Stalking Truth & Ambiguity w/ Luca Guadagnino's AFTER THE HUNT

Welcome back to The Film Dept. Pencils up everyone!

In this class, we delve into Luca Guadagnino's film AFTER THE HUNT, exploring its themes of truth, character complexity, and the impact of its cinematography and music.

Our hosts, alongside Professor Mona Nahm, discuss the film's ambiguity and how it reflects modern cultural issues, encouraging listeners to engage in discussions about personal truths and perspectives.

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to the Film Department Podcast
01:10 Spoiler-Free Review of 'After the Hunt'
02:25 Comparing 'After the Hunt' and 'Challengers'
04:33 Character Complexity and Ambiguity
06:47 Exploring Personal Truths in the Film
09:05 The Role of Music and Sound Design
11:24 Visual Storytelling and Cinematic Techniques
13:38 Themes of Truth and Deception
16:26 Philosophical Reflections and Takeaways
19:34 Character Analysis and Performance Highlights
22:26 The Significance of the Apartment's Design
26:42 The Title's Meaning and Implications

Watch this episode (and all previous episodes) on UNLV College of Fine Arts Podcasts:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgbLVA87WVDTKLP095pINKBeHXSe6brRn

Email us: [e-mail] 

Credits:

HOSTS - Lex de Asis, Matthew Trudeau, Robby Baker

PRODUCERS - Tom Bjelic, Sam Decker
EXECUTIVE PRODUCED BY - Adam Paul, Roudi Boroumand

For The Beverly:
Kip Kelly, Founding Creative Director | Chief Experience Officer
Alexi Harber, General Manager
Ivy Ergunes, Marketing Manager

To read the hosts' reviews, head over to: substack.com/thefilmdeptpodcast

Once again, The Film Department has teamed up with the mad geniuses of The Beverly Theater. Imagined by The Rogers Foundation, The Beverly Theater brings cinematic connectivity, novel collaborations, live happenings, cultural portals, and a zest for independent spirits to DTLV. With a mission to stage uncommon cinematic, literary, and live experiences, The Beverly Theater is Las Vegas’ first and only independent film house, storytelling arena, and live music venue.

For the latest screenings and events at The Beverly, visit thebeverlytheater.com The Film Department Podcast is supported by UNLV Film.

At the film department of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, every story has a beginning.With degree programs for undergraduates and graduates, state of the art equipment and facilities, incredible professional internships around the world, and expert guest speakers, students discover the power and potential of cinema as they prepare for the film and television industry… and beyond.

Learn more at UNLV.EDU/FILM UNLV Film. Find your voice. Tell your story.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
The Film Department is supported by UNLV Film.

(00:04):
At the Film Department of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, every story has a beginning.
With degree programs for undergraduates and graduates, state-of-the-art equipment and
facilities, incredible professional internships around the world, and expert guest speakers,
students discover the power and potential of cinema as they prepare for the film and
television industry and beyond.

(00:27):
Learn more at unlv.edu/film.
UNLV Film.
Find your voice, tell your story.
Hi everybody and welcome to season three episode one of the Film Department podcast at UNLV.
Thank you for coming out.
[Applause]

(00:47):
I feel so much better.
All right, my name is Matthew Trudeau.
I'm in my second semester at UNLV and if you can believe it, I still got chosen for
this.
I don't believe it either.
With me is Professor Mona Nahm.
[Applause]
She is a professor of film, architecture and design here at UNLV and with me are my beautiful,

(01:17):
well, one of them is beautiful.
Beautiful co-hosts.
If you'd like to introduce yourselves.
Hi everyone, my name is Lex.
I'm a third year film major and also a psychology major.
[Applause]
Hi everyone, I am Robbie Baker and I am a fourth year theater, stage and screen acting
student.
[Applause]

(01:41):
And we are so, so, very excited to be here today.
We just watched Luca Guadrini's latest film after the hunt.
Now we are going to start off with a quick spoiler free review, one or two sentences.
Robbie, do you want to kick us off for that?
Oh yeah, of course, throw me out of the bus like that.
Anyway, so, I would like to say that I think this is probably this director's favorite film

(02:03):
of mine.
I have watched recently a few of his other films and I just really enjoyed the amount of
intensity that was in it that felt right in place.
Very similar to Robbie, I do think the intensity was pretty amazing and also the ambiguity
which I know we will talk about a little later.
So, that is probably my favorite aspect of this movie.

(02:25):
I am just stressed out.
[Laughter]
I think that the film gives you a lot to think about.
And there is a lot of questions of like, who is right and who is wrong?
Did you see all the hands?
Where is the blood?
The blood does on whose hands, right?
So, there is a lot of little nuggets of amazing things that we can talk about.

(02:46):
Yeah, yeah.
I kind of agree more with the stressed out comment.
I never felt my heart race so much in this auditorium.
That was intense.
I mean, if I had to sum it up in one sentence, I would just say, "I am not a philosophy
major."
[Laughter]
That is about it.
And it shows.
Yeah, and it shows.
And it shows.

(03:07):
But Robbie brought up a good point.
I know us three recently watched a handful of Lucas recent films and I would love to
quickly compare and contrast.
What was his most recent film?
Was that Challengers?
Yes, I do believe it was.
Challengers?
So, I mean, right out of the gate, anyone want to start?

(03:28):
Challengers after the hunt?
I mean, it was a big jump from one to the other.
Oh, absolutely.
I would personally say that I definitely was not a fan of Challengers.
I thought that it was a lot of, oh gosh, how to put this lightly.
Well, Genitalia being measured.
And I was in a fan.

(03:49):
However, this one, after the hunt, was surprisingly well done and I think that I have a little
bit more hope for the future with this director.
As far as both, I feel like the cinematography is very lukewarm, no matter what cinematographer
he works with, there is that certain vibe that he has and he is very intentional with

(04:11):
every single shot that he portrays and so I think that is very loud in after the hunt
in comparison to Challengers.
I would say that one of the most amazing things about Lucas is that in every single story,
every single character is multifaceted.
There is no good without something else, right?

(04:34):
There is no dark without light.
And I feel like the complexity of his characters and the relationships is probably one of the
geniuses of his ability to direct and the tension, right?
I mean, the music.
It's like, I think I'm teaching a production design in horror right now.
And there are moments where you think it's like almost horror when the light in Julia Roberts

(04:57):
is coming to the door, think, think, think, and then you get the sound and you're like,
something bad is going to happen and then it just kind of chills out.
But the power of that music is the tension of the mind, right?
And I think the Challengers has to be very similar.
Oh yeah, I would say next to Lex.
And Lex was jumping a lot more than me.
Thank goodness for that.

(05:18):
And thank you.
No, thank goodness we're in the back otherwise I would embarrass myself, but all those big
as you put it, like that, those got me.
They all got me.
I disagree with Robby because I loved Challengers.
Challengers was a really fun watch for me.
But I think, I mean, the biggest difference between after the hunt and Challengers, Challengers

(05:40):
gave you a little sprinkle of what's actually going on with every aspect of the story.
And similar to Challengers, there's so much story.
There's a million different characters and storylines and subtext happening all at the
same time.
But with after the hunt, I never knew what was going to come next.
I never knew what was actually happening.

(06:00):
I didn't know who was telling the truth.
I couldn't tell you who was lying.
And I feel like, okay, I feel like this just shines so well with Lucas directing style.
I had this impression that he was saying to their different actors like, hey, this is the
truth, but pretend it's not.
Or this isn't the truth, but pretend that it is.
I just got that, especially with the I/O's character and Andrew's character, Hank and Maggie.

(06:21):
Or even similarly, it's like he told every actor that your story is the truth.
So just kind of portray it that way, no matter what, however else the interactions are.
And they nailed it.
At one point, I'm thinking, oh, I'm ruined for this character.
I'm ruined for Maggie.
I'm ruined for Hank.
I'm ruined for Alina.
Whoever it was.
And then the next second, the next scene, no, not at all.

(06:43):
I'm ruined for someone else now.
I think that's what really makes it more of a mystery, like, then anything else is the
fact that you really have to watch all the way to the end in order to make that kind of
depiction for yourself as to what is your personal truth.
Did anyone have a personal truth?
I don't know if you guys have ever seen "Hillipsy More Hoffman" and "Mero Street"

(07:05):
in doubt.
This feels like a very modern kind of look at a story where all the way through to the
end, it's not quite clear who is not telling the truth, right?
And even when Alma was attacking Maggie, everything that Alma said is almost the same Alma
confession at the very end, right?

(07:26):
So there is a very similar mirroring happening here that we're seeing.
So I brought this up a few days ago.
We had the opportunity to read through a little bit of a treatment for the movie and we
were discussing how I don't think I watched the same movie you did or you did or you did.
I doubt I watched the same movie anyone in this beautiful audience watch, I don't know

(07:48):
my glasses on, I don't know how beautiful.
I know I saw every single story through my own context, through my own life, through my
own personal experiences, which are not the same as anyone else is in here.
So I know one thing Luca wanted from this movie was for people to talk and I feel like
that's all I can do after watching this is I just want to talk.

(08:09):
I want to hear what you thought.
I want to hear your stories and your experiences and how you relate to these characters because
I'm sure we all relate to these characters in one way or another in bad ways and good
ways in mediocre ways, just everything.
I talked a lot, please so much take over.
I think one of the most powerful things about this is the fact that it relates so much

(08:32):
to what we have seen in modern culture with the Me Too movement and where you see a lot
of individuals, especially those that are in power, being questioned about these decisions
that they have made.
I think that for my personal perspective, I would like to say that I think Maggie was
signed the truth.

(08:52):
I think that there was a lot of these ways that Andrew Garfield's character Hank would
behave that would kind of give him as a tell that he might not entirely be telling the
truth.
And also the scene where Hank was, you know, advancing onto Alma, it kind of gives, you know,

(09:13):
a little hint of what he actually is capable of.
So, you know, we get to see that behavior and it's not completely out of character for
him.
I definitely think that there is a kernel of truth in all of them because that's usually
where the lie is the best lie, right?

(09:33):
If there is no truth within it, then it's too obvious.
So if we really have to dig into each of the characters, you'd have to wonder where is
the truth in each of them, right?
Even Alma's husband, he has a tell that that comes, you know, we see that he has a flaw.
And we see that there is a flaw in every single one of them.

(09:54):
Maggie was called out for maybe being with a partner for a certain reason and then towards
the end, there's something else going on.
I just realized I can't give away the story.
I've been a little bit of a stop talking about what they find out.
But in general, I think that we want to recognize that there was no perfect person in the story.

(10:16):
There's no hero here.
There's a bunch of anti-heroes trying to figure out how do they get it to be about their story.
I think that's a perfect way to put it.
And I definitely think this is going to be a movie that you need to watch more than once
to really get it feel for it.
But I also think no matter how many times you watch it, you're never going to be able to

(10:37):
decide who is telling the truth and who isn't.
Because I also think, I mean, this is going to sound controversial.
I also think the truth isn't what is important in this story.
I mean, it's Julie Roberts story.
It's Alma's story and at the end of the day in the context of the movie, she's not a part
of what the conflict is.

(10:58):
Well, she is, but not directly.
She was not in that apartment.
We didn't see what was in that apartment.
She didn't see what was in that apartment.
So we don't know.
We don't know what's happening.
But as I was watching, this is kind of backtracking a bit.
I found myself looking at their eyes the most.
Now, I have an acting background.
I know.
Boo.
But the eyes tell a lot.

(11:20):
And the one thing I noticed is that Maggie never made eye contact and Hank only made eye
contact.
At least for the most part, I'm sure if I watched it again, I'd see, oh no, oh, okay,
I was wrong.
Never working absolute people.
But that's interesting to me.
One of the things I always hear is that if they're not looking at you, if they're not making
eye contact, they're telling a lie.

(11:41):
And Hank seems so comfortable eating that Italian food or whatever it was.
It looked good.
I mean, the sounds are gross, but it looked good.
Oh, yeah, all the chicken wings for everyone.
I couldn't tell you.
I couldn't tell you who was telling the truth, but also I don't.
At a certain point, I found myself not caring what the truth was because I wanted to know
what almost truth was and then we learned it and it hit hard.

(12:04):
But doesn't that make a really good movie?
Yeah, right.
You start to really drop and forget the parts that you're going into a movie and expect
to see and then you forget all of that and then you're like, I'm on that journey and
then your journey maybe maybe keeps switching, which is like the miracle of film in a way.

(12:25):
It keeps changing your perspective, makes you question and dig deeper.
But if you think about the design, the lighting, I mean, there is so many clues out there, right?
Even the therapist was not perfect, right?
The therapist got issues too.
I mean, there is absolutely no perfection in there.
But if you look at it, the camera has such a point of view in this film.

(12:47):
The camera, either the POV, the actual POV of the characters.
No, did you see the frames?
Like, every head is kind of a little bit cut off.
Everyone's a little bit out of focus and infocus.
There's always an obstruction in the scene.
If you look at them dining, there's a table in front of them, there's a chair in front of

(13:08):
them, there's something.
It's almost like you can never really know who these people are because they're all surrounded
by this.
Almost like an armor that protects them and they've built it up to hide and protect who they
are almost.
And through the design, so much of that is visible in the lighting, you know?
If I can add on tonight, I'll be sorry.

(13:29):
Absolutely.
I think you're absolutely right on that.
And it's something that I have seen in some of the directors of their films is the fact
that he is very much a person that puts in all of these different objects.
We were just talking about this a couple of nights ago when we were watching, call me by
your name, where they really focus from the point of view of these different objects in

(13:50):
the room.
And I think that, like you just said, that everyone has this kind of extra armor as a layer
to them.
I really like what you were saying.
And then I also kind of want to add that we saw a lot of mirrors here.
And so everything, you know, the instructions to the camera, it's hiding who they truly are,
but then also the mirrors that gives like a little hint of who they maybe are, you know?

(14:14):
I kind of wanted to get your thoughts on that.
I think it's absolutely about reflection, right?
You're seeing somebody else, you're seeing somebody else who's got something, the fact
that one character is almost mimicking the other character.
It's a sense of reflection, right?
It's like looking at yourself.
I want to call out one more thing though.
Remember the very opening, I think this is okay to say we have the door sign that says

(14:36):
Hank, super legible, right?
We can identify, we can read it.
As the story goes, the information that is written is harder, faster, you can't read it.
It's a little too far, it's a little too blurry.
It's starting to hide, right?
It's like these are not the truths that matter.
The truth that matter is this person is this person.

(14:59):
Start questioning the information that's given to you and that will give you more power
as an observer and as a watcher.
So it's more so humanistic than focusing on the souls, we're not focusing on, you know,
the information around them.
So Lex is great, so if you don't know yet.
That definitely makes it a lot more of an intimate film and one of the things that I think

(15:19):
also helped with the intimacy of this film is, I know we've brought it up before, is
the score.
If you really pay close attention and it was something that I started noticing back when
I was watching Challengers is how crucial the music actually is to what is going on.
And in this film in particular, it was almost like a dance.
Like if the music were to go in a certain direction, there was a head bob, there was a movement,

(15:43):
the hands would would clasp, the hands would unclasp, there was a lot of things going
on with the score underneath it that once again, I think builds that intimacy.
Sorry when you mentioned the hand, I got excited.
So like the rings, how much this jewelry is like being noticed in every single frame,

(16:05):
right?
But back to the sound.
The sound is so amazing because did you hear how much silence the film had?
There are so many moments where there is no sound.
And that just makes it when the sound comes back.
It's even more impactful.
Yeah.
You're all so much smarter than me is the first thing I want to say.

(16:27):
I'm sitting here thinking about how she had milk done at the beginning and recessed
cups at the end.
But you know what I'll see that?
What is the significance of that, Massey?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that brings up a great thing, oral fixation.
Did you notice that?
Everyone was eating and snacking.
They're smoking and drinking.
They're walking down the hallways and they're putting things in their mouth.
It's almost like, oh, sorry, that too.

(16:50):
And I got very excited.
I just remembered one thing else.
But like the oral fixation, the desire to be heard, to be spoken, to talk, right?
But then the things they talk about and how much teaching was really in there.
Like maybe like one person and how accessible was the teaching.
Like if you're not a philosophy major, do you get half of that?

(17:12):
And the question is, is it a question of how inaccessible is the idea of higher ed and
academia?
It's an inaccessible thing.
People on the outside don't understand how it works.
And they've made the film to make you feel like you really don't understand how it works,
right?
I feel like it by was a philosophy major.

(17:34):
I wouldn't have liked it as much.
So philosophy, do you know much about it?
How do you feel?
I think since we're a group full of performing arts majors, I think that we might grasp philosophy
a little bit better than the average student.
However, I would also have to say that I don't have the background for it, but I think that

(17:59):
if you are involved in the arts, you need to understand philosophy even if it's just a
little bit.
And so I think that this film for arts majors can be very eye-opening.
I always ask my students, what's the takeaway of this film that you can really like think
about on it on your own life?
When you watch this film, what are your thoughts walking away from it?

(18:24):
I'm asking you now.
Oh my gosh.
It's so much.
It's looking over at me.
It's not.
I suppose just off the top of my head, I'm thinking we all have our own truths.
We all have our own back stories.
I kind of touched on this in the beginning.
So when you watch, I'm going to swear, when you watch a shit show like that just occurred

(18:50):
with all these characters who had so much, it's easy to walk away and think maybe I shouldn't
judge as much, which is kind of what I'm thinking.
I'm a very judgey person.
I just hate and hate and hate all day long.
Maybe that fixed me.
I have them in my class.
I better be very afraid.

(19:12):
I feel like...
Actually, I need to collect my thoughts.
Robbie, go ahead.
Oh boy.
Robbie, don't collect your thoughts.
Go.
Okay, I'm going.
So, there was one line towards the end that I think was very impactful and it was along
the lines of the death of philosophy is politics.

(19:34):
I want to say that probably my biggest takeaway from this entire thing is there is always
another side to the story.
And I think that it's something that I do my best with in my own personal life when it
comes to politics.
And I think that there's always a third side.
There's always a fourth side.

(19:54):
There's never this one or two red, blue, black, white.
It doesn't matter.
There's always some other way to look at something.
And so for this film and with how many different sides of the story that there were, it is so
important that you don't make a rash call with just one tiny bit of the information and
that you're able to really look at it from all sides before you finally go, I think that's

(20:17):
what it is.
I think the best example of that in the movie was Fredrick, almost husband.
I mean, he...
I was watching him.
He was my favorite character.
He was funny, first of all.
And he was just so heartfelt.
He loved even though he wasn't getting love back.
He asked questions.
He wanted to know more before saying anything else.

(20:40):
That last scene, which by the way, okay, hold on off topic.
That last shot with him...
Don't give it away.
Spoilers.
It was great.
It was a real good shot with him.
Matthew said.
But he wanted to know more before he put his own input in.
I mean, I think he was like a therapist or something among those lines, which is what a good

(21:04):
therapist does.
But he just embodied that idea so well.
And I also bring up Fredrick, and his...
What am I trying to say?
The way he was giving Alma the supplements every morning.
The oral fixation bringing it back to that.
I think him doing that and her never taking it.

(21:27):
He was like a symbolization of him wanting the truth from her.
And then we got that at the end.
And right before that scene is when we first saw her take the supplements.
So I was just thinking about that.
I like all these ideas.
That films that make you talk about it to me is a successful film.
But when I think about what I would walk away from this film, I think that we have a habit

(21:55):
as humans to put people on pedestals.
We want to think highly of the people we care about and we respect.
And I think that the higher the pedestal, the higher the fall.
So I think meeting people where they're at and kind of allowing yourself to say this relationship

(22:16):
feels okay.
And this is a little bit maybe it is philosophy in a way, but it may be it's not even
about film.
But meeting people where they're at and allowing them to make mistakes or be who they are and
accepting them.
I think there is a better chance of less lies and a better chance of having to hide who
we are constantly by accepting that even with whatever failures or experiences we've had

(22:41):
in our lives, it doesn't diminish who we are.
I was just having a very recent conversation about this with my mother actually who is in
the audience.
And we're talking about just meeting people where they're at and how that is crucial to having
a great relationship with somebody.

(23:01):
You know, we're not perfect.
We're human.
Human is the definition, perfect is not the definition of human.
We make mistakes, we learn, we grow.
And I think meeting people where they're at is one of my biggest takeaways from this movie.
Despite the fact that I probably disagree with like 90% of everything happening.
But yeah, meeting people where they're at is integral to this specific story.

(23:24):
Right.
Yeah.
Well, and I mean that ties back into what Lucas said he made this film for.
He wants people to talk.
And that's a good thing because this is a podcast.
I want to go back a little bit.
You are a production designer.

(23:46):
The apartment, Franklin, Frederick and almost apartment.
The one thing I noticed the most was that it was neat but disorganized specifically in the
bookshelves.
I was looking at the bookshelves and maybe this is just me, but it is a cardinal sin to stack
books on top of each other.
Did you notice that?

(24:07):
It's in my house just like that.
Cardinal sin professor.
You get that?
Well, I mean.
That's just out of my grade going down.
Usually when I pull the books off the shelf and I realize I've got 13 books on the table
and I don't know what to do with them.
I just are showing them back on the shelf.
That is also me.
Oh no.
Well, I thought it was a really good showcase of their facade.

(24:30):
It's a real list.
Yeah, for you, it's real.
My bookshelves are beautiful.
Do you have those CD vanishes?
No.
You guys should see that as a bookshelves.
It's gnarly.
His bookshelves are actually very neatly put together.
I will tell you I used to alphabetize my bookshelves and then I realized it's because I had too
much time on my hand and it wasn't actually how it was using the books.

(24:53):
Now when I see the books that are scattered, I know they're the ones I love the most because
I keep pulling the same one out.
But can't talk about the apartment.
Yes, yes.
Okay.
So like, why was that always so dark when she got sent to the bathroom?
I was sitting there going, has she been in this house?

(25:20):
Trying to get us to feel and think.
Is that already a red herring?
Are we already being navigated to think that something unsavory might be happening that
someone would know your house well enough to walk in the dark and not look for a light switch?
There's a lot of questions, right?
And that's a design and a cinematography and a story.

(25:42):
One cannot go on without the other.
And the music, right?
At that moment, I think there was so much lack of music at that moment and it was so eerie.
It felt like a horror movie.
That something's going to jump out and say hello to you or someone's going to open the
door and catch you doing something.
And then when the footsteps start happening, right?
It has that.
It's almost like how life is scary.

(26:05):
Emotions are scary.
People are scary.
Emotions are scary.
And I think the whole environment just builds up to it.
And the last thing at the, the house got messier and messier and messier as the story went
on and it almost felt like something is unraveling, right?
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, from the beginning, you used the term red herring and I feel like this movie was just

(26:26):
full of red herrings.
That's all it was.
Like, why was that envelope there?
Why was it, why was it hidden there?
Spoilers.
Why was it hidden there?
Like who hid it?
Who hid it?
Right.
Was it all?
Yeah, but we all thought about it.
Yeah, yeah.
Why did Maggie pull out that one thing?
How did she know to look over there too?
Exactly.
Well, I think she was looking for toilet paper.

(26:46):
Well, she's looking for toilet paper.
But she paused.
She paused a little bit.
I noticed she didn't wash her hands before she started having a badness.
Yeah, that's.
Maybe I am a CD, oh no.
Or is that dream of a football?
I don't know, I just work here.
But, um, I like, the characters themselves were red herrings.
And then, when Andrew Garfield, like, Hank, he was, it wasn't Andrew Garfield acting, it
was Hank acting.

(27:07):
He was putting on this facade, the whole, he was sitting up in his chair like this the whole
time and he was like just constantly moving and constantly rearranging the room because
why, why let anyone stand still?
And then when something actually, when that wrench was thrown into those gears, that's
when we started to see some actual emotion come out of him.
You know, I love the fact that you're bringing up Hank and this is actually something that

(27:27):
I turned to Lex in the middle of a movie about, but on his arm, he has a snake tattoo.
And you know, it's kind of that snake in the grass mentality that I think his character
had as an underlying tone pretty much throughout the whole thing.
And so I feel like every time he was on screen, you knew that you had to pay attention to

(27:51):
what it was he was saying, even if he wasn't the thing in focus at the moment.
I mean, he might just be a fan of the movie Anna Konda.
I'm just putting that out there.
I think I want to call it one of the things is like, I get a lot of curious how or what vibe
watching this, you know, run this kind of like movie ideas Shakespeare, right?
You kind of get this feeling of like, who story is who's and I think that I don't think

(28:14):
we can finish this podcast without talking about performance.
Yes, absolutely.
Can we talk a little?
Yeah, well, I mean, you can't have good performance without good writing and the writing
was phenomenal.
The writing was phenomenal.
This was a first script for this writer.
Yes.
Amazing already.
But now, now, I'm going to perform.
So I just had to say that all of these characters were so flawed and so egotistical and they

(28:38):
were taken out by that like, like, or a set of chocolate factory one by one, they were
fallen.
Like, it was, like, they took themselves out.
I just hit the microphone, fixed it and post.
They took themselves out.
They took themselves out because they couldn't just fix their problems before or fix their
egos before it was a problem.
And that was the case with all of them, no matter how likable they were in a scene or

(28:59):
unlikeable they were in a scene, they were egotistical, they were entitled, they were not
super lovable, which I've noticed is kind of a pattern in Lucasfilm.
Oh, for sure.
He doesn't like likable characters.
He wants you to watch a story with unlikeable characters.
He wants you to test the limits.
Yeah.
See how far we can go to like a human.
And he's testing my limits.
I do not like the series.
I haven't talked too much.

(29:21):
I'm going to please someone take a minute.
Let's do that.
Acting.
Huh?
I'm about to title.
Ooh.
Yeah.
Okay, let's go from, let's finish up performance real fast.
And then let's talk about our title.
Oh goodness.
So in terms of performance, I would like to definitely highlight Maggie for a moment.
I think that there was a lot of really good intimacy between her character and everyone

(29:45):
on screen, especially because she was definitely the driving force of the, of the entire film.
There was one particular scene where you see the hands of both her and Julia Roberts characters.
And just the, the intimacy that you can get from something so small is, is so great.

(30:06):
And then seeing the eyes reflecting that.
And I know we've spoken about the eyes a little while ago, but in that one particular scene,
seeing her eyes and Julia Roberts eyes when they make this intimate embrace, definitely
was kind of a highlight of acting in the film for me.

(30:26):
You guys keep looking at me like I've just got something to say.
Lucky for you, I do.
Yes, yes.
I would disagree with you on one thing.
You said Maggie was the driving force.
I think, I think almost the driving force, really.
Which again, going back is interesting because it wasn't her story.
It wasn't her conflict, but she was the driving force.
At least for me, at least for me.

(30:46):
Again, we all watched different movies.
They were all acting.
Not the actors, the characters, Hank, Maggie, Anna, Frederick.
Yeah, there's a facade that had to keep going.
They were all acting.
None of them were truthful from the, from the very beginning, which that's hard to pull
off.

(31:07):
And notice when a truth is being asked of, they completely divert the question.
Yeah, yeah, or they fall apart.
Yeah.
That happened multiple times.
Sometimes quite physically in all this case.
Yeah.
She fell apart.
Now, not to change the subject, but what did you guys think of the title itself?
Settle.
Settle, Robbie.
Okay.

(31:30):
Breaking it down after the hunt, the only scene we had after the hunt was that very last one,
between Maggie and Anna.
That was the only one.
And I'm not sure exactly what they wanted me to take away from that.
I always say it like it.
I'm not going to lie.
I always say it like it.
So, what do you think?
I argue that the hunt was the entire movie, the whole film, because of the fact that you're
hunting for the next piece of information.

(31:52):
And so, yeah, at the end of the film, we get a little bit of a thing, not to give away spoilers,
but you get this little piece of information to see what is the fallout from everything
that happens.
You know, there's always one more piece of information that gets discovered and you
don't know when the hunt is going to end.
Yeah.

(32:13):
Could you say that this is after the hunt?
The conversation.
The conversation is after the hunt.
Because, as long as we have a lot of fun, we'll have fun.
I guess I would ask what the hunt is.
Like, what is it?
Is it true?
The one, is it?
Is it?
Are they hunting for a title?

(32:33):
Are they hunting for a promotion?
I mean, are they hunting for love?
Are they hunt to hunt is to want to get to something, to obtain, however it is, right?
You want something, right?
You scavenger hunt.
You look for things, right?

(32:53):
So, I think it's a brilliant title, because it has such an openness and a vagueness to it,
and it requires all of us to consider it.
Yeah.
I think, when I think of the hunt, I mean, it was all based around the #MeToo movement,
which, at certain points, was very, this is not the right way to put it, a lot of times

(33:19):
it was being compared to like the Salem witch hunt, you know?
The words of one against the reality for another, what's true, what's not true, either
way we're getting punished for it.
So, that's kind of the thing that was invoked in me is his truth going against her.
Is her truth going against him?

(33:39):
Yes.
Which one's going to end up on top?
And I think that is a wonderful place to leave off for tonight's podcast episodes.
Spence.
Leave them in suspense.
Yes.
Anyways, thank you guys so much for listening.
Yeah.
Thank you for coming out.
[Applause]
Thank you guys so, so much.
Don't follow us.

(33:59):
Go follow us on Instagram @TheFilmDepartment podcast.
And, that's it just send us DMs, comments on our posts, we want to hear what you guys think.
So, thank you guys so much.
We'll see you next time.
Thank you.
Bye!
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