know, when the trio meet,it's like you say everything's
fine, everything's normal.
(20:26):
But then the old kind ofpresumably jealousy has come
back to haunt them.
You know Jacqueline as aHollywood actress and has sort
of paid for it all, so they arethe ones who almost expected to
feel grateful for her generosity.
And Kay, too, kind of she's,also has, you know, certain set
(20:58):
of superiority, coming fromTexas and maybe and this also
being Trump, but wanting stillto fit into the gang.
And then Laurie, who, as alawyer, also struggling and
hoping that maybe this I thinkthey all may be hoping for
different things going to happenin this trip, but then with the
(21:21):
various affairs it's almost asif they're trying to escape
their childhood or this, but atthe same time it sort of all
comes back and haunt them.
What's your opinion of that?
The ladies.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yes, it all comes back in one.
So I mean it's a little bitlike.
I mean it's.
It's quite a a nice touch inthe early episodes of the, the
season, where it's each, each umof the three women, um each,
they each gossip about the other, uh, behind the other's, back
to the, to the friend, and itchanges um each episode.
(21:56):
So they're all gossiping abouteach other and they do end up a
little bit like jealous schoolgirls, you know, jealous about
you know, oh, you've stolen myboyfriend, kind of thing is
effectively the vibe that youget when these characters sort
of pair off with various menthroughout the season but
they're not trapped by theirkarma again.
(22:16):
In their case there is a form ofepiphany, there's a form of
revelation towards the end, andthey manage to transcend that
ultimately by the Lauriecharacter who's the most
embittered, understanding thatin fact what transcends it is
not so much anything they'vedone or not done to each other,
(22:38):
but time and the fact thatthey've been together for so
long.
So she experiences thatepiphany at the very end.
Whether as a plot point,whether it's a little bit too
pat and neat, maybe in terms ofthe final episode resolving that
storyline, that's up for debate.
But within the flow of thenarrative, they do experience a
(22:59):
form of transcendence.
They recognize that theultimate value is of their
friendship and in that sense,they leave the resort with an
equilibrium restored.
That equilibrium had beenknocked during the holiday, but
it's now.
It's now been restored andimproved upon.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
My question is mentioned as a sum and he talks
about this concept of identity.
And it is maybe most prominentin this dialogue by Frank, a
friend of Rick, that he meets inBangkok where he talks about
his changes to political lovefor Thai women and then his
(23:41):
identification now, possibly asa Thai woman, that it's almost
his.
He becomes what he loves likehe, he, he likes him so much so
he becomes one himself.
I don't know is that somethingyou find in screenwriting, this
idea that you almost become whatyou love?
I mean?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
he's there, he's wonderfully played by Sam
Rothwell.
It's more comic relief, I think, that speech and it's the idea
that you think you know a friendbut actually it turns out to be
um entirely different, thatthey've changed a great deal and
he's obviously been on ajourney.
But notice that as soon as heum hooks up with his old friend,
(24:25):
he sort of relapses into hisold alcoholic, um womanizing
ways.
But um, yeah, it's again.
It's that idea that thatcharacter has been on a journey,
in a sense that people canchange.
One of the aspects I think ofthe show is that identity is a
prison and that each are lockedinto their own identities and
(24:49):
it's only some of them thatmanage to transcend that
identity and to leave theirprison.
So in a comic way the SamRothwell character embodies that
, but it's done in a very comic,outrageously comic way.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I thought it was a wonderful monologue and I was
kind of amazed that he was ableto give it in a sort of eloquent
way.
But in terms of identity, thenot someone else that is trapped
in identity is this betweenGatok and Lisa, this idea that
he is I don't pronounce his namethat he is, he has this
(25:32):
profession, he is a securityguard, so he is meant to be this
tough guy.
But actually he is not a toughguy.
He's, you know, and also due tohis religion, he's a Buddhist,
he's non-violent, and then hehas to be, you know, in a brutal
like act, you know, do thisshooting, but also to win the
(25:52):
love of Lisa.
So he also has to transcend hisidentity.
He has to be someone who he'snot, if that makes sense, but he
sort of does it in the end,when he kind of, when the lady
who owns the hotel sort of askshim to shoot Rick, when he runs
away and he sort of then becomesa sort of heroine.
(26:14):
So that's also another exampleof people that cannot transcend.
How did you find that?
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Well, that touches on a really important aspect of
the show, which is the way inwhich good characters can also
be corrupted and actually fallprey to what the show called the
monkey mind.
You know, you have all theseshots of, cutaway shots of the
monkeys in the trees called themonkey mind.
You know, you have all theseshots of, cutaway shots of of
the monkeys in the treessurrounding the resort, um, and
(26:42):
you know, as you've mentionedbefore, charlotte, the theme of
the monkey mind.
Now, just think about there'stwo, uh, good characters through
most of the season.
There's two good characters,essentially the, the lady
belinda, who comes to the resortand starts to realise that she
knows somebody who lives nearbyand has that moral quandary, the
(27:06):
fact that he may be a murderer.
There's her.
And then there's also thissecurity guard, who's a very
nice fella but is under a lot ofpressure to be, um, live up to
the sort of strand, I guess, ofthai culture, of, of hyper
masculinity, of being the toughguy you know, as symbolized by
the, the boxing matches thatthat we see throughout the
(27:28):
season.
But look what happens to bothof those characters, the good
characters, um, at the very endthey're corrupted by the
pressures of the environmentaround them and of the bad karma
of others.
So the security guard, yes,ultimately gets the approval of
the lady that he wants to dateby becoming the bodyguard.
(27:52):
But look at the price of whathe's had to do to achieve that.
He's had to shoot a man in theback.
Essentially that's what theshow shows at the very end.
You know, when he's asked totake the shot, the man is
walking away from him and he'snot threatening him, and yet he
shoots Rick in the back.
Now you know again yin and yang.
It ultimately produces somesort of peace for Rick, I guess,
(28:16):
but it's still a nasty act,while the Belinda character, who
has, you know, essentially beenwrestling and not wanting to be
bribed, in the end is bribedand paid off to cover up a
murder.
So the price of her doing thatis to walk away from the man
that she had kind of could haveset up a business with and could
(28:37):
have been her partner.
So the there's bad karma thereas well, and the way in which
and interestingly, you know,there's almost a satire there
the way in which the um, therich characters, can infect the
poor, um in such a way that thethe poor ultimately make bad
karma choices that might mightbenefit them personally, but in
(28:59):
the show's mythology that's themonkey mind.
The monkey mind benefitsindividually, but the peace and
tranquility and the equilibriumof the wider universe is
corrupted.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, unfortunately she sort of also does to him.
As to what was done to her inthe previous season, where the
lady just sort of when she died,unfortunately she sort of left
her.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Yes, that's right.
So bad acts can create furtherbad acts further down the line.
Yes, that's right.
So bad acts, you know, cancreate further bad acts further
down the line.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yes, that's interesting and yeah, but it's
interesting also that she's oneof the few people who wins on
this episode.
A lot of other, they have thissort of, I feel, as if they're
leaving the sword.
Some of them are certainly evenmore embittered and even more
less relaxed than they came, soto speak, um.
But another thing I wanted tomove on to thailand, which I
(30:03):
think thailand has a veryinteresting um place in this.
Because I mean one thing weboth have been to thailand uh
together and in um and one, onething that struck me when I was
in time, there was this ideathat the poverty lies on top of
(30:24):
the rich.
You know, like you, you, youlive in this gated community and
where you have all thesefacilities and it's wonderful
and everyone's, and then youstop three minutes outside and
you're met with sort of poverty.
It's very intense.
It's one of these where you,it's such a strong
differentiation between the poorand the rich.
(30:46):
They really live, they livenext door, but it's they're
miles apart and as well as atiny culture of slightly
silencing but maybe not beingtalking very open.
But how was your feeling?
Speaker 3 (30:59):
and obviously you have been more determined than I
have been only once beforeyou're absolutely spot on and
you know it's interestingbecause the show is three
seasons in and in many ways theThailand setting is the perfect
setting for this kind ofBuddhist karma type of show in
(31:22):
which you know you explore thecorruption under the White Lotus
.
It's actually a perfect settingbecause Thailand is such a raw
society For those of you who'venever been, I mean, it's a
really interesting country ofcontrast because you've got this
very peaceful population thatare, you know, that worship
(31:44):
Buddhism, and yet you've gotthis, the extremes as well, you
know, of violence, of povertyand actually of outright danger
in that society.
So it's a society of extremesin that society.
So it's a society of extremes.
So it perfectly fits the themesof the White Lotus because you
know, again, going back to theopening scene of season three,
(32:05):
where you know you've got thisopening in this paradise of
wellness where the Indian gurulady is trying to say close off
your mind from all outsideinfluences, but suddenly danger
erupts right in the heart of theresort and the facade is ripped
open and in fact the Indianguru lady, who's seen as some
(32:26):
sort of repository of wisdom inthe show, just does a runner
from the, the fear of the of thegunshots.
And of course you know, withoutbringing up exactly where and
when this happened we'veexperienced this directly,
charlotte, because we werestaying in a resort in the
neighboring sort of um touristspot in phuket, um, when, um,
(32:51):
and we were in this kind ofwhite lotus style resort you
know the, the branding is almostexactly the same that, the sort
of the sort of insignia acrossagainst a white background.
Um, we won't mention the nameof the resort, but it was in
phuket and um, we were enjoyingour holiday and one night we
(33:12):
were listening to a band.
We were there with our um oneand a half year old son uh, at
the time he was one and a halfyears old we were listening to
to a band.
We were there with ourone-and-a-half-year-old son at
the time he was one-and-a-halfyears old and we were listening
to a band and we suddenly hearda sort of commotion outside the
walls of the hotel.
So the walls of the hotel werequite big and you were kind of
shut in, but you could hearstreet noises from the other
(33:32):
side.
We didn't think much of it andthen it was only gradually that
we realised that in fact whathad happened was a murder
directly outside our hotel thatwe were staying in, in a road
that we had already walked downwith our one-year-old son in his
(33:53):
pushchair.
And the interesting thing wasthe Thai people never mentioned
it to us, it was never discussed, it was never raised, it was
not, there wasn't anything.
The only way we found out wasactually because we, we happened
to.
You know, there was no internetin the hotel, rather like the
mobile phones, um, but you couldgo on the internet in the hotel
lobby and one time a day or solater we went on the internet to
(34:16):
check the news and suddenly wegot the local news coming up and
what had happened was that twoAustralians who were staying at
our very hotel had gone for awalk down that road.
It was two women, I think, andone of them had a bag, and two
guys in motorbikes came shootingdown the road and tried to
(34:38):
steal the bag off one of theseAustralian ladies.
She gave struggle and struggledand she managed to resist for a
short time, but eventually theguys grabbed the bag and it was
only after she had staggered afew more steps that apparently,
according to the news, shediscovered this huge wound in
(35:00):
her torso.
The guy had actually stabbedher with a blade and I'm afraid
to say that she died shortlythereafter.
So it was a murder that didcreate news.
I think it made internationalheadlines as well.
But we were kept from it, andeven sort of taxi drivers that
were using um, you know, wewould notice um kind of police
(35:22):
outside the hotel and and, andthey didn't even let on to us
because I think the idea was notto disturb the tour.
Yeah, but it's certainly,charlotte, I'm sure you agree,
you'll remember that that itsums up the um, the huge
extremes of thai society and theway that everything looks very
serene on the surface, buddhistcalm, but underneath it can be,
(35:42):
it can be pretty dangerous.
What do you think of that?
Speaker 2 (35:45):
There was also seen a sort of sense of the band
played on.
So, yes, so we, we kind of Isort of felt it's something
strange, but we couldn't reallypinpoint what the strange thing
was, but it it's like.
But no one said something,nothing was discussed, because
some people say that it isn'tstrange that the people is not
(36:05):
talking.
But that's exactly whathappened no one said a word.
We had no idea they weretreating us as regular guests
and you know, it was somethingthat, oh, we had had this happen
outside, so we were in blissful.
Uh, I mean, and maybe that isthis idea that they want to like
(36:25):
, what writers look to get upthis?
They want people to staycocooned in this, almost, like
you know, move, remove mobilephone, remove everything, so
that you are away from life.
And something that struck me now, maybe it's a bit like you know
, sometimes you feel likebetween the rich and the poor,
that rich people sometimes areliving in a bubble.
(36:46):
They are not able to identifywith the struggles of the poor
or something like that.
I don't know, at least some ofthem.
I feel something that's comingup again Again, it's a theme in
the white clothes that's notsupposed to struggle, but
sometimes, of course, the richare seen as a satirical
(37:09):
characterization.
But that was something, yeah.
But, as I say, at the same time, I was very impressed by how
guest-friendly, how friendly thepeople were in Thailand, you
know, and I mean, for example,they were looking after my son,
you know, they were veryfriendly.
At the same time, it was thiscode of silence or code of not
(37:31):
discussing.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yes, that's right, charlotte, and yeah, I mean, you
know, they would babysit ourson when we wanted to go out.
Um and um, you know you couldsay, well, look, you know people
, they were trying to not spoilpeople's holidays, uh, not
frighten them, um, let peoplehave a lovely holiday.
But at the same time you alsofelt a little bit you were being
, you know, cheated a little bitbecause, intrigued me, we
(37:57):
treated a bit like children.
Uh, and that idea that, um, youknow you, you shouldn't know
what's going on, you know,because it could have had an
effect on our holiday if we hadbeen caught up in violence that
we were unsure was happening andyou know, it could have just
been simple avarice to protectthe, the thai tourist industry.
Um, it was very interesting.
I remember it was on the day weflew off and we were waiting in
(38:21):
the airport and it was on thetelevision screens at the
airport, you know, in the lounge, when we're waiting.
They finally got the two guysor they found somebody anyway
that they claimed were theperpetrators of the um, of the
killings and um, I do remember.
You know this is the way itworks over there is they paraded
(38:42):
them on television, on nationaltelevision.
It was almost, to sort of say,tourists.
We found them.
Now I don't know whether it wasthese guys or not, but I do
know that, that, um that youknow and I haven't checked
whether they were presumed theywere found guilty and if they
were found guilty over therethey would be executed.
So it's, we can identify withthe themes of the white lotus
(39:04):
and thailand and that yin andyang and the, the buddhism um
contending with the dark forces.
It's absolutely on the nose ofwhat thailand like.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
But moving back to the episode, so basically, yes,
so a tragic ending, but at thesame time hopeful.
So what do you think is thenext sense for the season?
So I thought about sort of someplaces that it could go.
One could of course, be aspin-off of what happens to
these characters when they comeback.
(39:36):
But also maybe I thought ofother places that maybe they
could go.
I mean, I presume they might gowhere they have these resorts,
but maybe I thought of somethinglike Mauritius maybe Well,
charlotte, I have some news foryou, and maybe this is the right
place to end this.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
I read now it isn't just a rumour that, yes, season
four is planned, but wait forthis.
They're planning to do it in aNordic resort.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Oh wow, that should be exciting.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
It's a Swedish thing, so it'll be sort of instead of
fire, if you like.
In Thailand it'll be ice.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, it'll be a nordic noir maybe.
Yeah, definitely, we're eagerto watch that.
And so some final thoughts.
Yeah, so, as I say, there was agreat season, I think, yeah,
among among the best, I wouldsay.
I think I love what to startwith and and I've in some ways
it sort of feels as if it's gonebetter and better and a strong
(40:39):
season and interesting character, and we hope it continues in
this way to maybe end this.
And what about you?
Do you have any final thoughtsyou can leave for our viewers?
Speaker 3 (40:49):
just say that you know it's worth a watch.
It is a bit of a slow burner,but the episodes if you saw, and
it's one of those shows thatyou have to soak into it.
You're not going to necessarilyget a lot of incident in,
particularly the earlierepisodes, but you sort of slowly
(41:09):
soak into yourself, soak intoit and it's actually extremely
beautiful to look at.
The cinematography is beautifuland it's so lush and so watch
it on the biggest tv screen youcan find.
And, um, as I say, I hadn'treally been exposed much to
previous seasons and so I canhonestly say that I enjoyed
white lotus season three and, um, you know, got a bit out of it
(41:32):
and hopefully, with you youlisten, audience, listening to
this discussion you've got a bitmore out of it as well.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
I hope so.
Yeah, definitely tune in toHBO's White Lure.
It's a great show and a greatcharacter.
To say, and, as I say, I wassitting on my edge of my seat
and couldn't wait next week towatch the next episode, so it's
a certain nail-biting as well.
But thank you very much forfollowing us.
I'm hoping following us nextweek and you have a great week.
Welcome to the Final Cut, the show where film and
television meet expert insightand passionate discussion.
Hosted by Professor John Cook,Emeritus Professor of Media Film
and Television at GlasgowCaledonian University, and
Charlotte Buren, amateurfilmmaker and devoted cinephile,
the Final Cut brings freshperspectives to everything on
screen.
Each episode explores thelatest releases, iconic classics
(00:24):
and the trends shaping theworld of storytelling, through
spirited debate, academic depthand a shared love for the art of
film and television.
Whether you're a seasonedcritic or just here for the
drama, this is your place forscreen talk that cuts deeper.
This is the Final Cut.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Welcome back to another episode of the Final Cut
, the show where we discuss thelatest in film and television.
Today we're going to talk aboutthe White Lotus and in
particular now season three andmaybe a bit also focus on the
final episode.
So it has been an interestingseason and all of them has a
(01:03):
sort of all of the shows have asort of similar theme.
It's always the affluentAmerican or affluent people from
various worlds that come andvisit these White Lotus resorts,
upstairs-downstairs theme to it, whereby the guests, who
(01:28):
sometimes have certain negativecharacteristics perhaps, are
visiting this very polite staffand the same, obviously, in this
episode and in this season it'sset in Thailand, in Kusumui, at
one of their wealthy WhiteSeasons resort, and we are
(01:51):
invited in to see various guestscoming.
And for this discussion todaywe have dressed up appropriately
in Lutus-style fashion and, asyou can see, our background here
is mirroring and so we arepresented with it's certainly
three families or people fromthree parties are coming in and
(02:16):
for example, for the first wehave the Ratcliffe's family,
which is a wealthy taxon familywho, tim Rathcliffe, is bringing
his whole family and they havethis sort of Dallas appeal kind
of wealthy family and hisdaughter is interested in
(02:37):
Buddhism, which is the pretextfor going to Thailand.
And we have the girls, which isa three girls who obviously
were students together and nowhave a reunion here in Thailand.
And we also have Rick andChelsea, which is a part of a
(03:00):
sort of two kind of odd couples,where he is kind of an older
man who has found this youngerwoman that he has brought over
to Thailand and he is here inthis pretext to show Thailand,
but actually it's more ofsolving a sort of family dilemma
.
(03:21):
And we have a final couple withGreg and Chloe chloe, where we
know greg is hiding secret buthe's also hiding it from chloe,
and again under the pretext ofhaving a lovely romantic trip in
thailand.
So overall I thought it was a,it was a great episode, it was a
great season, uh, I think,actually a lot stronger than
(03:41):
season two.
I think, uh, I loved season oneand I think this is on par or
even better than season one, andit's an interesting showing,
kind of a traditional format,but it had an interesting twist
and turn to it.
But, moreover, so with me heretoday, obviously I am joined by
(04:04):
my co-host, professor John Cook,who is an miraculous professor
in film and media.
So what was your feeling aboutseason three and the White Lotus
?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Well, hi, charlotte.
Welcome everybody to thispodcast on the White Lotus,
season three.
You'll see that we're alldolled up in our tie gear here.
Uh, appropriately for the forthe show.
So what did I think?
Well, because I hadn't reallyseen the previous seasons, I
came to this fairly raw and newto it.
I'd seen a little bit of seasonone but I'd completely
(04:37):
literally missed the boat withseason two.
So I actually enjoyed it andenjoyed the experience and the
immersion of it.
Um, I've noticed online quite alot of criticisms that it was a
bit of a slow burner, that thepacing some people criticise the
pacing of it as being ratherslow, but on the other hand it
suited the pace of an experiencein Thailand that is supposed to
(05:00):
well, on the surface wassupposed to be relaxed and
things were supposed to be slow.
But the key, fundamental premiseof this show and I think of the
entire three seasons of theshow, is that what looks
initially idyllic starts to getdarker and darker and the guests
(05:20):
bring the kind of corruption ofthe outside world into this
sense of paradise, thisparadise-style resort.
And you have to remember thatthe title of the show is called
the White Lotus, and a whitelotus is.
If you look up the meaning ofwhite lotus, it's obviously a
(05:42):
flower but has been attached tothe idea of purity and
enlightenment.
But notice that the way, theway that the white lotus grows,
is it grows in muddy water.
So it's actually, in that sense, a product of corruption.
Quote-unquote.
That's the metaphor that you'vegot a yin and a yang.
You You've got the muddy waterthat produces this wonderful
(06:04):
flower of purity andenlightenment.
But at the same time, is thatflower all that it necessarily
looks?
Is it as pure and enlightened?
Has it not got a sort of filthysoil underneath?
So that's very much, I think,the theme of the premise of the
show sorry, the premise of WhiteLotus and it was very much the
(06:25):
theme, I think, of season threethat we've just watched.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, and also there's of course, quite a
strong Buddhist theme aboutmindfulness.
This idea of the monkey mind,the monkeys that's interesting,
I think has kind of two kind ofmeaning.
One is about the monkey mind,that we can't actually sort of
switch off that inner dialogue.
I don't know if people arefamiliar with one for less, but
uh, so.
(06:50):
So I think the monkeys was arepresentation of that, but at
the same time I feel the monkeyshad also slightly evil streak
to them, so you didn't reallyknow whether they were going to
have, um, any more part.
Another thing that I thought wasquite interesting was this
about the revolver you see inall the scenes, um, and whether
(07:12):
it's a check of gun, this ideathat something is placed and
then you don't know whether ornot it's going to be used, and
it's in many um.
It comes up first with timratcliffe about whether or not
he's going to kill his familywhen he actually steals the gun
that is then stolen from him,and then obviously with the Thai
(07:34):
gentleman, the bodyguard, whosorry the security guard whether
or not he's feel able to usethe gun and impress that lady.
But it's, it's.
I think it's quite tense, a lotof it.
You sort of sit on your edge ofa seat, kind of be worried.
But you know, is he going tokill her?
(07:55):
I mean with with him there?
Is he going to kill the family?
Is that he's going toresolution?
Um, and another thing I alsowant to bring up is this idea of
miscommunication.
I think there's a difficultsomething that is permanent to
go serious, and particularlythis season, is this idea that
people are unable to communicate.
(08:16):
So and and this could maybe bebecause of the within Tim's case
, maybe the idea of shame hehe's embarrassed about if his
wife finds out about the factthey are bankrupt because of the
FBI raid and he's not unable tocommunicate that.
(08:38):
And it's the same with Rick andChelsea.
This miscommunication, how didyou find that?
The Chekhov's gun andmiscommunication.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yes.
Well, the gun motif, of course,is key.
So we're going to obviouslygive away a few spoilers, so
spoiler warning for those thathaven't seen the entire eight
episodes.
But towards the final episodesof of the series, we have all
this literally gun play, if youlike, playing around with the
(09:10):
the.
You know, hitchcock called itthe mcguffin um, the thing
that's introduced into the plot,that um may or may not lead
somewhere, and mcguffin oftenleads nowhere.
So the initial placing of thegun, uh, and the security guard
trying to trying to locate thegun, and who does find the gun
and takes it away.
So that particular threatevaporates, of course, in the
(09:32):
case of the Rattler family, tobe replaced with the threat of
poisoning.
So the father first of alltries to think about shooting
himself, and then he thinkshorrifically about trying to
poison his own family, with theexception of his youngest son
who said he wasn't so muchinterested in material
possessions.
But in the end, tragically, andwe think in the final episode
(09:53):
that unfortunately he's killedhis own son and this is the deep
tragedy of it.
But in fact it's not.
So that whole story justresolves itself, but the real
meat is actually in the finalepisode, with the character,
rick, who starts the gun warthat we've known about and has
(10:15):
built a sense of tension aboutright throughout the season,
because the season opens withmayhem in the resort, which is a
perfect metaphor, by the way,for the show, the idea that I
mean it's a lovely sceneactually where one character is
in a meditation session and istold to shut out all sense of
(10:37):
the world, to have this sense ofpeacefulness, and suddenly
realises that there's cracks inthe air which sound like
gunshots and then the theso-called guru quickly does a
bunk and a runner, showing thatthe whole thing is actually, um,
a little bit of a facade thatit gives the resort gives the
(10:57):
illusion of wellness, butactually, um, there's a lot of
danger in that locationunderneath, and that could
actually be a wider metaphor forThailand as well actually which
we can maybe return to in thisbit later in this discussion.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Mike.
So, mike, why talk a bit aboutthis metaphor, the Greek
metaphor, the Greek tragedy ofyou kill what you love, and I
think it's coming in twoinstances.
It's the first, obviously,between Rick and Chelsea,
whereby he in the end sort of Ican't spoil it tragically ended
(11:34):
up killing her because of tryingeffectively to save her, and
then, with Tim Ratcliffe, thathe's effectively killing his
time inadvertently.
I don't think he purposelesslyput the rest of the milk there
(11:54):
as to drink, there for him tofind, so that he couldn't
probably foresee that the boy,or could he?
It's a bit ambivalent, butthere is this method of killing
what you love.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Yeah, to just come back to your idea before about
miscommunication, one of the keythings I think is that all the
characters, when they're in theresort, are very much isolated,
so they can't really communicatewith each other very well.
I mean, they talk, obviously,but they're not necessarily on
(12:33):
the same level.
So, for example, the veryentitled character played by
Patrick Schwarzenegger, he SaxonSaxon.
He is very much trying toobviously get off with the women
, but the women are operating ona different level to him,
certainly the character Chelsea,and so the people are
(12:55):
miscommunicating.
They're not working together onthe same level.
Only really towards the enddoes he have a little bit more,
but not much, but a little bitmore understanding.
So he's seen towards the end ofthe show reading books about
Buddhism that Chelsea hadrecommended him.
But this actually is carriedover into the cinematography and
the visual look of the show andthis is why we've got the
(13:18):
background that we have of thefocus on the grass and the wet
grass as our background, becausethat very much mirrors I mean
it's actually almost mirroringexactly some of the key shots
from the show.
And if you look at the show verycarefully over the eight weeks
when the characters are in theresort, they're shot with a very
(13:38):
shallow depth of field.
The cinematography has ashallow depth of field, in other
words, only the figuresthemselves, the main characters,
are in focus and the backgroundis out of focus.
This compares to some films,for example the films of Stanley
Kubrick, who have a wide depthof field where both foreground
(13:59):
and background are sharply in.
You know, you have a sharpimage, sharply in shot.
So in the White Lotus it'scomplete opposite.
There's a lot of blurrybackground with only sort of
foreground figures or objectssharply in shot, and it's only
actually when the charactersstep outside of the resort that
(14:21):
that changes.
So I think it's the idea thatonce you're in one of those sort
of tranquil wellness resorts,you're sort of locked away from
the rest of the world, butcrucially as well from the rest
of your fellow men and women,and so that is an interesting
visual aspect that emphasiseswhat you were saying, charlotte,
(14:41):
about miscommunication.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
The other thing, absolutely, and the other thing
I also want to talk about is, asa psychologist, I'm most
interested in miscommunicationin terms of realization of
trauma and the inability ofbeing resilient.
So both Ratcliffe's family, theRatcliffe family and Rick and
(15:06):
Chelsea are experiencing trauma,but their experience is quite
differently and in both casesthey're both hiding something
from their families, respectivefamilies.
And in Timberlake it's that hehas gone bankrupt.
In Ricks it's that he wants tofind the man who shot his father
(15:28):
and ultimately kill him.
Okay, but when things goescompletely wrong, etc.
Their ability to be resilientto this is because in some sense
, both are men, are sort offalling apart, whereas we find
with with tim, he he's he, hehas some sort of resilience in
(15:50):
him in the sense that he's ableto deal with situation in terms
of that he doesn't poison hisfamily and he's able to still
have resilience to not act out,whereas in the situation with
Chelsea and Rick, it'scompletely obvious that Rick has
(16:11):
no resilience.
He cannot cope with that anger,despite sort of Chelsea trying,
you know, maybe give him thisman from us trying to, you know,
love conquers all, etc.
Whereas he cannot deal with itand that ultimately, I think
what leads to this tragedy.
(16:32):
And another thing that struck meand is this idea of Chelsea as,
almost like one of these womenwho loves too much, that she
believes and many, I think,women believe that they can
change the man.
They can.
Just enough love.
Or you know, we she's trying tomake it seem that you have
(16:53):
enough love here.
You know you don't have to, youknow you don't have to go after
something, you'll be fine,you're okay, and ultimately
still try to get it to happen.
What is your response?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yes, yes, I mean, it's actually there in one of
the lines in the episodes whereshe's trying to explain, I think
, to Saxon the basis of herrelationship with Rick, because,
saxon, you know themiscommunication, he can't
understand why she would be withsomeone like that.
And she says that it's the yinand yang thing.
(17:25):
Again, he is pain and sherepresents hope, and so in many
ways these characters are quiteheavily symbolic and they are
the yin and yang.
You know, if we go back to thewhole sort of Buddhist backdrop,
they're the yin and yang thatcontend throughout this series.
You know the dark and light,pain and hope, and it's quite
(17:48):
noticeable that throughout theseries we see shots of Buddha or
certain Buddhist gods where thegenus faced, which is the Latin
term, where they're looking.
One is looking in one direction.
One isred in the deaths of Rickand Chelsea, in which, for the
(18:13):
first time ever, rick's pain hasbeen alleviated and he's almost
staring up at the sky as helies there dead in the pond with
almost a beatific smile on hisface, as if he's seen God,
whereas poor Chelsea is lyingface down in the water in an
opposite direction.
So the idea that they're inopposite directions and, in some
(18:35):
sense her hope at the very endhas been transposed to Rick, who
is finally liberated from hispain as a result of death.
So it's a pretty bleak message,but it's the idea that it's
karma.
So Rick is someone who cannotescape from his past and he's
(18:55):
locked in that karmic cycle.
Um, chelsea tries to intervene,tries to create.
You know, he's got.
He rick is is, is mourningsomeone that is gone, um, and
not realizing that there'ssomeone there right now that
that he could have love with,but he's unable to do it.
There's a moment where we thinkhe's transcended it, but he
(19:17):
doesn't, and in the end he'scaught in that karmic cycle.
Ratliff Tim Ratliff, thebusinessman character gets that
moment of hope.
He could have gone down thatpath, but he gets that moment of
hope and it's the moment whenhe realises that he had almost
lost his son and suddenlyeverything else just pales into
insignificance.
So he gets his own form oftranscendence by realizing that
(19:41):
whatever's going on with hisbusiness and the possibility of
him going to prison, it'snothing compared to the loss of
his son.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And hopefully they're able to communicate better
after coming on the boat.
That's right, we don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
We don't know.
It's left hanging the idea thatthey may all be changed by
their experiences, those atleast who've lived and survived.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
I want to talk a bit about the girls and the trio.
It's quite interesting becauseit's something that actually
reminds me a bit of some of theSwedish writing about girls or
your old classmates how peoplechange, and I think initially,
you know, when the trio meet,it's like you say everything's
fine, everything's normal.
(20:26):
But then the old kind ofpresumably jealousy has come
back to haunt them.
You know Jacqueline as aHollywood actress and has sort
of paid for it all, so they arethe ones who almost expected to
feel grateful for her generosity.
And Kay, too, kind of she's,also has, you know, certain set
(20:58):
of superiority, coming fromTexas and maybe and this also
being Trump, but wanting stillto fit into the gang.
And then Laurie, who, as alawyer, also struggling and
hoping that maybe this I thinkthey all may be hoping for
different things going to happenin this trip, but then with the
(21:21):
various affairs it's almost asif they're trying to escape
their childhood or this, but atthe same time it sort of all
comes back and haunt them.
What's your opinion of that?
The ladies.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yes, it all comes back in one.
So I mean it's a little bitlike.
I mean it's.
It's quite a a nice touch inthe early episodes of the, the
season, where it's each, each umof the three women, um each,
they each gossip about the other, uh, behind the other's, back
to the, to the friend, and itchanges um each episode.
(21:56):
So they're all gossiping abouteach other and they do end up a
little bit like jealous schoolgirls, you know, jealous about
you know, oh, you've stolen myboyfriend, kind of thing is
effectively the vibe that youget when these characters sort
of pair off with various menthroughout the season but
they're not trapped by theirkarma again.
(22:16):
In their case there is a form ofepiphany, there's a form of
revelation towards the end, andthey manage to transcend that
ultimately by the Lauriecharacter who's the most
embittered, understanding thatin fact what transcends it is
not so much anything they'vedone or not done to each other,
(22:38):
but time and the fact thatthey've been together for so
long.
So she experiences thatepiphany at the very end.
Whether as a plot point,whether it's a little bit too
pat and neat, maybe in terms ofthe final episode resolving that
storyline, that's up for debate.
But within the flow of thenarrative, they do experience a
(22:59):
form of transcendence.
They recognize that theultimate value is of their
friendship and in that sense,they leave the resort with an
equilibrium restored.
That equilibrium had beenknocked during the holiday, but
it's now.
It's now been restored andimproved upon.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
My question is mentioned as a sum and he talks
about this concept of identity.
And it is maybe most prominentin this dialogue by Frank, a
friend of Rick, that he meets inBangkok where he talks about
his changes to political lovefor Thai women and then his
(23:41):
identification now, possibly asa Thai woman, that it's almost
his.
He becomes what he loves likehe, he, he likes him so much so
he becomes one himself.
I don't know is that somethingyou find in screenwriting, this
idea that you almost become whatyou love?
I mean?
Speaker 3 (24:03):
he's there, he's wonderfully played by Sam
Rothwell.
It's more comic relief, I think, that speech and it's the idea
that you think you know a friendbut actually it turns out to be
um entirely different, thatthey've changed a great deal and
he's obviously been on ajourney.
But notice that as soon as heum hooks up with his old friend,
(24:25):
he sort of relapses into hisold alcoholic, um womanizing
ways.
But um, yeah, it's again.
It's that idea that thatcharacter has been on a journey,
in a sense that people canchange.
One of the aspects I think ofthe show is that identity is a
prison and that each are lockedinto their own identities and
(24:49):
it's only some of them thatmanage to transcend that
identity and to leave theirprison.
So in a comic way the SamRothwell character embodies that
, but it's done in a very comic,outrageously comic way.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I thought it was a wonderful monologue and I was
kind of amazed that he was ableto give it in a sort of eloquent
way.
But in terms of identity, thenot someone else that is trapped
in identity is this betweenGatok and Lisa, this idea that
he is I don't pronounce his namethat he is, he has this
(25:32):
profession, he is a securityguard, so he is meant to be this
tough guy.
But actually he is not a toughguy.
He's, you know, and also due tohis religion, he's a Buddhist,
he's non-violent, and then hehas to be, you know, in a brutal
like act, you know, do thisshooting, but also to win the
(25:52):
love of Lisa.
So he also has to transcend hisidentity.
He has to be someone who he'snot, if that makes sense, but he
sort of does it in the end,when he kind of, when the lady
who owns the hotel sort of askshim to shoot Rick, when he runs
away and he sort of then becomesa sort of heroine.
(26:14):
So that's also another exampleof people that cannot transcend.
How did you find that?
Speaker 3 (26:21):
Well, that touches on a really important aspect of
the show, which is the way inwhich good characters can also
be corrupted and actually fallprey to what the show called the
monkey mind.
You know, you have all theseshots of, cutaway shots of the
monkeys in the trees called themonkey mind.
You know, you have all theseshots of, cutaway shots of of
the monkeys in the treessurrounding the resort, um, and
(26:42):
you know, as you've mentionedbefore, charlotte, the theme of
the monkey mind.
Now, just think about there'stwo, uh, good characters through
most of the season.
There's two good characters,essentially the, the lady
belinda, who comes to the resortand starts to realise that she
knows somebody who lives nearbyand has that moral quandary, the
(27:06):
fact that he may be a murderer.
There's her.
And then there's also thissecurity guard, who's a very
nice fella but is under a lot ofpressure to be, um, live up to
the sort of strand, I guess, ofthai culture, of, of hyper
masculinity, of being the toughguy you know, as symbolized by
the, the boxing matches thatthat we see throughout the
(27:28):
season.
But look what happens to bothof those characters, the good
characters, um, at the very endthey're corrupted by the
pressures of the environmentaround them and of the bad karma
of others.
So the security guard, yes,ultimately gets the approval of
the lady that he wants to dateby becoming the bodyguard.
(27:52):
But look at the price of whathe's had to do to achieve that.
He's had to shoot a man in theback.
Essentially that's what theshow shows at the very end.
You know, when he's asked totake the shot, the man is
walking away from him and he'snot threatening him, and yet he
shoots Rick in the back.
Now you know again yin and yang.
It ultimately produces somesort of peace for Rick, I guess,
(28:16):
but it's still a nasty act,while the Belinda character, who
has, you know, essentially beenwrestling and not wanting to be
bribed, in the end is bribedand paid off to cover up a
murder.
So the price of her doing thatis to walk away from the man
that she had kind of could haveset up a business with and could
(28:37):
have been her partner.
So the there's bad karma thereas well, and the way in which
and interestingly, you know,there's almost a satire there
the way in which the um, therich characters, can infect the
poor, um in such a way that thethe poor ultimately make bad
karma choices that might mightbenefit them personally, but in
(28:59):
the show's mythology that's themonkey mind.
The monkey mind benefitsindividually, but the peace and
tranquility and the equilibriumof the wider universe is
corrupted.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, unfortunately she sort of also does to him.
As to what was done to her inthe previous season, where the
lady just sort of when she died,unfortunately she sort of left
her.
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Yes, that's right.
So bad acts can create furtherbad acts further down the line.
Yes, that's right.
So bad acts, you know, cancreate further bad acts further
down the line.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yes, that's interesting and yeah, but it's
interesting also that she's oneof the few people who wins on
this episode.
A lot of other, they have thissort of, I feel, as if they're
leaving the sword.
Some of them are certainly evenmore embittered and even more
less relaxed than they came, soto speak, um.
But another thing I wanted tomove on to thailand, which I
(30:03):
think thailand has a veryinteresting um place in this.
Because I mean one thing weboth have been to thailand uh
together and in um and one, onething that struck me when I was
in time, there was this ideathat the poverty lies on top of
(30:24):
the rich.
You know, like you, you, youlive in this gated community and
where you have all thesefacilities and it's wonderful
and everyone's, and then youstop three minutes outside and
you're met with sort of poverty.
It's very intense.
It's one of these where you,it's such a strong
differentiation between the poorand the rich.
(30:46):
They really live, they livenext door, but it's they're
miles apart and as well as atiny culture of slightly
silencing but maybe not beingtalking very open.
But how was your feeling?
Speaker 3 (30:59):
and obviously you have been more determined than I
have been only once beforeyou're absolutely spot on and
you know it's interestingbecause the show is three
seasons in and in many ways theThailand setting is the perfect
setting for this kind ofBuddhist karma type of show in
(31:22):
which you know you explore thecorruption under the White Lotus
.
It's actually a perfect settingbecause Thailand is such a raw
society For those of you who'venever been, I mean, it's a
really interesting country ofcontrast because you've got this
very peaceful population thatare, you know, that worship
(31:44):
Buddhism, and yet you've gotthis, the extremes as well, you
know, of violence, of povertyand actually of outright danger
in that society.
So it's a society of extremesin that society.
So it's a society of extremes.
So it perfectly fits the themesof the White Lotus because you
know, again, going back to theopening scene of season three,
(32:05):
where you know you've got thisopening in this paradise of
wellness where the Indian gurulady is trying to say close off
your mind from all outsideinfluences, but suddenly danger
erupts right in the heart of theresort and the facade is ripped
open and in fact the Indianguru lady, who's seen as some
(32:26):
sort of repository of wisdom inthe show, just does a runner
from the, the fear of the of thegunshots.
And of course you know, withoutbringing up exactly where and
when this happened we'veexperienced this directly,
charlotte, because we werestaying in a resort in the
neighboring sort of um touristspot in phuket, um, when, um,
(32:51):
and we were in this kind ofwhite lotus style resort you
know the, the branding is almostexactly the same that, the sort
of the sort of insignia acrossagainst a white background.
Um, we won't mention the nameof the resort, but it was in
phuket and um, we were enjoyingour holiday and one night we
(33:12):
were listening to a band.
We were there with our um oneand a half year old son uh, at
the time he was one and a halfyears old we were listening to
to a band.
We were there with ourone-and-a-half-year-old son at
the time he was one-and-a-halfyears old and we were listening
to a band and we suddenly hearda sort of commotion outside the
walls of the hotel.
So the walls of the hotel werequite big and you were kind of
shut in, but you could hearstreet noises from the other
(33:32):
side.
We didn't think much of it andthen it was only gradually that
we realised that in fact whathad happened was a murder
directly outside our hotel thatwe were staying in, in a road
that we had already walked downwith our one-year-old son in his
(33:53):
pushchair.
And the interesting thing wasthe Thai people never mentioned
it to us, it was never discussed, it was never raised, it was
not, there wasn't anything.
The only way we found out wasactually because we, we happened
to.
You know, there was no internetin the hotel, rather like the
mobile phones, um, but you couldgo on the internet in the hotel
lobby and one time a day or solater we went on the internet to
(34:16):
check the news and suddenly wegot the local news coming up and
what had happened was that twoAustralians who were staying at
our very hotel had gone for awalk down that road.
It was two women, I think, andone of them had a bag, and two
guys in motorbikes came shootingdown the road and tried to
(34:38):
steal the bag off one of theseAustralian ladies.
She gave struggle and struggledand she managed to resist for a
short time, but eventually theguys grabbed the bag and it was
only after she had staggered afew more steps that apparently,
according to the news, shediscovered this huge wound in
(35:00):
her torso.
The guy had actually stabbedher with a blade and I'm afraid
to say that she died shortlythereafter.
So it was a murder that didcreate news.
I think it made internationalheadlines as well.
But we were kept from it, andeven sort of taxi drivers that
were using um, you know, wewould notice um kind of police
(35:22):
outside the hotel and and, andthey didn't even let on to us
because I think the idea was notto disturb the tour.
Yeah, but it's certainly,charlotte, I'm sure you agree,
you'll remember that that itsums up the um, the huge
extremes of thai society and theway that everything looks very
serene on the surface, buddhistcalm, but underneath it can be,
(35:42):
it can be pretty dangerous.
What do you think of that?
Speaker 2 (35:45):
There was also seen a sort of sense of the band
played on.
So, yes, so we, we kind of Isort of felt it's something
strange, but we couldn't reallypinpoint what the strange thing
was, but it it's like.
But no one said something,nothing was discussed, because
some people say that it isn'tstrange that the people is not
(36:05):
talking.
But that's exactly whathappened no one said a word.
We had no idea they weretreating us as regular guests
and you know, it was somethingthat, oh, we had had this happen
outside, so we were in blissful.
Uh, I mean, and maybe that isthis idea that they want to like
(36:25):
, what writers look to get upthis?
They want people to staycocooned in this, almost, like
you know, move, remove mobilephone, remove everything, so
that you are away from life.
And something that struck me now, maybe it's a bit like you know
, sometimes you feel likebetween the rich and the poor,
that rich people sometimes areliving in a bubble.
(36:46):
They are not able to identifywith the struggles of the poor
or something like that.
I don't know, at least some ofthem.
I feel something that's comingup again Again, it's a theme in
the white clothes that's notsupposed to struggle, but
sometimes, of course, the richare seen as a satirical
(37:09):
characterization.
But that was something, yeah.
But, as I say, at the same time, I was very impressed by how
guest-friendly, how friendly thepeople were in Thailand, you
know, and I mean, for example,they were looking after my son,
you know, they were veryfriendly.
At the same time, it was thiscode of silence or code of not
(37:31):
discussing.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yes, that's right, charlotte, and yeah, I mean, you
know, they would babysit ourson when we wanted to go out.
Um and um, you know you couldsay, well, look, you know people
, they were trying to not spoilpeople's holidays, uh, not
frighten them, um, let peoplehave a lovely holiday.
But at the same time you alsofelt a little bit you were being
, you know, cheated a little bitbecause, intrigued me, we
(37:57):
treated a bit like children.
Uh, and that idea that, um, youknow you, you shouldn't know
what's going on, you know,because it could have had an
effect on our holiday if we hadbeen caught up in violence that
we were unsure was happening andyou know, it could have just
been simple avarice to protectthe, the thai tourist industry.
Um, it was very interesting.
I remember it was on the day weflew off and we were waiting in
(38:21):
the airport and it was on thetelevision screens at the
airport, you know, in the lounge, when we're waiting.
They finally got the two guysor they found somebody anyway
that they claimed were theperpetrators of the um, of the
killings and um, I do remember.
You know this is the way itworks over there is they paraded
(38:42):
them on television, on nationaltelevision.
It was almost, to sort of say,tourists.
We found them.
Now I don't know whether it wasthese guys or not, but I do
know that, that, um that youknow and I haven't checked
whether they were presumed theywere found guilty and if they
were found guilty over therethey would be executed.
So it's, we can identify withthe themes of the white lotus
(39:04):
and thailand and that yin andyang and the, the buddhism um
contending with the dark forces.
It's absolutely on the nose ofwhat thailand like.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
But moving back to the episode, so basically, yes,
so a tragic ending, but at thesame time hopeful.
So what do you think is thenext sense for the season?
So I thought about sort of someplaces that it could go.
One could of course, be aspin-off of what happens to
these characters when they comeback.
(39:36):
But also maybe I thought ofother places that maybe they
could go.
I mean, I presume they might gowhere they have these resorts,
but maybe I thought of somethinglike Mauritius maybe Well,
charlotte, I have some news foryou, and maybe this is the right
place to end this.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
I read now it isn't just a rumour that, yes, season
four is planned, but wait forthis.
They're planning to do it in aNordic resort.
Speaker 2 (40:06):
Oh wow, that should be exciting.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
It's a Swedish thing, so it'll be sort of instead of
fire, if you like.
In Thailand it'll be ice.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, it'll be a nordic noir maybe.
Yeah, definitely, we're eagerto watch that.
And so some final thoughts.
Yeah, so, as I say, there was agreat season, I think, yeah,
among among the best, I wouldsay.
I think I love what to startwith and and I've in some ways
it sort of feels as if it's gonebetter and better and a strong
(40:39):
season and interesting character, and we hope it continues in
this way to maybe end this.
And what about you?
Do you have any final thoughtsyou can leave for our viewers?
Speaker 3 (40:49):
just say that you know it's worth a watch.
It is a bit of a slow burner,but the episodes if you saw, and
it's one of those shows thatyou have to soak into it.
You're not going to necessarilyget a lot of incident in,
particularly the earlierepisodes, but you sort of slowly
(41:09):
soak into yourself, soak intoit and it's actually extremely
beautiful to look at.
The cinematography is beautifuland it's so lush and so watch
it on the biggest tv screen youcan find.
And, um, as I say, I hadn'treally been exposed much to
previous seasons and so I canhonestly say that I enjoyed
white lotus season three and, um, you know, got a bit out of it
(41:32):
and hopefully, with you youlisten, audience, listening to
this discussion you've got a bitmore out of it as well.
Speaker 2 (41:40):
I hope so.
Yeah, definitely tune in toHBO's White Lure.
It's a great show and a greatcharacter.
To say, and, as I say, I wassitting on my edge of my seat
and couldn't wait next week towatch the next episode, so it's
a certain nail-biting as well.
But thank you very much forfollowing us.
I'm hoping following us nextweek and you have a great week.
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