The Big Picture - Movie Swap: ‘Fargo’ vs. ‘The English Patient’

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

It’s time for another movie swap! It’s a 1996 showdown as Sean sends Amanda the Coen Brothers’ thriller ‘Fargo’ and Amanda returns volley with Anthony Minghella’s Best Picture winner, ‘The English Patient.’ They talk 1996 movies, the year’s Academy Awards, and how these two modern classics hold up. Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Dave Chang and Chris Ying. We are the hosts of Recipe Club. You may have listened to it before, but we are now back on the air, new and improved with the same hosts that lose every week. I still don't know what the rules are because they've changed as well. Chris, can you give a quick rundown?

Every week, we debate the best way to cook the things you want to eat. We take a user, listener-submitted recipe, and we all cook it with our friends, Priya Krishna, Rachel Kong, Brian Ford, and John DeBerry. And then we talk about what went right and what went wrong. No, I actually really don't want to do this podcast. And they are hardly our friends. They are enemies. They are enemies. It's Dave's civil disobedience. If you want to see Dave Chang in an act of civil disobedience, tune into Recipe Club where he will not follow the recipe.

I'm contractually obligated to make this podcast. But I'm here to have a good time. So listen to Recipe Club every week on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobennessey. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about swapping movies. It is another movie swap. This time, I am sending Amanda the Coen Brothers 1996 classic, Fargo.

And Amanda is sending back Anthony Minghella's 1996 Best Picture winner, The English Patient. Now, I have never seen The English Patient. This is arguably the single biggest hole in my movie history viewing catalog. Amanda has seen Fargo, though I believe it's been quite a long time since you've seen it. Yeah, I don't think I'd seen it in a decade at least, but I did participate in the movie culture of the 1990s, and thus I've seen Fargo. And you, meanwhile, also participated in the movie culture of the 1990s and And thus, I've seen Fargo. And you, meanwhile, also participated in the movie culture of the 1990s and somehow just completely skipped this one crucial data point.

Yeah, I'm trying to locate why I skipped it. There are a couple of obvious reasons. Yeah, I was a 14-year-old boy. This was a romantic epic. I wasn't terribly interested in that. Also, I had discovered Fargo, and I think I had thrown my lot in with Fargo. And I was like, this is the best movie of this year. This is the movie for me. This is the movie that speaks directly to this very narrow kind of tonality that I'm interested in movies where it's like, it's a serious, violent noir thriller. But also, is this really funny? And is this kind of almost like a satire of a noir thriller? And there was something unusual about it. And so sometimes you choose sides. The show has been about choosing sides over the years,

and I chose a side. So for whatever reason, I just skipped The English Patient. I think also it appeared in this famous segment in Seinfeld about how long and slow it was. And it had a reputation as being a very fancy, prestigious, buttoneded up film. And when you're 14 and you're growing up on Long Island, you're not fancy or prestigious or buttoned up. This is in our lifetimes where like the Oscar establishment versus like the cool movie nerd fight happens. And, you know, I think that's probably been happening as long as people have cared about Oscars. But for us being people who followed the Oscars and aware of these things, this is a precursor in a lot of ways to Shakespeare in Love versus Saving Private Ryan,

which got really out of hand for a number of reasons and lots of ugly things were said, possibly rightfully so. But this has a lot of the same sort of culture clash of a traditional sweeping epic style of Oscar movie versus, you know, the Coen brothers were pretty well established at this point, but like, or at least in, you know, cinephile circles, but upstart indie movie. And as you noted the Seinfeld episode, and so like not liking a movie becoming its own part of popular culture it was like memes before memes and we did all of this in the mid-90s and so I think as we were young people trying to kind of figure out our allegiances and how we wanted to enter the conversation like it was probably willful that you didn't see it but that's a that's okay

it was in a way I before we're not really even talking about the movies but I But that's okay. It was in a way, we're not really even talking about the movies, but I guess that's probably appropriate here because I think the Oscars and the idea of how you watched movies in the 90s is a huge part of this conversation. So my vision of The English Patient is not as a person who would go to the local art house cinema at 14 and go see a film like this. And I guess this movie did open widely and ultimately did make a lot of money, but I think it probably started small and expanded and expanded. And it was as the double tape, the double VHS blockbuster and the film that, you know, sometimes could feel like homework. And when you're 14, even if, you know, even if, you know, I would rent Ben Hur and I would watch that, that was a double tape. I would, i would rent gone with the wind or at least my mom would rent gone with the wind for

me and we would watch that so i don't know why this one i just felt like there was a hurdle there was a barrier of some kind to getting into it but also i think it i think i assumed it was like four and a half hours it's actually only like two hours and 35 minutes it's not really that epic it's like pretty epic i mean we have been trained i guess or ruined by the last three to four years of everyone just being like well here's my three-hour movie didn't cut it down because streaming services don't care good luck to you yeah it's also like i definitely will watch a movie that has a guy in a spider-man costume that's two hours and 48 minutes long and feel like it's normal. So that is definitely a factor in the way I see it now. Back then, it was different. Back then, I felt like there was a clear demarcation between your standard issue, courtroom drama, rom-com,

thriller would be like two hours and one minute. And everything that was significantly longer than that had to be about just the heavens opening and God touching down on a great warrior. And there was really no in between. We've obviously completely blurred those lines lately. Let's talk about the Oscars first, because I think the point that you made is right, which is this is when you and I are both kind of coming of age with the Academy Awards and the ceremony itself. And this is a fascinating year because it's a rare two-movie year. And I think that these two movies that we're talking about on the episode essentially blotted out every other movie. There were a couple of other films

that were in contention this year. You know, movies like Shine and Geoffrey Rush's performance won Best Actor. Movies like Sling Blade, handful of notables from 1996. But I think of the almost 20 key awards, more than half of them went to The English Patient and Fargo together.

And frankly, The English Patient was absolutely dominant. It won tons of awards and tons of below the line awards. And you're right that it sets the stage, I think, for these showdowns to come. The sort of fussy, prestigious seeming film from an arthouse shingle, often having showdowns with big studio fair from classical entertainment auteurs like Steven Spielberg. This is the Shakespeare in Love and Saving Private Ryan thing. It's like films like American Beauty and A Beautiful Mind, but also films like Titanic and Gladiator are soon to be best picture winners.

The English Patient, it kind of splits the difference between all of these movies. It is a big historical epic, but it also does have the hallmarks of a careful thoughtful elegant literary adaptation and so it feels like it flatters a lot of the sensibilities in the academy yeah i think it is i mean it's not the last literary adaptation but it's one of the last great, like giant budget everyone buying into we've, we've adapted this like actually very good novel. This is based on a Michael and Daji novel that won the Booker prize, I believe in 1992. And then when they gave the Booker prize,

like the lifetime Booker prizes again in like a couple of years ago, it won that as well. So like a really well-regarded novel um and that definitely in the 80s and 90s was how you won oscars you made just like the you took a great work of literature with a capital l and made it fancy and everyone was like oh we have to take this seriously and i was like reminded a lot of Chris Ryan always talks about the fights that he used to get in with his father about the Merchant Ivory adaptations and remains of the day and which was like definitely a moment like late 80s, early 90s. And also kind of softens the ground for this

a little bit, I think. But people were trained to be like, oh, well, they made this wonderful book into a movie. So now we like have to go see it. And I'm doing the voice that makes fun of myself in that for sure. But it was definitely a thing. And I think even five years later, the sweeping crowd-pleasing epics that you're talking about go a little less literary, a little more mainstream. no... Gladiator is based on some sort of loose sense of history, but it is not based on a historical novel. Let me ask you a question before we start digging into the two films. When do you read The English Patient? Too early. I read it probably... Well, I reread some of it this morning, and I got to tell you,

tremendous. But I had not revisited it and since probably like late 90s i don't know that i saw this in 96 that's the other thing i was 12 years old i i don't know that i saw fargo immediately because you know that's kind of gory i remember fargo as a phenomenon i remember this movie as a phenomenon. I remember this movie as a phenomenon. I definitely found it when I got into the Oscars. And I definitely read the book too early because it's, I should go back. It is like dense and, but not really. But like, it's one of those things where, you know, they're doing dialogue and there's no, like, he said, she said, or whatever. It's like a very lyrical jumping around, bouncing all of these characters and times.

And it's not that hard to follow. But I think when you're 16, I'm not sure I got all of it. But it's beautiful. I was really astonished this morning when I went back. So, I think that actually is a big part of why this movie was so widely celebrated, which is that the book is considered very difficult to adapt in part because it is happening over several periods of time. And particularly these sort of twin love stories that are happening throughout the film.

And you can see the challenge. And I guess what, one of the key aspects of the movie is it's direct written and directed, adapted and directed by Anthony Minghella. But the people who worked on this movie is the true murderer's row of below-the-line craftspeople. It's shot by John Seal, who made some amazing movies with George Miller and Peter Weir and Sidney Pollack. It was optioned and produced by Saul Zenz, who was the producer behind Wonderful of the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus, and had a golden

touch when it came to Best Picture winners, and edited, I think, most notably by Walter Murch, who was Francis Ford Coppola's editor and sound editor for a number of years. He cut The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, a lot of great movies. He's written great books about the art of editing. And he actually, I believe, wrote a book called The Conversation with Michael Adage about editing his novel. And they talked a lot during the editing process about the best way to put this story together, which I thought was so fascinating and seems so unusual in movies. You don't often hear about the author of the source text being a participant in this way. And you also don't talk about... There are very few film editors. D.D Dee Allen comes to mind, but there are not a lot of film editors who even people who

consider themselves serious cinephiles could name check. But Walter Murch is definitely one of those people. He's one of those guys who you're like, he's on the tip of your tongue when you say the greatest film editors of all time. And he, it seems like his sense of power in this process is a big part of why the film became what it was because it's a little bit of a confusing story and i think that that is in part the point of it and maybe this is an entree into talking about what this movie is actually about because frankly i did not even know and as you pointed out in a recent recent uh movie draft that we had i i kind of knew what this was about the first like 20 minutes. Your general setup and then what these characters got up to is when things got a little dicey for you.

Yeah, I had a sense that there was a badly burned man because I think I had seen one image of Ralph Fiennes in quite a bit of latex makeup. Well, sure. They also used it a lot in the Oscars promo for this year. I mean, obviously, the famous, remember the Billy Crystal opening video where at the end, he's piloting the yellow plane and crashes and then comes into the Oscars. That's honestly how they opened the Oscars this year, which is pretty funny. But so I think even if you didn't see it, it was so central to the Oscars narrative that you at least know that Ralph Fiennes is in a lot of badly burned makeup. Yeah, I definitely thought this was a love triangle movie. And it is not really.

I mean, it kind of is, but it's not. That's certainly not the love triangle. I imagine that it was. The film was sold on Ralph Fiennes, Julia Pinoche, who won Best Supporting Actress for her performance, and Kristen Scott Thomas. And there are actually quite a number of other very recognizable, well-known actors.

I had no idea Willem Dafoe was in this movie, period. I never knew until literally the moment I turned the movie on. And for me, that's pretty weird because I look at IMDb actors' filmographies all the time. So in addition to him, you know, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth, Jürgen Prochnow, there's a lot of very memorable, well-known figures in this movie. And it is a movie about love stories, but ultimately it's a memory movie in which after Ralph Fiennes, who plays Count Almashi, who is a, what nationality is he?

He's Hungarian. Hungarian. A Hungarian count, who is also a cartographer working in Africa, is mysteriously shot down and burned during the final stages of World War II over Italy and is recovered, I guess, by someone in the military and then somehow transferred to Juliette Binoche,

who is a French-Canadian nurse working on the front lines of the war. Working with the Red Cross, yes. With the Red Cross. And she becomes his caretaker. And in caring for him, she starts to learn his story. And people enter their lives, and as they enter their lives, more of his story comes to the fore. And so the movie is sort of bifurcated

between the story of Hannah, this nurse that Binoche plays, and Almasy and his history, his backstory, essentially traversing through Africa in the 1930s and then later the 40s and the love that he encounters and the danger that he encounters over time um i'm i still don't really know if i liked this movie and i here i definitely did not hate it at all um i think it's a little hard to look at this movie and not be kind of blown away by the the grace the majesty of the

filmmaking the scope and achieve yeah yeah it Yeah, it's a big achievement movie and you can't deny that. I think that sometimes you can know like a little bit too much about a movie going in or have too much cultural information around it. We talked about this with some movies that you hadn't seen before when we've done this exercise in the past.

And I think I was just kind of like, the other thing too is that it's a puzzle movie and so i felt like i knew a shitload about the movie but i didn't know what the end of the puzzle was so then i started treating it like an mcu movie when i was watching it i was like where are we going with this where's the is there where's the easter egg for amashi you know which is obviously evidence of my brain but but like because i think because i was not i'm not able to participate in in the way that we normally would with a prestigious Oscar film in real time, where you're letting it pour over you. I'm like, millions of people have already seen this movie.

I'm not having any kind of communal expectation around this, even with you. I don't even know if you rewatched this for this podcast. I did, yeah. Okay. But I have some notes on my own rewatch that were funny. Oh, interesting. Okay. Well, I think I walked away from it feeling like it was very well done

i still am basically where i was when i was 14 which is i'm holding it against the standard of fargo which i also re-watched in which i continue to i'm kind of amazed by and that just says a lot about me i'm sure but knowing that it isn't it's very difficult to accomplish a film like this to pull a movie like this off, and to make it make sense, and to make it feel propulsive, and to really slip into the romance and the sense of longing that is really powering the story. And so I thought it was very effective. Will I ever watch it again is something I've thought about. Probably not. So I'll share a bit about my rewatch. I did rewatch this movie,

and I, in fact, rewatched the entire thing and texted one of my good friends, Will, halfway through. And I was like, hey, I'm rewatching The English Patient for work, so I can't just fast forward to the Almaschi and Catherine scenes, which is like how I've definitely seen half of this movie 15 to 20 times, you know, and like, I can do it. I, you know, it's like the wind scene in the car and then the bathtub and then Christmas and then, you know, he gets really drunk. And then like, I know all the highlights of like that romance and i too am reminded every time that willem dafoe is in this movie you know what i mean i'm just like oh

right there's this whole thing and you lost your thumbs and that's pretty tough um and you're gonna like help us solve a a crime but or not a well i guess it is a crime it's like a spy mystery basically it's a betrayal for sure yeah that's you know i wouldn't say that everything he did with that almashi does is noble no but you know i'm just there to watch the love story and frankly like the sex scenes of it it's a pretty it is like a pretty sexy movie in its in. The heat between Ralph Fiennes and Chris and Seth Thomas. Oh my God, I forgot the Herodotus scene, which is like definitely why I became a classics major,

which is so stupid. Oh, wow. Really? I mean, I'm sure. Don't you think that like, had you, I guess you had heard of Herodotus before because you're a grownup, but I- Yeah, I'm 39.

So I definitely had, but but at 14 there's no way i know i'd never heard of herodotus and then when she's sitting there with that like incredible scarf around the campfire just like a bunch of men captivated and she's like telling this amazing story and i was like how can i be exactly that you know which is stupid i could have majored in something useful but so i watch all of those all the time. I don't rewatch the whole movie very often because it is long. And I do think, to your point about it being these two love stories. And I was really impressed, actually, in the way that it manages to play them off each other.

But the motifs and the themes of the movie actually are nestled together really well and like sort of a novelistic way i was like oh i'm genuinely very impressed with this adaptation but like it definitely favors the ray fines in the katherine's dot scott thomas story for sure and even in book, I think the Kip character is a lot more developed and there's more balance between all of the characters. And I'm not being honest if I say I watch it for this masterful puzzle. I watch it because of the cave scene gets me every time. Yeah. Looking back at some of the writing about the film, especially from people who love the book,

one of the big criticisms seemed to be that Kip, who is played by Naveen Andrews, who is the Sikh sapper, who is essentially like identifying landmines and diffusing them in the latter stages of World War II, and who becomes this critical romantic figure for Hannah, is not really as developed. And their romance is not as developed in the film as it is in the book. And that that seems to be like a major takeaway. Now, maybe what happened is in the making of the film, the Ralph Fiennes and Kristen Scott Thomas

aspect of the story just became more powerful and deserved more screen time. And, you know, obviously two incredible performers at the height of their powers. I wanted to talk about like where all of these actors were at that time and where they are now, because I think it's really interesting how some people's careers can develop and some reputations can develop and some cannot. Um, I get like these folks were not terribly famous in 1996.

This is fairly early. You know, Ray finds, of course, I, I had appeared in, um, in Schindler's list by this point um but and juliette binoche was emerging on the scene as an international film star she'd appeared in you know kieslowski film and a couple of other things defoe of course had been working since the 80s in american movies kristen scott thomas i think was relatively unknown maybe if you'd seen bitter moon you

would have known about her but four weddings and and a Funeral. That's right, of course. Four Weddings and a Funeral is 94. Yeah. Let's start with her because she's really interesting. She's, I think, basically the flame star of this movie. 100%. The movie is kind of built on her profound magnetism. And I don't know that, did Kristen Scott Thomas have the career she was supposed to have? Which is not to say that she had a bad career, but I'm looking at her filmography. In 94, you've got her in Four Weddings and a Funeral, and she's nominated for BAFTA,

and there's a lot of like, wow, this woman is hot on the scene. She's one of England's next great actors. She makes a small appearance in Mission Impossible in 96. She's in Richard III in 1995, Mission Impossible in 96, and then The English Patient in 96 as well. And then she crops up in The Horse Whisperer with Robert Redford, which is a very, very big movie at the time that no one really cares about

now. And, you know, makes some random hearts directed by Sidney Pollack and Gosford Park a few years later with Altman. She's good in that. She is like what no what yeah what is she has that she has that amazing episode in fleabag like you know that's right 20 years later yeah i think that she's a little bit of timing here like i like i said i literally you know made life decisions based on wanting to be her in one scene in a movie probably if we undermine so i agree with you about her appeal in this movie but you also wrote in the the outline there like a lot of sexy Europeans, you know, and I think this is a line from the Anthony Lane review of this movie, which, reserved, kind of like old Hollywood, like, movie star here. And I think, like, what's amazing about the performance is the way that the, like, the love story actually, like, breaks that had a lot of demand in the late 90s and early 2000s, even in the types of movies that I like to see. So I think maybe it just, there weren't that many

roles for her. And she like, I think she's worked a lot in Europe and in French cinema as well, because she can speak in both languages, again I admire her but that doesn't make you you know Sandra Bullock no she's I mean she's had a thoroughly successful career she works every year she's been in a lot of films she's often a supporting character she was Mrs. Danvers in the Rebecca remake a couple of years back right not not a good film but you know doing good work she's in Darkest Hour she's been in things I think let's compare her to ray fines her romantic counterpart who you know i think sits comfortably as like one of the most dependable movie actors that we have and i think part of the reason he has retained his sense of relevance is because certainly he

makes movies like the grand budapest hotel in a bigger splash that you and i love which are you know art house films and working with incredible filmmakers but But he's M in No Time to Die. And he's in Holmes and Watson. And he's in the Harry Potter movies as Voldemort. So he like, he's playing the game of modern Hollywood in a way. And whether or not Kristen Scott Thomas doesn't want to or has not been asked to, it's interesting to kind of pair them together. They're about the same age. They have a similar training. You know, they have a similar sort of presence on screen. You know, that sort of,

that patrician bearing that you're talking about. And yet you could say Ralph Fiennes to a 14 year old now, and they probably know who that is. Right. But that's basically just because of Voldemort. And this, you know, this movie is like 25 years ago now. So even like late nineties, he early 2000s, he does Made in Manhattan with Jennifer Lopez, which I'm so excited that the Jennifer Lopez rom-com era is back. But I wouldn't say that Made in Manhattan is the is the one that I hold up, you know, nor he uh make any sense at all in it respectfully and then you know he does like constant gardner and all of these things and then

and and is doing like sort of the chris and scott thomas version until voldemort and then i think voldemort gives him time and money for this like late stage career reinvention that is grand budapest in a bigger splash and like ray fines just like going for it and some of that is just that once you reach a certain age as a man in hollywood if you have the bone structure that ray fines does you just like you you get the fun parts and the women don't always get like the fun parts in the same way it's very true i think his sense, I think he often is playing against type and the sense of reservedness that his character has,

whereas Kristen Thomas often is playing to that type. The one exception that I will make is in Only God Forgives, Nick Reffin's absolutely batshit movie from 2013. Kristen Scott Thomas plays Ryan Gosling's mother in a psychotic Oedipal sequence that is like one of the truly mind-blowing like I didn't know Kristen Scott Thomas could do that I wish more people cast her in these kinds of parts

Ralph Fiennes routinely even before the Harry Potter stuff though the first movie he makes after the English patient is the film adaptation of the Avengers TV show, not the Avengers Marvel, the British TV show, the Avengers opposite Uma Thurman. This movie bombed, but the intention of this movie was to create a franchise. And so he's like, I shall be a movie star. You know, this is also the dude who, in addition to appearing as Voldemort,

was Hades in a Clash of the Titans remake. You know what I mean? He's just not afraid to just do the franchise entertainment. So they're like an interesting contrast of terms. Obviously, Dafoe, still relevant, still giving great performances to this day, whether as Green Goblin or in The Lighthouse or in a Paul Schrader film. Naveen Andrews, it took a while for people to catch up to him. I think it really took Lost for people to catch up to him, where he was took lost for people to catch up to him where he was i thought routinely the best part of that show um and pretty much since then has not done a whole heck of a lot um i remember being surprised that

he was married to barbara hershey when i was watching him on lost they're no longer married he hasn't made a movie in nine years and he's been on a couple of tv shows it seems like um i guess he was on instinct on cbs and he was on sense8 which i did not really watch very much of the wachowski's uh tv show and i guess he's appearing in the forthcoming series the dropout um which is about uh elizabeth holmes so that's fine so he he had he's one of the two leads. He plays Sunny Balwani, who is sort of like her partner in the business. So that's a big look for him after not really having a ton of massive looks of late. I thought he was very good in this movie. He's very young in this part, too.

And it's a real, like, obviously there are not as many parts in Hollywood for actors like him. And that's unfortunate. But much like Kristen Scott Thompson, I'm kind of like, did this person really have the career that they should have had? He's also such a swooning romantic type. Yeah. This scene when they go to the church and he puts her in the harness and they look at the frescoes.

I'd forgotten about that. But I was like, wow, this is like movie magic. This is really it is swooning and beautiful and exhilarating. And also, as you said, I think his character is pretty reduced from the novel and he doesn't get as much screen time. They don't develop the character, but when he's on screen with Juliette Binoche, it's working. And he does a lot with a little, I guess. Juliette Binoche is the one performer from this movie who I'm like, she did it. She did exactly what she set out to do.

She is widely considered one of the critical international movie stars of the last 30 years. She routinely works with the best filmmakers around the world. She'll occasionally pop up in American productions, but is not bound by them by any stretch of the imagination. Doesn't really seem to care for franchise entertainment for the most part, though she did appear in the terrible Ghost in the Shell adaptation. Do you remember that? Also had a very memorable five minutes in Gareth Edwards' Godzilla. Do you remember?

Did you see that one where she dies and Bryan Cranston watches her get trapped in a nuclear reactor? Actually, an amazing scene. I know this sounds stupid, but him having to say goodbye to her through a glass window in a Godzilla movie. Oh, that is sad. Yeah, that's sad. I was like, how did they get Julia Binoche and Bryan Cranston to make this stupid movie anyway um but you know

she's she's probably best celebrated for stuff like certified copy you know like uh the Kiarostami movie or um I don't know what has she done recently she's in um non-fiction which we talked about a couple years in the show yeah um High Life with Claire Denis um so she's she's very very active and uh your boy colin firth uh-huh yeah he he's uh he's kind of against type in this movie too yeah notably after the bbc pride and prejudice where he becomes like a huge heartthrob um i don't know they couldn't have known that was coming no it was probably filmed like simultaneously i mean he was he was playing Mr. Darcy and a BBC pride and prejudice. So you have to know something's going on. It's a good point,

but it is pre Bridget Jones diary and all of that fun stuff. Three years later, would he and Ray fines have swapped parts? No, because Ray fines just has, it really is the bone structure and the smoldering silence. I think there's sort of a stern silence that Colin Firth can sometimes bring, but it doesn't have the same, it doesn't fill the screen the way that Ralph Fiennes says. I mean, this is like an astonishing performance of saying nothing and being super hot.

How do you feel about the latex? I mean, it's tough, but it's required. It doesn't look that good. It doesn't really look... I've seen better makeup in monster movies, if I'm being honest. Okay, but once again, I don't really like monster movies.

It's not like I came to this to be like, wow, look at the really realistic representation of a total burn victim. I mean, he's just kind of sitting there. It's, it's fine. I have another important question to ask you. Yeah.

So I made a note here for this episode and I wrote that every actor is in that I'm really 32, but I could be 45 or 25. I am the perfect distillation of elegant beauty. I feel this way about every single primary character in the film, barring Juergen Prock. Now, once again, playing an evil nazi i feel like he plays an evil nazi and everything yeah um we're in our 30s yeah i'm in the waning days of my 30s you know for a long time i i looked very young i looked younger than i was I have a very babyish face. And I feel like I've lost that in recent years.

Okay. But basically, when you watched this movie for the first time, were you like, these people are so old, I'll never be this old? Did you think this was a story of young love lost? How did you visualize them? And now that you are basically at a stage in your life that is around the same age as the characters of the film, does it feel like a story

about your contemporaries? No, it doesn't feel like a story about contemporaries. These are grownups in a way that they were grownups when I was 15 or 16. And I was like, wow, seems like there's a lot

for me to discover. And then they're grown-ups now in a way that I still don't really feel that I am even though you know I have all of the accoutrements at this point or I'm about to and and in a way that you almost like don't see in movies anymore that maybe we're all just so like age obsessed and generationally obsessed that you and and and arrested development obsessed and all of these sorts of things that you become way more aware of where someone is on their life journey. But these are just like those are grownups in a distant, you know, in another time doing grown-up things. Yeah, that's essentially where I'm going with this, which is like, I will never be as adult as the people in this film are.

No. And I'm older than them. Yeah. And I don't know if that's a testimony to the absolutely tiny life that I'm living, that I'm not working as a cartographer in Africa or traveling through war-torn Italy, healing wounded people. And maybe I should have some bigger and better experiences. This is the kind of movie that makes your life feel

quaint, I would say. You know, it's not, we're not, we're not living, we're not tripping the light fantastic across Europe and Africa in the 1930s. It's sweeping. It's a historical epic. It's not like, you know, a domestic drama, even though it is about people in love it's

it's it's very over the top high stakes so just for context this film won best picture uh-huh anthony mingala who we've not spoken about very much who went on to direct one of our favorite movies the talented mr ripley shortly after this movie excellent literary adaptation truly one of the few where it's like you're taking an actually good book making it make sense as a film which we know is really hard and if and at least creating a similar tone like keeping some idea of the the work of art as it was like written on the page and translating that to the screen yeah and he um he also a few years after that adapted cold mountain also a literary adaptation which you know considered somewhat less successful than his previous two films but he specialized in this and

he died uh quite tragic quite young in his 50s um actually he had most recently adapted the number one ladies detective agency for hbo as well and that was also a novel and so he really was kind of one of the masters of the literary adaptation game um in movies and television and i'm curious to know like what you've often talked about you know can i get a donna tart movie or something like that like he probably he's probably would have man that make he could have made the goldfinch if we would have let him make the goldfinch, that probably would have been a fascinating adaptation. Anyhow, obviously, he's hugely responsible for this film. In addition to him winning Best Director, we mentioned that Binoche won Best Supporting Actress. Gabriel Yarrad, who we did not even mention, won Best Score. He went on to work with Minghella many

times after this. This film won for Best Sound, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Costume Design, and Film Editing. So this is like, this actually is one of those Ben-Hur films. This is one of those West Side Story films where it's like, it is enshrined in the history of the Academy as one of the most significant movies that they ever celebrated. Do you feel like it lives up to that reputation in 2022? No, but what do you do? I do it. Does it live up to me or do people yeah i can't

hold it to that yeah i guess that's two separate things it's sort of like is the film worthy of that is one is one question and then the second question is does it like live in that way has it been properly uh celebrated and commemorated it doesn't live in that way for sure like the seinfeld of it all and then as you noted i noted, I mean, this is a Weinstein film. So in this sort of is like the starting of like the Miramax Weinstein chokehold on the Oscars, which we know is just an uncomfortable, gross, bummer part of Oscar history. And of many of the movies that you and I really loved in the late 90s, to be completely honest. So but but certainly that changes how we look at it now. I think there are a lot of people who came of age at a certain time in the mid-90s

who had a similar feeling about movies and the English patient that you did. And many of them can now be found on Letterboxd. And that's cool and and so i think it it's definitely regarded now as like a old school like mainstream traditional oscars holdover which i think is a little a little unfair i think it's like as a movie itself it's one of the lesser offenders in that space though obviously it has its issues should it be like one of the 10 you know one of the great oscar movies that won like seven or eight or nine oscars i mean it's strange in in like film history but all of the all of the crafts awards that you just mentioned i'm like probably deserves every single one of them like

this movie is like amazingly well made. And this is like my frustration with all of the movies that are supposed to be Amanda movies now where they just like look like crap and nobody spends any time or money or puts any thought to like the feel and the craftsmanship and the, the, what can happen when you have this like big canvas and a lot of people spending time. So it probably deserves all of those awards, but is it like the original West Side Story

or, you know, like, no, but it's tier B, I would say from those movies that will be talked about 100 years from now, it's probably not that. And I do think that there is a little bit of a Weinstein stink on it because it's not so much the film itself. And Harvey Weinstein quite famously equated these stately, literate films as like a key to respectability. You know, like even going back to Peter Biskin's book, Down in Dirty Pictures, there's a lot of exploration of like their background and their sense of kind of like middle class them and kind of striving to be considered you know great artists and operating in the world of literary cinema and so industry acceptance in addition to money in this

movie did make a lot of money a movie like this with really no true movie stars making almost $250 million around the world, that also is like, forget about it. That's never happening again. You can't even get a version of a movie like this that looks good, let alone one that a quarter of a billion dollars worth of people are going to go see. So it does feel very much like a relic of a lost time. Let's use that as an opportunity to transition to Fargo. Does Fargo feel like a relic of a lost time. Let's use that as an opportunity to transition to Fargo. Does Fargo feel like a relic of a lost time to you? No, just because it's such a predictor of everything I understand, both about the Coen brothers movies and also just people trying to rip it off for 25 years now. It's so predictive. It feels like the opposite in a lot of ways. I feel like so much,

and I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but of course there is a Fargo television show, but it feels like so much series television uses the exact tone of this movie, which is like, can you fucking believe this is happening? Is this really funny or is this tragic? Right. And can they nail the tone? No, which is why this movie is singular and the coen brothers are so special but they're definitely trying um do you want to give a little kind of log line intro to your relationship to it and kind of what this movie is i'm sure many people who are listening have seen this perhaps probably more than the english patient despite the english patient doing better at yeah well so this is the coen brothers sixth movie yes Yes. But probably it's their most mainstream,

right? At least until you get to, well, this may be like kicks off their mainstream period because then you get big Lebowski, which is like so cult. It became mainstream. I feel like.

Yes, we can talk about that. I mean, I think that by this point, they're very well known in the world cinema space. Like they've been to can, they've been hugely critically acclaimed, but they're not like mainstream movie makers. and this is like their first big oscar recognition

and this is the first time that i have i have a vivid memory of my beloved aunt betty like doing an impression of francis mcdormand in fargo and being like well it's a radisson you know and like my aunt betty would never have seen another Coen brothers movie before, or maybe she would have, I don't know. The nineties were different, but this was like, people were aware of this movie in large part because the Oscars gave it a

platform, but it just seemed like slightly more accessible. And also people did somehow have more access to it. And that's certainly, this is also certainly the first Coen brothers movie I ever saw just because of my age and because it won some oscars and because everyone in my family was like doing midwestern accents um just apologies to the midwest throughout this entire rest of this podcast because i realized basically i understand the midwest as fargo this was definitely like i i grew up in atlanta ge Georgia. I haven't spent a lot of time in the Midwest. This is my introduction to all of the jokes and stereotypes in it and really stays with

you in what I think is maybe ultimately a loving way. But I know there was controversy at the time. Well, I mean, the Coen brothers are from Minnesota. And so they know from which they speak. I think part of the reason that this movie permeated the culture in a way that say hud sucker proxy or miller's crossing or or um you know raising arizona didn't and that those movies kind of operated in a cult way is the general premise of this being fake true crime that the movie opens with this title card that is sort of like this is based on true events right this is a true crime that the movie opens with this title card that is sort of like this is based on true events right this is a real story that really happened and then so many of the things in the story are so absurdist along the same lines of what you might find in raising

arizona with the dial turned slightly down on the wacky but you still get a leg in a wood chipper you still get the goofy accents you still get the deadpan looking into the camera you still get a leg in a wood chipper. You still get the goofy accents. You still get the deadpan looking into the camera. You still get the weird camera movements that are disorienting to viewers. That making it seem just a little bit more real, even though it was fake, let people come into the... They open the kimono, so to speak, for the viewer. Which I've always wondered, and I'm sure they've talked about it at some point, but I've always wondered how much of that was a cynical gambit on their part how much

of it was a practical joke how much of it was an an earnest attempt to get attention you know like where do you fall on that well that was what was interesting about my rewatch which i landed on it and so if you haven't seen no one needs the recap of Fargo, but the recap of Fargo is that it's about a car salesman played by William H. Macy, who arranges a kidnapping of his wife in order to get the ransom. And then the bubbling hit men played by Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare kind of get out of control and kill a bunch of people in dramatic fashion.

And Francis McDormand, a local police chief, comes in to solve the murders. So it's a noir, it's a crime thriller with an extremely wacky tone. But there's enough to hold on to, I think, for people just in that basic plot. It's in a lot of ways a plot you've seen before, even if it's being played differently. But on my rewatch, I was like, oh, this is somehow less bleak than I remember and more decent. And then I was like, am I being fooled here? Is that just me, old Amanda? Are they playing a joke on me?

And am I falling for specifically the decency of the Marge character and like the ending scene? Like, is it actually cynical and I'm giving them a little too much credit or whatever? I am still not totally sure. And that's obviously because I've seen a lot of Coen Brothers movies since. And I know how they're operating. And I'm not totally sure. But on its own, it's not the darkest version of humanity. Unless it is.

And they're playing a joke on us. I don't know. There's such an interesting conversation about all their movies over the years. Which is, do they have a sense of contempt for so many of the people in their movies over the years which is do they have a sense of contempt for so many of the people in their movies and do they look down on them of course they come from minnesota and the midwest but the joel and ethan are considered you know very very intelligent and very self-sufficient filmmakers who kind of look down their nose at everybody and even in the even their you know longest collaborators are kind of like, yeah,

they're like this hive mind who are like a little bit rude. They know exactly what they want. And yet, and perhaps this is informed by the fact that Marge is played by Frances McDormand, who's married to Joel. You can't look at Marge and think that there's any sense of contempt for her or her husband or the modest but very decent life that they are living and obviously marge is the smartest person in the movie by a country mile and so i i i never really bought into that i never i think that they they do see that there are a lot of evil and stupid people in the world and that a lot of their films are about the what the evil and stupid people you know essentially bring to our society on a day-to-day basis but they're so po-faced about everything that it's impossible to tell well i did start wondering how much of it is also what

francis mcdormand is bringing to the character in the performance which the coen brothers are obviously uh very specific very controlled they like they have a very fully realized world and tone but francis mcdormand being married to joel coen having worked with them throughout the years she you can decide how you play marge a little bit and whether it's supposed to be really funny that she is the person who knows everything and everyone else is just idiots or whether it's supposed to be like a funny, but also like a little heartwarming of like, Oh,

this guy like has it figured out is honestly like something that an actor can decide, you know, like, or, or that she can bring to it and, and that they decide to, to press the buttons on.

And what I think is really amazing about the performance, the scene where they find the first bodies and she's crawling around on that, you know, the iconic just white out screen and then cuts you. I'm not sure I agree with your police work there, you know? And that's become a meme, obviously. But I had forgotten that she actually manages to find some layers in it. It's not totally like an SNL performance. So I wonder if that's actually a rare instance of the people finding it together.

I seem to recall the other huge part of this at the time. And as I said, at the top of the conversation, I was really really into this movie i was i was a coen brothers fan by this point though this definitely is the one that flipped the switch where i was like i'm all in on these i have to find everything that i had not seen you know blood simple i'm not even sure if i've seen ray had seen raising arizona by 14 i probably hadn't honestly but i was william h macy was the thing that jumped out to me. Yeah. I was,

I was into Steve Buscemi. I had seen reservoir dogs and pulp fiction and he was the, he was the, the, the sort of the, the, the character actor du jour of the independent cinema at this point, you know,

I had been familiar with some of the faces in the movie, but William H. Macy as Jerry Lundegaard, I was like, this is the most desperate performance I've ever seen in a movie in the history of movies. And he's so phenomenal in this film as this absolutely monstrous, ne'er-do-well car salesman who destroys his life, blows up the life. Every single person in his life is basically shattered because of his stupid actions. And one of the genius things in the movie is we know that he has debts, but we don't really know what he did.

The movie doesn't go out of its way to give you backstory. It doesn't care about that. It is in the very same vein as those noir movies that you're talking about from the 40s and 50s and feels as much influenced by the kind of neo-noir stuff that's starting to happen at this time in the 90s. It's just that it's all about what's happening in real time you know we know that this guy's got an overbearing father-in-law who has a lot of money but he doesn't really care for him we know what is it a gambling debt is it something about his inability to sell cars in a certain month so he needs to balance the ledger does he have a second you know a girlfriend and you know he's bought a

home for her we have no idea what the hell is going on in jerry lundegaard's world we know that he's a double dealing person just by watching that famous true coat scene which you cited here in the show notes i just i i was doing some rereading and i found it like an interview from 1996 that the cohen's did with sight and sound and i just just, this is so funny. So they're explaining this character. Joel says, Jerry is a car salesman,

just like the real man, but a lot comes from Ethan's experience buying a car five years ago. And then Ethan adds the scene revolves around the true coat. Jerry is trying to sell. It is almost a verbatim experience, verbatim transcript of my experience. And then they talk about the psychology of the character or whatever, but I just like the image of Ethan Cohen, just like trying to deal with this person,

trying to sell him true coat is just wonderful. But how extraordinarily relatable is that scene where you're incredibly, you can see it. Yeah. You're sitting across from a guy who's trying to sell you one thing on a car that you're like, I don't need this, want this and will not pay for it and they're like okay but and i'm like no no okay but never okay but just let me leave with this car please i'm begging you uh is those

nuances are incredible and i think also like i said the the big and absurd turns in the story are part of what makes it so good this movie's very very violent that is one thing that makes it a little bit different. I think from, you know, some of those fifties noirs and even from some of their other films, it feels, you know, Miller's crossing is violent,

but the violence is, um, like Tommy guns shooting, like out of a Cagney movie, you know, it's not this sort of like, I mean, what they do to Lundergaard's wife and the way that she's like,

uh, abducted and assaulted is like pretty harrowing stuff it's really harrowing but they are also somehow playing it for laughs which is in a way or maybe my brain is just like really fucked up but there is a level of this is so messed up that it's funny that is the tone of the whole movie and that scene where they first show up at her house and she's like watching whatever daytime like talk show. And like the guy in the full, I think it's Buscemi, like the full ski mask and black outfit with, you know, just like standing on the porch in the window for like a really long time looking so stupid. But also, you know exactly what's about to happen and then later on when they're kidnapping her and she's like running off in the flip-flops like it's it's they spend a lot of time they

really it they're long and they milk it but with all of these completely absurd details and even when like buscemi gets his jaw sort of shot shot off then you just have to look at his gross half jaw for like 15 minutes in a way that's like really gory but at some point you're like this is so absurd that i at least i only know how to respond with laughter yeah some of the violence is really shocking and sudden but then the aftermath of the violence is often played for gags that's also true i think it's probably has the most in common with blood simple of all the movies where there is there is a bit of gore that you have to contend with. But I mean, I think of the shooting in the parking lot when the money exchange is happening where Jerry's father-in-law is attempting to do the handoff

and he gets shot and he gets shot through that puffer coat. And that was an authentically stunning moment in the movie when I first saw it. I was like, holy, Buscemi is just off the rails and then of course the father-in-law returns fire harvey presnell plays the father-in-law great performance from him too um and he shoots buscemi in the face and i i thought he was dead obviously a lot of movie a lot of noir films end that way with two people who are attempting to do an exchange both going down but of course it doesn't i guess the other thing that is so brilliant about this movie is the fact that literally no one wins except for march you know the money that is exchanged is basically buried in the snow and marked by that ice scraper who do you think found that money that was always a fun thing to talk about in the 1990s did some you know unaware minnesotan

come across it one day yeah exactly um what else you, what struck you as you came back to it for the first time in a while? Well, I think one thing was how little or how late in the movie Marge shows up. She's not in the movie until 30 or 35 minutes in. And this is, God bless them, a 98 minute movie. This is tight. This is to the point.

Thank you so much for just making movies that are good and move. They're pretty good at that. She says after, you you know extolling the virtues of the english patient but it's it's pretty amazing that this movie straight up does not work without the march character for me well for anybody um it certainly would not have been an oscar film without her yeah and i think also you know a funny thing about this is like william. Macy goes on to play this character in like 40 more movies. You know, this is like the stock William H. Macy character after a while, but without Francis McDormand and Marge to balance it, you don't make it to the Oscars. But yeah, she doesn't show up for almost 30 minutes and she's

probably on screen, what, for minutes total which is which is pretty amazing for such a memorable character and also frankly for a best actress win completely agree it feels a little bit it's not quite in that anthony hopkins in silence of the lambs category of low screen time for a best actor or actress but it's close it's definitely close i think it's because what she's bringing is so unusual and so against the tonality of the rest of the movie where the rest of the movie is like a looney tunes movie with guns and she has this sunniness and this inquisitiveness but also there's this um just like i said an intelligence her character is she's an authentically good detective. It's a detective story.

And she is asking the right questions, pursuing the right clues. She does have these little side journeys too. You know, she has that interaction with Mike, which is one of the most cryptic parts of this film. And I wanted to ask you about that sequence. So she meets up when she's, so she leaves Brainerd where she works as a police officer.

She goes down to Fargo to interview some folks about this triple homicide that happens roadside. And so she has a lunch in the Radisson with her, I guess, a friend from high school. It's a little unclear.

I guess he reaches out to her. He sees her name in the paper and he reaches out and says, hey, how are you? What's going on unclear i guess he reaches out to her he sees her name in the paper and he reaches out and says hey how are you what's going on well i guess he called her yeah and and they meet up and they have this awkward exchange and what what is that scene about why is that scene in this movie what is we know that we know that her classmate is not well because of a phone call that happens later in the film. Right. And that he's been struggling living with his parents telling lies to people perhaps stalking women.

Why is Marge there? Why did that happen? What are her intentions? Why the why the Coen's put that scene in the movie? Well, my best understanding or at least kind of what I was thinking through which I didn't overthink this when I rewatched it, I'd sort of forgotten it. And then to me, it was serving the purpose of showing you that Marge is a person who will give the benefit of the doubt to anybody. Like everyone else in this movie is like deeply cynical and self-interested to the point of parody and comedy. And this is a person who's just like eating her Arby's and being like, well,

we'll try it, you know? And so she gets a call and she goes and is weirded out, but like pleasant enough at the lunch and then finds out that, you know here is yet another person who for his own reasons is not that doesn't mean the best in the way that marge does you know it's like a different a way of marge confronting people with different um requirements or motivations or or issues than than she has is sort of how I interpreted it.

I also just like, sometimes the Coen brothers do weird things. So like maybe your, maybe people's like block with this particular scene of like, why is this in there is sometimes like the block that I have with like with the Coen brothers in general,

which is not that I don't, I think they're geniuses and I think everything they do is good. But sometimes I'm like, I didn't really connect to this. You guys are clearly on your own page and that's cool. But I don't know what this is.

So I'll just keep moving. Yeah. Well, I mean, I love that about them, obviously. I love that they're kind of like, figure it out for yourself. Yeah. I have my reasons for why I did this. And the fact that they

don't do i do love when filmmakers go on press tours and just tell you everything they were thinking about a movie but i love that they basically never do that even even listening to joel cohen talk about the tragedy of macbeth and the handful of interviews that he's done i'm like i still don't really know why you want to do this like i still can't totally figure out what you were thinking here and that might be frustrating for people who have to talk about movies for uh 100 minutes every week on a podcast. But for those of us who don't, it's kind of fascinating that they'll continue to sprinkle in these curios into their movies. Let's talk about Deakins really quickly.

Okay. Yeah. So go ahead. This is Roger Deakins. Yeah. Hey, Sir. Roger Deakins. He did it.

He did it. He is. He's a knight. Sir Roger Deakins. He did it. He did it. Congratulations. He did it. He's a knight. Sir Rango. When will Rango be knighted? That's what I want to know. He needs to be knighted before the queen does. He needs the queen's... You don't think that harry will roll in and be like i'm back

bitches and and we're knighting rengo holy shit wow that would be incredible really would i'm all for that let's we should only knight animated characters going forward because also knighting is so stupid it's really really stupid i really like it when they give a knight to a woman so you know like you have like dame helen mirror and that's like pretty fun it is fun uh i mean deacons is the first cinematographer who's who's ever been knighted so he is a sir and um i'm well done well done by one of the one of the greats one of the great inspirations for this pod so i think fargo is like when your meltdown started on that podcast yeah because you i think had already put in basically every coen brothers movie that he had worked on and we were

only to 96 things were getting a little full you just kept screaming about the snow and the ice which like is a great point sean um you know and for the wood chipper alone i found an oral history of the wood chipper scene where roger deacons was like listen the thing about the wood chipper is you had to plan it in advance because you could only do it once because then there was blood everywhere on the on the snow which makes a lot of sense when you think about it um so you know solving a lot of technical problems i hear you but also this did start your meltdown. I can't even remember if we put it in the Deakins Hall of Fame. Fargo has to be in the Deakins Hall of Fame.

This movie looks extraordinary. I mean, you also noted the Carter Burwell score in the outline. You pair that with these big, wide open panoramic shots of Brainerd in the snow or Fargo in the snow. It's like breathtaking breathtaking and that's part of the thing is when the movie starts and you hear that um string score and you see those images like this movie is important this is a big story this is a big american crime story and we have to pay attention this is like this is the midwestern godfather and then stuff starts happening and

you're like these people are fucking idiots and it is not the godfather but the movie never blinks on that sense of grandeur you know it never kind of gives up on the way that it introduces us into the story which is part of the reason why i like it so much it really is it's comfortable with these conflicting styles and conflicting ideas about how to make movies deacons is unreal This is also in the middle of an absolutely wild run for him where this is the third movie that he made with the Coen brothers after Barton Fink and Hudsucker Proxy.

But in this period of time, he goes Hudsucker Proxy, Shawshank Redemption in the same year, then Dead Man Walking, a huge Oscar film, then Courage Under Fire and Fargo in the same year.

Then he goes to Tibet to make Kundun with Martin Scorsese. And then he makes The Big Lebowski and The Siege, also a very complex film with Ed Zwick. And then obviously by then, he's basically a legendary cinematographer. And 20 years later, the man's being knighted. But boy, one of the things that makes them great

is the same thing that made Anthony Minghella great, which is pick your collaborators well, pick your partners well, you know, know who's great at their jobs and let them do their jobs well. That's like 80% of being a great director is 20% is vision and talking to people. 80% is can the guy who puts the camera in position, do it in a way better than you can. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's exactly how, uh, how we think about podcasting here at the ringer. You know what I mean? It's like, how do we how does amanda get into a position to succeed how does cr get into a position to succeed how does bobby wagner get into a position to succeed and then we get to the end of an episode and we have a fargo don't you agree yes absolutely who's who in this situation

i'm the marge obviously you're definitely the smartest person i am at the time of this recording i'm somehow still pregnant i'd forgotten that Marge was pregnant in this movie. That was nice. Good for her. Did you relate to her? Not entirely. No. Again, because I was like, oh, Marge is a nice person in the end.

Which I was like, oh, I forgot that that sometimes happens in Coen Brothers movies. That is true. Good for her. And I'm excited about the Mallard stamps or whatever. Yeah, I'm very happy for her husband who's played by, mallard stamps or whatever uh yeah i'm very happy for her husband uh who's played by what's his name john carroll lynch is that the actor's name um and he of course uh perhaps is best known as maybe maybe not the zodiac killer in david fincher's zodiac or arthur lee allen um what so going back to the english patient and putting

these two movies together then you look at them we watch them to back. They could not seem more different to me. Right. You put a section in the outline that was like, what do these movies have in common? And I was like, nothing. They're both well-made. They look good.

Yeah. It was really refreshing after watching a bunch of, you know, recent release movies to go back and watch two, like, high art movies from 1996.

And I was like, wow. Just everything was better. The cameras were better. They were spending more money. They were actually thinking about things. These are two great production directing teams. But man, do movies look like junk now. Yeah, I hate that conversation.

And when I was working as a music writer, I fought very, very hard against older critics who, or at least in my mind, I hate that conversation. And when I was working as a music writer, I fought very, very hard against older critics who, or at least in my mind, I fought very hard. I don't know if I actually fought very hard, but I fought very hard in my mind against older critics who were like, it ain't like it used to be. And music was better in the 70s or the 80s or the 90s, yada, yada. As much as I love music in the 70s, 80s, and the 90s, I was like, what's happening right now is really relevant. And here's why. Here's why it's an evolution. Here's why it's part of the big story of popular music

in America over these 70 years. I was very invested in that line of thinking. And I feel the same way in movies. I want to celebrate the things that are great. It's very easy for me to be like, Parasite stands up to

any movie from 1996. You can't put another movie up against that movie and not say it can't hang, especially with the Coen brothers. I mean, the Coen brothers and Bong Joon-ho, they have a lot in common. But having watched these two movies back to back,

I did walk away from them being like, damn, movies are better in 1996. There's just no doubt about it. There just was way more care, time, money, and grandeur put into the making of movies like this. Now, obviously, we're looking at the two most celebrated movies from that year from two iconic production teams.

But I did feel a little bit depressed, honestly. I don't know if we need to feel depressed. I mean, movies are obviously in a... I mean, sure, we do because movies are in a terrible state. But also, movies are in like a different state. They're scratching different itches. They're trying different things. I mean, you know, you love to talk about cinematic universes and all that stuff i don't know

yeah you do you love to consider it an achievement whatever like movies got to evolve we all got to evolve we all got to try new things this is literally just like for a visual medium things just used to like aesthetically look better that we just, we're handed so much garbage now. Things just look really bad. And I was like, oh, it's nice that people spent some money trying to make things look good. Okay, quick counterpoint to this

and then we can wrap this conversation up. Is it possible that there was always this much garbage, but that the garbage is more accessible now? And whereas we could avoid things before by walking into blockbuster and saying like no garbage for me tonight i shall go to the oscars section whereas now you pull up netflix or hulu or whatever service and you're like i'll try this and then you try it and it looks like junk and then you accept junk is that i'm sure i'm sure that it is i'm sure that we're just like two old people you know in our rocking chairs being like in my day they use real

film or whatever and i like don't want to be the real film person but is that your grandma that's a new voice you got a grandma voice i guess i actually started rocking in the chair and that's what came out. That was method acting. Yeah, there we go. But there's a volume issue to the amount of crap that we're being asked to watch at this point. And some of that's like COVID and you can't go anywhere. And so it's just like a bunch of people on sound stages, which they had. You know, that's also every single movie that you and I love from the thirties and forties and fifties.

But, uh, I don't know. It looks really bad right now. Okay. Last question before we wrap up this swap. Yeah. Did the Oscars get it right?

1997. They gave best picture to the English patient. Right. Not Fargo. I don't know i i think the english patient is like really great but i i understand that fargo is also like a masterpiece and like the future of did the oscars got it right for the oscars but did they get it right for what we want from the so-called custodians of cinema and cinematic history? Probably not. Okay. Let me throw one other curve ball at you related to that question.

Now, there are quite a few films from this year that I like quite a bit. Quite a few films are recognized by the Academy. People versus Larry Flint, another movie that I think is a little fallen by the wayside, but that was a huge fan of Milos Forman movie. Breaking the Waves was released this year. Secrets and Lies,. Breaking the waves was released this year. Um, secrets and lies. The Mike Lee film was released this year, nominated for best picture. However, I would contend that maybe the movie that should have won best picture rather

than the English patient or Fargo is Jerry Maguire. Have you watched Jerry Maguire recently? No, I have not. I watched it on a plane a few months ago. Okay. How was it? Listen,

I had the time of my life. It is the most 1996 movie that I have ever seen. You want to talk about filmmaking and production and when things look like the product of the technology of their time. And then also the way the scripts put together and it is i mean people have been ripping jerry mcguire off since it happened in a way that's funny um but maybe not quite as like cinematically uh fruitful as people ripping off fargo but it's it's definitely if you want like to put a pin in the in the the time of 1996 sure it could be jerry i think fargo's jerry mcguire i think fargo's like the most prophetic and like long-term influential english patient is like the end of an era and

jerry mcguire is just this crazy movie that came out when you and i were teenagers i love jerry mcguire man not being on the jerry mcguire rewatchables that was a bad beat for me yeah that was really a bad bad beat i was listening to um oh well by fleetwood mac the other day which is that like, from Jerry Maguire. And I was like, man, Jerry Maguire, that movie rules. Okay, maybe we'll do Jerry Maguire on a movie swap one of these days. We would have to swap it with somebody who doesn't watch it

every two or three years like you and I do. So maybe we'll bring a third into it. Is that a good idea to bring a third into the mix on a swap? Well, can we like, at some point, I was really thinking, because we've been thinking of things that we plan ahead yeah i really need to do a movie swap so that we can make bobby watch casablanca oh oh perfect okay so but i think bobby probably also hasn't seen jerry maguire because

no bobby are you fucking serious i mean i knew that i asked that like to rag on you but you work at the ringer you've never seen Jerry Maguire oh my gosh all right well this is a whole separate Bobby episode where we like give Bobby homework Bobby says I was born in 1996

I have a lot of big gaps here Bobby Wagner wow you were born the year of Fargo and the English patient wags geez man okay uh that makes me want to kill myself. Thank you so much, Amanda. This has been fun.

Bobby, thank you so much for your work as the producer of this episode and all episodes of The Big Picture. I don't know what's coming next because we're recording this in the past for the future, but it will be a dynamite episode of The Big Picture and when it happens, we will see you then.