The Big Picture - Movies Vs. TV in 2023: What the ‘Succession’ Finale Says About Storytelling Now. Plus: A Pointless ‘Little Mermaid.’

Episode Date: May 30, 2023

Sean and Amanda discuss the finale of ‘Succession’ as a portal into the true divide between movies and TV today, and the ways in which the latter has stolen the former’s mojo (1:00), before a breakdown of the new live-action remake of Disney’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ (30:00). Then, Sean is joined by Cristian Mungiu, the Romanian master filmmaker, to discuss his latest, ‘R.M.N.’ (56:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guest: Cristian Mungiu Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Joanna Robinson. Join us every week on the Prestige TV podcast feed as your favorite ringer hosts like Bill Simmons, Van Lathan, Mally Rubin, Sean Fennessy, Chris Ryan, Julia Lippman, and many more cover the latest episodes of your favorite TV obsessions. From boardrooms to throne rooms to courtside and through the mushroom apocalypse, we'll be here throughout the week breaking it all down. Subscribe to the Prestige TV podcast feed on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. to get started. I'm Sean Fennessy. I'm Amanda Dobbins. And this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about TV.

So bear with us. Later in this episode, I'll be joined by Christian Mongeau, the Romanian master filmmaker, best known for 2007's unforgettable abortion drama, Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days. His latest film, which is available on VOD right now,

is called RMN, which translates to MRI in English. It is one of the most exceptional social dramas in recent years. Had a really nice time talking with Christian. He's a very, very bright guy. This is a complicated movie about xenophobia, misdirected rage, a lot about not just Romania, but our times here in America. I hope you will watch this movie, maybe rent this movie at home, and then listen to our conversation because we go into a great bit of detail. And he really is one our times here in America. I hope you will watch this movie, maybe rent this movie at home, and then listen to our conversation because we go into a great bit of detail. And he really is one of the great filmmakers living in the world right now. But first, completely different energy. I want to talk to you, Amanda, a little bit about kind of what's been happening over my content weekend, what I've been consuming. So I've appeared on a couple of podcasts talking

about TV shows. I listened to one of them. Thank you very much. One of them was about Succession, which concluded its series run after four seasons on Sunday. And then the other is Barry, which also concluded its four-season run, which I've been podcasting with Bill Hader about throughout the last couple of seasons. And I also saw, and I know that you also saw, in that same corridor of time, the new Little Mermaid film. Sure did. It's a live action remake of the 1990, or excuse me, 1989 Disney classic. And I'm probably doing a little small sample size theater here, but it certainly had me thinking about the state of the arts,

the state of television and the state of movies. So this is what you're doing now. You're just like every movie we see, you're just going to log on and be like, it's all over. I'm not sure I'm ready to say it's all over, but I had what I feel is a notable takeaway from the experience of watching these three things. To me, this is not necessarily doom and gloom. It's a little bit of an investigation into how we got here. And I wanted to get your perspective. I also wanted to know what you thought of Succession because we haven't

talked about it. And it has become, of course, like I think the lightning rod cultural topic of the last few days. And certainly the season has been widely acclaimed. So maybe we'll just start with Succession before we dig into the big grand question of movies versus television right now. What do you think of the finale? They landed the plane. I'm a huge fan of Succession. I think it's, I mean, it's incredible. It's an incredible work of art, of writing, of filmmaking, of acting, of music. You know, I know that Nicholas Pertel is like pretty celebrated for his score, but I thought the finale really drove home what an essential part of the television show and the tone and the achievement his score is. So, A-plus stuff. I have felt that season four has been moment-to-moment and even episode-to-episode extraordinary

and in some a little wobbly. Like, just, you know, I think you were quoting House on the podcast saying that this show kind of loses it, lost its center a little bit once, spoilers for Succession, I suppose,

once Brian Cox left the show. And I, you know, I agree with that. And I think that it's both like a bold structural choice to get rid of Logan so early in the season and is like playing with the idea of TV in an interesting way, but also definitely puts, put the show off its square and i especially the last few episodes was feeling them the the inconsistency almost moment to moment as they were kind of getting to the ending but

they picked the right ending which is really hard to do. And I thought most every scene was like completely extraordinary. Even if I like didn't totally understand how they got, everyone got to where they got. Yeah. In the, in like in the, you pointed out on the podcast with Bill, which I thought was great, that some things were too tidy and some things like were kind of, you know, there's some pacing issues, like whatever. They got to the right ending and moment to moment, it's like amazing to watch. Yeah, I think finales are really challenging. I liked talking with Andy Greenwald about it too on The Watch and just hearing, I think he's just incredibly intelligent about this stuff and the decisions that TV writers make

to end their shows and how they do it and how there's always a kind of awkwardness to some of that execution. But in general, the acceptance of the audience with the choices that the creators made is also kind of rare in these kinds of shows. And even though I think that it has been widely dissected and debated how the show has ended, I do think most people agree that it was good. It was effective. It worked. Yeah. And what's so interesting to me about that is

there's very little confusion about the moral or emotional states of any of the characters. They're bad. Yes and no. These were bad people. Yeah, but it's so interesting. Again, I was listening to you

and Bill talking immediately after the finale, which also affects things, as I was driving into work today. And you were saying that you know Kendall's bad, but you were rooting for him a little bit. And you felt sad watching him in that moment. And I was interrogating my own feelings. Obviously, that last scene, or that last shot of him,

and really, like, the last three shots of Roman, of Shiv and Tom doing their graduate moment, and then of Roman, of Kendall staring out at the ocean, are, like, archetypally, like, perfect, significant, forgive me for saying Shakespearean, but it is true what the show is drawing on. Like amazing stuff and have a lot of weight.

But also I was like, I don't feel anything for any of these people. And I've like always, I've just, I have always thought that they were bad people. So it has been really interesting to me to watch the show, consume all the content around the show, which I think a lot of people do. And I think the ringer is the best at, but is reflective of how we all watch TV now and really what we imbue in the characters and how we try to have emotional

relationship with the characters and even how the show responds to the audience's investment in the emotions. I never rooted for any of them. Well, then let me ask you this question. Do you think that the show had a hero? Yes, Logan Roy. In that we were rooting for him to achieve his dream?

No, but I think that the show's... That's a protagonist, maybe. And I think Kendall was the protagonist. But like, I hear... And we think about modern American 20th, 21st century storytelling. Sure. You know, and especially movies and television.

The hero's journey, the Joseph Campbell idea of storytelling has done it. Sure, then it's Kendall, of course. Yeah. But Kendall is obviously a kind of destroyed and craven person who has done terrible, who has killed someone, you know, who betrayed his siblings and his family over and over again, who abandoned his children, who put them in danger, who was awful to women, like

really not a genuinely immoral person. Right. And I do have kind of like a, I don't know about a relatability. That might be the wrong word, but I felt for him in a profound way, but he's not heroic. I mean, he had no heroic characteristics, honestly.

He just was played by an extraordinary empathetic performer. And so I'm asking you that question, which is a leading question, because, you know, the thing that Succession reminds me of is the thing that i care about the most which is 1970s american movies right you know and travis bickle is a damaged and dangerous

person and yet you watch robert de niro whose films we just drafted on this podcast yeah and you think how did he get that way why did the world turn out this way is he heroic or is he dangerous is he a product of the destructive forces of the military industrial complex is he dangerous? Is he a product of the destructive forces of the military industrial complex? Is he mentally unwell? Is he an incel? Going through the thought process of understanding a deep character study, which I think that this show ultimately was this kind of menagerie of character studies succession, the show and a lot of shows like it in the last 20 years, what has come to be known as quote unquote prestige TV, has had most of the hallmarks of the kinds of films that I respond to most deeply. Now, I think that that was an easy observation to make even 15 years ago about the state of TV, so this is not my grand conclusion

that I'm trying to draw to. But when I put it in contrast with what is at the center of the movie culture, I see something very, very different. Because Succession is maybe not the most watched show, but it is among this kind of cohort of shows over the last 20 years. And I'll just use the best drama series Emmy winners as a lens into what I'm saying. I'm not saying this is the end all and be all of quality, but these are the shows that have won since 2008,

the best drama series. Mad Men four times, Homeland, Breaking Bad twice, Game of Thrones three times, The Handmaid's Tale, Succession twice, and Your Beloved the Crown. All portraits of damaged people

betraying, conniving, confusing. I mean, even The Handmaid's Tale and The Crown, which I think are sort of like perhaps more socially minded in terms of their portrayals of women or their portrayals of like reimagining history or the future. These are still like shows about deviance and underhandedness and a kind of politicking throughout. Like these are all strategy shows in a lot of ways. And they're also shows about like really corroded souls. And know put more simply it's like

bad people acting badly and or privileged people acting badly and being made fun of where you're questioning why you're rooting for them yes very well put movies over especially over the last 20 years with the exception of the handmaid's tale but which i also think is a very unsuccessful show but i agree not my favorite show i think a little bit of an outlier on that list but nevertheless still a show that is about these kind of moral times. Yes.

Movies I think are defined in the last 20 years by the rise of the superhero film as like the linchpin of box office success and then I just you know I'm doing a little bit

of cherry picking here but if we look at the best picture winners over the last 10 or 15 years here are some names that come up. The Shape of Water Moonlight Everything Everywhere All at Once, Spotlight, Green Book, Coda. Stories that are either ultimately feel good or that are at a minimum hopeful.

Now, Green Book and Moonlight don't have a ton in common, but they are both movies that at the end you might feel a sense of up, a sense of emotional lift based on the possibilities of the end, you might feel a sense of up, a sense of emotional lift based on the possibilities of the future, which is the exact opposite of how I felt about Succession. As I was watching Succession, I was like, the world is a pit. People are awful to each other. Yes. We built all of these systems to destroy one another. We even kill our families.

What a dangerous, weird world we have. And then everybody just cried and was like, this show is magnificent. And then you watch Green Book or you watch everything every once in a while. It's a better film. I think a more successful film. But definitely a film

that relies upon the idea of sentimentality and human connectedness and the power of family in a completely And hope. Inverse way. Movies used to be

the place where you could explore much more complicated themes. TV was the place of comfort. TV was the place of we follow our hero. And our hero takes us on a journey and they are morally right. And they solve the case. Or they fix someone in the surgical room. Or they are, you know, a great lawyer and they win. And it has inverted quite a bit.

And I'm trying to sort through why that is. Why did these two mediums change so dramatically over the last 20 years in terms of what the audience's expectations are and then what ultimately is celebrated? Do you have any idea? Well do i sound crazy no i i mean what you're saying is is true and i mean it's just kind of factually true and i think some of it is pretty well i have a simple answer for some of it which is just that and you said it yourself, which is that where people are allowed to take risks in art changed because of the nature of the business. And so in TV, for whatever reason, I think a little bit because people weren't paying attention and there came some success specifically with Sopranos and Mad Men and the economics of it just worked out. People were allowed to do bad things or characters were allowed to do bad things and try different storytelling. And meanwhile, you can't take that kind of risk at a movie theater anymore because you have to put butts in chairs um with

ip in order to guarantee a return on the massive investment that you're making i mean it's the same thing as the middle has been cut out of movies and i this is the middle i guess as you noted not that many people watch succession compared to many of the other shows on television even. I think my counter to that, and I can hear people saying that in their minds, is Game of Thrones is a more kind of genre conventional approach. But the storytelling in Game of Thrones is very similarly brutal. And a similar takeaway of like the world is dark and people will slit each other's throats to win. Except for at the end when we discovered the power of storytelling. Which everyone hated.

That's still the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened on HBO. The fake everything everywhere all at once ending of Game of Thrones. People were like, absolutely not. I would not believe that shit. It was terrible. It was a poor choice. But nevertheless, I think that you're, of course, you're right. The answer is that the economics of the two industries evolved a lot over time and i am

interested in that and we have talked about that ad nauseum and i think that the streaming opportunity created an opening for even more of this kind of storytelling but to me that is like a form follows function note the function was that we needed more TV storytelling and that the noisiest shows had these hallmarks, even if they weren't the most successful shows, the shows that we canonize, that we memorialize, The Wire, Breaking Bad. These shows weren't the biggest shows on TV at the time, but they come up over and over again as we think about the history of the 21st century in TV. And then, so, the form kind of bends around it. It bends around the function.

So, our expectation of a good show now is one that has this kind of complexity. Even like a Fleabag or a Barry or an Atlanta. Right.

These 30-minute series that are among the most acclaimed are stories about these kind of wrung out, destroyed people and these confusing societal moments. They're all kind of hard- out, destroyed people and these confusing societal moments.

They're all kind of hard bitten and almost cynical. And I am fascinated by that and how the opposite has transpired with movies where safe harbor for people, like emotional comfort is what drives business in the movie world right now. Yeah. Super Mario Brothers at the MCU.

Top Gun Maverick. Top Gun Maverick. is so interesting yeah but here's the thing is that all of this shows and what you're defining as and prestige TV is essentially what what you're talking about and with the exception really of Game of Thrones like those shows aren't moving the business for TV in the in the way that they are for it they are what's happened is is that a group of people who take these things mega seriously and have certain artistic standards and like to talk about them on podcasts started take it like and that's us started taking television as seriously as we took movies and in some cases more seriously

because the movies are not rewarding that like those standards in the same way and a lot like our tastes like the center of culture as we say over and over again moved to tv so i guess it like what the real question is like why are we such sickos that this is all we want to watch and that this is the only definition of good to to us I think you're right for the most part that I'm talking about prestige tv but if you watch Yellowstone and I have sure it has a lot of the same hallmarks I mean it is a lot of really kind of damaged people it's using a more traditional like falcon crest style soap operatic approach but it's taylor sheridan who comes from movie writing who writes anti-heroes who writes characters that are deeply flawed right

and you know i'm not as big a fan of that show as i am of some of the other shows we mentioned but it has really infected even some of the most mainstream tv storytelling yeah but also like soap operas are also about flawed characters it's you know, who live in opulent settings and do things and you root for them anyway. So it's not like prestige TV invented that like Yellowstone having elements of soap opera is it's bridging like TV history and what's new about it. Now, maybe, you know, it looks better and it has the American West and I know all the men love the American West. Well, I don't it's not that I think it invented it. I think it's that it became the center. You know, it became kind of the orienting tone and force of modern television and modern TV is like, is modern storytelling. People don't read as much as they used to. They don't listen to things as

much as they used to. They spend a lot of time in front of their TV and their devices. And because of that, it's like these things, sorts of things massively influence culture. And because of that, these sorts of things massively influence culture. And I know that this is, this veers into galaxy brain territory. But movies' inability to retain this, and there have been great movies made. It's not that they don't make movies like this, but we lamented the strange

and sad box office performance of a movie like Tar, which basically did all of the same things that something like succession or taxi driver did deep character study complex series of ideas that require a lot of unpacking wildly interpretive so that like you can see the film through one lens or see it through another i think succession it's just been really fun watching people think about oh was this a moment when shiv her decision to do X? Or is this the moment when Kendall could no longer do Y? I mean, what is going on in Shiv's brain is one of my big questions of season four,

but that's a different conversation. I haven't had the chance to rewatch the episode yet, but I will say that it's been persuasive to me that when Kendall sat down in the CEO chair and started talking to Stewie and doing bro talk, that that was the moment that she was like, actually, we can't do this. Yeah. I mean, sure. Again, moment to moment that she was like, actually, we can't do this. Yeah, I mean, sure. Again, moment to moment, it all makes sense. And I don't think that season four shift has,

it does not make sense to me. I don't get it. I struggled with it a lot. I struggled with it a lot. And I also, there was a huge burden to put on the shoulders of the biggest dynamic female character to be like, she's the one who blew up everything. That fed into, I think, a kind of unfortunate perspective the biggest dynamic female character to be like, she's the one who blew up everything. That like,

that fed into, I think, a kind of unfortunate perspective that a lot of male viewers have of these characters that I'm sure Jesse Armstrong is aware of, but it was like, Macbeth is 500 years old.

Yeah. You know what I mean? And because of that, Lady Macbeth is 500 years old. Anyhow, that's neither here nor there in terms of this bigger conversation. But I'm trying to better understand.

And maybe it's just because there is a kind of clear dollars and cents approach to paying tickets to go to see movies. Whereas on television, everything is at your fingertips and you don't think about the transactional nature of it as well, where it's just like, this is my stories. And I turn on my TV and I watch and I can take a chance on something. Whereas I feel that I cannot take a chance on a movie. I need to know. And this has informed what I think has ultimately been

an interesting comeback for the box office this year, but kind of a bad year for movies. We're entering our sixth month of the movie year and I look at my best films of the year. And there are, of course, a couple of A24 and Neon films and IFC films that I liked a lot. I loved John Wick 4. I thought it was like bravura, you know, a couple of A24 and Neon films and IFC films that I liked a lot. I loved John Wick 4. I thought it was like bravura, you know, Big Ten historical movie making in a modern sense.

But it's not really a great list. And we're obviously coming out of the pandemic era and the over-reliance on IP. It's also this time of the year, as you know. And then, like, come September, all the festival films will come out. They'll release all their movies. There is a season. There's a rhythm to all of these things. year as you know and then like come september yeah all the festival films will come out they'll release all their movies there is a season there's a rhythm to all of these things um so you know we're gonna have our big summer blockbuster season which i'm i still am very excited about and then and then the movies will come again so you do have to remember like where you are in your

in your time meanwhile in tv you're getting every single show that ever existed right before the Emmy voting deadline. Yes. So. Yes. Just pointing it out. It's a fair point. And I'm trying to not conduct this conversation as if the world is on fire because it's not. It's more like the two forms that I think we spend a lot of time on the pop culture side covering quite closely and the ways in which they have converged. We've mentioned this a few times now with

the MCU of late. And you were, I think, rightfully giving me shit when we talked about Fast 10 that like the episodic nature of TV has also kind of- Infected. And like demagnetized the stakes of everything in a way that Succession in that final episode, I thought to myself like, wow, this is it yeah this is ending yeah like i will never see any of these characters that i have feel i have built a genuine relationship to ever again and i was reading interviews with matthew mcfatty and and jeremy strong and they were like i haven't really been thinking about these guys because they're dead to me now the story's over and with the mcu i'm like

i'll probably take my daughter 20 years from now to an MCU story. That's really depressing. So that also, that makes you feel like you are in the same kind of hamster wheel

that I felt like I was in when I watched episodic TV in the 90s where I was like, this just can't even come close to Pulp Fiction. This is such disposable crap. You wrote in the outline

so I know how you feel, but doesn't it bum you out? I think we have it the wrong way. I think that we've reversed it. And I understand why. And I do understand that TV is the place now where filmmakers like Jesse Armstrong get the chance to take these wild swings and make these things and shoot on film and, you know, let, let everyone just like improv and, and,

and be funny. And I, I wouldn't return it, but it's like, I do feel that the episodic structure has its limits, um, and can start to undermine the character studies that you, um, that we like so much and i do feel

ted lasso is a great example of this where the first season was just like a nice story about a guy figuring some things out and like believing you know and hitting the thing on the wall and then um and i just watched it every week and i was like great i watched 30 minutes and i feel good and i could take that in an episodic structure like forever and then they made two seasons of like i must explore the traumas of myself and everyone around me and invent new ones and try and try to turn it into some sort of like dark prestige character study thing and like it's a disaster and part of that is because I just want the other thing and at like a 30 minute drip I that seems like the right vehicle

for a feel-good story like as you said I just want to spend some time with my friends and on the other hand I sometimes feel like the longer these prestige series go on they did more and this isn't totally true of succession though I think season four it got away a little from them a little more than it did the first three seasons where it's like at some point a character study is just like rewriting if it has to go on forever it's just rewriting the character and I you know me I like a tight edit I like boundaries I like endings I it just seems like if we switched everything back around if everyone would agree to do that it would make better art for everyone but unfortunately the business does not support that well the the I think where the potential concept of panic can kick in actually alleviates

a little bit of your concern there which is that i think that it is plausible as we are one month into the writer's strike as we are potentially on the verge of a sag after strike as the director's guild does not have a deal yet and as we look at this age of austerity that television is now locked into and movies to some extent but television more specifically in that shows are being canceled after their first and second seasons. There is no more residual culture. The sense that streamers overreached and overbuilt and now need to scale back significantly or even consolidate and compartmentalize. I said to Andy that I felt like the end of Succession and Barry could be an end of century moment for this era of TV too.

And I don't know the answer to that. I don't have a crystal ball. I do think that there will still be so many shows, so many shows that we will not know what to do with ourselves. We will just be like,

you know what? I tried for 10 minutes and I can't. Like I just don't have time or I can't get through it. But still, it's going to be less, a lot less probably

than what it was for the last 10 years. I mean, that's not what I want. That's not what I'm asking for when I want the things to switch in the movies to tell the complicated story.

No, I know. That's not what I want. I don't want like less of good things. I just think we've mismatched the medium and the storytelling a little bit. I think that's ultimately where I'm at is that the character study approach often works best in a contained period of time. It always does. Endings, boundaries are good. Boundaries are good in relationships. Boundaries are good in storytelling. There are exceptions that prove the rule. To me, The Sopranos is an exception that proves the rule.

Yeah, of course. The Sopranos was like, that was our Russian novel of television. We can have those and I like those things. But in general, I agree with you that two and a half hours, 90 minutes is a better way to approach these things. I don't see how we're really getting that back anytime soon. But what I, what I, I don't know if I fear it,

but I certainly think about these things a lot because of what we do for a living. We're going to have less of the good stuff. You know, that that's sort of what it feels like to me is we'll just have less of the good stuff in both directions. I don't know, Bobby, do we sound weird and, and, um, and old and out of out of touch no i don't think so i i mean i feel a lot of what you guys are talking about especially with like i have this argument all the time with uh my partner phoebe who prefers television to movies i prefer experientially like sitting down and having the whole story told to me in one sitting and then thinking about that and thinking about that and letting it marinate which is of course something we talk about on

the show all the time but i do think like our attention spans have changed and we're more amenable to the notion of an hour of something 40 times than four hours of something one time no doubt about and that's just like the the way that our brains have been rewired in a million different aspects of society like it's sports it's social media it's movies and it's television and i think that we are kind of like running up against that theme in culture in a lot of different ways like it's the same reason that people don't read as many books as they used to like it's hard to focus yourself on one story for that length of time that's the thing is there are a lot of different influences and reasons that this has happened it is not just the strictures of movies and

television business i think social media is a great example of something like that. I think you and I are at a different phase of our lives too, where we have to be much more mercenary about our time. So certain things we just can't invest in. So maybe we're missing things. Maybe we're missing shows that are not doing the thing. They're doing things differently. We're missing, I'm probably not missing any films, candidly. But to that point about sitting down and focusing on something, like this is what I wrote down in this outline that i feel is very resonant for me which is that the shifts in storytelling type and tone over time do evolve and if you look at the history of movies especially you can see that the way that the business influences the kinds of things that are made then influences the audience and vice versa. But movies are where focused,

active engagement thrived. And TV was a passive medium and is now an active one. And fan engagement and theories and the kind of second screening lifestyle of TV watching has completely subsumed the movie culture. Like the movie culture

that did a lot of those things. They didn't do them in the same ways, but the movie culture that did a lot of those things. They didn't do them in the same ways, but there was this huge apparatus of fandom around films that I don't know if it's diminished, but it's been overtaken by TV. And now movies, because people watch so many movies at home and there's the expectation,

I mean, even the people that we, even Bill Simmons, who I love, it's like I'm waiting for John Wick 4 until it comes home. I'm like, Bill, come on, man. I love you, the people that we, even Bill Simmons, who I love, it's like, I'm waiting for John Wick 4 until it comes home. I'm like, Bill, come on, man. I love you. But you are like, you're on the front lines of John Wick 1 being like, this is one of the great movies of the last 20 years.

So because those habits have changed so much, movies become passive. Movies become, I'm looking at my phone while I'm watching the movie or I'm pausing it and going to the bathroom. All these things we've talked about over the years. And they flipped again in another way and just in the way that they're watched. And I think you're right to bring that up, Bob. I don't really have like a dramatic conclusion to this theory. I did think it was appropriate to bring it up as we engage with The Little Mermaid because The Little Mermaid strikes me as something that I know a lot of

people worked hard on and is doing great business, but we just do not need and does not push movies in any direction anywhere. So I saw it on Memorial Day during nap time with a bunch of other children, not a bunch of, but I was at like a 1 p.m. screening and it was very clear what the purpose was, which was something to take your children to. And Disney for whatever reason, has decided, or I guess the movie theaters have decided that another re-release of 1989's Little Mermaid isn't going to draw enough people to the theaters. And so they are just Xeroxing it with some truly heinous additions

and putting it in as something to take your children to. And the children mostly seemed to like it they missed flounder so did i and i mean he was there he just wasn't yeah deserved to be exactly like what was that about i've known anyway so like i know why it's there but it's a pure crass business like lame decision a bottom line yeah i mean i guess you could if you were if you were being generous, you could say that they were kind of like updating some of the cultural stuff that wasn't,

you know, obviously changing the, the little mermaid to a black character is obviously like, I think representationally meaningful, but not enough. So to justify the cravenness that you're describing. She still is silent for a majority of the film, which,

you know, how much of that is on Hans Christian Andersen? A lot, but it's like you're working with the source material. You're working with the source material. Let me tell you about my experience watching the movie. I thought this was an absolutely deranged personal choice by you after a very long weekend. Let's set the stage.

You and I flew back from Europe on Friday. We did. It was a 23, so let's set the stage. You and I flew back from Europe on Friday. We did. It was a 23-hour travel day. We flew from Stockholm to New York and spent two and a half hours at JFK. That flight, that first flight, I think was eight and a half hours, including some solid runway time, some tarmac time. We did not sit together, though I think it would have gone fine based on our previous flight. Yeah.

And then we flew from JFK to Los Angeles, which is, again, another six hours or so, plus your drive time home. So really long day. Saturday, whatever. Sunday, watch Succession, record a podcast with Bill Simmons. And then immediately after I've recorded that podcast, go to see The Little Mermaid at the Alamo Drafthouse in LA. 9.30 p.m. 9.30 p.m. So there were not a lot of kids in my screening unlike yours. Were there any other people? It was a sold out packed house. Wow. And it was...

Was it mostly people Bobby's age? Yes. In fact, I sat next to two young women. Let me tell you about them. They were wearing head-to-toe Little Mermaid regalia. They sang along to every song. They were actualizing the notion that I had in my mind when I sat down to watch it, which is movies have just become karaoke.

And that this was a live karaoke session. It was reverse rotoscoping. It was like Richard Linklater shoots a film and then animates over it. This was deanimating an animated movie and then just making it over again so that people can have a party in the movie theater and have a nostalgia moment. Obviously, kids watch the movie too, but I showed my daughter the animated Little Mermaid yesterday and she was wrapped. Yeah. And it was really good.

Yeah. It's a very well-made animated film. It's very good. And it's also- Messed up. Well, it has complicated storytelling. It has problems, I guessmade animated film. It's very good. And it's also... Messed up. Well, it has complicated storytelling. It has problems, I guess you could say. But it's 83 minutes.

It flew by. The animation is gorgeous. The songs are A+. They are the A-plus songs. I want to make a note about the animation and the color. Like the actual, you know, it is art. You and I saw a beautiful Ellsworth Kelly that we'd never seen before at the Tate Modern in London. And it's like that level of saturation.

Just incredible stuff. Yes. Reds, greens, blues, yellows. The live action version is like a dark, sludgy CGI underwater mess. They did not have James Cameron's technology. They did not. They have a lot of shipwrecks. And it just, it looks really bad.

The last third, well, like the final set piece, like I don't even know what to say. It was like Marvel took over the making of Disney and made it worse. One thing that, one choice that they did make to differentiate, and they made a couple of choices, but one thing they did do is they attempted to effectively like ground the story more, make some of the creatures seem more real, hence your flounder point, make the stakes seem a little bit different. So for example, like a a notable cut which i thought was just abominable was the chopping of the french chef song les poissons les poissons yeah which is just a hilarious and fun part of the movie yeah when great when alice and i were watching it she was just like wow you know

yeah it's very it's cartoonish and that was why rob marshall the director of this movie cut it but it's a movie for kids. It's okay for movies for kids to be cartoonish. They don't have to be realistic portrayals of imaginary creatures, mermaids. So I find this sort of like intellectual backing of the movie to be deeply flawed. I'd like to talk about the music. Fire away. So part of your world, it might be-time number one like on the disney canon

or in the history of the written word certainly the disney canon but it's like up there in terms of like movie anthems that i can't tell you let's do the list right now when you wish upon a star in the conversation part of your world is more important um that's just and it's just also just like an incredible millennial brain right there no but also just like an incredible summary of like the american condition you know um while also just being a banger hugely important to me knew every word i think it's one of the first songs that i ever sang my son because when he was really little and i was trying to sing to him i realized that there aren't that many songs that i know like every single word of. Can you get into that register? The aerial register?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's some strong work. I was singing at a lower thing. But you know, when you're not singing along to something, how many songs do you know every single word, every single beat? It turned out I knew fewer than I thought. But let me tell you, I know every single word of part of your world. So saying it to him a lot. It's amazing. It's so good.

I felt that Halle Bailey did a pretty good job and I gotta say, she has the high note. You know? And so... She can sing. I thought she was good.

It has nothing to do with her. She has the high note. So that one was okay. What they did to Under the Sea and Kiss the Girl... War crime. I was outraged. to the hague just like

the the arrangements in the original and like the you know the harmonies etc are so funny and it's they just get rid of all of it yeah shocking i've been and you're sitting on gold and then you just remake it in this like milk toast like what the fuck it's how dare you it's tough it it was watching it i was reminded of what a deep memory and understanding of all those songs i have i was seven when this movie came out i'm sure i saw it in theaters multiple times um nothing none of that should have been changed none of the songs should have been cut the lin-manuel miranda who I'm very hot and cold on, the new song was not good.

The scuttle rap, not a fan. I was really upset. I did not enjoy Awkwafina's choice. I don't know why Awkwafina is making Renfield and The Little Mermaid and not more movies like The Farewell. I guess Money, which shout out to her. But like Awkwafina is talented. What are we doing?

Hollywood is not making that many movies like The Farewell, as previously discussed, which sucks. I loved The Farewell. Of course. As previously discussed. Of course. Which sucks. I loved The Farewell. But I was pretty depressed watching the movie. Here's the most important thing to me. This movie is two hours and 15 minutes long. Oh my God, it was so long. There's like 10 minutes where you have to learn about Eric.

No one cares about Prince Eric. You know, he sings to the coastline and is like, we have to learn about Eric. No one cares about Prince Eric. You know, he has, like, he sings to the coastline and is like, we have to, like, explore other cultures, which is a good lesson. Sure. But, like, no one cares, you know? I don't care. The point about, you don't, no one cares about Eric.

That's one of the essential lessons of The Little Mermaid and, like, Disney Princess thing is that you actually, the prince doesn't matter. I liked Melissa McCarthy. She was very good. I thought she was really good. I agree with that. I also want to give a special shout out to, let's see, I wrote her name down, Jessica Alexander

who shows up for one scene as Vanessa and honestly steals the show. She did great work with very limited character. She's sort of like the the ursula uh transformation into an ig model yeah yeah yeah yeah but like when the the necklace is ripped away from her and she's like doing the scream it was a really good scream she made it work um i would like to speak briefly about uh oscar winner javier bardem

as king triton who is mostly you know doing motion capture underwater or whatever and it's again not a character with a lot of depth so pun intended despite being being in the depths. So I don't know. He just kind of looks like solemn or whatever. But the end, the last 10 minutes, I'm glad I stayed because I was treated to images of Javier Bardem floating in a water tank and trying to act. And it was the funniest thing I've ever seen in my entire life. And just like bobbing along somewhere in Manhattan Beach, I guess, just being like, I hope you will come back to me. And just looking asleep. I spent a lot of time wondering what that paid for. I was thinking like maybe like some sort of like tax bill, you know, in somewhere in one of the European countries. But I hope it

went to good use for him i hope penelope cruz is eating well yeah that's that's my hope for that i think she is i think that chanel is is paying her just fine that's so tough tough scene very funny but a tough scene from him but the thing is is like he wasn't good no he's bad he was in complete autopilot in the whole movie. He's Javier Bardem. He's one of the most exciting actors alive. And he's taken on a character that has really no shape whatsoever, that is just angry dad, and done nothing with it.

And it just leaves me wondering why. Is this just the most cynical thing you could possibly do? And of course, the movie is making a lot of money in the United States. Reinforcing bad habits of movie makers. Probably three days from Javier Bardem, don't you think? One day in the water tank, two days being like, no, don't go to the surface. Humans are bad.

I hope it was all worth it for him. I think it probably was, honestly. That's why he did it. Is this stuff worse than usual this year, or is it just the same and we've just been going through the motions for a long time now? I was going to say,

I think this one is actually better than the other ones released this year in terms of Disney live action. I think that actually is the broad takeaway, is that this is an improvement. Which is tough, yeah. But that's the bar. I mean, come on, we need to have standards.

That's silly. Like, this animated movie exists. It's on Disney+. It's fantastic. I don't get it. Put it... I don't... Why won't they just put the original back in theaters?

Like, is it because... No, that's something... It just is not enough of a financial... But, like, why isn't it enough of a financial incentive for them? Is it, like, the rights? Do they... Are they negotiating better deals this time around? I don't know the answer to that.

Are the movie theaters saying no? I think consumers don't respond in the same way. Like, do you remember in... I want to say it was 2000. Maybe it was in 1998 or 99 at the 25th anniversary when they reissued the Star Wars films in theaters. It was a big deal. Obviously, George Lucas, like, added a couple of new things to the films,

but the movies did gangbusters in movie theaters. And as recently, you know, people joked about how it was the 40th anniversary of Return of the Jedi this year. Oh, right. Yeah, no, they did it recently. I couldn't go. And they were like, it was open for two weeks, I think,

and then they took it out of theaters. I didn't really see what impression it made at the box office, but probably not very big. Why is that? Why can't you put older films in theaters and drive audience to it anymore? Especially a movie as beloved as The Little Mermaid. I don't know. It might just be that. It's available on Disney Plus for free.

That's a huge part of it. And The Vault, which I think you might have mentioned to me when we were talking about this. They kind of eliminated that whole strategy by putting everything on Disney Plus. I think that they're going to start to take that stuff down. I think that that's like one of the moves that they're going to make now is they're going to just go back to 1982. Yeah, that's right. We were talking about the vault because we were like, where were we? Were we in the British Museum or something? And then you were like, people are, oh, no, no, no. No, we gazed upon the Rosetta Stone. and we said how wonderful it is that we can watch the

Rescuers Down Under. Sean, Chris, and I did go see the Rosetta Stone, which is some sort of metaphor that I can't really unpack right now. No, we were literally, we were taking a cab from Heathrow to London. And I'm just being like, look, there are buses. Look, they have two levels. Whoa. I'm like, the Timbs is right over there.

And you're like, seems like they're taking a lot of stuff off of Disney+. And I was just like, I need you to be here with me. It was a long flight. It was a long flight. And you had a lot of Twitter to catch up on. But yeah, they put stuff in the vault all the time. It's not a new strategy. It definitely, as you said, sucks for all of the filmmakers

who would like to be able to access their hard-earned work and have it be seen, and it's not available. But I mean... It was a fair point. Finances have been managing this for some time. Yeah, I mean, I think that that's actually an interesting way to kind of bring this back to where we started, which is that we also got comfortable with this idea of having everything at our fingertips.

And so you never had any anxiety about something seeming special because if you wanted to, you could watch it. Like if you just want to stream like Citizen Kane, you can just watch it. It's remarkable to me how, I mean, that's the thing. It's a paradox. It is awesome. It's wonderful if you are a thoughtful and considerate person who wants to learn. But it's scary because it's easier to ignore in a way because you can just be like, it'll be there for me at some point. I'll get around to it.

But for now, what I need to watch is, you know, the new season of, what is the Netflix dating show that is about to come back? The Ultimatum. The Ultimatum, you know? Oh, what happens on that? Like, eight couples arrive. You brought it up, not me. I'm watching Citizen Kane. You're not.

You're not. So don't tell me that you are. Eight couples arrive. I watch snippets of Singing in the Rain every damn day. In an attempt to narcotize your child, not in an attempt to celebrate the great works. Both. We're celebrating them.

I think, I can't explain the ultimatum. I don't want to do that. Okay. It's just people are like confronted by their partner and they're like, it's do or die, marry me or don't. And then they go into a weird dating pool because of that ultimatum that is set

it's a terrible show it's like it's destructive on our culture and it makes me sad but do you watch it? I was watching it

because my wife watches it why is Eileen doing that? because Eileen to her credit if she has a hard day she wants something she doesn't want Citizen Kane

it's 10.30pm she's trying to go to sleep. She wants to watch something she doesn't have to think hard about. She doesn't have to engage with that deeply. I feel that way too. And that's the truth

for most people. I feel that way as well. So all that stuff still exists for TV. Like TV is still TV but also it's movies and movies are not movies. And movies are the Little Mermaid.

Yeah. No, it's bad. I mean, it's really bad out there i know i started this by giving you a hard time being like oh you're gonna do this again no like shit sucks it's it's really tough and they only make one top gun maverick every 20 years and they only make one tar every you know 10 years and everything else is sort of sanctimonious garbage. But, um, and, and then a lot of people like form weird parasocial relationships with like demonic monsters like Kendall and Shiv Roy.

It's, it's tough times. Yep. Have you been watching my Kendall fan cams though? I feel like they're really good. I feel like I really can. I have spent a lot of time on the Succession Fashion Instagram handle, which was pointed out to me by my friend Lauren Sherman, who wrote about Succession Fashion for Puck.

They aren't updating it enough with Harriet Walters fashion, which is where I am. That's the mom. That's FaceX. Caroline, yeah. Yeah. I need to know where she's sourcing her stuff she was wearing ysl at the um at the funeral but that's not really the kind of day-to-day look i'm going for you should

just start dressing that way like black funeral suit every day to work that's kind of your that's one of your personas you are like a funeral suit well you're like you come to eulogize all the things i like you know you're just like you are stupid idiot who likes dumb shit and i will now destroy it yeah um you start crying like roman and then i come in and be like it was great but it is over and it was world building but it was evil you might be more of a ewan if i think about it okay that's great yeah you know and i'm like this awful magnificent force i could only hope to be like all my heroes and yet i'm stuck with this fucking waystar bullshit um can i ask you guys a question about succession yes so your characterization of

the show about was that it's about terrible people doing terrible things which i think is true if you take it in totality but episode to episode it is also like the funniest piece of culture that we have i agree an incredible comedy yeah that is the same way with sopranos it was like the funniest it's like one of the funniest shows ever made but also they're brutally murdering people every 30 minutes you're 100 right yeah why is tv the only place that we kind of accept this tonal anachronism in writing? Because we don't accept it in movies anymore. Like we don't have movies that are people doing terrible things, but also unbelievably funny.

And they're like very rare in the last like 10 or 15 years. Like Phantom Threat is a good example. The movie that you guys just screened in London in front of a live crowd. They're not doing anything. I think that's a very romantic movie. Exactly. But it is kind of like high stakes drama.

She's poisoning him. Interpersonal drama. They're finding a way. But it's so funny. They're finding a way. It's a very good question, Bobby. Is it just because writers or TV executives

are like more accepting of that kind of tone to tone shift episode to episode? Because like when they try to do it in movies, it just seems like the movie is a mess. I think there's leeway in either direction.

I think writers on television have both more freedom but are still more bound by formula. So it's a little hard to say. I mean, Barry is actually an interesting counterpoint to a lot of this. And this is something that Andy has been saying on The Watch for weeks now since the fourth season has been going on, which is that that show has way more in common with movies now because it is the work of a

single person's vision who isn't doing everything on the set, but is fully conceiving, writing, and directing lots and lots of the show. And so because of that, Andy's been using the word auteurist. And I think that that's right and it just feels it feels like the Coen brothers it feels like David Lynch it feels like Martin Scorsese it feels like someone who has a strong like their their their the fingerprints are

deep like when they touch something you can't help but know that it's theirs and that's so rare in any kind of movie now like there's no MCU movies where you're like oh my god this is so clearly destin daniel cretin you know like i like his movies but you can't watch one of his marvel movies and be like oh well this is so obviously theirs even ryan coogler in black panther wakanda forever i was like where's ryan coogler in this like where is he why is he not speaking of three

disney movies all set almost entirely underwater in the last couple of years. Wakanda Forever, Avatar 2, and now this Little Mermaid movie. Anyway, I think that that is so interesting that that is an opportunity. Andy didn't seem to think that that was very replicable, the hater situation. But that was a world where clearly, like, he was doing a very similar thing that you just described. Where there's really, really laugh out loud funny moments in that show. But two-thirds of it of it is like brutally bleak and dark

and kind of upsetting honestly and I I don't know why it's easier to get away with that or it makes more sense in a TV format

because you're living with those characters for a longer period of time yeah but you also you just you have more room in TV which I think

can be a blessing and like allows you to massage that tonal shift. And you really can accept multiple tones within an episode or a season, as opposed to a movie where if it's tonally all over the place, you're like, okay, well, this doesn't make any sense. So I think the room that TV affords can be a hindrance in other ways, but in terms of that, like the comedy and the hang moments

and all of the fun stuff, I mean, it's the best. Succession is, Face Eggs is like so funny. Blobs of jelly rolling around. God bless. Really good stuff. Like I'm thinking of like L to the OG. Like you try to drop that into a movie nowadays,

like it would just be a total bomb. But on TV, you know, in the hands of a creator who knows where to cut himself off, clearly. Jesse Armstrong knew to end the show before it became just him writing different versions of L to the OG for six straight seasons.

I think that that's true. I think that it's enticing to those people. I think it's enticing to those types of creators. And I think it's a pipeline question of who is going to TV and who is going to movies. It's still, it's hard to be succession though. I mean, I appreciate the boldness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, Bill and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago.

Jesse Armstrong is in his 50s. He's been writing television for 25 years. I mean, he's extremely accomplished and has had a lot of experience. And so if you're a 31-year-old aspiring TV writer, in all likelihood, you're not going to write Succession. I think you're also probably not going to write Tar. And so you know that. And frankly, Tar is a more finite experience. And I don't know what would be considered kind of more lucrative, either financially or kind of creatively. It's a little hard to say at this point. I think it'll probably change person to person.

Some people like to have a job, you know, where they're like, my job is that I make this show and that I've been doing it for the last eight years. And some people like to move from project to project. Movie people are circus people. You know, they go from town to town, basically. And so, I don't know. It's a little hard to say why specifically certain tones work or certain... It's a little easier to take a certain kind of a risk. It's also, you know, part of the dubious nature of this proposition that I've brought to us here. It's like, Succession is the best show of the last five years. Like, in my mind, not close.

Yeah, absolutely. No. And because of that, I don't want to draw too many dramatic conclusions away from it. But it does... I can't get out of my head that weird little best picture data point of like why are all these movies like so uplifting is it because well but i mean those are the ones that win which is a whole different ball game of what a group of people are voting for and that starts bringing in virtue signaling that starts bringing in like you know it's often a response. Succession has won twice in a year twice in a row and is going to win a third season and that's the same thing the Emmys are voted out for in the same fashion. I guess so I

don't really take the Emmys very seriously. I don't take them seriously either. I'm like I don't really but we shouldn't be taking the Oscars as seriously as we do. Yeah it's true. So Succession winning and Green Book winning tells me a lot more about the Oscars than it does about the Emmys. Most people agree that Succession is the best show. No one agrees that Green Book is the best movie except for the Academy. Right. So I don't know. Let me put it this way.

I'm fine and everything is fine. Okay. If you listen to Christian Munju, you will know that everything is not fine. And there are actually even deeper ways to examine some of these very frivolous issues that we've explored today. But I enjoyed exploring it with you guys. I feel like we came to some important conclusions. And as usual, this will be the last episode I've recorded of this show because the art forms are dead. Okay.

Unrelated, did you have Chris do the Rosetta Stone and Wayne Jenkins voice? And if so, did you save the video for the JMO Patreon? Yeah. God damn! Didn't know we have civilization on locker here yeah that's pretty good thank you

yeah we spent a lot of time with Chris I miss Chris so much Chris come back from Europe we miss you buddy come back and be with us alright let's go to my conversation with Christian Munger We'll be right back. Try one or try our full Tim Selects lineup. Terms apply. Prices may vary at participating restaurants in Canada. It's time for Tim's.

Very honored to be joined by Christian Monjou. Thank you so much for being on the show today. My pleasure. Thank you. So, Christian, you're well known for pulling from real life or anecdotes or stories that you've heard for your films historically. For RMN, I'm curious what it was you were seeing and hearing about that was transpiring in romania that made you want to make this film there was a incident which is not so different from what you see in the film the film fictionalizes instant tries to understand what are the deep roots for what happened but the incident was like this right before the pandemics uh in a tiny village

in transylvania which is part of romania in this small community a small town inhabited mostly by hungarians lacking labor locally because very many people left. Somebody owning this kind of bakery, like a bigger bakery, like a factory somehow, decided that they couldn't move on only based on the local force and they opened up this idea of bringing foreigners. And they brought foreign workers from Asia to work in this factory and the community reacted. And first of all, it was a local thing.

They reacted there and they talked among themselves. But little by little, the conflict became bigger and it became bigger the moment when they decided to have this reunion of the community, which ended up in this kind of town hall meeting in which everybody could expose his own arguments, why for, why against, and eventually they voted. So if you want, in a democratic way somehow, they decided that they don't want that their community gets to be open to people coming from outside. And of course, there's a context because of this, because for years, living in minorities in these villages with a different religion and a different language, they were always trying to preserve what they felt is their identity, their traditions, their religion.

And this is why they were not too much opened up but to the majority to start with. But it stayed as a habit, if you want. And the other thing connected to this is that, I'm sorry to say this, but it wasn't connected to the stereotypes of these people coming and to the color of their skin. If the foreign workers brought there would be,

I don't know, Italian or Finns, probably nobody would have said anything. And nobody has had anything with these people in particular coming from Sri Lanka. They had some problems with the local Roma population, which is considered to be difficult to live next to. And they had created very well-organized societies for themselves, villages, structures, organizations, and they prefer that they are not penetrated by people from outside who cannot really respect rules. And that was the context.

The moment somebody had the idea of recording this town hall meeting and placing it on the internet, the scandal started. And it was first a local scandal in Romania. It got to the press and after it got to the press, it got to the moment when the prime minister had to interfere and say, hey, people, you cannot behave like this. And it created a lot of emotions. Very many people decided to help these foreign workers and everybody wanted all of a sudden to fire them in some other places. So there was this huge turmoil of opinion. And I got the feeling that

all of a sudden what was different in this case was coming from two different sources. You would imagine that a population which is a minority in a country would be more empathic to people coming from somewhere else and being even a smaller minority, but on the contrary, they were not. And I learned later on why. And on the other side, what was interesting is that they thought they were somehow naive and they thought that it's still possible in the world of today to speak in public and to express yourself in public as if you're very honest and you speak in your family with the others. And that's okay.

But actually, they learned that today nothing is private. Everything is public. And somebody was recording, and all of a sudden, they discovered that they are considered to be, I don't know, the most xenophobic people in Europe. Even if, of course, they don't see at all themselves like this. And starting from here, I thought that it can be a very good

starting point for a story about us today, about the state of the world, about the difference, if you want, between the truth and what you say publicly, because the film

is connected with these ideas of political correctness that prevents people from saying what they think, but it doesn't prevent them from thinking that way. For that, you need a different mechanism. And little by little, I thought that what happened in this village is very representative for what happens in the world today. And I hope that people who watch this film, and I noticed this in the last year of screenings across the world, they realize that it's not about Romania. It's not about Transylvania. Transylvania stands for what, I don't know, Europe is today, the world is today. This kind of conversations would happen, unfortunately, pretty much everywhere in the world today. When you see these events and you start reading about what's transpiring or watch this video of

this town hall meeting, does your mind immediately go to dramatizing what you're seeing? Or does it take a long period of time to kind of process what you've seen? I recognize them from the beginning as incidents having some potential of talking about more insightful things. But then there's a process. There's a longer process for this one. It was a process of some one year, I think. So like one year later, I started thinking about this, making a film starting from this, the moment when I was trying to convince somebody else to make a film about this. There were some younger filmmakers I was working with. And I told them, look, this is an interesting story, but I didn't have the time to think deep down about all the meanings.

I will tell you what this is about and maybe you can develop something. And the moment I took the time to think about all the things that this story can tell like this this this this clash between the animal inside of you and the human part that you have inside of you between the individual and the group in society and the process in which you lose your individuality and you become i don't know a little part of a bigger group we don't know, a little part of a bigger group. We don't know individuality whatsoever, and you conform to the opinion of the majority. And it was that moment when I decided that I might work on it myself because it had a lot of layers. Sometimes, you know, I get to the meaning of these layers easier,

sometimes not. But what's difficult at the end of this process, once it clarifies for me what are the themes that I want to speak about, what's difficult is to manage to find, if you want, the visual equivalence of all these abstract ideas, because it's film at the end. And these things should come out organically somehow

from this whole film and not through blinds or through words that somebody says. And this is why the film is interpretable. And this is why it's abstract in some moments for some of the spectators because finally it replicates it's abstract in some moments for some of the spectators,

because finally it replicates somehow the way life is, if you want. And that's the whole point of my cinema. Life doesn't come to you interpreted. It doesn't care at all about you. It just happens. And it's up to you, to your moral beliefs and context, to make something out of it and to give it some sense. And that's always going to be according to your education and information that you have. And you're going to make a sense of it.

What's interesting about my films and about this one in particular is that because I abstain from pushing in my own opinion about the situation, I just try to relate it in a very objective way, allowing space for everybody to express their opinion. People end up by feeling that nobody tells them what to believe. And that's a good feeling. If you can still make people think using cinema, it means that cinema still has a purpose. It's not just entertainment. It's not just, you know, completely lost.

And it's not just material for adolescents. I do find your films to be nonjudgmental, but I immediately interpret them. And I'm sure it's my completely emotional, subjective point of view, but I have strong takeaways from all of your films. This one in particular, you know, the film could have just been about xenophobia in a small community. That would have been a rich enough topic.

But there are so many bigger concepts like man's relationship to nature. There's class conflict. There's aging and the kind of desecration of the body. There's equitable pay in the workplace. There are all of these. There's love and romance and the complexity of that. There's so many different things that you're digging into. It felt like the widest scope of a film that you've made. And also, the approach that you've used, I think, is the first time you've used kind of this fragmentary number of different characters, POV pov typically we're with a small number of characters if not just one and i was wondering if you could talk about did you expand that because you had so much on your mind when you

were making this well as you as you can imagine it's not easy to tell such a complicated story and such a complex story with the so many layers and to make sure that the narrative advances logically and quite fast towards its purpose but at the same time the characters develop their motivation is more or less clear as clear as they understand it but there are some changes and also you touch all these layers of meaning that you need to touch in an attempt of, you know, making a portrait of the nowadays society finally. It's not easy in two hours in cinema. So there's just one change stylistically in this film,

different from what I did before. The fact that I haven't used one main character with one individual perspective as I did for. The fact that I haven't used one main character with one individual perspective as I did for the previous four films, these times there are two. It's like a dialogue. And because the film, it's a lot about how subjective the truth became to be today. And it's also about this idea that, you know, in this postmodern era, people keep telling you that there isn't just one truth. Everybody has its own truth, which is a very dangerous and relative thing to consider because you need to have some solid base on which you can express what are the principles of morals in society today. The film is also talking about communication, communicating with the other, about dialogue,

because you can have a conversation with somebody only when you are willing to listen to the other. If not, people will be talking, but that's not a conversation. And I think that communication is important if you want to hope that you can change something socially, like xenophobia. Well, you know, I think that the process, the natural process is of trying to listen to these people, because obviously they are displeased with something. So you cannot just tell them, hey, that's not legal. You cannot say this. Or you can, but you won't get anywhere with this. You just, I don't know, forbid people to say what's not correct, but nothing of their inner

choices and opinions are going to be changed. So you should listen to them and you should engage into some sort of conversation if you wish that you change something of what they think. And from this perspective, the film was also trying to speak about, I don't know, the limits of democracy the way we knew it, because it shows you that unless you have invested well in educating people prior to asking to their opinion, democracy might not lead you to the right results.

Or it does, but it's a way of saying that we chose in a democratic way a bad solution. And this shows you that there's a lot of responsibility that people should have, not people, structures, state structures, all of us should have and not people structures state structures all of us should have in education because if not today um it's very difficult to to um educate people in this very global world in which they are assaulted with so much information and so difficult to distinguish the truths from the fake news. And it's so difficult to make sure that you're thinking with your own mind and your own ideas. You are so easy to manipulate that you might be using the arguments of somebody else without

even checking. So there was a lot of thinking of how to do this. And I wrote a few versions of the screenplay. And what helped a lot is that in the middle of this process, first of all, I investigated very well what happened on the real situation. And I went over there and I talked to people there. And they were quite nice and quite open. And they talked to me and I learned a bit more about the community and about their reasons and I could rewrite the first version of the screenplay and then you know what happened I went to Cannes. I went to Cannes

to pitch my project one year before shooting for my distributors and I had to talk so much about the context. Then I realized that I needed to introduce some of this context in the film as well, because people, well, you know, they knew very little about, they barely know where Romania is, but Transylvania is still Transylvania, there's no Dracula over there, it's a part of Romania, but it's a part of Romania with a specific history, there are Hungarians there, there are Germans there, nobody knew why. Why the Hungarians are not

even at the border with Hungary, they are in the middle of Romania and so on. Why are there so many religions? So I talked and talked and talked to them and I was trying to explain somehow the developments of the countries of today and the populations based on historical development because you know we like to think about Europe as a continent with people sharing the same view about the future but to be honest well that that's a good ideal but there are a lot of different populations there and peoples there with very different historical developments.

So I came back and I was trying to reorganize all this material and make sure that all the themes that I wanted to have in the film were coming, were introduced in the film logically from the situation. They were still realistic or could be explained realistically because some of the moments in the film could also be explained i don't know metaphysically if you want but still there's a realistic explanation for everything and by the end i could only hope that the film is not too abstract in some moments i think i failed failed. I think it's too abstract to be honest. I don't agree, but that's interesting. Well, I had to answer so many times the questions about the bears. But finally, I think that

somehow the film succeeds to have all these threads put together in an advancement which follows not only the development of the characters, but the development of the situation, trying to bring arguments in which you understand that it's not only about this village, that it speaks through this village about what happens today in a bigger world. It's interesting going to Cannes and having to explain that context, because this is basically the fifth film of yours in which something very small and a very localized experience is extremely universal for so many people. I mean, I'm sure you can imagine people must be coming up to you and talking about four months, three weeks and two days in the United

States and everything that's happened here in the last 12 months is it's extraordinary resonant right now. I did want to ask you about that town hall sequence though, because you've kind of recreated and reimagined it. And it is this bravura piece of filmmaking over, I think, 17 minutes. Can you just tell me about the making of that sequence and what went into executing on that? First of all, I like to say something about the need of having a scene like this that long. It comes from a decision that I make before shooting. I make, you know, when I'm writing the screenplay, I analyze what I've learned new about cinema in case I've learned anything new. And I decided that I will keep on going with my idea

about cinema in the sense that it is the only art alongside with music that can show you how time passes. You can feel this evolution of time on condition that you don't use editing. And all the films that I created since four months are based on this principle. okay some some scenes can be shorter some can be longer but i don't i don't do coverage and little by little i developed this craft of being able to present even a complex situation even a i don't know a fight scene by just using one single perspective of the camera and there are are a lot of other, if you want, ethical principles that the camera needs to use and that I need to use. I mean, I don't move the

camera unless there's a movement. So what we try to do is to get as close as possible to this kind of objectivity. You are already very manipulative and make a lot of choices as a filmmaker. So I don't want to get over the top and cut a piece from the material and say, that was not important. You just get back directly to this and watch this guy now closer and watch this other guy. I'm trying to make this kind of mise-en-scene, this kind of situation in such a way in which I can follow it just with one position of the camera. As you can imagine, this is not easy. And there's usually just one position of the camera which covers it better than all the others.

You learn soon that you will win some coherence, but you will lose some. And very often you will lose the face of this other guy talking. So you need to be very creative when placing people. And you need a level of precision, which is unlike anything that people do in cinema. It's kind of easy to make cinema when you're doing coverage. Anybody can do this and you can put the pieces together and then add some music and everything is glued together and it flows.

But this is like working with bare hands, if you want. It's like organizing a show. I organize a situation as in theater, if you want, and then I record it, but everything needs to be perfect. Technically, because unfortunately, you know know cinema is a technical thing you need to record the sound of everybody the camera work the light sometimes I turn the camera all around so it's very difficult for lighting but it needs to be perfect in terms of interpretation because interpretation is very important for me even if besides Romanians or Hungarians in this film,

people don't understand what people say, there is a feeling of how they act, if this is right or not. So casting and interpretation are very important for me. And, you know, I developed a lot of experience. That's the only benefit of getting gold. You know, you lose a lot of innocence and freshness, but you get to be a better craftsman. So I knew from the beginning that I needed to tackle the regular situation that I have when people talk to one another, that they face one another. So when people face one another, you don't have many options.

You can be behind them, you can show just one of them, or you can be aside. I had very many people in the audience so i needed to see them i had some people behind the camera so i started by showing them and then moving to the camera and then i did a few smaller tricks like i used a lot of windows on the end of that town hall especially for people which were off camera just to give them the feeling that they are in the shot. Okay, they were very small. But for actors, you know, it means a lot when somebody asks you to come and play for 17 minutes, and you know, you're off camera, it's going to be difficult for you as a as an actor to focus. And then what I did, I was trying to find the right position for everybody from which he could deliver his text. And I did this

following the dialogue. I was using some logs. I was having these pieces of logs because they are hit with wood. So before asking the actors inside, I was putting all the logs over there, just to make sure who talks with him and when. And I came up with this kind of setup in which I brought the actors. And, you know, everything seemed very logical, except that when we started shooting, nothing worked, as it happens in, you know, the first day of such a difficult scene. Because having the right rhythm

was based on being very precise with your lines and with the moment when your lines were supposed to be delivered. So it was quite difficult by the end of the day. I have to say that I only had two days of shooting this. Normally, they prepare this in like two weeks in theater. I had one day of preparation and two days for shooting. I talked to the actors by the end of the day. I said, look, this is difficult. It's

the most difficult thing I did. It's the most difficult thing you're going to do in cinema. I just need one thing. By tomorrow morning, you need to know precisely what your lines are and when you have to deliver. That's all. Besides this, I'm going to handle it. And the next day, it was a bit better. It always helps when you let people sleep over. And something very important that happened the next day was that we learned something. You know, you make a lot of choices in cinema because you made them before, but actually the progress in cinema comes when you challenge your decisions or the decisions that people are normally making. And, you know, all of a sudden after telling the extras,

shut up, the actors are focusing, shut up, pretend that you are talking. I realized that that kind of, you know, pretending is not the real thing. And the actors, instead of being helped, they were somehow frustrated about that silence. And in the last half a day and in the second day of the shooting, I decided that I will allow for once for all the extras to express themselves the way they wanted.

And I talked to them. I say, hey, you are artists as well today. So your opinion matters. For once, I have this option of really shooting and creating and working with a collective character coming directly from the Greek antiquity, and it's you, so express yourselves. Of course, I couldn't shoot once they started shouting, but a few takes later, I managed to somehow direct

the level of the temperature of their reactions in a very physical way. And this helped a lot the actors as well. It brought a lot of real adrenaline, the right rhythm, the right energy, and all of a sudden people needed to fight to deliver their line. So we got to have it closer together little by little. As always, I was changing a little bit of things from one day to the other. And it was somehow, it got to be agglutinated enough so that you can have this little fight at the end. That's not easy to have 17 minutes after you've told them how to do this. So it felt quite organic. And then the other thing that we did, we recorded this with, we had three different sound engineers and some 25 microphones.

It was very, very difficult to mix, I would say. But in the mixing process, I realized that by encouraging people to express themselves, I got use of a lot of sidelines that I couldn't hear on the set while a sort of cut down from what they said was delivered to me in my headphones. So I could mix it. And it sounds very nice if you manage to understand these languages because there's the language of the main dialogues and there are people talking behind and then you hear a lot of individual lines. And probably the other major decision that I had to make there, I realized that, you know, the essence of such a reunion is that everybody speaks at the same time. People don't wait for the others.

And that was also the feeling of Babel Tower that I wanted to have. Nobody's listening. Everybody's talking. There are a lot of languages, but that's not the problem for which they don't understand one another. So what I did, I had some 24, 25 pages of dialogue, and I decided to overlap the first seven pages with the next. And now you have to decide to which of the characters you listen when the scene plays.

And that was a way of keeping it together and focusing on the main characters which are in front of the camera, because it was important for me to deliver this situation as if it's from the point of view of Sheila and Matias who are in front of the camera. He doesn't want to be part of it. He still believes that you don't have the social obligation of having an opinion. He learns by the end of the scene that you do have it and you do have a responsibility,

even if you don't want to have an opinion. And she is there in the scene mostly to speak about this need of preserving your principles and fighting as an individual for yourself and for your opinion, even against everybody else from the mob. It's funny watching the film. There's a sequence at a dining table earlier in the film. And as I saw it, I was like, oh, I know this move. You've made this move in previous films.

It's interesting that he is calling back to this. And then when we get to the town hall sequence, it feels like an elevation, like an action sequence version of the dining room table kind of static objective idea. It's truly amazing. Quickly, you mentioned the word metaphysical, and I wrote surreal in my notes here. And I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about introducing that concept or that expectation for the audience, which feels like a pretty significant shift from some of your previous work some of the ideas that the film want to speak about are not surreal let's say but they are very abstract how would you portray in a film fear and anxiety and the evil that you feel happening next to you in the world.

You need some sort of formal expression for this. And very often people are afraid not of what they see in their most horrible nightmares about the things that you don't see, about the things coming from the dark, about the things that you don't see about the things coming from the dark about the things that you can't take away and i really wanted to speak about the anxiety that people feel today in front of a of a very troubling future you know because a lot of these reactions in the film of just not being friendly with the others come from this fear that the world is coming to an end closer than we imagined. Because 10 years ago, 25 years ago, we could imagine that at some point we were watching the science fiction films of the 80s, Mad Max. Okay, we will fight for resources, it might be a bit warm someday, but we live today, and it's warmer already, and we are very many on the planet, and

it's not clear in which kind of life our children are going to live, and there's a sort of a panic and anxiety. But how can you portray this into a film? There's another thing. In such a small, you know, people do not really think rationally. Part of their thinking is rational, but there's a lot of emotional and there's a lot of very irrational kind of thinking based on this kind of child perspective in which things signify something. And this is the way decisions are made. Decisions are not fully rational.

If you ask somebody why he decided something, he doesn't really know. It comes somehow naturally from him so it was important for me to reach these levels and to speak about something which is the most difficult thing to speak in a film why what is somebody thinking about now when he's not talking he's not talking he's in front of the camera but he's thinking about something. I want to that for the spectators to have an idea about what he could be thinking about. Of course, you cannot be sure, but it's difficult to deliver this kind of hint. And then you need external situations

that would place you in the position of associating ideas and maybe saying, well, it might be about this. And for example, you know, for me, the film is also about a new form of migration, because this is what people feel today. That, you know, 1,000 years ago, it was easy to know that the migrating peoples were coming. They were on horseback, coming from the other side of the hill, having a spear. You would know that they are not tourists. They are not coming to ask you about the beauties of the place. They wanted to plunder and take something

from you. Nowadays, it's a bit more complicated. Everybody flies here and there and it's okay that people come and work somewhere. And the question was for me, how can you talk about the fact that this is the new way in which migrations look, not by mentioning this with words? And for example, this is why we have these people on horseback. Nobody asked me this, but there's this stereotype about the Huns, you know, the ancestors of the Hungarians. And in the communist times, when the propaganda was always very strong and very nationalistic against everybody, we used to look up to these people saying that, hey, the ancestors of these people were eating raw meat that they were having under the saddles of their horses and so on and so forth. So all these hints,

everything which is in the film, the fact that he's having that motorcycle, the dog, the horses, they speak, each of them about something. And for example, we have this classical poem that we learn in school about the communion between man and nature and the role of the dog and of the sheep. I know that it's going to be easier for people who have never read this to see the connection, but some of it is in the film. Some of it you can get if you read a little bit more. But bottom line, the idea is that if you keep having this connection

with the nature and your inner nature, you are going to be connected with the world. The moment you lose it, you float around. And this is why I wanted to to have all this you know this layer which can be perceived in the film as as a fantastical somehow because for example by the end of the film what happens when people ask me what is he following and what's what's over there well he doesn't know what he's following but he feels his his dog comes and his dog barks. The dog tells him, hey, there's something evil lurking around. And he comes out and he tries to figure out if his

beloved ones are in danger. And he gets to the house of his child. He's not there. He follows to the house of his wife. And from there, he starts watching and following something which becomes a bit more concrete. He assumes that this creature that he's following might be the missing worker. He follows this creature up to the police station. He finds the others. There's nothing precise there. When he gets out, if you watch the film again, you will see that this creature appears once again physically in the film. We needed a long while to design how precisely

this creature could be in the film and what kind of creature this would be so he follows this creature by the end and he gets into her house he gets to the woman that he loves trying to see if she's okay and he's there to protect her there's a big misunderstanding between them because she feels guilty and he is there to protect her even if they have learned things about one another in the last two days. And then after he shoots in that beast, in that bear, he believes that is the end of it. So there are these animals who are the source of this anxiety. But a few steps later, you see that there are several entities like this coming from

the dark and from the forest, and things are not clear at all any longer. And I like that whenever people were trying to interpret what's there in the forest, they had a lot of different comments and interpretations that these are people, or these are bears, or these are people. But the nicer interpretation was that, you know, these are not or these are people. But the nicer interpretation was that, you know, these are not even real.

This is a kind of interpretation of his fears coming from his inner self, which is a good interpretation for me. That is how I interpreted it as well. I thought the film was simply brilliant. Christian, we end every episode of the show by asking filmmakers, what is the last great thing they have seen? Have you seen any great films recently?

That's a good one. i i think i've seen uh uh pieces that i liked a lot in the last years in films um i like burning quite a lot i have to say and i think from last year i liked albert serra pacification yeah tell me about that we just spoke about that on the show recently what did you like about that film well i first of all i like something about him and about his very free way of interpreting cinema i think that It's always important in cinema to have directors who do not just apply the rules and the principles of this art, and they take time to challenge them, to see if it's possible to do differently. And it's possible to, you know, you are taking a lot of risks if you do this, and he's taking a lot of risks. First of all, of not being popular as a filmmaker for the audience,

but this is how cinema progressed. Cinema hasn't progressed with the blockbusters who brought millions of people in front of theaters. That's, that's a good thing as well. But progress comes from, he's like a researcher of the ways in which you can expand the language of cinema. And I appreciate this.

And I appreciate his courage, his boldness of just doing whatever he thinks in a very different method. And I even appreciate that he finds the means to do this. It's not easy to find people believing in you. You need to be challenged. If you're not challenged as a filmmaker and you think you know all and I've been doing this, you're dead as a creator. And it's a process that every other creator who's still alive somehow inside, it's a process that you need to undergo to every time you make a new film. I'm sorry that I couldn't come up with another

better idea of understanding cinema, but I continue looking for it and thinking about it for each other film before I start shooting. I might not come with the right idea, but I think that this should be an honest process that we should all be taking before making films because you're not just telling stories with images. It's way more complex than this. And it has a lot of ethical implications as well. I think you're a shining example of that as well. Thank you so much for doing the show.

Thank you so much. Thanks to Christian. Thanks to our producer, Bobby Wagner, for his work on this episode. Later this week on The Big Picture, Amanda and I, maybe some special guests, we're working it out. We'll be digging into the Spider-Verse.

We'll see you then.