The Big Picture - ‘The Boy and the Heron’ and Top Five Miyazaki Movies. Plus: An ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ Deep Dive.
Episode Date: December 13, 2023Sean is joined by Andy Greenwald and Charles Holmes to revel in the top film at the box office, Hayao Miyazaki’s final film, ‘The Boy and the Heron’ (1:00). They talk about Miyazaki’s whole ca...reer, including their top five Studio Ghibli movies (41:00). Then, Amanda rejoins the pod for a detailed discussion of the 2023 Palme d’Or winner, Justine Triet’s French courtroom drama ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ (1:12:00). Hosts: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins Guests: Andy Greenwald and Charles Holmes Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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I'm Sean Fennessey, and this is the Big Picture 8 Conversation Show about Hayao Miyazaki.
Later in this episode, Amanda and I will have a deep dive conversation into one of the most intriguing movies of 2023 and a contender for Best Picture.
It's a Justine trier's thorny french
thriller anatomy of a fall but first long time coming on this podcast long threatened a discussion
of the first film in a decade from another living master hayo miyazaki whose latest movie the boy
and the heron has just opened at number one at the american box office let's fucking go
that is true that is very true true. In fact, to join me
to talk about this film,
of course,
Bobby Wagner, our producer,
but my Ghibli homies.
It's Andy Greenwald
from The Watch.
Ghibli Jang.
It's Charles Holmes
from The Midnight Boys
in studio.
LA resident Charles Holmes.
California now.
Very happy to have you both here.
We've individually talked
about Miyazaki over the
years we actually Andy and I at least have podcast partners who frankly refuse to participate
in the wonder of Miyazaki's works does does Van mess with Miyazaki does he watch those movies
uh on last night uh no last week's Midnight Boys he thought it was the boy in the hair on
and I have to explain to him like there's no heroin
you know what I'm saying
is Cameron in that movie
he was also
I was like
but you know
Totoro
you've seen My Neighbor Totoro
he's like
who the fuck is Totoro
like so
no
okay amazing
but let me say
like I feel
kindness for these people
because they just don't know yet
like think of all the joy
still in front of them
you know
to discover these movies
and I think I think Chris is a lost cause,
but I think Amanda will come around.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Chris, you got Chris
to watch Scavenger's Reign.
I did get that,
and I'm still shocked about that.
But I don't know if there's
a lot of crossover listeners,
but I think it's now
about 28 months
since he agreed to watch
The Wind Rises.
Which I think he would like.
I really think he would like that one.
That movie is about three things that he likes.
War, airplanes, and smoking.
You're stepping on my top five already.
Sorry.
Let's start with Miyazaki in general.
I thought we should start with you, Charles.
What makes Hayao Miyazaki, the 82-year-old master animator and storyteller, such a special filmmaker?
So I think there's two levels to it.
I think the first is visual, is that even when I wanted to see the boy in the heron,
what he has been able to achieve, where it's like when you see a Miyazaki character cry,
they don't cry like a normal animated character.
Their tears look like globs of pudding.
And you're like, this character is more sad than any character
i've ever seen on the screen same thing where if you go on twitter or instagram you're like look at
this anime food blah blah blah it's become a whole trend that starts with people like miyazaki where
i was watching porco rosso and he will just stay on frame of like wine and old radio and set a mood.
And you just, there's, there are these things where he makes children's movies
that feel so considered that there's a reason he's called a master.
And then I think there's the myth of Miyazaki where he is a man of contradictions,
where it's like his movies are anti-fascist a lot of the times,
but he is in love with war planes.
He makes movies about the importance of parenting
and teaching children how to live,
but he has a very complicated relationship
with his own child.
He's all, there's all these layers of,
he seems like a very negative person
or has a negative outlook on the world,
but then he makes these movies with so much
love and joy so i think at least what always drew me to him is i'm like how does this man who looks
at the world with so much disdain and disgust and thinks so deeply about it can make something that
touches to the core of what it means to be human human does that make any sense it does i think i
think you nailed it andy do you remember when you first encountered the work of hay it means to be human. Does that make any sense? It does. I think you nailed it.
Andy, do you remember when you first encountered
the work of Hayao Miyazaki?
Yeah, I mean, I hate to admit that.
I was a van.
I was not familiar with these movies
until I booked a ticket to Daddington Island
and then was immediately struck by the dearth
of quality imaginative entertainment for my daughters and finally listened to the
people in my life who had been telling me this whole time that there was this master to check
out. And so watching Totoro with my daughters was the first Miyazaki experience I ever had.
And it completely changed my view of what, I mean, what animation could be, of what quote
unquote children's movies could be, or also just what imagination could be. Because this was a movie that did the opposite of what every Disney film
does. And there are good Disney movies, but Disney movies like Disney rides are on a track, and they
take you past certain things, and you always know where you're headed, and you're always going to
make it back safely in one piece to where you started from. And Miyazaki movies are absolute
flights of fancy and journeys into the subconscious and the unconscious. And what's waiting for you there might not be pretty. It might not be comfortable. It might be a little scary. But like life, you keep going through it and you are changed by the experience. asked why Miyazaki, I feel like what any of us want from an artist in any medium, whether it's
TV, film, or painting, right, is you want a guide to take you somewhere, to show you something that
they see in a way that only they can see it. And I think it's extremely rarefied air in movies
for this kind of journey and this kind of tour guide. Really, the only person I would compare him to,
and this is a strange comparison for someone
who we often talk about in association
with entertainment for children, is David Lynch.
In that the single worst thing you can do
to a friend or a loved one
is to tell them about your dream.
It is so boring to everyone else.
David Lynch and Miyazaki can tell us about their dreams and we vibe with them. We
get them. We trust them. We go along with them. And somehow we recognize something in them,
even though they are so deeply personal and idiosyncratic. And watching this movie as a
summation of his entire life and art, I was just so moved by that fact above all else that like,
wow, I trust him so utterly. I'm glad you framed it by when you like that having a family and having daughters
synced you into his work.
I was wondering for both of you, for Bobby and Charles, you guys are a little younger
than us.
Did you grow up with these movies?
Because obviously he's been making films since 1979 and he's started to gain, I think,
significant American acclaim in sort of like the mid to late
90s but like was this on the menu when you were 12 years old or bobby did you see any of these
movies when you were a kid first time i saw a miyazaki movie was 2018 i was living with my
cousin who had just had a kid and his um his wife's sister also had kids that are about like
were miyazaki age coming up on todoro age i would say and uh was the first
actual exposure was the ponyo theme song which uh my cousin wanted to watch exactly go off charles
go off i love it i have to see come on theme song on youtube which my little baby cousin wanted to
watch on repeat all of the time and then it was totoro on on the screen so that was my first exposure in 2018 so no i did i did not grow up with them um it's interesting how
like the family sort of backdoors you into miyazaki's storytelling style which is like if
you really dig into it kind of full of fear and anxiety and loathing about the world and what
we're doing to it and so the fact that they are,
many of them are made for children.
I think there is sort of like two different avenues
of the Miyazaki experience,
where some of them are like,
you feel safe and warm start to finish.
And I think Totoro and Ponyo are probably like within those,
although Ponyo has maybe a little bit,
some more adult themes.
But like Mononoke,
that's pretty serious, heavy, like worldly stuff
that he's digging into.
And the fact that
I did not grow up with them,
I don't think
takes away at all
from the experience
of him reflecting
and refracting emotion
back to children
so effectively,
which I think is truly
one of his superpowers
is that he makes you feel
like this is the first time you're ever feeling
emotion like you're watching a movie and it's all coming from inside his mind there's no
he's doing all of the work you know he's building these whole worlds that you never even thought to
imagine and you're just buying into it you're along for the ride i think he's an interesting
filmmaker to go to grad school with like most kids growing up are exposed to Disney films.
They're maybe exposed to Warner Brothers cartoons.
They're exposed to anime more commonly in the last 20 years.
But he is a next-level storyteller insofar as there is a kind of absurdity
and dreamlike quality that Andy is talking about.
There's also a violence and intensity in some of his best known films that is weirdly
deeply inappropriate for like a three-year-old or even a seven-year-old at times and so you kind of
have to be careful how which films you choose i agree with the way you're framing it bob which is
like there's the action adventure miyazaki movie and then there is the family drama that both of
which feature unusual creatures and a kind of
like elaborate world and portals into new existences but there are two tones and it's
interesting to think about the boy in the heron in that with that in mind because it feels like
the clearest fusion of the two concepts like the two kinds of movies that he makes. Just specifically to your point, Sean, I brought my daughters in the theater to see this.
It felt a little risky at times, just in terms of the intensity of it. But because this movie is,
and I'm excited to get into this with you guys more specifically, is such a summation and includes
echoes and pieces of everything he's ever done, I think they felt comfortable. They were both very
nervous and they looked away at certain times,, I think they felt comfortable. They were both very nervous
and they looked away at certain times,
but I think they trusted the larger journey.
And they also were familiar enough
with the way he tells stories
and the way bodily fluids look in his movies.
Like literally when the pelican is coughing up blood
because it's dying,
would I have chosen to take my six-year-old to see that?
No, but she saw Mononoke,
which again, that's the problem of having
two because the older one keeps pushing things forward.
it is a fusion of these things.
And it's a little bit
discomforting in a way that the other ones
aren't, right? Because it's not as easily defined
as it's in this bucket or the other
bucket. So let's talk about The Boy in the Heron then.
Can we call it by its real name?
Well, the film was, in Japan, is titled How Do You Live?
Which is a reference to a 1937 novel
that is not actually the framework for the film,
but is an exceptional title.
Yes.
That it defines a filmmaker at the end of his career.
It defines, frankly, like all of the themes of his films. It defines, frankly, all of the themes of his films.
It's like the definitional question.
And in America,
they've changed it to The Boy and the Heron.
And you're protesting.
I'm furious about this.
The Boy and the Heron is such a worse title than...
It really is.
...the original.
It's so bad on so many levels.
And I can't believe they signed off on it
because I just said this on the watch.
Like, generally, I trust in the wisdom and leadership of octogenarians.
That's just my brand going into 2024.
But I worry that they slip this one by Miyazaki sensei himself because the title is beautiful.
People know what they're getting.
There is now, as you said, Sean, like a couple decades of foundational understanding of Miyazaki and the types of movies he makes.
I don't know who suggested this,
but it seems like they were trying to
maybe access the Paw Patrol demographic.
I think so.
I think there was an attempt to commercialize.
And you know what?
It might've worked.
I mean, this movie made $13 million
to the US box office.
I mean, it is literally true.
It's a really weird Japanese animated movie.
There is a heron.
Yeah.
It is factually
accurate, but everything
else about it makes me
furious.
I mean, it was weird
watching the movie with
the American title.
Yes.
Being like the heron is
not.
I mean, this is all
Miyazaki movies.
The thing about Totoro
or Ponyo.
It's not like Disney
characters where they
have like a fucking
theme song that's going
to get stuck in your
head like Elso.
Or they're saying pika pika.
Except the Ponyo song.
Except the Ponyo song.
But there's no Happy Meal toy for Totoro.
So it was weird watching a movie called The Boy and the Heron and being like, this is not about the Heron.
Particularly because the Heron in this movie is kind of grotesque and bizarre.
And not a friend.
And not a friend.
Yes.
But in a way that's kind of appropriate
too for Miyazaki.
So Miyazaki had announced
his retirement
in September of 2013
after completing
The Wind Rises,
which was his kind of,
I thought,
like an incredibly fitting
farewell,
denouement,
to the end of his career.
Like so many other
filmmakers this year,
like Michael Mann,
like Ridley Scott,
like so many people
we've seen,
these 80-year-olds
are just coming out
of the woodwork and dropping new work. And some of which is great, some so many people we've seen. These 80-year-olds are just coming out of the woodwork
and dropping new work,
and some of which is great, some of which is not so great.
This one started...
80 is the new 30, Sean. Get on board.
It does. It will feel that way even more so next November.
I'm bundling right now.
In 2016, the film was officially started.
He began storyboarding, and of course,
Miyazaki has some of the most sophisticated
and beautiful storyboards in film history.
Production began in 2017.
This is six years in the making, this movie,
which is remarkable.
In Japan, where Miyazaki is a god,
there were no marketing materials for this movie.
So cool.
There was one poster.
There were no interviews.
There were no trailers.
There was no ad campaign.
There was a poster and a title and a movie.
And the movie is a huge hit in Japan, of course.
Here, it also is now a huge hit. it's also the most expensive japanese film ever made which i find fascinating obviously the amount of um creative efforts that go into his works uh is
well documented but this one in particular it seemed like was a next layer of depth and attention
that was paid to the animation uh The story is tough to describe.
It's tough to describe the story of many Miyazaki movies.
And I think that that's why he exists in a slightly elevated realm as a filmmaker,
because there is something ethereal and abstract about a lot of his stories.
But this one I found particularly, if I'm being honest,
a little challenging because it dispenses with a lot of the traditional frameworks of storytelling.
So it follows Mahito, who is a 12-year-old boy in Japan in kind of the immediate aftermath of
World War II. And he has just moved to a new town. He's in the middle of the war.
Oh, is the war ongoing? Yes. It's in the middle of the war that they evacuate Tokyo
because the bombing is coming. Right. And he has lost his mother in the bombing of Tokyo. And so
his father moves him to a new town and he remarries. In fact, he remarries his mother's
sister. And immediately when he arrives in this new town, he feels displaced. He's being bullied
at school. He doesn't feel like he fits in. In fact, he hits himself over the head with a rock
to injure himself, to kind of remove himself from this new society that he is joining. And so he's a boy lost.
There are a lot of boys and girls lost as kind of a common thread of Miyazaki movies. And then he is
encountered by this talking heron with very unsettling teeth. And then the movie truly
transforms into a Miyazaki movie. He enters a sort of portal of discovery to learn about the possibility of perhaps reuniting with his mother
or imagining a future that he really wants, as opposed to the fated one that he feels like he
has to deal with. What transpires from there is kind of like a psychedelic nightmare.
The movie is like very unsettling and very beautiful.
I personally, this is not my favorite Miyazaki movie.
I feel very comfortable saying that,
that I felt like I could sense him working very hard to put as much of himself into it.
And so as a work of art, I respect that.
But I found myself struggling particularly
with the first hour of this movie.
And it was not until he really like locks
into this fantastical universe that he's trying to explore for you guys i'm curious like
did you immediately connect with it did you find like it was a little bit more difficult
to penetrate it's obviously been celebrated as one of the best movies of the year andy what did
you think of it um i i'm i was blown away by it it's too soon and it's too dense for me to consider
it really in terms of like favorite or
not favorite. I think it was a hugely
successful movie in my eyes
and I found it
and I should say, this is the first and potentially
only Miyazaki movie I've seen in the theater
when it was new.
You saw it dubbed or subbed?
I saw it dubbed.
Dubbed. And you saw it dubbed as well? I saw it subbed.
You saw it subbed. Bobby, how did you see it? I saw it subbed. I saw it subbed as well I saw subbed you saw subbed Bobby how did you see it
I saw it subbed
I saw it subbed as well
three subbed
and one dubbed
I wonder what the
percentage financially
is from the dubbing
and the subbing
you didn't see
Robert Pattinson's
absolutely batshit
insane performance
that's why I stayed away
it is so wild
I had no idea
interesting
it was him
was it good
yeah
I thought
I mean I think the dubbing is always good, in my opinion, in these movies.
I agree.
And there's some really nice, again, there's so much intentionality towards everything except maybe the title,
that Christian Bale does the voice of the father in this movie.
And I thought, that's interesting.
That's one of many callbacks to other films.
What's the thought behind that?
And then I went online and I see that in the Japanese version that you guys saw the japanese language version the actor that does the father also voiced
howl yes so they they twinned that in a way that i thought was really um thoughtful but to go back
to your original question sean like i did my best to learn nothing about the movie so i was locked
in for the first hour thinking it was more of The Wind Rises, that this would somehow be
more in reality than previous Miyazaki movies. So I was surprised and I have to say delighted when
the world got bigger and stranger and deeper as it was going. I think that I was, yeah, I had some
trepidation in the beginning, but I was particularly excited by something that I think the movie paid off,
which was the echoes.
You know,
when the,
when the crones show up,
um,
like this is,
there's old ladies and the importance of the elderly.
I mean,
that's Ponyo.
Um,
that's how,
um,
that's a recurring motif.
And then I count that there are seven of them.
And I'm thinking about Miyazaki's relationship to Disney and seven dwarfs being one of the earliest movies that came out. And just thinking like, so I was thinking as much
as I was feeling in the early going, but by the end it was pure feeling. What did you think, Charles?
I found this to be one of his most beautiful movies, but narratively one of his most like
confounding because the thing that makes Miyazaki so special is he is a pure visual artist. He
doesn't, like I was going back to
watch a documentary, one of my favorite documentaries of all time. And you're watching
him. He doesn't write the script. He just does the storyboards and he's changing it, the movie.
And he's so exacting like the storyboards, you could hang them in your house. That's how
beautiful they look. And this felt to me like someone who I'm like, oh, at this stage in your career,
you aren't explaining your logic as much. You are trusting that because he's touching basically
throughout his whole career. You see spirited away in this. You see a little Porco Rosso. You
see a little Princess Mononoke. I feel like he almost is trusting his audience and children at
this point to be like
you're gonna fill in this like this is a feeling we don't need to explain it I am trying to get to
the core of something emotionally which does it make it one of his favorite movies for me no
but I appreciated the swing because I'm like this is it gave me the killers of the flower moon thing
where I was like this is a director at the end of the life trying to almost experiment with the form, which I'm like, if I'm fucking 80, I want to get to that point where I'm like, I'm trying to prove something about life, but also teach all that.
There's more Irishman. That it is like a much more mournful, a little bit slower,
but making a point to very clearly,
like to note the things,
the echoes that Andy is talking about
and say, you may remember this from Howl's.
You may remember this from Spirited Away.
You may remember this from The Wind Rises.
In fact, I think that the last line of dialogue
that Nahoko has at the end of the wind rises as jiro
is kind of she's sort of like disappearing is you must live and then this film immediately starts
10 years later and is how do you live so i agree and i enjoyed all of that it does have a little
bit of the like you have to watch this one last like you kind of can't watch this movie if you
haven't seen at least the five major miyazaki works otherwise it might seem a little bit more confounding so Bob this is in
your top five movies of the year yeah I loved it but I also like I'm in this weird zone where I'm
just like put something on the screen that I've never seen right now like I'm like really just
kind of like trying to appreciate uh uh, especially animated movies, like as the visual boundary pushing Vanguard form of art that they are,
especially someone like Miyazaki.
And I think that even from like the very beginning of this movie,
the animation style is different than anything he's ever done.
And to be doing that into your eighties,
it's pretty,
pretty gnarly.
Like the way that the fire is sort of melting the screen and melting
his memories that are being formed in real time. To me, that locked me in right from the beginning.
And then, of course, the movie slows down a lot like you're talking about in the first hour,
almost to the point where it stops still and nearly nothing is happening, which I found
intriguing because most of the time in Miyazaki movies, you're getting those elements,
those fantastical elements that are kind of being doled out to you to draw you
in to this world.
And this is much more of a sort of like half,
half,
half real world,
half fantastical Miyazaki imagination.
And it's to me,
the word I keep coming back to because of that is it's ambitious.
This is one of the most ambitious movies that I've seen in a really long time to not only merge those two visual styles of creating things that are ghostly or otherworldly, but also with his vision of the surreal world that we know is also unbelievably gorgeous too. And so to merge those tones and to merge those visual styles
at the same time
is just why I was kind of just like
overwhelmed and blown away by it.
But it is definitely a movie
that is intentionally trying to like
juggle you around
or like poke at the idea of
conventionality and plot.
And I think he's not really interested
in that at this point.
Yeah, yeah.
I think he's definitely dispensed
with a lot of it.
There's that great story about how he
drew the image of Totoro at the bus station
before he even knew what the movie was going to be,
like under the umbrella, you know?
And it does feel like the parakeet soldiers in this movie to me.
I'm like, this is just like an image that he had in his head.
And he was like, I'm going to put this image in the film
and find a way to make it work.
I want to just jump on that point because I think that
if you think of these movies as movies
made in a foreign language, but in the
case of Miyazaki, I feel like it's a language he has
slowly taught us all to understand and speak.
One of the
most confounding things about watching
Totoro for the first time, if you've just heard it's
a great movie, as was my experience,
is it's over and you don't understand
what just happened to you. Because wait, it's about
your neighbor Totoro,
but Totoro is this kind of scary beast that shows up twice
and makes really loud sounds and then it's over?
Yeah.
I don't understand what happened.
This is not speaking to me in any language that I've ever heard before.
So by the time you get to this movie,
and we're almost playing hopscotch between giant, giant ideas
about what is reality. I feel
like he taught us and took us along with him to get there. And so at this point, I was just
delighted that we were pirouetting over these giant gulfs of space, narrative space that other
movies would have taken a trilogy to fill in for us. So what did your kids think? They loved it.
Yeah. They loved it. I think they, again, like a 10-year-old and a 6-year-old had different experiences.
There were different moments that they were interested in and or afraid of.
I think the big ticket thing that I want to point out, though, is when they were told
it was called The Boy in the Heron, they were like, we're out.
Because they do not want movies about boys.
One of the first Miyazaki films to put a boy at the center, which is also good.
Yes.
And then at the end, they were like, oh, good, because the girls were awesome.
So they were fine with it. But at first, they were not paying attention to their audience.
I think that one of the reasons why I love sharing these movies with my daughters is because
it brings them into contact with something sort of ineffably beautiful,
maybe something they can't articulate yet, but it familiarizes them with an idea of art and what you
can get from it that isn't as easily translatable into let's play these songs on spotify let's buy
this backpack let's wait for the sequel interesting do you i don't i guess i don't know like where to
go with the movie like i feel like i need to see it again i would like to see i have something
dubbed as well might unlock it for you because I left confused.
Like my feet are left confused where I was listening to a girlfriend and her boyfriend.
And he's like, the boyfriend's like, what did you think?
He's like, I don't even know if I understood it.
Not even in a bad way.
It was just kind of like there was like a shock. Which is a common refrain after even like the masterpieces of Miyazaki.
Like if you watch Spirited Away, when you get, when the parents are transformed into pigs. And then it watch Spirited Away when you get when the parents are transformed into pigs
and then
it's
Spirited Away
starts to happen.
There is like
a mass confusion
that I think
if you're six or ten
you can be like
it's exciting to know
that there is actually
children's entertainment
that can be
if not legible
like emotionally experienced.
But
and this is
I'm sure this is my failure
as like
big picture host brain but I'm like so what was this? I'm sure this is my failure as like big picture host brain
but I'm like
so what was this?
Like what
is this like
the lie of nostalgia?
Is it
is it about
him finally coming to grips
with the loss of his mother
who you know
had tuberculosis
for decades
after the war?
Like what
what
what was this?
There's a story that he tells
and it was like
I rewatched the scene
where he tells this story about his dad.
Because Mahito the boy is based on him.
And he tells a story about when the war was happening,
his house was one of the only houses that was not burned down.
And there was a family that basically like squatted in the house.
And he's like, my dad and I came back, our whole family.
And my dad walks into the house.
The whole family's like, we're so sorry.
We're so sorry.
We had nowhere to go.
And the dad's like, don't worry about it.
And it's the war.
He brings out chocolate and he gives chocolate to all the kids.
And Miyazaki as a kid was jealous.
He's like, why don't we get chocolate?
He's like, chocolate, this is the war.
And there's a similar scene where the dad in this brings out the chocolate
and when he was making the wind rises one of those children when he was 70 mailed him be like i never
forgot this moment and miyazaki it took him two months during the wind rises to write this kid
back because he had such a fraught relationship with his dad And he's telling the story and he's like,
he ends up being like,
I fought with my dad because he made so much money selling airplanes.
And I loved airplanes, but I was like,
come on, this is fascist, what?
And he's like, but that chocolate, he was 28.
And I was like watching this film, I was like,
oh, this is him trying to come to terms with
how can this person that I had such a complicated relationship with be so human?
And I was just like, once I watched that, I was like, oh, he's trying to come to grips not only with his relationship with his mother who died and was experiencing tuberculosis, but his father who he's like, who is this man who was selling war machines
that I ended up loving
being somebody who was capable of such humanity?
That's tricky to pull off in any movie.
And I think what's beautiful about that
is that this movie is so deeply personal,
as Charles is saying.
It's like it's just ripped through with things
from his own life and his own memory
and his own experience. It's very intentional that Miyato is close in age to
him, I think, and had a similar experience. But what I can't get over, and I'm still like, I get
choked up thinking about it, was the larger universal message at the end of the movie for me,
which elevates beyond a particular Japanese sensibility or Miyazaki's own life, which is
to say that this is a child who is traumatized and like born into fire and war
and killing and escapes into a fantastical world of imagination where his dreams come true,
where he can play with his mother as a child. And that it was like Petit Maman,
the beautiful French movie from a few years ago, which still haunts me. And he is given the choice
to be the king of fantasy world or to be a broken boy in the real world. And he chooses
to go to reality. And that's because that's where his friends are. That's where his family is.
That's what has marked him. That's where he belongs. And it's such an adult sentiment that
maybe took him 80 years to reach. And he's not disparaging the imagination and flying,
talking parakeets of his childhood, but he's saying like, that was part of me.
And I live, but I lived in the world
or I choose the world.
Maybe he's only choosing it now.
His son probably has opinions
about what his dad actually chose.
But I thought the very end,
and then you see the quick glimpse
of the new family that is forming.
And what's the last line?
Like, and after two years, we went back to Tokyo.
And then the work begins.
You know, I get shivers thinking about it.
I think it's a profound statement that most artists don't get to reach it's interesting because he
also does get to spend his entire life inside the fantasy land because he has created one of the most
iconic and memorable visions of fantasy that we've ever seen in movies but it seemed he seemed
disgusted like the old man it was very funny where it was like, Mahito is Miyazaki
and I was like,
is the old man Miyazaki as well?
Is he looking back
at everything he created
being like,
these building blocks,
what were they for?
What was all of this sacrifice?
He's looking almost back
at his career being like,
you gave us so much joy
and you almost seem disgusted
by what it turned you into
a little bit.
And then you fold into the fact
that his son made
the only ugly
Studio Ghibli movie ever.
You know,
with the earwig.
Like, that movie is hideous.
My children like it,
but I can't even look at it.
Well, it's digitally animated, right?
It's awful.
But like,
that's the poison chalice
for his son
that he's angry about,
you know?
It's just,
it works on a number of levels.
I also found the end of it,
the end to be so fascinating
because it's like,
the movie supposes the end of it, the end to be so fascinating because it's like, the movie supposes
for most of it
that somebody does need
to be holding
all of this together,
that somebody does need
to take the old man's position,
the tower master's position.
And then Mahito chooses
at the end to not do that
and then goes back
to his own reality.
And it's still there.
You know, it's like
a commentary on the fact
that we think that we need to tie up all of these loose ends we think that we need to have everything like
neatly put in place perfectly and then to just leave that all behind and choose what you know
choose what you love and like intentionally go back to that like you're saying andy it's like
it's not the most narratively satisfying thing in in movie form but it's kind of really insanely
bold to do that.
I think that's a really crucial observation
because so much of,
I don't want to call it kids entertainment,
but entertainment about kids or magic kids,
there's always the wizard behind the curtain
who's like, this is your burden now.
This is your legacy.
This is your destiny.
You are the boy who lived.
You are all that you have.
You must take on this challenge.
Your life's going to be terrible, but you must
shoulder the burden and fight evil and save
your friends or whatever. And they always do.
And this movie is saying
actually just being alive is tricky.
Sometimes you hit yourself in the head with a rock.
And sometimes your only friend is a weird
old man inside of a bird's mouth.
But forward we must go.
I mean, even his mother,
it was like, I was emotional when
he first finds the
How to Live book
and I'm like
if this was
if this was his mother
because
they forget
basically like
the heron I think tells him
that you're gonna
end up forgetting
so
the fact that he has to say
goodbye to his mother
twice
and that she basically
writes this book on like
here's how you live.
And we see Mahito at the end.
He doesn't do that thing
in a Disney movie
where it's like,
everything is all right.
It's almost like,
we don't know.
He's just looking at his new family
and he's not like chipper
and being like,
I love my new aunt.
And it's just like,
okay, no,
it's probably still going to be hard,
but he chose this path
and he's going to go forward. His aunt hates him. I mean, that's probably still going to be hard, but he chose this path and he's going to go forward.
His aunt hates him.
I mean, that's what she says to him.
But there's also this stuff that I think,
and this is true with all of his movies,
that there's always these elements
that I think are profoundly Japanese
in ways that we can only begin to tease out
or try and understand
in terms of like the cultural significance
of certain objects or family members
or respect between generations.
And one of the recurring motifs, because happens in spirited way too um when sen jihiro goes to the the witch's sister and then she's like call me
grandmother and she becomes her grandmother that happens again in this where she's like he starts
calling his aunt mother which is less at first At first, I'm like, oh, I take everything literally. Was this always
his mother and he was born to two in time?
I'm doing the awful
back-channeling retcon work of an
American fan. It's a cultural sign of respect. But it's more like,
no, you now fill that role in my
life and I accept it. And that was the beginning of the
acceptance.
It's interesting. I think it's the kind of
movie that will, even though it's been quite acclaimed,
will probably improve its reputation over time. He's had both as a filmmaker. He's had films that have been instantly received as all-time classics, and he's had other films that have grown in estimation over the years. His reputation in America has become incredibly strong. I would say since the announcement at the end of The Wind Rises, but more
specifically, the films being added
to Max is
an incredible thing that has happened.
It was not easy to see many of these
movies. You had to buy the
physical media.
I guess at a certain point you could maybe rent them
on Apple for a lot of money or something like that,
but they just were not streaming.
It is remarkable that you can watch either the subbed or dubbed version of all but one film that he's
directed in his entire career. So is this him losing the war a little bit? The fact that it's
available this way, that they're not these little beautiful little art pieces? Because I feel like
even as Miyazaki has grown in stature, especially in the States, I think there has been a little bit of him losing power where it's like, it seemed as if back in the day when he was riding his peak, his movies came out how he wanted them to come out.
Merchandise came out how he wanted it.
There was no theme park.
There is now a Studio Ghibli theme park in Japan.
But you know about the theme park, right?
Oh, he was, I've watched documentaries
about him being like,
it can't be bullshit.
There are no rides.
There's no rides.
It's in the middle of a park
in the Detroit of Japan
with no signs leading to it.
And then there's
an incredible New York Times
magazine piece about
how they're finding it.
And like he sees,
there's like a recreation
of the girl's house
from Totoro
down to like the linens
are in the closet. And it's just the house. And then he saw a line of people girl's house from Totoro down to like the linens are in the closet
and it's just the house.
And then he saw a line of people outside
waiting to look in a hole.
And he's like, aha.
And he waits in line for however many minutes
and he gets to the front of the line.
He looks in the hole and it's a hole.
And he asks the representative of Studio Ghibli,
like, what's going on?
And they're like, well, that hole is to represent
the kind of place where Totoro might be.
And the guy's like, but he wasn't there. And there and they're like well he wouldn't really be there for you
like that is so wild but that's even winning even when I'm not saying Miyazaki sold that at all but
like there is he's talked about how like oh will I even be able to make and this is what I think a
lot of this movie is also about is like is the era that made someone like Miyazaki, where we can get these type of movies, beautiful,
most expensive Japanese movie, can labor over it for years, not a bunch of 3D bullshit.
Once he dies, is there anything left? Is there anyone holding that up still? Does it need to
be held up? And for it to go on on this long he needs to do the theme park
even if it's done in the best way possible he needs to do the HBO Max deal there's way more
like when I was growing up you didn't see this as much Totoro fucking swag you go into Barnes
and Noble now it's it's Target it's everywhere and I'm like that's what makes me a little sad where i'm like oh miyazaki wasn't even immune to market forces yeah i think it's because we perceive him to have
as you eloquently described a kind of punk rock personality a kind of like i am a true artist
and i'm a bitter cynic and i want to do things exactly my way in the kind of appealing, control freak way that we see in auteurs.
And we forget that this is big business
and that these movies have been licensed by Disney
over the years.
His loudest champion in America for years
was John Lasseter.
You know what I mean?
And so obviously Pixar is in some ways
a kind of creative successor
to what Studio Ghibli was creating
and has now kind of evolved and changed
and gotten worse and gotten better.
But also, it's the most...
It's just like you couldn't draw this up more on the nose.
Like, what is the Japanese version?
What is the American version?
Because Pixar is a highly efficient, gleaming story machine
where every quirk is hammered.
It's a commercialized successor.
Yes.
It's hammered and smoothed into a perfectly humming
race car of efficiency
and emotional punch.
And it's profoundly the opposite.
So I feel like Lasseter
championing this is so,
there's something very bittersweet
or not self-aware about this.
It's fascinating
because he, at the time,
obviously he's a very
complicated figure
and has been accused
of terrible things.
But at the time,
he was considered a savior for Miyazaki in America because of what Harvey Weinstein represented, another terrible person, when he was licensing the films.
And, you know, Harvey Weinstein and John Lasseter being the two people who really brought Miyazaki to America in a meaningful way tells you a lot about just the American movie system.
And obviously, Harvey Weinstein, as he so often did, was attempting to recut and refashion all of these movies.
But those movies that those two people were attempting to bring more broadly to, to the States, I think are the movie that kind of cemented his, his, his legend in a lot of ways. Um, I don't think we would even necessarily have a podcast about how do you live slash the boy in the Heron here if not for you know spirited away howls my neighbor
totoro that's sort of like 1989 through 1997 98 period top five is hard with him it's very personal
i think that there are two movies that it would be very hard to not put on your list because they
are so widely acclaimed um i almost want to... I don't know where Spirited Away would stack up for you.
I noted with interest that Bobby, Charles, and I all had it at number one
because it is...
Number one.
It is number one.
Okay, I had a feeling.
I mean, it is widely considered maybe one of the 25 greatest films ever made.
Is it number one in your guys' heart?
Because I like Spirited Away,
and if I'm doing the critic brain thing
it is number one
I don't know if it's the one
that I return to the most
like it's
it's an achievement
but emotionally
it's not the one
where I'm just like
this is for the real heads
that's a good question
so I think that there's something
generationally happening now
with his films
I've never been a
Howl's Moving Castle person
no
but Howl's Moving Castle person. No.
But Howl's Moving Castle in America,
I think is his second most popular or successful movie.
If you look at things like IMDb
and Letterboxd and things like that,
Howl's is a very impactful movie.
I think that Spirited Away is kind of like,
the same way that The Boy and the Heron
and many of his films are deeply indebted
to The Wizard of Oz, Spirited Away is kind of like the same way that The Boy and the Heron and many of his films are deeply indebted to the Wizard of Oz.
Spirited Away is kind of the Wizard of Oz
of Japanese animation where it's sort of like
it feels like for many people it is like an orienting
text. It's like we kind of understand
what the shape and mode of
storytelling is like from these kinds of films
through this movie.
And from Neon Genesis
to Evangelion to
Ghost in the Shell to whatever the other icon, you know, to Satoshi Kon movies.
Spirited Away is like, if you watch this, it'll be easier to understand everything else.
And so I think that's why it retains centrality in the conversation.
But I also still really like it.
I feel like it's gonna be a while before I watch it, though, because I only have a two and a half year old.
So, like, how long, like, how old were your kids when they saw Spirited Away? We watched it. but I also still really like it I feel like it's gonna be a while before I watch it though because I only have a two and a half year old so
like how long
like how old were your kids
when they saw Spirited Away?
We watched it
three years ago
so
seven
and three
Three is young
but she
look let's
let's be honest
there's a lot of throwing up
in that movie
Yes
It's super gross
Look the thing is that I learned i didn't i'm
an only child i didn't know but like the second one just doesn't just gets dragged along like you
kind of can't if the older one wants to do it you can't be like now you sit in this room and watch
something else so you know it'll all come out in the um psychotherapy bills later i guess i mean
if i was three just the entire scene where it's like she's cleaning the bathtub and she's pulling this and like, I was just like, even in my 20s, I'm like, this is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen.
That said, kids have a more intimate relationship with body horror.
I think that is a lot of stuff coming out all the time.
And you're in front of people.
So I can't imagine.
But I don't know what she took away from that other than maybe potential nightmares.
Seeing it again now.
Now it is something that she likes and understands,
but it is not her favorite.
And I tried to keep Mononoke away from them
for a long time until I failed.
They play, I listened to the watch,
they play Zelda.
I feel like Mononoke and Zelda are-
Very, very similar.
So again, it's the kind of thing where it's like,
they now speak that language
of what certain things look like.
Like, yeah, like the Blight in Zelda is Mononoke, basically.
Straight up.
And so they're just used to it.
But we definitely took more care at the beginning with like Totoro, Ponyo, and Kiki were in heavy rotation and are still in heavy rotation.
Yeah.
That I feel like is the starter kit for kids. And maybe some of my list is representative of that
because I'm thinking about what I either am going to show
or have shown my daughter.
What's your number five?
So my number five is Prince Mononoke.
And I think this is one where it's like, it's crazy.
Some people look at you crazy if you put it number five,
but I think it is, the reason I put it there is
my least favorite mode from miyazaki
is the grand sweeping epic and i think this is very much a i'd put this right up there with
peter jackson's lord of the rings films in terms of like what it's doing the scope of it how he
makes the animals look how he makes nature look what he's telling and I think I like this story visually and visually and narratively
but the reason I have it at number five is my favorite version of Miyazaki is a little bit
closer to that emotional core is the more children Ponyo neighbor Totoro type I'm basically teaching
kids what it means to be alive and then I'm teaching people like adults and their parents
what it means to look at your children and yourself.
But I think Princess Mononoke is just an epic, beautiful film.
Can I make a small wrinkle in this?
Yeah.
As we name movies, can I share the...
Because I jotted down what the echoes of each movie that's in Boy and the Heron.
Yes.
And so if you talk about Mononoke,
Boy and the Heron has bloody animal death.
It has tiny, cute white things.
And archery.
Those are the overlaps.
Is Mononoke on your list?
So, this is such a cheat.
I went back and forth.
I kind of have to tie for five and I can't decide because I think artistically
aesthetically
spiritually
it should be Mononoke
that's the one that I've seen
the least amount of times
because of the ages
of my children
and I haven't checked it out
enough on my own
my relationship to that movie
at the moment
is still admiration
more than it is like
into my heart
so five is like
depending on the day
or which child
I'm watching it with
it's Mononoke
or it's Ponyo.
Bobby, it's number two on your list.
This is a big one for you?
I think it's an absolute masterpiece.
I also think it's one of the more, if not the most morally complex film he's ever made.
Every single character is pretty in the gray area of morality.
I agree with that.
And they're all trying to figure out in this really complex,
really political way,
how they're going to exist with each other.
And one of the beautiful things about Mononoke
is that the main character doesn't,
he reserves judgment for every single person
he comes across.
He's willing to let the moral things
that he disagrees with
not preclude him from developing
an understanding of these people.
And I think that's
a pretty radical concept to put into your movie that is also clearly a condemnation of what we're
doing to the environment a common a condemnation of the military industrial complex that has swept
across the world and uh while still specifically speaking about how it manifests in japan and the
movie that i kept coming back to is one that I've critically reassessed for myself
in the last couple of years,
which is Avatar.
And I guess now Avatar 2,
The Way of Water.
In just that it's going for it all.
It's just going to be this sweeping environmental epic
and it's going to honestly make you feel pretty bad
about your existence in the world coming out of it.
And maybe that says more about me
and what I'm looking for in a movie and also
just like I'm just really a big fan of wolves
and they look pretty dope
the whole time also the
main character the woman could
rip my throat out anytime
keep it together Charles
keep it together but Bob your point
is like it's so important to have art
that doesn't champion resolution,
but particularly for children.
Because the world doesn't do that.
And yet everything that we show to children,
it's just like,
and then they became Mighty Pups
and saved Adventure Bay.
Well, that's one thing about Boy in the Heron
is that it's maybe even more existentialist
than Mononoke
about how you have very little ability
to actually tie these grander things
that are going to impact your micro life.
You don't really have that much control over them.
And you might have to just accept that
if you want to keep trudging through this world.
Heron's coming into number five for me eventually.
I have to ask this because Miyazaki is always saying,
he explains his films as if children are way smarter than we take them for.
They understand a language that we don't, like, they get and a lot of adults have forgotten.
Have you, when you show your kids Miyazaki films, do you get the sense that they are understanding it in a way that maybe Americans take for granted?
Where they're like, they don't need words to understand what's happening.
Like,
you feel that?
Play is not linear,
especially like child,
literally child's play.
Like before,
you know,
the age of like six,
seven,
eight,
it's just completely not linear.
It's like,
now it's this,
and now this can fly.
And that,
you know,
and,
and I think so to,
to watch these movies,
like,
okay,
yeah,
they're open to it.
I'll go along with it.
So they,
they're, they're watching the boy in the heron. And like, for me as an adult, I had to shut these movies, it's like, okay, yeah, they're open to it. I'll go along with it. So they're watching The Boy and the Heron.
And for me as an adult,
I had to shut off the story thing where the parakeets come.
I'm like, wait, why is the king here?
What's his relationship?
And everything, I was like-
That's the thing that I was struggling with
as I was watching the movie
was my internal logic demanding clarity,
even knowing I'm sitting in front of a Miyazaki movie,
which is silly,
but you have an expectation especially
when there's like all
of this grandeur
around like this is
the end right this
is the final one if
this is the final one
then you expect some
sort of like concluding
statement but I think
you guys very elegantly
clarified like what
the concluding
statements are in the
and the parakeets are
funny the parakeets
are so funny it's so
funny with that they're
like holding the knives
the butcher's knives
behind their back.
That is just great
visual humor.
So fucking funny.
So technically,
all four of us
have Mononoke.
I have it at number four.
We all have Spirited Away.
Does everybody have Totoro?
I kind of like
was going to cheat
and put Ponyo and Totoro
together just because
those two movies
are so like thematically
and emotionally linked
in my mind
and also for the interest of putting something different on my list that we could talk about
because i know you guys are not how's moving castle people necessarily um i think that movie
is really funny i don't think it necessarily has like the most interesting ending and it's kind of
like overly sweet at the end of it but i like it a lot which one you mean how's moving oh how's yeah yeah i mean i
think i put princess mononoke on my list because i was like this is the maximalist like lords of
arabia of these movies and i think it's incredible that he reached for something like that my instinct
was to put howls on but then i put howls on tv and i started watching and i was like this isn't
really my movie i don't have a connection to it the connections christian bale um moving through
fire yeah uh young people
becoming older vice versa oh good well that comes up in other movies as well um did anybody else
okay so totoro you know totoro is like a transformative movie it is like the it's the
most confectionary i think of his movies in that there is an inherent sweetness
to what is happening,
even though there's a really sad core
and actually kind of a sad ending to this movie as well.
But I think it is remembered in part
because it has the most plushy toys associated with it.
It's because everyone wants Totoro to be his Mickey Mouse.
Yeah.
But Totoro is not.
To your point earlier,
Totoro shows up two or three times,
just roars and sleeps.
It's just like a creature that never gets explained.
But Totoro-
Nor Catbus.
Catbus just shows up.
Here's the thing.
I will say, I rewatched all the Miyazaki films during the pandemic.
And the one that had the most profound effect was Totoro.
Because I think there is a dark current
that people forget about that movie,
which is their mother is sick
and is essentially these two sisters
and the older sister having to come to terms
with the fear of,
it reminded me when you're young
and you first experience your parents getting sick
and you're just like, wait, what?
This person that I love is frail?
Yeah.
And they might not be okay forever.
And it was like watching that, you know, around 30, I was like, oh, I had forgotten how that felt to see adults in your life and have to grow up overnight.
And that movie does such a elegant job of not spelling it out for you.
The sadness of growing up and learning that experience
is just played so beautifully and deftly under the core,
where it's like, as a kid, you could watch it and be like,
oh, there's great fluffy animals, Totoro.
And as an adult, you're like, oh, this is what it feels like
to know that
your parents one day are going to die or that they're not going to be okay I think Totoro and
Spirited Away are his masterpieces because they're like the primary school and graduate school version
of wrestling with the lack of safety in the world yeah um they are they are both deeply concerned
with the same project but approach it really differently and I think that Totoro it but it
but I I really don't want to underrate Totoro
because I think Spirited Away is flashier,
it's more ambitious,
it's more challenging in a lot of ways.
But Totoro is so beautiful.
And the relationship between the sisters
is maybe the best relationship
between any characters in any movie that he ever made.
And it's very, very haunting.
And the role the woods play, you know,
is a source of like imagination and hope and adventure.
But it's also scary.
She's alone.
She gets lost.
You know, they're dredging the waterways,
looking for her body in the background
of a few scenes later in that movie.
There's this moment in Totoro where
Amei, of course, sees Totoro for the first time
before anyone else sees the character a couple times
actually and she runs up to her older sister and her father and she tells them that she's seen this
figure which they have no idea what this looks like and they have no reason to believe that
this figure would be hanging around the house and they both both characters just immediately
believe her even though she's the youngest character, which in so many films, so many movies and TV,
the father would dismiss that
and then they'd walk away
and you'd sort of understand
a simplicity
to the emotional dynamic of that
where the kid is frustrated
that the father doesn't believe her
because she's a young child.
And in this,
they immediately believe her.
And so the emotional stakes
are different
and it's much more about
believing in the imagination of everyone around you. And, you know, to Charles's point, like treating kids like they're smart, like treating kids like they are worthy of believing what they have to say. And it's whether it's whether it's like in Totoro I think it's Kanta
the kid you know
who's the friend
who's like
who's taking his job seriously
like patrolling the neighborhood
to even in the new movie
Mahito
like putting on
his little uniform
the whole time
the idea that it's
it's not just like
kids can be crack wise
and potentially be wizards
it's like
you're part of the society
you are responsible
this is my
this is a segue
to my number five
which is Kiki's Delivery Service which is like very much about this like it is very much about little kids
believing and i'm why i feel like i'm experiencing experiencing this in real time the idea that they
have responsibilities and independence and then being confronted by the fact that they don't or
that they what they imagine to be possible will be challenged and then what it means to feel
challenged kiki is such a strange movie it feels like weirdly one of the most conventional or that what they imagine to be possible will be challenged and then what it means to feel challenged.
Kiki is such a strange movie.
It feels like weirdly one of the most conventional Miyazaki movies
and also one that I still don't fully understand
because so much of it is happening in a real world
in which we accept that there are witches.
And Kiki is a character who basically, as a witch,
is taking her year of independent sabbatical away from witchery
in which she builds entrepreneurially a delivery service.
Well, she's still a witch, but she has to discover what kind of witch she is.
And she has to leave her loving family.
And her family is like, goodbye, 12-year-old.
Yes.
Go fly into the night with your talking cat.
But the movie has so many odd rules where it's like every town has their own witch.
Yes.
And the town is like,
yes, I accept that this is our,
you will be our witch this month, Kiki.
You're on loan.
It's like English Premier League soccer.
Just loaning out witches
to different towns.
Can I just say,
I'm sorry Mallory isn't here,
but if we're talking about
the sexiest people
in like all of like animation,
I am in love with the bakery dude
from Kiki's delivery service. I think in love with the bakery dude from Kiki's Delivery Service.
I think he's just the perfect man.
But to your guy's point,
why I love Kiki's Delivery Service.
Wait, the baker's husband?
The baker's husband?
Brad Garrett?
Yeah.
Inimitable vocal performance
where he goes, huh?
This has one of the great
voice casts of all time
because it is a young Kirsten Dunst
who, of course,
her real life nickname is Kiki,
plays the young girl,
and Phil Hartman portrays the cat
Gigi and uh
world class Phil Hartman stuff
to your point I think what makes Kiki's
deliveries are so funny is like
if you look at how American
animation like treats work like if you
look at like Cinderella classic movie
it is like Cinderella
is at her lowest when she
is with her with her uh aunts and cousins she has
to clean and this is oh the dream is to be a rich princess where it's the proletariat Cinderella
where in a Miyazaki film spirited way Kiki's delivery service even even the boy in the herring
you have scenes where it's like if you're a child in this world, you need to learn how to clean floors
and you need to learn how to listen to your parents
and do these things and make money.
And care for people and be part of a community.
There's never a thing in his movies where it's like,
okay, kids, the dream is to become a rich millionaire
so you can hire a bunch of butlers to do it for you.
It's like, no, if you're a part of this community,
these are the things that'll make you a beautiful human.
The villains in Kiki
are the snobs.
It's the witch in the beginning
and the rich girls
who don't appreciate
the fish cake
made by the old lady.
You gotta respect the elderly.
Yeah.
Okay, Andy,
I know you're one and two.
Right.
Is there a film
that has not been named yet
that is on your list?
You're thinking
Boy and the Heron, possibly.
I decided not to do that
because it's too soon.
I probably,
I have a feeling
it could be my number five.
Bob has it at number four,
the Boy and the Heron.
Kiki is my number three.
Okay.
Top three.
Wonderful.
Can I just also say,
I think everyone here
probably shares this,
they're all good.
Yeah, they're all great.
It's very, very hard
to do this.
And by the way,
if we ever want to do
like a Patreon version of this episode,
of the show where we do like the Studio Ghibli movies
that aren't his,
like,
like Arrietty,
pretty good.
Definitely.
My kids went through a deep pandemic,
like,
you know,
like when Marnie was here.
Yeah.
Where it's just like all these weird,
sad dead girl stories.
Pompoko is amazing.
That one's insane.
That one's actually like dangerous.
Yeah.
But I mean like Red Turtle, Princess Kaguya, like there are so That one's actually like dangerous. Yeah, but I mean like
Red Turtle,
Princess Kaguya,
like there are so many
good films from the studio.
The Yamadas?
They love the Yamadas.
I feel like one of the things
that I neglected to mention
when you were talking
about Studio Ghibli in general
which is that Takahata
died in 2018
and when Miyazaki dies
then I think we'll find out
what was really happening
because part of why
I think that this became
a commercialized structure
was because Miyazaki realized he was at the end
and legacy became more important and Takahata was gone.
And then they started thinking,
okay, theme park, licensing in America, my final film.
And they started moving all the chess pieces around.
But nevertheless, I think you're right.
You could watch...
I would say like 90% of the Studio Ghibli movies are good.
Or like at least a B.
But it's funny because he's, Miyazaki has said it,
like interviewers have asked him,
yeah, I think an interviewer asked him around when the wind rises,
they're like, yeah, what happens when you're gone?
And he was like, to Studio Ghibli, he's like,
it's all going to fall apart and maybe that's fine.
And I think he had a change of heart when he realized.
I think so too.
Where he's like
not only for me
to continue making films
but for Japan
to continue this.
My
my legacy
is going to be like
how can I make
this bigger
so more animators
because
you brought up
Neon Genesis
Evangelion
Anno
who voices
one of the characters
in When Rises
the protagonist
came up under miyazaki
there is a there is a protege their entire people who movies and careers that are directly indebted
to him so i think even the boy in the heron is a little bit him trying to come to terms with
what happens to this medium i love after i'm gone i think that's right um this is's right. This is like what Sean's doing with the big picture.
He's trying to just see who's going to step up.
Yeah, exactly.
It's time for the neon Genesis Evangelion of the big picture.
What's that going to be?
Globalize it.
Time for me and Charles talking about the most ripped characters
in animation history episode.
The baker's up there, dude.
What about Castle in the Sky?
What about the Sky Pirates
dudes who can
rip their shirts
with their pectoral muscles
I mean if we're talking about
when nobody's
doing the like
punching in the stomach fight
yeah that's ridiculous
if we're talking about
you know
ripped muscles
and the sexiest characters
guys
no one's brought up
the gem
Porco Rosso
what
speak on it
Miyazaki has called this his failure
because he's like i'm supposed to make movies for kids porco rosso is such a
fascinating film to me because it marries basically what he loves which is airplanes
with this very old hollywood story about an airplane pilot who was cursed to have a pig's
head, but the story is not about him trying to not become human again. The story is like,
can I fall in love with this woman? And what does fascism mean? And it's like, I was watching the
first 15 or 20 minutes today. And it's just like the first 15 or 20 minutes is this pig-headed man
trying to save
these little girls and the little girls are in this ship and they're in peril and they're just
laughing and squealing and having the best time and i'm like i don't know what it is about porco
rosso that imprinted so much on me but i'm like every single time i watch it i'm like this shouldn't
work because perfect example spirited away what pigs mean in that movie is completely different.
Where it's like when...
It's like a prison.
It's a prison.
It's like that story is about like,
what is happening to Japanese society as they embrace capitalism.
And you're seeing them eat and eat and eat.
And in Pork or Roast, it's like,
he just has a pig's head now, guys.
Roll with it.
But also, don't we meet the character
when he's just like listening to the radio
on a beach drinking?
Drinking wine.
And basically he's like,
he has to save the kids.
And he's still like,
to the guy hiring him,
he's like,
yeah, it's still going to cost extra.
Like, I was just like,
what the?
For the Daddington perspective,
Porco Rosso is the only miss
in the catalog.
They would never want to see it again.
For me, it's goals.
Like, that is. I want to be Porco Rosso is the only miss in the catalog. They would never want to see it again. For me, it's goals. Like, that is...
I want to be Porco Rosso.
But they won't watch that one again.
Is it because of the boy element?
Are they just like, no?
It's a man who's also a pig.
They're like, there's no way in for us.
And for context, some of you know this,
or listeners might know this,
they won't watch Star Wars
because they're like
why do I care about a magic boy
like they are
like they are very
but magic girl different
magic girl would be different
has way more to say
yeah
I agree with this
I agree with this
so
I'm torn
see because then we mentioned
Castle in the Sky
which I have a very
I really have a lot of fondness for
even though the vocal performances
kind of drag me out
although that said
Mark Hamill
back for more in this one.
Yeah, that's true.
He's the one who's like,
Sheeda, the power of Laputa.
You must understand, you are a princess of Laputa.
One of our great
vocal actors.
But that's not on my list.
I feel like it's all in flux,
but I put Wind Rises.
Yeah, Wind Rises is my number three.
I think that it's an in flux, but I put Wind Rises. Yeah, Wind Rises is my number three. Such a good film.
I think that it's an important film,
not just that even though it's no longer like,
ah, that was the capper.
He finally lifted the curtain and showed us the wizard.
It's not that.
I found it really moving to see this film
and realize that he is an artist,
first and foremost, always, like in any medium,
that there's no real fantasy element in this,
but he's still the same storyteller,
even within the limits
that he set for himself in this film.
I find it very moving
and incredible that it's not about lung cancer,
that it's more about tuberculosis and war,
because I feel like the secret killer
is coming from inside the house.
A lot of cigs in this movie.
A lot of darts.
There are aspects of The Wind Rises.
I'll tell you what.
I really like a projected biopic.
That is when a director takes on a biopic
and they're like, this is about me.
Obviously, that was a very funny point of discussion
around Oppenheimer this year,
where it was sort of like, oh my God,
a genius with all these great ideas
and he can't figure out how to put them all together.
He's got to get all these artisans to come in and teach him.
Get ready for Maestro, everyone.
Strap in.
Maestro is the apotheosis of the projected biopic.
This is also a projected biopic,
but it's got a second layer to it,
which is that it is,
to speak to the point that you were making
about his parents earlier,
him finding empathy for his father
by telling a story about a person who is not his father,
that he is looking at the story of the man who created the Mitsubishi A6M plane and who has this
kind of windswept adoration for time in the sky, but is also a part of the machinery of war,
of capitalism, of the fascism that you keep pointing
to, Charles, that the two things are kind of inextricable.
That the militarization and industrialization of Japan and the growth of that country and
the growth of this level of manufacturing is inextricable from being a world power and
a world player.
And there are huge parts of this movie that are just like men in cars talking about
whether or not they're going to be able to perfect the plane you know in many ways it doesn't have to
be an animated movie but the fact that it comes to the place that it does and that it has these
breathtaking aerial sequences and that you know the poster for this movie is a woman under an
umbrella regarding the sky it's not a person in a. And it's because it's about something that is more
metaphysical and more emotional and ultimately about love and discovering who you are.
So it's weird because I think on any given day, this would be my favorite of his movies,
even though it is the least indicative of the kind of filmmaker that I think that he is. And
so it feels weird to be like, actually, it's not Spirited Away, it's The Wind Rises. But I loved
that he chose to end his career on this note.
So when he came back, I was a little, I wouldn't say I was disappointed.
That would be silly.
But I was surprised because it was a great mic drop by kind of zagging at the last second.
Nevertheless, I still have.
But also, when you put it that way, like, I have more respect for a guy who's just like,
yes, I have serious feelings, but also parakeets.
Like, he wasn't disavowing
the folly of his youth, you know?
He was like, this is also 100% me.
But also this speaks to the contradiction
of Miyazaki where it's like,
he'll do a Porco Rosso
or he'll do like a Wind Rises
that are not children's films.
And then you'll get this
pang in his chest
where he's just like,
I gotta go, like,
I gotta do one for the children.
And I'm like,
would we, would it have been a fitting end to end on a miyazaki film that was not a children because he he to some degree i feel like he holds children in higher regard than he
does adults which is also a weird thing when you're watching his films where you're just like you have so much disgust for pretty much
the ages of like 20 to 50 and you love children and you love old people and it's like the boy in
the heron feels like that times a thousand where it's like the perfect people in the boy in the
heron are the old ladies these are the people that he's like i want to show you them and i want to
show you why mojito is someone we should be rooting for the rest his father fuck him and his aunt hates him
at the risk of sounding a little too like film critics you know chomping on a cigar for saying
this but like isn't that kind of thematically resonant with the building blocks that he has to
stack in the end of uh boy in the heronon. Those could be his movies in his mind.
It doesn't necessarily matter what order you put them in
as long as they stack on top of each other
and you think that this will hold your world up together.
He's just like, I'm just out here collecting blocks
and doing with them what I need to.
I have all of these stories in my mind.
But that's what's cool about someone like this
is he's a mechanic and a designer.
He creates and he also builds.
And they're not the same, but when they come together,
that's usually when you get a really great artist.
Okay.
I think it's worth saying, like the conversation you guys were having before
about the future of Studio Ghibli and what it means and things,
it's almost unfair to put this all on one guy
because he is entirely himself.
He's sui generis.
There are very few artists working in any medium
that do what he does.
So I feel like his retirement or passing,
whatever it may end up happening,
shouldn't preclude the future arrival
of other well-intentioned artistic animated movies.
Of course, of course.
He is his own studio,
even though he literally has a studio.
It's still possible, I think, sometimes to see these glimpses of that.
It's kind of anarchic, like storytelling spirit in some other animation
or in some other kids' entertainment, and I go to it.
I mean, this is way too on brand,
but the way that play is presented
in bluey is in of a spirit with the way that story unfolds in miyazaki and like so you can track that
separate and apart from the artist hopefully or else we're all doomed before we all uh go to the
big castle in the sky maybe we should just give our top fives clearly so that listeners can know
what we believe.
Bob, do you want to start
with your five?
Sure.
At five, I have
Howl's Moving Castle.
At four, I have
Boy and the Heron.
At three, I cheated
and put Ponyo and Totoro together.
At two, I have
Princess Mononoke.
And at one,
I have Spirited Away.
I have to cheat in my top five
because Sean's been doing it
for years.
I haven't cheated in a long time.
I haven't had the chance.
I didn't cheat today, though,
so you're the only cheater among us.
Charles, what's your top five?
Oh, you cheated as well?
Okay.
Well, we'll wait to find out yours.
Five, Princess Mononoke.
Four, Ponyo loves ham.
Three, Parker Rosso.
Two, My Neighbor Totoro.
And number one, Spirited Away.
Okay, Andy, what is your five?
My cheat is Ponyo and Mononoke.
Ponyonoke.
Woodwatch.
Woodwatch.
Windrises at four four kiki at three
totoro at two
and spirited away
which honestly
we should just do
a hall of fame episode
about someday
because I feel like
we didn't really talk
about this movie
but holy shit
how do I get it
on the rewatchables
is really the question
wait do you
actually this is
has bill ever seen
spirited away
I'm 100%
no way
is bill going to
sabbatical
like what can we do?
I don't know.
I don't know.
We got maybe a letter writing campaign?
You tell me if this will get me fired,
but I do have access to the Rewatchables feed,
so if you guys want to just fire that up right now,
I can just let it rip.
Or we could just casually rebrand my other podcast
as The Rewatch and see if he notices.
I feel like he's not a regular listener.
Do you think, what is the chance that we could get
Bill and Chris Ryan to watch
Spirited Away for the first time?
Quite literally zero.
Zero?
Quite literally zero.
Yeah.
Y'all don't believe enough.
I'm in LA now.
Maybe there's a way.
Land of dreams.
Maybe we can conspire
a watch-along of Spirited Away
in which we can talk about the themes,
the weirdness, the fun.
Yeah.
That lets us hang out.
It's a two-hour film.
Yeah, I'm game.
Okay.
Well, we'll think about it.
My top five is Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke,
The Wind Rises, My Neighbor Totoro, and Spirited Away.
Guys, this was very insightful and fun.
Thank you so much.
Sorry to Amanda.
I met her outside and she was just like,
you guys need to have a love fest. I don't want to ruin it. The only person who's sorry is Amanda. I met her outside and she was just like, I just guys want, you guys need to have a love fest.
I don't want to ruin it.
The only person who's sorry
is Amanda, okay?
Because Amanda is not experiencing
the wonder of Hayao Miyazaki.
She's got a two-year-old,
so give it time.
It's coming.
I'm wondering if I can be
the agent of introduction there.
Uncle Anime over here.
How do I say,
oh yeah, let's,
why don't Nox come over
for a play date
and we'll hang out.
What's the first one?
Pop in.
Well, Alice already kind of sat through Ponyo once when she was like 18 months.
And she liked it?
Yeah, yeah.
She was locked and loaded the whole time.
But that's a different time.
Like now, she's two and a half and we'll watch an entire film in a sitting.
Like we've been to the movies a couple of times now.
So I feel like if I put on Kiki, like will she finish Kiki?
I think so.
She might.
It's very entertaining.
Yeah.
Totoro is shorter.
Totoro is a good way to start also.
Can I just make a pitch for you as Uncle Miyazaki?
I think you should just fully commit to cosplaying as Miyazaki
and wear these, like, humble work pants
and just have a heater burning in your hand at all times.
If I could grow a beard like that, I would.
I'm just going to put that out there.
I just feel like you come over,
you pick up Knox and you just say like,
look, I have something to show you.
No free ads,
but there's never been a man
that's made chain smoking look cooler.
Maybe Chris Ryan,
but Miyazaki?
Back in the day.
Andy, Charles, Bob,
thank you very much.
If you have not seen
The Boy in the Heron,
we highly recommend it.
Let's go to my conversation
about Anatomy of a Fall
with Amanda right now.
Okay, Amanda Dobbins, the co-host of this podcast is here.
Hello.
We're here to talk about Anatomy of a Fall.
This is a movie.
This is the weird times that we're living in. This is a movie. This is the weird times
that we're living in.
This is a movie that opened,
it won the Palme d'Or in May
at Cannes,
at the Cannes Film Festival,
which you and I did not attend.
And it opened in movie theaters
in October.
And it has done
solid arthouse business,
but it's not streaming
anywhere right now,
despite the fact that it had
opened before a movie, say, like The Holdovers, which is also on VOD right now, despite the fact that it had opened before
a movie, say like The Holdovers, which is also on VOD right now. And so we're in this kind of
complicated time where when's the right time to talk about a movie? And we learned after the
Golden Globe nominations that this movie is firmly competing for Best Picture.
This movie is in it.
Yes.
Yeah.
And so it's one of our duties really to spend a significant amount of time speaking in depth about every film that is competing. And it's been such a robust slate and it's been such a crazy October, November, December that we wanted to try to find a time to talk about this movie. Some people may not have seen it. If they haven't seen it, you probably don't want to listen to this part of the episode because we are going to completely spoil a movie because the spoiling of the movie is kind of inherent
to understanding
and exploring
what this movie
is really about.
Yes.
It's directed by
Justine Trier.
It's her fourth film
and it is
a huge leap forward,
I think.
I've seen two of her
three other films
and those films
were these kind of
interesting,
like,
dramedies
that have
unusual tone.
Her last film,
Sybil,
from 2019,
which I like, is where she first started collaborating with Sandra Holler.
Which I like.
Which I like.
And my wife, Sandra Holler.
And Sandra Holler is a star of Anatomy of a Fall.
It's a movie about a woman who's a writer who very early in the film discovers that her husband has died from a fall at their home.
Actually, their son discovers her husband.
So before we start getting into the plot details, and as I rewatched the film, I wrote every single plot detail.
I know. I checked in at like 1030 last night after I got home from a different film.
Just to see where you were, because you promised you're going to fill out the outline.
And I couldn't scroll to the end of it on my phone because you were just writing that but it is
it is very helpful I re-watched it last week but this is a film where the details matter I mean it
is in many ways I said whether it's a whodunit is an interesting question it is an interesting question. It is certainly a procedural. It is certainly a courtroom drama.
It is certainly a movie about, well, like the truth or can you know the truth and the different
sides of the truth? And so what you're told and when and the specific accumulation of detail
is actually very important. So though I clan you a lot for your documents and spreadsheets,
in this case, I thank you. Thank you. I think it's important because you're right. The movie
is an accumulation of incidences and remembrances and what we remember versus how we interpret the
past and the way that the past is sometimes captured is a huge part of this movie. Both
Sondra Holler's character, who's also named Sondra, which is slightly confusing,
and her husband Samuel, played by Samuel Tice, who's also named Sandra, which is slightly confusing, and her husband Samuel,
played by Samuel Tice, who's also named Samuel in the film, which is also confusing.
It's not confusing. It's part of the text because there is another element of like what, you know,
art versus real life and what, you know, how artists draw inspiration or what is the inspiration
of fiction? What is the difference between fiction and real life
and truth and imagination?
So it is clearly intentional.
And the way that they capture their life
in photographs, in recordings throughout the film,
in their own written fiction,
in the memories of their child,
in the recreation of events in this story that may or may not be
truthful, is this fascinating swirl. And so on its face, I think you're right that there are like
clear genre tentpoles that are holding this movie up. You know, who is responsible for the death of
this man is a true crime trope that will power you through in an entertaining conventional way.
But the more you think about the
movie and the more you kind of interrogate the movie the way that sandra is interrogated throughout
the second half of this film the more you may i think better come to understand like how you see
the world how you see relationships um i think it's a pretty deep movie i think it's very entertaining
um i think it's a very interesting movie to watch with your partner. I don't know if you had a chance to watch it with your partner.
I did actually.
And then we had basically no discussion and went to bed.
So I don't know what that's about.
I mean, wow.
You may have an anatomy of a fall.
Yeah, I was going to say.
Some unexplored feelings.
It's a two and a half hour film.
Yeah.
And so we were pushing like bedtime for both of us. We discussed the central question and came to a pretty quick agreed resolution on it and then went to bed.
But we didn't discuss any of the marriage aspects.
Did you like this movie?
I really did.
Yeah.
I wouldn't say it's like my favorite movie of the year.
And so it's just a great movie year, I guess, because this is another
one where I'm like, oh, this one, you know, it's like a European Film Awards. And this one, you
know, has been nominated for like 45 Golden Globes. And it's, there are so many different
movies and like in contention this year. And so many movies that people are like really fired up
about. I'm intellectually fired up about this movie movie it's a very cerebral movie that i would
say you know and i think where emotion is deployed is like is part of it so i i find a hard time
being like getting like really like yeah raw anatomy of a fall like a two-hour exploration of
you know marriage and truth but no it's it as you said
there's a lot to talk about um very engaging i've been thinking about it a bit in conversation with
may december actually because another spin on true crime and sort of you know our outside interest
in relationships people doing bad things the celebrity of regular people too
exactly which is an interesting concept to be exploring i think this is kind of does it
from both sides and and ultimately is more about the the one person and kind of like the internal workings of of the accused person as opposed to
like like media commentary but there is a little bit of it before we dig into the details of the
plot i want to ask you just like a personality test question yeah now bob you've seen this film
right i'll ask you the question too then um Do you believe, regardless of what you think the truth is of the events that are portrayed in the film,
that the Sondra character is a sociopath?
No.
Bob?
Sociopath? No.
I think she is a pretty repressed person,
which is part of why I think the performance is kind of unbelievable.
We can talk about that more as we get into the details.
I think she's a difficult person.
Does she have narcissistic personality disorder?
I don't know.
At some point.
Answer the question. No, because, like, this is, like, the problem with all modern fiction now is that we're so therapized that, like, you, you know, explain and get away.
What's the, what is the recent movie where it's like the answer is oh salt burn where it's just
like oh he's a sociopath so like that explains all of it that is boring she probably had some
narcissistic tendencies like as do we all looking right at you buddy um but like but you know what
i mean like do i we are at minute 10 too early to start accusing people of having disorders in the pod started it but it's
like you know i don't want to like just bring out the textbook and explain away all this stuff
because i think that sort of that diminishes like what is interesting about this and and what this
film accomplishes in terms of exploring like how people are to each other yeah no i agree i mean i
think i ask in part
because that is the thing that we reach for
when we're trying to better understand these stories.
And this story isn't based on a true story,
but it also kind of is.
Justine Triet, the filmmaker,
has said that Amanda Knox,
your namesake, I'm sorry to bring that up.
It's a family name!
Before she was born!
But she was a big inspiration for this.
You know, this is a story about a person from a different country,
maybe or maybe not committing a violent act while in this kind of land of unknown.
And so the movie opens quite, quite fascinatingly.
The first 10 minutes of this movie are so disorienting.
You know, we, the first thing. They're all time. disorienting you know we the first they're all
time it's really it's really well done um the first image another big sound design movie
very important to the plot points as well well when i was re-watching it with my wife i was kind
of like just hang with it hang on you know because there's something kind of really unsettling about
the beginning but we meet the sandra character and she's being interviewed by this journalist and it's a very kind of insinuating almost flirtatious or seduction kind of conversation
that's happening but it's a little hard to suss that out because about three minutes into the
conversation an instrumental version of 50 cents pimp begins playing and not just playing but
playing so loudly from the attic of this home
that we soon learn is in the french alps and it is jarring and they're trying to continue to have
this flirtatious conversation whilst this just hilarious musical choice is playing in the
background and it almost feels like there's something wrong with the movie you know like
the levels are off or and you're kind of like what is and and sandra is not she's she's not disturbed by this she
recognizes that this is an undermining marital tactic that has probably happened in some way
before right and the interviewer whose name is zoe i think is like what is going on here like
where am i? Really uncomfortable.
Yeah.
I can come back if you need.
We can do this another time.
I mean, we've done interviews before.
Like, you could imagine
if you were trying to do an interview
and someone just started playing some 50 Cent
really loudly in the room,
you'd be like, is this interview over now?
And I thought it was a very clever choice
for making us uneasy in this movie
and making us feel like we've invaded
someone's intimate space
and that there's something not right
in this intimate space.
Yeah.
This steel drum instrumental choice also
is just so disorienting.
You could talk over most anything else,
but there is something like
you've been somewhere in public and then suddenly like steel drums are going and you're just like
I don't know where I am anymore it's really I did also in my screening it wasn't clear to me
that the rest of the crowd immediately recognized the song choice but of course I
for our generation I just's a forever song.
It is genuinely really funny
and instantly recognizable.
But I guess for others,
there are like layers to it.
Anyway, an amazing opening.
This was the first film
that screened at New York Film Festival
at Lincoln Center
at 10 in the morning.
About five minutes in,
there was kind of a lot of people
that were confused
and seemingly were not
sure about that joke um so you know the film kind of proceeds with the conclusion of this interview
because it's just impossible for them to continue talking in a meaningful way and we get a cutaway
and then we start to see daniel who is uh sandra and samuel's son whose vision is impaired and Samuel's son, whose vision is impaired, and he's out for a walk in the neighborhood around their home.
With his dog.
He's walking his dog.
Who's named Snoop.
Snoop.
Absolutely one of the great dogs.
The winner of the Palm Dog Award this year,
which is very exciting.
The annual award given to the best dog in a movie at the Cannes Film Festival.
One of the best awards we have.
Best dog at the Oscars.
Just do it.
Just what are we waiting for? This is so easy. a layup america nevertheless uh snoop that they could vote on
remember when they had speed force or whatever like why don't they actually just have like a
crowd i want a picture like francis ford coppola voting for best dog i don't want the public to
vote i want warren baity to cast his ballot you You know, in like two days, Francis Ford Coppola is going to do an Instagram post about like the
best dogs in movies. Someone send him the tip and he'll do it. He's game.
He is on a 24-month megalopolis marketing tour and I support him. So no shame there.
Snoop discovers the body and the body turns out to be Samuel. It's his father, and he has clearly fallen from a great height,
and there is this indelible image when Sandra comes outside
that I think is the poster of the film,
which is sort of like seen from overhead,
the body laying on the ground, the blood staining the snow,
and Samuel, or excuse me, Sandra and Daniel bereft.
Very quickly, the film leads to an autopsy
and then the title sequence and we're off this is
a procedural crime thriller it's not a domestic drama in this the way we might have been expecting
the only other thing to note is that in that entire opening we don't meet samuel we don't see
him we don't hear his voice we don't i mean we hear his expression through 50 cent but then the
steel drums.
But the first time that we see him is like in the snow, dead.
The second time we see him is in a series of photographs throughout the credit sequence, which I noted the second time I watched the film, the way that they use images of maybe happier times,
maybe the performance of happier times throughout the movie, which I think is a very clever filmmaking tactic.
And then soon, Sandra is visited by Vincent,
who is a friend who also happens to be a lawyer and maybe was something more than that.
And he begins talking to her about the events.
And it soon becomes clear that he's going to represent her
because she is going to be accused of murdering her husband,
who we learn as the film goes on is in the attic
because they
are renovating the home, and there's a lot of renovation and work that is being done up there.
He spends a lot of his time up there because he is leading this renovation, and the insinuation
is that she has pushed him from, or maybe even struck him in the attic and forced him to fall
from the top. You know, Vincent tours the home. He starts helping to cook
during this visit, which indicates a
level of intimacy that
would be unusual if your
lawyer were to visit you and you were accused of a crime.
We learn quickly that the autopsy
is inconclusive.
And then the first note
of grand suspicion hits when
it becomes clear that Sandra
has a bruise on her arm.
And she says that it's because she bangs her arm against a countertop as she walks through her home on a regular basis. That she's always bumping it.
And that's where the bruise comes from.
But anyone watching the movie, immediately their radar goes up and they're like,
so there was a struggle and you were grabbed or hit by your partner
and in the act of killing him, he hurt you?
And the movie does this 20 more times
where you're like, that doesn't seem right.
What is she hiding?
And so this film ultimately becomes this Rorschach test
of did she or did she not do it?
That is the primary question of the movie.
Daniel, of course, this young boy is bereft. And then as the... I'm curious what you think of the first primary question of the movie um you know daniel of course this young boy is
bereft and then as the i'm curious what you think of like the first 45 minutes of the movie because
the first 45 minutes of the first act of the movie is the investigation which reveals very
little ultimately we see the possibilities of how the fall could have transpired we see
what daniel may or may not have heard or seen as they attempt to recreate the day's events which is so insane when the french
police come in and they start doing some sort of like screaming volume test and they try to make
sandra herself do it like over the over the pimp instrumental. In order to recreate where he was and what he could have heard to test his memory of his interpretation of how they were.
I mean, it's just like, it's a farce.
It's interesting, like, it shines a light on the absurdity of murder investigation in the first place.
Yes.
That, like, what would we be able to prove or not prove by doing this kind of work?
It's almost unscientific,
and yet we rely upon these things so much
to determine the outcome of these events.
So it's an interesting choice.
And then, you know, we learn very quickly
that Sandra has been indicted
and she's also confined to house arrest.
She's not forced to be in prison,
which we learned is a controversial decision
in her country. And then she and Vincent get to the business of preparing for the trial.
They do this kind of rehearsal interrogation, which I thought was fascinating because she
starts talking about what was going on with Samuel at the time of his death.
They're presenting a case of suicide.
And she's giving information slowly.
What I was asking myself during this scene was, is she performing her angst about revealing these sordid details of his life?
Or is she actually agonized over the truth of what's happening?
Or is she just completely making everything up?
Well, there's another wrinkle to it, which this movie takes place in France.
Sandra is German.
And so she and Samuel, Samuel is French.
They've come to his home, like in the French Alps.
And yeah, we should just say also the house is just like at the top of this like unbelievable
mountain it's the most beautiful setting it's like it's yeah it's astonishing and how perverse to
make such a beautiful setting this right well and you know i think that's like part of it of
you know it's like instagram versus reality for lack of a better term but it's like
the view looking out from their house is just like these immaculate mountains. And then their house is like a shambles and like halfway through renovation.
And also everyone's unhappy.
And there was a tragic death there.
So anyway, Samuel is French.
Sandra's German.
They're in their marriage.
They speak in English.
And but Sandra's going to be tried in a French court and so even
though she is used to communicating in in English and their marriage is like conducted in English
she's going to be expected to communicate all this in French so translation and or
lost in translation like you know the how do we understand each other
like different languages like literally but also metaphorically come into play as well so
some of it is that in that rehearsal she's speaking english right but then they're going
to have to translate it into french so this comes up again during the trial.
One of the interesting things that keeps happening when she's trying to figure out how to communicate about Samuel with Vincent in this room and they're in her home is that she keeps making
comparisons between her and Samuel.
She keeps circling back to herself and he keeps saying, don't talk about yourself.
It's this, don't focus on him.
This is about him, which is this, again, another flag
of like, this is a narcissist. This is a person who's compelled by where they fit into the
equation of everything more so than even the tragic loss of their partner. So we go from there
to a hard cut to effectively like where the rest of the film takes place, which is inside of this
French courtroom. And I was wondering, I'm curious for both of you,
I just didn't know anything about how the French courts worked.
Not a single thing.
I saw Saint-Omer, of course.
We talked about that last week on the show.
But even then, I'm not sure if I felt like I saw how the courts were working.
No, that was more just a focus on the testimony.
And like truly astonishing testimony testimony as opposed to the ins
and outs of i get every every court system including our own is preposterous and flawed
to the point of uh use uselessness but it is noticeable the ways in which the other court
systems that you're less familiar with are flawed and to the point of uselessness and i mean this was driving me insane in like a particular french way you know
like being so persnickety about the rules and you're just like oh my god stop it yeah well it
is like a it's a a courtroom of manners and ill manners um bob were you did you do anything with
french courts uh i've appeared in several courts um no i didn't but i actually so they were very persnickety about some things and then also
seemingly like the judge had more leeway to allow or disprove disapprove of certain things too
particularly from the prosecutorial side yeah which is a really effective like emotional raising of
the stakes for the movies for like from the
script which uh over the course of the runtime as you spend more and more time in court you get more
and more frustrated which to me made me side a little bit more with sandra's character which i
don't know if that was the authorial intent necessarily but as i was watching it i was
thinking in that way i think at a minimum it's meant to make you disdainful of the legal system, even if you think Sondra is responsible for the crime. Notably,
Antoine Reynard plays the prosecutor, and he is the only person in the film which is not of a
name. He is just the prosecutor. And that is very purposeful because he is the long arm of the law
in this movie. He is not a human being. He is a baby dion waiters unreal this guy is fucking going for it in this movie and it is
working um yep now i was baffled by some of the procedure there the first court sequence um is a
an interrogation of zoe the journalist who we saw at the very beginning of the film and it is this
very leading and aggressive questioning of her and her intention
and Sandra's intention in the conversation.
And what could Samuel have been thinking while he was playing the music?
And we very quickly learned that there is something unexpected
in terms of the sexual politics of this movie and the people's lives in the film.
We also see that you can just talk to the defendant in the middle of
an interrogation of a witness which is like one of those mind-blowing right things in a movie where
i'm like i didn't know that it worked this way i was trying to think i'm sure i've seen french
courtroom thrillers but i i could i couldn't there must be like a claude chabrol movie where this
happens but i couldn't think of something like this happening in a movie. Where you do like the cross-examination in real time.
Yeah, exactly.
Where Zoe says something in her testimony
and then they immediately turn to Sondra Huller
and they're like, well, what do you think about this?
And then she has to speak to what's just been uttered.
And this happens four or five times in the film.
And it is so different, so profoundly different.
Where in many murder cases in America,
the defendant never speaks.
And so the difference there is so jarring.
And for me, it worked really well.
I know you are the daughter of lawyers.
And so I wonder if your awareness of the structures made it more...
Of the French courses?
My parents aren't French.
No, just how the American legal system works maybe made it more agitating that it was like working differently.
Oh, yeah.
I found it all
very stressful but i'm with bobby that i think my frustrations were more at the judge for sure and
like obviously the prosecutor is meant to be like a classic like going for it prosecutor and that
you're like but there's something about the prosecutor's role is to prosecute a case and i
understand you know he's doing his, he's doing his job.
So I expect them to be outlandish.
And then the judge being just like, I'd love to hear more about your thoughts on seduction.
And I'm just like, ma'am, you know, like, we all would love that over a glass of wine and a cigarette later.
But like, this is a courtroom.
You know, it's just so fucking French.
I love the French people this scene also just has
the best line of the whole movie
which was
it was an instrumental version
after they try to
like
after the prosecutor
tries to be like
the choice of song
was commenting
on Zondris
this misogynist anthem
yeah
really really special stuff
did you mention that
the prosecutor is
kind of like
decked out
in these
awesome looking robes that I would love to wear around my house?
What's up with the Euros and their courtroom wardrobe?
This is something missing from our culture.
All podcasters should be asked to wear robes whilst recording, I think.
Try colored robes, you know, multiple strong reds.
The Brits still gotta wear those silly wigs.
Like, you guys, it is 2023.
Like, everyone in the UK is worried, like, you know, we still have a monarchy and can you believe that we're not up to date with the times?
Like, start with the wigs and then you guys can move on to whether you want to pay for some royals.
Have some shame.
Yeah.
You're putting on a wig to go into court.
2023.
Amen.
I think it's a beautiful tradition.
I support them.
We see other witnesses testify
we see expert witnesses
who talk about the
scientific dynamics
of the fall
there are of course
there's one for the prosecution
one for the defendant
the defense witness
she's very good
yeah well there's a lot of
it reminded me a little bit
of your least favorite scene
of the year
the inquisition of
Kitty Oppenheimer in which like the word choice that any witness uses is attacked.
And then the witness can then attack the prosecutor with his own question.
You know, there's a lot.
It's a very sharply written movie.
Yes.
The dialogue is very, very good.
And it's very memorable because she has that line of, like, it's also possible that I will become the president of France.
You know, right.
That's what I was thinking.
Right.
But the interesting thing there is that like she's a great show person, but also her science actually makes a little more sense than the other science.
This is what happens in cases.
Yeah, exactly.
Regardless of what happened, it's about who presents the best case.
Yeah.
And there are times when you're watching where you're like well the prosecution is just dunking on them and there are other times you're
watching where you're like vincent and his team have clearly presented the best case for this now
some events happen at the end of the film that we'll get to very shortly that indicate also that
sometimes it doesn't matter what the science says what the witnesses say that sometimes it's all about how we feel um you know sandra testifies i guess she's sort of responding to the expert
responses and she recounts samuel's suicide attempt and she kind of struggles like remembers
one day after vincent yes left and it's one of many times throughout the film where we see an image of what could have been
what happened.
We see his body
on the floor.
We see his vomit
on the floor
and the pills
that he has taken.
And we don't know
if that is an image
of something
that has actually happened.
We don't know
if it's an image
that is being conjured
in the minds
of the people
in the courtroom.
We don't know
if it is just
Sandra's delusions.
The movie's very good at kind of like moving us,
moving our feelings around through the movie.
And then it leads to this very dramatic sequence
in which Samuel's therapist testifies
and defies everything that Sandra has just said,
indicates that he is attempting to be weaned off
of the medication that she claims he has been abusing
and has led to his suicide attempt.
He claims that she is the primary reason
why he was depressed and struggling
and that she stole from him in more ways than one,
that she stole from him creatively,
that she stole his passion and his pride,
which is writing.
And we come to learn the details
of what has happened to Daniel, their son,
and how he was injured in an accident. Um, and that she blamed him. She blamed, Sandra blamed Samuel for Daniel's
accident and the loss of some of his sight. And again, I found myself thinking like, why the fuck
do they do this this way in the courtroom where it's just like a therapist and a murder defendant,
like yelling at each other about why like what their
marriage was like how is that the court system in france it's pretty crazy it's a very very
captivating scene though yeah i think that this was probably my least well i don't know i really
like it's an interesting portrayal of, like, therapy and therapy culture.
And also, I think, really the malleability of therapy.
Because, like, that's the thing, actually.
Like, you just go to a therapist to hear, like, how to make things better for you individually.
Like, I know.
But, you know, I think as we've become, like, a more therapized culture and, like, mental health awareness and everything it's like um that the the primacy of what my
therapist says as like the the most responsible thing um is like interestingly deployed a lot
and especially in movies so i i hate therapy in movies so much that i was kind of like oh this is
annoying but it is actually in many ways like an interesting explication of how we talk about all that stuff.
The reason I like it is because it gives Sandra Huller an incredible moment that I think is revelatory about, I think, what irks you about this.
Which is that during the sequence, she says, she's trying to find a way to kind of beat him in this conversation to be like, you can't be the final word on my marriage.
Like I know what my marriage is more than you ever could.
This is one small part of it.
Yes. And she says, what you say is a little part of the whole situation.
Sometimes a couple is a chaos. Sometimes we fight together. Sometimes we fight alone.
And she says a few more things after that. Very powerful moment. Again, as I'm watching it,
you're wondering to yourself, is this an incredible performance of self-defense?
Or is this actually the truth?
Because for many people, it is a truth because of what you're saying, that therapy is this kind of individuated experience.
And that people in therapy will say things that they would never say to their partner or that they would never say to their parent or to their child.
And they do it as a place to kind of like free themselves of the burden of the feeling.
And then they can feel like they can move forward in their life.
And so did Samuel use therapy in that way?
We don't know.
We'll never know.
I think that this thing that you're talking about right now is the thing that recommends
the movie the most.
Even if in this moment, it's not most clear cut to you.
It's like the idea of subjectivity on one end and objectivity on the other end of a
Kinsey scale and how it plays out in different circumstances in a marriage, in a house, as parents, in a courtroom,
in a French courtroom, in the media, in the portrayal of the case after the fact, among the
jury. This sort of seesaw between these two ideas is pretty expertly crafted and the dialogue and
that exact comeback were to
me,
like the peak of that sort of dichotomy between those two ideas,
subjectivity and objectivity.
And Huller's performance is like so challenging because she has to make you
think that like,
she's trying to portray an objectivity to the courtroom,
but also like not make you forget that subjectivity exists in everybody's
testimony too,
because otherwise it would make her seem like she was guilty.
Yeah.
In theory, a courtroom is an objective space,
but of course that's impossible.
I mean, we think about this all the time with journalism, you know,
where there's like an intention to tell a story as directly
and clearly and honestly as possible.
But that's an impossibility ultimately
because everybody is coming to every experience differently um i i'm amazed by her in
in the testimonial parts of the movie i think that she because she's kind of a cheshire cat performer
and in tony erdman like a lot of the work that she's done before this is very
sly and comic and this is a straight up tragedy this movie And still when you're watching her,
you're like,
are you the saddest victim in the world or the devil?
And like,
you can change your mind every minute of the movie.
Like,
I think it really,
uh,
elevates what could be like a slightly more tawdry and silly movie.
Um,
I think it's helped a lot by its script.
The script is,
especially the dialogue writing is very,
very good. But I, I think she's amazing in this good but i think she's amazing in this movie i think she's amazing in this movie but i didn't
find myself vacillating towards the character in that way at all interesting yeah um and
it might be because of i it might honestly just be because of the way that I I watch all of the courtroom
stuff that is so such a circus and her performance is just someone being like wait what um but you
know like this is so I think I'm watching her in response more to the immediate drama of the court shenanigans as opposed to the essential truth, which is to win the argument of the court case? Or are you trying to win the larger argument of what happened? Or are you trying to win the argument of the marriage,
et cetera? Well, this leads pretty directly into the argument of the marriage. There's this
interstitial scene where Sandra and Vincent are back at her home and they're drinking outside in
the cold. And she kind of has a breakdown where she's concerned, quote unquote concerned, that
he doesn't believe her, that she's innocent. And we see that she's kind of has a breakdown where she's concerned, quote unquote concerned, that he doesn't believe her, that she's innocent.
And we see that she's kind of constantly working on her case,
constantly working on presenting whether or not,
you know, she should be convicted of this crime.
Then that leads to the next day in court,
which reveals this fight recording.
And we learned that Samuel has been secretly recording,
actually we learned earlier in the film
that Samuel had been secretly recording conversations
and there's one in particular
that is an explosive argument between the two of them.
And for roughly seven-eighths of the fight,
we actually see the fight.
Even though the courtroom is listening to the fight,
we witness a recreation of Samuel and Sandra
talking to each other.
This is a top 10 movie scene of the year for me,
like, bar far.
I completely agree.
It is mind-blowing
like it is i don't want to say like i saw myself in the scene but i've definitely had fights like
this up till about the like two-thirds mark of the fight right where you're like you have a very
strong point of view on this and i have a strong point of view and one person is more sad than the
other person in the fight yeah and there's no there's no way for us to resolve this because we have dug
our heels in on this thing and the only way to get through it if you're in a marriage is to just
kind of like accept that it is what it is and it is what it is and these two people don't do not
accept and the there is this true pain because they are also two creative people and something has been taken,
according to Samuel, from him by her. And so there's even a much deeper and more dangerous
wound that they're trying to heal through this fight. And he keeps saying, I need more time.
I need more time. I need my time back. You took my time from me. I have to take care of my kid.
I need my time. He keeps repeating this over and over again. And she will not budge. She is like,
your time is for you to figure out.
I'm able to do this.
I'm able to get everything done that I need to get done.
Why can't you?
That's on you.
And it is so ungenerous and so harsh.
And she just really mean spirited.
And he's coming apart at the seams.
And she is very, very tough.
But you can kind of see where she's coming from too,
where she's like, we're all trying to get through life.
You have to find a way to get through life the way that I do.
So Vincent, the defense attorney,
has a line at one point in the court where he's like,
Samuel was a man of projects.
You know, he would try this and then he would try that,
which is like kind of the single
most eviscerating line in the whole, and he doesn't mean it to be, but I've thought about
that so much in description of like other people as well. In a lot of ways, it is like the one
sentence summary of a lot of what Sandra says without the meanness, though its accuracy is like maybe honestly more cutting in the end.
He's a guy who just can't figure it out.
Can't finish.
He can't finish when he starts.
And she's not helping him, which many might argue is a feature of a marriage or a partnership that, you know, or like parenting for sure.
If you're going to like give and take and try to do things.
She's so ungenerous is a great way of putting it but he also is just just floundering
that what you're talking about amanda when when he points that out and the projects and that in
relationship to this fight is where for me like the central question that the movie is trying to
answer on like a societal level is like should the defendant's emotional makeup like should her resentment of her dead husband matter in the court
of law like resentment for things that aren't related to the marriage like emotions that can
cloud whatever this idea of objectivity is that the police are trying to get at that the prosecutor is trying to get at that the defense lawyer is trying to unpack or uh rebut um and that was like for me i was like wow that is a hard question to
grapple with as a movie viewer and i imagine a hard question to grapple or to pose like uh in a
deft way as a screenwriter too. It's obviously a tremendously important move
by the prosecution to present this information
because here's a few things that the Sandra character
says to her husband during this fight.
She says,
stop whining about this scheduling bullshit.
Don't worry about me.
I'll always be able to write.
I don't owe you anything really.
I see you very clearly.
I just don't see you as a victim.
What an amazing line that is. You expect me to follow your lead. I just don't see you as a victim. What an amazing line
that is. You expect me to follow your lead. That's your notion of how a couple is. That's what Samuel
says to her. And then later she says, I'm not the one who put you where you are. I've got nothing to
do with it. Is that also about the murder? You're the one to blame. You're petrified by your own
standards. And then he says to her, you're a monster. And then this physical altercation
transpires. We don't really know what happened because the camera cuts away from these images that we had been seeing back to the courtroom.
And we go to Daniel and Daniel is listening to this fight, which is that, is this the most
traumatizing thing that could happen to an eight-year-old boy for them to have to hear
his parents, not just screaming at each other in the most terrible way, but to hear them hitting
each other. It's just tremendously upsetting. And obviously you're right bobby that just because
someone is vicious to their partner are they should they be convicted of a murder does it
even really mean anything because couples fight right they don't all hit each other but they fight There are two more complexities. Number one, her infidelity and the sexual aspect of their marriage comes up and he's mad and she says things like, I can live without sex, I just can't live without it forever. but you know there's so i that is like not the reason for the fight and not like totally what
they're arguing about but like at some point it is and obviously like you wonder what how like
large a portion of his his anger is in that um and then also like he's secretly recording this
and has been recording them for six months for, like, some sort of project.
The aforementioned project that he's, like, doing some sort of or thinking about some sort of auto fiction book, which is basically just transcripts of his secret life, like, of his life.
Which sounds crazy until you realize that this is what Sandra has been doing her entire career.
That she not only has plundered his ideas for another book,
but that most of her books are modeled closely.
She talks about this in the interview with Zoe
at the beginning of the movie.
Right.
Well, you know, but then it's another interesting question
of like, what is art?
Because the difference is that he's just like transcribing
and sending, and then he doesn't understand the difference.
And it's not received well by his publisher friend,
and it seems like it's another dead end.
And it's even suggested that maybe he provoked the fight
to get some more material,
which obviously it's good material in an artistic pursuit,
as we are seeing in the context of this movie.
But it's all very fraught.
There's a very funny moment very shortly thereafter where the prosecutor is following up about what we've heard on the recording and talking to Sandra.
And he starts asking her about her infidelities.
And she clarifies that there was one time that she cheated without telling him.
And he found out because he looked at her text messages.
But that in the year of Daniel's accident, she had affairs.
And she told him about the affairs.
And so she did not think that they were indiscretions.
And she said, I was honest about them.
And the prosecutor says, interesting take on honesty.
Which is like kind of the subtitle of this movie.
Right.
That it's all about this subjective truth that Bob was talking about.
Again, I'm glad I wrote down the dialogue from the movie
because you can see that every single thing that is said in the courtroom
is an insinuation in one direction or another.
Then they start talking about the books that she's written.
And they start using these works of fiction to explore whether or not she was a murderer.
I mean, it's a very bizarre, like, as this starts happening,
I'm like, France is out of control.
Like, this is wild that they very bizarre, like, as this starts happening, I'm like, France is out of control.
Like,
this is wild that they're just like
reading passages
from a novel
with like science fiction
elements in it
and trying to explain
that this is clear
that she has committed murder
because of these things.
This is the sort of thing
that obviously
would not be admissible
in a U.S. court.
Are the U.S. courts better?
I don't fucking know.
Probably not.
They're not.
Okay.
You know,
there's bad in different ways.
But we,
it's at this point actually when I started to feel like Sandra's going to get off.
Like she's actually, even though this is the worst thing that could happen to her, as soon as the prosecutor reaches for the novel she wrote, I was like, oh, he's desperate.
He's desperate.
Because there's a benefit of the doubt in her direction because this is such a difficult to prove case because there's so little evidence there's no murder weapon etc etc
even the the even the motivation is murky at this point despite the fact we've seen she's
such an asshole um and then we kind of move into the third act of the movie and um you know daniel
has already testified in the film but he's given this kind of like wobbly testimony about what he did or did not hear.
And then the film goes into this like crackpot theory, like almost like real time Reddit conspiracy where Daniel thinks he understands what really happened to his dad because he conducts an experiment on Snoop the dog.
Well, he asks his mom to leave.
Yeah.
He doesn't want her to have in the home.
He has like a court appointed guardian.
Played by Jenny Beth, the lead singer of Savages.
An incredible band, by the way.
Just putting that out there.
And he says he doesn't want his mom in the house.
And then he feeds his dog a lot of aspirin.
Because that's also allegedly what Samuel overdosed the first time on it, which is like, is that what?
I don't know.
Again, aspirin of all things.
But anyway, gives the dog a lot of aspirin.
Then they have to Google how to make a dog barf, which the court guardian uses Siri to Google in French,
like, hey, Siri, how do you make a chien vomit?
Which I just, like, I enjoy.
You know, I don't really spend a lot of time
thinking about people using Siri in other languages,
but of course they do.
And then he explains how Snoop was acting.
It doesn't, like, make any sense.
But he's like, this proves that her story
about my dad was true and he was really sad and for some reason having to do with the french court
he's allowed to come back on monday morning when but like before there was supposed to be a verdict
or there you know and he presents his theory yeah Yeah. In full. And before he does that,
we actually get this great little moment where we see Daniel watching television and we see a talk
show talking about his mother's case. And then we cut to Sandra and we see her watching TV,
watching people talk about her case. And her narcissism again, is we're reminded of it.
And we're reminded of his kind of sadness, but also is something going on in his mind and then daniel gives this testimony in court incredible performance um milo machado
grainer he this this is for a young boy to give a performance like this is uh amazing to me because
this is a very complicated material and it's a very complicated idea that he's being asked to present which is that he tells this story of what could have happened where the he learned that the dog
had eaten what his father had thrown up and so that indicates that like it clearly is what his
father did make an attempt to commit suicide his mother wasn't making up this concept am i getting
this all this right is that more or less how it goes that's how i understood it anyway um but then he starts to
tell this story about this conversation that he had about his dog with his dad in the car
and his dad starts explaining to him that effectively snoop won't be around forever
you know that he'll get sick again and he starts talking about what he does for daniel and how
what a good dog he is.
He says he anticipates your needs.
He foresees your movements.
He keeps you safe.
Maybe he's tired, always caring for others.
And it becomes clear to us as we're watching.
And we're seeing the actor Samuel Tice mouthing the words,
but they're coming out of Daniel's mouth talking in the courtroom.
And there's this realization that Samuel is admitting to his son that he's going to commit suicide. At least this is what Daniel's recounting.
And we're sitting there and we're thinking, did this really happen? Did Daniel come up with an
idea to save his mother because he can't imagine living without his mother or because he feels some
filial piety that he has to fulfill to take care of his mother
despite the fact that
maybe she did something terrible
or maybe he actually
believes this.
Maybe this is something
that actually transpired.
We don't know.
Like 80% of the movie,
it's just people saying
what they think happened.
And so,
it's an incredibly
powerful moment.
Within three minutes
of the movie,
Sandra is not guilty and free.
Yeah, acquitted.
And exits the trial, is interviewed on camera.
And, you know, there's a kind of epilogue,
which we should talk through.
But I thought it was a great stroke in the movie storytelling
to make a crackpot, unprovable, emotional moment from a nine-year-old the central reason why she was acquitted.
Like, and I believe it because people are emotional.
Like, they actually ultimately don't care about the facts.
What they want is to, it's about what they feel.
Like, U.S. courtroom films are about this as well.
You know, it's like, you want the best case, but it's always the fiery testimony from the impassioned person that gets the person off.
You know, and so it's like an interesting twist on that in this courtroom setting that we're not as used to seeing.
So I really liked the way that they did this.
I am still a little confused by this part.
Okay.
The child with visual impairment either being the person who perceives the most and or representing the ways in which our judgments are we only see what we want to see is a bit literal literal for me and i don't i mean you're right
we don't know why he does this and what his motivations are but like i really don't know
and it's not like that's an interesting like thing of the text i'm a little bit like what
am i supposed to take from that what was your read bob so i didn't read it as the the main reason in the piece of the
pie as to why she was acquitted i read it as like i read it more as a an opportunity for the son
for daniel to rationalize this event these events whether they were true or not and that the for me it's so emotionally
crushing either way whether he's remembering this fictionalized version of what happened
this conversation with his father and reapplying it to the current tragic situation so that he can
emotionally move on that's incredibly sad and. And it's truly, really crushing
if his father was having this conversation with him
in this way about a suicide that he was about to commit.
And that is like tragedy
in the most historical sense of the word
projected on screen.
And so I, in the structure of the movie,
to me, it was like this moment of giving the son
who doesn't really
have a huge voice and probably is going to experience the longest and most trauma over
time from the events of this movie an opportunity to emotionally process what he needs to process
from these events i think i think that's right i also read it as the concluding event of the trial
because the last thing that we hear in the courtroom
is the prosecutor in a kind of almost exasperated fashion
turn to the judge and the quote-unquote jury
and say, this is not proof.
And he's desperate because he knows
that he's been checkmated in the courtroom
by the same kind of
elaborate insinuations and suggestions that he has been making throughout this court.
And he can't parry back because it's a kid. It's an unimpeachable witness in a way
because you can't attack the kid of a father who's just died. And so that was why I read this as like,
that's why he lost this case in part.
There's also in his speech,
it's a beautifully written speech.
And he says, when we lack proof,
we have to look further,
which is what the trial is doing.
We have to ask why.
Which is, you know, like an amazing...
A little sophisticated for a nine year old. Yeah yeah that's what i was about to say i was like on the one hand very profound on the other like
okay i thought the same thing yeah it's a it's a little bit of a writerly stroke exactly like
we're putting some words in some in some special kids mouths yeah the movie the movie does a little
bit of legwork to imply that he's kind of like a gifted somewhat of a gifted
sure he's playing Chopin
like he's teaching himself
Chopin throughout
playing the piano beautifully
that this tragedy
that's happened to him
he's put some of that more
like childlike energy
into creative pursuits
or whatever
but
he's also been homeschooled
by these two incredibly
erudite people
you know like
his parents were very
intelligent also obviously
so
you can kind of buy him
and maybe he's 11
I don't know
I actually don't know
how old he's meant to be in the film but he it it's quite a testimony that he provides it's quite
a story he tells um then we see i think a critical kind of epilogue to the film which is that sandra
celebrates with vincent and her attorneys at a sushi restaurant and she gets very drunk and she
does this rather than go directly home to see her son well she calls in the
car no she calls and then she's like i gotta go out and drink which is something that she is
effectively accused of by her husband earlier in the film because i noted it as well she calls and
she says does daniel want me to come home or not and she hears a response and she says okay then
we'll go get something to eat so it it's like, it's a response.
She asks the question first.
I viewed that very clearly as,
this is a mother who puts herself first.
Sure, that's...
It's not gendered.
Yeah, you want your assumptions.
Okay.
Are you serious?
You actually think that we're not meant to think
this character's a narcissist?
Um, I don't know.
She's just gotten off a murder charge because her young son testified.
Right.
And she's like, I need to go out and get drunk.
She calls first and is like, does he want me to come home?
With her ex-lover who's her lawyer.
I mean, I thought it was weird too, but I thought it was weird that her son was like, I don't, you know?
Because he's trying to say like, it's okay, mom, it's okay.
That's what you think?
Absolutely.
Why else would they even show us any of this why would they reveal any of this to us otherwise you could
just skip it the it's a choice it's a choice the filmmakers made to show us that she's a
vainglorious person and that she's a sad depressed narcissist i thought it was meant to show that he
still doesn't trust her and that he like still wants space from her and wants time to present
that might be what the last scene tells us.
Well, but also the thing of like, he doesn't want her there.
He does this whole thing and then she calls and it's like,
he doesn't want her to come home.
I think it's because he wants to be able to, maybe, maybe.
I mean, that's what I noted on it.
I thought that was so that he could conduct the experiment on his own time.
But after she's acquitted, she like in the car, she calls and she's like, she like in the car she calls and she's like i
want to call my son and she's like should we come home now and she's like really asking what to do
and i thought it was like a very intentional like no he's not ready for you to come home yet yeah
yeah so so i mean and then she goes and gets drunk with a bunch of people like sure that's that's fine
like it maybe you're right maybe it's both were it me i would like be lurking outside the
porch until he was ready to let me in yeah that's what i'm trying to speak to is like there's totally
but if you're a mother of a young child you wouldn't be like you make the call you'd be like
i'm coming home right i'm coming home to see you after this incredibly traumatic thing that is
great but i just the movie does a lot of work to indicate that he's not comfortable totally with her.
With her, yeah.
Which is one of the great mysteries of the movie is why did he do this thing at the end of the movie?
Exactly.
Even though he has clearly not as strong a relationship with his mother as he does with his father.
Right.
Yes, and that his mother doesn't necessarily treat him in a motherly way in a lot of circumstances.
No. necessarily treat him in a motherly way in a lot of circumstances no that that she when convenient
for her treats him as more like an equal or like like an adult even though the movie goes to great
length to show us the tragedy of him being so young while experiencing these events and i think
that that coda at the end of the movie is resonant with that but also what makes it so interesting
which is that it doesn't have this like synthetically sappy ending to it where she comes back and it's all love and hugs and kisses
and we're happy that they get to have this mother-son relationship still it's that this
character might be mean in some ways yeah even ways that she doesn't even know that she's being
mean and that she's sort of derelict in some ways because of it and also that there's been a
duplication of the resentment and confusion that her husband
felt towards her that her son now feels towards her and that the movie notably does not end with
her hugging him it ends with her hugging her dog alone on a couch and that this is a person who's
alone you know that even though she will be in all likelihood taking care of her child going forward
and we see in the movie of marge the woman who is meant to mind daniel is like clearly a much better caretaker of her child that like they have formed
this kind of trust that maybe she struggles to form with her own son and yet they have this kind
of like intellectual bond there's that great moment when they start playing the piano together
where i was like this is their bond like they're both kind of brilliant right and that they
she has given him something clearly but the way that they connect is like, is a little unsettled. And so the movie leaves us hanging. And obviously the big
hanging question of the movie is, did she do it? Yeah. Now I will foreground that question for the
three of us by saying that Sondra Huller performed in this film reportedly as though she were
innocent. In her mind, she believed that the character
did not commit the crime of killing her husband.
So I ask you guys,
Amanda,
did Sondra kill her husband?
No.
Bobby?
No.
You know, I thought no the first time,
and then the second time I thought yes.
The second time I was like,
they're just giving us way too much here
to indicate yes.
For me, it was never a question.
I think it's also, I'm really interested in, and like not to talk down to either of you,
but like both your perception of like her role as a mother and her performance as a mother
and the implication that she's not a good mother.
I didn't take that.
I think she's like different from our normal understanding and that
the and especially with a child with like in increased needs since the accident and
you know that that samuel the dad steps in for kind of like the quote-unquote like traditional
you know care taking and the homeschooling and all of that stuff um which maybe it's because
she's a monster maybe it's because he's more suited to that and and she is like being a mom
in a different way so i like but i so that's all to say like i don't even read her as bad mom like i the things that are meant to to communicate that she's a monster or a narcissist
whatever like i never saw them as that i think she's like a difficult person and she's like
very mean in that fight and i probably would not want to be married to her but and and maybe that
is to sandra holler's performance of just thinking she's innocent.
She's not actually a monster.
She's just super complicated.
I'll tell you what my reading of this is.
But I think that informs my interpretation of whether she did it or not.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
I don't know if she's a bad mom or not.
I think what the movie effectively conveyed to me was that when Daniel was injured in the accident, that her perfect child was damaged
in some way, and that that created like a fissure in her relationship to being a mother in her
family, and that that obviously it badly damaged her marriage because she lost a kind of trust in
Samuel. And even if she was unfaithful before that, that it kind of like fired something up and
she kind of like leaned back into herself more because she found it too painful to take care of
the situation. That there was like, you know, when you have a kid, I mean, this is my experience,
but when you have a kid, you're like, my kid is like perfect and a hundred percent and I'm like
putting all my energy into this. And then something bad happens and you're like, oh my God, how do I cope with them coping with this pain? And that can happen when
they fall on the playground or it can happen when there's something more serious that happens.
But it feels like something changed with her. Maybe she was always a little selfish,
but that she withdrew from the family a little bit. And the movie is kind of showing us that
should that withdrawal be perceived as like making you
a potentially violent criminal,
like what does it mean to be a bad mom, basically?
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And if you're a bad mom,
is that equal to a murder?
Right.
Which is a provocative idea.
I wouldn't say that I think that she's a bad mom,
like bad, intentionally uninterested in being a mom necessarily i think
that she that the movie is giving us a somewhat unconventional representation of motherhood in
comparison to how motherhood is usually put into movies where like it's like love and warmth and
like the emotional aspect of being a parent, regardless of gender, which they ascribe to the father
in the context of this movie,
much more than the mother.
And they give you a more,
like Sean was saying,
an intellectual bond between the two of them.
And the last scene is like,
I wouldn't say that that's necessarily
her being a bad mother,
but it's that her,
it's more so that like,
it wouldn't,
that some of these things that would
occur to me as a parent wouldn't occur to her as a parent you know but i don't have a kid
necessarily but like that some of these things that as a kid that i would have wished that my
parents would have done for me if they did that instead that might have bummed me out or like
that might have made me feel a certain type of way and i think that that is the the harder question
to ask like does it if a person
is not well equipped to a situation that happens to them that is out of their control meaning like
this accident or meaning how this court case is being portrayed in the public does that necessarily
make them a bad person i think it makes them an imperfect person which is maybe more interesting
to talk about i think it speaks to the point you were making earlier which is is that she treats her son like an equal. And so in the aftermath of
this court case, she would think to ask, is it okay if I come home? Right. As opposed to I'm
coming home, which is like a probably more traditional concept of parenting. But we are,
you know, weirdly in this modern era where it's like gentle parenting is about presenting choices
and, you know, not being stern and not, disciplinarians
are no longer in vogue
as parental models.
Like,
this is,
it's a different time.
Well,
and I do also think
her asking permission
to come home
and then that final scene
where she goes,
he's asleep in bed
and she gives,
like,
kind of a plaintive,
like,
But he hugs her.
Exactly.
She falls in and he hugs her. And it's like, almost like she's askingive, like. But he hugs her. Exactly. She falls in and he hugs her.
And it's like almost like she's asking for, like.
Is it forgiveness?
For something, for sure.
But I, like, the power dynamic in their relationship, like, has certainly changed.
And I think it changes once he asks her to leave.
And, like, whatever is going on with him and the experiment and then the testimony and something has desperately changed.
But I'm not sure I read it as the thing that has changed is that we both know I killed your dad.
Like, and now I got to take care of you.
Like, I don't actually, you know.
I do vacillate on this i think there are a lot
of times where the movie is like here's a giant red arrow that she clearly pushed him out of this
building um i would not have been maybe it's just my taste that i would not have been so direct as
a filmmaker if i didn't want anybody to think that that was possible um and so i watching it again
there's so many instances and maybe it is just the idea
of
showing a woman
who is imperfect
and that
the idea that like
I failed the Rorschach test
I'm not like
I'm not trying to be like
she has to be
like innocent
because it's hard to be a woman
she's a girl boss
she's a girl boss
she's a girl boss
I'm not that at all
she's corporate feminism
and she deserves
to be free
she's gonna girl boss gatekeep and gaslight all throughout this film I'm not that at all. It's like, it's just corporate feminism and she deserves to be free.
She's going to girl boss gatekeep and gaslight all throughout this film.
I think that at the end,
whether or not,
so like for me and Amanda feeling like she did not do it. And for you feeling like she did,
that that is sort of like the operating piece of information as to the Rorschach test for the whole movie,
which how much sympathy do you have for her?
And how much does like do the outside tragedy, tragic events that have happened to how much sympathy do you have for her and how much does like
do the outside tragedy
tragic events
that have happened to her
which if you think
that she's innocent
is her husband
committing suicide
and her son
having this tragedy
that turned him blind
and has altered
her relationship
or her need
to perform
certain types
of motherly activities
that changes
your ability
to have like
sympathy and empathy
for any of the shortcomings
that she has
throughout the whole movie which is a hard thing to process in a movie that is willing to
nakedly put out a lot of the shortcomings for the audience to internalize there's one other
potential reading okay samuel committed suicide okay they had a very unhappy marriage
she's happy he's dead maybe she's not not happy, but she's like, oh, well.
Relieved.
Relieved, yeah.
She says.
Now, that's something that can never be said.
I'm relieved about different things.
She does.
Several times in the movie, but never about him.
So, I think that's like a good signal.
I mean, do you think he.
Yeah, what do you think actually happened?
Like, what is your.
Well, they show us one moment where we see what could have been her striking him on the veranda and him falling.
And we see it at an odd angle and we don't see anyone's face when we see that image.
And it happens very quickly during one of the testimonies.
And I was like, why did they show us that?
Because almost everything that they show us feels credible
everything and it it feels credible watching that happen maybe that's just the trick of filmmaking
and the brilliance of the movie it doesn't really matter ultimately like I like I said the first
time I saw it I was like she's definitely innocent but this is the sort of thing that happens all the
time and people are like wrongfully imprisoned all the time for things like this and also people
are you know acquitted for things that they so clearly did. And this is all just a farce, this whole world.
But then as I started thinking about all of the recreations in the movie, I mean, the fight
sequence is so chilling and so captivating. And the thing is, is that we see it and we see the
recreation of it and we know that it happened because there's an audio recording. So that had
me thinking about all of the other things that they showed us, even if there's no recording of it. And why did we see it?
Why did the filmmaker show it to us?
So that was very compelling to me.
Now,
maybe that's just another,
that's part of the miasma of the storytelling.
Right.
But it got me leaning in that direction.
I might be a sucker,
but I think you fell out by accident.
I do too.
I do too,
Bobby.
None of the events of the movie that we know about or like
the the mental makeup of the character would lead you to believe that this would be the way that he
would try to commit suicide like you said he's like this i don't know that that seems like a
what if he just fell that's what i mean that's what i think you think he just fell and like
i mean two things in one way is i think the movie is a lot about like their preposterousness
of all the different ways in which we try to understand something that just happens.
You know?
And then the other thing, I've been thinking a lot about the title, which is pretty faithfully translated.
It's Anatomie de la Chute, which is a fall in French. So, like, a fall being in the title,
you know,
it's like,
it's obviously a reference
like Anatomy of a Murder
and all these sorts of things,
but there is something
very specific about it
that I'm like,
oh,
maybe it's right there.
Yeah,
could be.
Could be.
You know,
I don't know.
This is how you know
it's a great movie.
Yeah.
99% of movies,
you can't have a conversation
like this about what happened
in the movie.
That's true.
Because they're like,
here's what happened.
Yeah,
the magical kid, I still don't totally get.
Well, he's gifted.
You were a gifted child once.
Didn't you go to some sort of school for gifted children, right?
You were like in the arts and playing piano and stuff.
It was a camp.
Were you like Daniel?
No.
You were partially blind.
We know this about you as well.
Were you the inspiration for Daniel in the film Anatomy of a Fall?
It's me.
I love to
conduct experiments with aspirin you played piano you didn't have a dog i fear that i might have
been the inspiration for samuel you know just cooking with my little audio in the attic pretty
sad you love 50 cent yeah yeah yeah making instrumental covers of rap songs yeah oh boy
uh you think this movie's gonna to be nominated for Best Picture?
I do.
Yeah, I do too.
You took it out of the...
I changed my mind.
I watched it again.
All right.
Well, there you go.
I think it should be.
Can I just say
a much more incisive
and cutting movie
than last year's
Palme d'Or winner.
And I'm excited
that it's in the conversation.
Oh yeah.
Same distributor.
This movie is also Neon.
Neon just keeps buying up
the Palme d'Or winners
hoping that one of them hits.
I thought this movie would have been a bigger hit, honestly, because I think it's very, very entertaining.
And it's in the mode of something that we like a lot, which is true crime, like as a culture.
I think when it is available on streaming, I mean, it is two and a half hours.
I don't know that the true crime audience and the subtitle audience always overlap in the ways that we might hope.
But, you know, perhaps we can all elevate together, you know?
Yeah, in theory.
Anything else we should say about Anatomy of a Fall?
Do you think Sandra Holler will get nominated for Best Actress?
I don't, but I think she should.
She's been popping up on a lot of lists, though.
Critics lists.
Yeah, I guess that's true.
I've been thinking a lot about what you were saying about how our last top 10 was not international enough.
And I think you're right.
And it does seem that there is a kind of blood sport going on between The Zone of Interest and Anatomy of a Fall.
Both films star Sondra Haller.
Both films are, I wouldn't say The Zone of Interest is ambiguous, but are more-
At a remove.
At a remove, for sure, and artistically charged.
Anatomy of a Fall is more conventional, but still has a kind of willingness to be unsatisfying in a way that is unusual for the conventional biopic or straight-ahead drama that we expected the Oscars.
I hope they both get in because they're both tremendous films.
But I'm a little skeptical that we're going to see both.
We shall see.
Bob, thank you for your work on this podcast.
You talked a lot on this episode.
How are you feeling?
Tired.
Gotta go drink some tea.
Make sure that voice is rested.
You better because we're back again
later this week.
Oh, right.
It's a three episode week.
What's at the end of this week?
Wonka.
Yeah, it is.
So we'll talk about the film Wonka.
Let's go, Timothy!
So like seven months ago,
I was texting with Joanne Robinson
and I was like,
just tell me like one or two movies
you really want to talk about this year.
And we'll just plan for it for later this year.
And in three seconds,
she just wrote back Wonka in all caps.
It was alarmingly fast.
Joe will join us.
Alarmingly fast response.
And we'll talk about Timmy.
We'll talk about,
is Timmy the biggest
movie star in the world?
Ooh, is it time to
do our rankings
or have we not reached
the 18th month mark yet?
We're going to wait
for a quiet moment
in the spring of 2024,
I think,
to launch that episode.
Not when all these
good fucking movies
are coming out.
Okay, just asking.
Okay.
Bob, thank you.
Amanda, thank you.
We'll see you on Friday.