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In Review On Mic: The Debut · In Review On Mic

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone,
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: you're listening to the inaugural episode of In Review On Mic, the new podcast
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: of film criticism platform In Review Online.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Hugo Emmerzael and alongside our talented roster of contributors,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: we will bring
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: you in-depth conversations, discussions and interviews about cinema, old and new.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: A pilot episode means finding your bearings,
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: so we figured our In Review On Mic debut should
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: revolve around some of our favorite debut films.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Putting
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  SPEAKER_01: in perspective how celebrated filmmakers out there have launched their own careers
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: doubles
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: as a way for us to fittingly kick off a recurrent podcast series,
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: one that we hope will continue
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: to grow and flourish after these humble beginnings.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: So thank you already for listening.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Please like and subscribe to our channel wherever you listen to your podcasts
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: and enjoy
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: the ride as we take off with our newest endeavor.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Today I am joined by Dhruv Goyal and Joshua Polanski to share words about a couple
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: of
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: stone-cold classic debuts:
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Terrence Malick's Badlands,
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Danis Tanović's No Man's Land and Na Hong-jin's The Chaser.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: I would say,
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: let's take it to the limit one more time and dive into our debut episode.
• 1:18
  [Intro music]
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Alright, we're off to the races.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Guys, this is somewhat insane, but we are recording the
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: debut episode of In Review On Mic.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: I am joined by Joshua Polanski.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Josh, how are you doing?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Joshua Polanski: Good.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Great to be here and I'm excited to be on the first episode of In Review On Mic.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Hugo Emmerzael: And we have Dhruv Goyal.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: Thanks for having me on here too.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really excited to be.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: a part of wherever we have starting and wherever we
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Where the hell were you going?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Well that's exactly the point.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's somewhat of a big daunting let's say enterprise
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: to start a new podcast So And when we were discussing what to do for
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: the first episode,
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: right, it's always also a bit uncomfortable.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Where do you start?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Hence we came up with the idea of discussing our some of our favorite
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: debut films So Josh,
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv, and I, we all have one of our favorite debut films that we
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: would like to discuss amongst each other.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: and Dhruv, which film have you brought to the table today?
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've been running away about discussing this filmmaker's work for like four
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: or five years,
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I think.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Whenever I've gotten the opportunity to discuss his work or write about his work,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've basically said,
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: let me hand it to anyone else who thinks he they're more equipped
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: to write about him or talk about him.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: I have a great reverence for this filmmaker, but
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean of course with reverence comes like,
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know, you also have to I was about to
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: r say the Spider-Man thing, with reverence comes great re responsibility.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: but I'm talking about Terrence Malick and his first feature,
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: which is Badlands I wanted
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: to at least talk about it.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think as you said, like how do we approach debut features
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: and how do we sort of You know,
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: approach them once you've seen the filmmaker's other work
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: and then you go and revisit it.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So basically if I had seen the entirety of Malick's filmography
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: before Badlands.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Then I watch Badlands and then how that sort of shapes your perception
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: of it and how you have to like rejig your own expectations and all that stuff.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: thank you Dhruv and Joshua which film have you brought for us today?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Joshua Polanski:
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: I've brought Danis Tanović's No Man's Land,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: which is an Academy Award winner from Bosnia
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: and Herzegovina.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: It actually beat out Amélie, the French film, and Lagaan, the Indian
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: classic as well.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it's less known than both of those films.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: Tanović is a director that's been very important to me for a very long time.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: in some ways it's kind of cheating.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: He had made over three hundred hours of documentary
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: footage of the Bosnian War prior to this and a lot of that has made
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_02: into documentaries
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: and such as well.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: But I think this is w considered his first film.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: thanks.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: And well, yeah, I brought, Na Hong-jin's debut film, The Chaser, from 2008,
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: South Korean Genre film that's somewhere between a serial killer thriller and
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: a police
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: detective procedural film somewhat in the vein of David Fincher's Se7en and all
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: of these
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: murky post noirish or neo-noirish nineteen nineties informed very gritty thrillers
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: cynical, bleak, has a somewhat depressing view on humanity, but also As is often
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: the case with these South Korean or East Asian spins
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: on such American noirish genre has
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of these little unexpected moments and twists and turns or just kind
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: of let's say
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: asides that rarely make it into more mainstream American cinema.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a good fitting time considering Na Hong-jin's latest film,
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hope, has recently
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: had its big American release
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've all selected wonderfully bleak and depressing and really hopeless
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: for them
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: actually in some way or the other.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: To some degree,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: yes, because we actually have two films about serial killers you would
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Say s and they are sandwiching a film about one of the biggest ethnic cleansings at
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: the
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: end of the 20th century from a Bosnian-Herzegovinian perspective So these are not
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: the
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: lightest films and yet three of them do actually point a lot towards the light
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: in Despite
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: all of this darkness, so let's also see if we can find some of that in this chat.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: [Clip from the trailer for Badlands (1973)]
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_03: Hugo Emmerzael: But
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Dhruv,
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: you said at the beginning that You always postpone to talk about the work of Malick
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: or to write about it.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm quite curious why.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I think it's Th many things actually.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: But this I think the first thing is of course, it's
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: hard for me to in general write about filmmakers who I think are so foundational
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: to like
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: certain aspects of my cinephilia.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I think Malick for me opened the door to like a certain
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: kind of arthouse cinema which I had never seen.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
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  SPEAKER_00: So I saw like The Thin Red Line during undergrad when I wasn't into film
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: that much also
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: and I was just like I did not know like you can make a war film like this
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: where you know
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: the narrative is so dispersed.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: You have you don't have like a single main character, you
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: have like multiple narrators,
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: and the flow of the narrative is all over the place, but
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: not in a way which felt like you know wrong, if that makes sense.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: So like there were lots of elements.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then of course I followed through his filmography,
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: watching his other work.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started reading more and I was like, oh
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: God, there's like a lot of philosophical depth within it and everything.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: So I was like always intimidated.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, you know, can I talk about his films without
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: talking about sort of the philosoph the philosophical underpinnings in a lot
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: of his work.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: He is a philosopher.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: He taught philosophy in at Yale,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: yeah.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: You need to grab the Martin Heidegger, you know, text
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: between the years of his hiatus from filmmaking, which is like about twenty years,
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: right?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So but then I think after a point, I guess a lot of film criticism, at least for
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: me,
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: sort of opened a door into actually also talking about the films from
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: a more emotional
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: point of view,
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: a more sort of, you know, of how does how why does a Malick film feel like
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: it does actually?
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think now I can if someone asks me to write about like Badlands,
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think I can at least attempt to write about it
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: because I think I've seen it like whatever
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: three four times and I think there's like a clear between Badlands and Days
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: of Heaven
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: and then his later work So again interesting but I've always been intimidated just
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: because
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: he's I think one of my favorites
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: let's talk about Badlands,
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: it's Malick's debut film, it's loosely based on the 1958 Charles
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Starkweather and Carol Ann Fugate killings.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: which ended up also being on the album cover of one of the best Sonic Youth albums.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: So a quite iconic story that really riled up America in the postwar era, I guess.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: Teenagers going on killing sprees,
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: going against the established order of their previous
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: generations of their parents.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: And yet it does not really feel like a serial movie that
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: much, does it?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: Yeah,
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: so I think again it's as I had sort of began also saying that I watched this after
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: having watched a lot of later Malick and when I watched this the first time
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: after having
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: watched them I was like I don't really get why it's such a widely considered classic
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: because
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: There's a marked difference for me in what he did does later in his sensibilities
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: and
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: what he does here.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I was trying to retrofit that Malick into this Malick and I was
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: like,
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: why does this not have Emmanuel Lubezki's floating Steadicam roaming around all
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: the time.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: People like to make him almost like a parody, like at this point, because he
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: has repeated his style so much.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: But Yeah, I think I was expecting that, but then what
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: I got and what I've subsequently got again and again from this is this feeling
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: of Like
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: it's chilling discomfort actually a lot of throughout a lot of the film.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: and then Sissy Spacek who's m magnificent in this,
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think, like that voiceover has this
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: innocence which makes you want to care for these people.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: But to me the there's like this distinct sort of Chilling feeling to
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: the entire thing
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: where it feels like you know the how Malick always searches for a utopia in all
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: of his
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: films.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like he's looking for something which is purer than what is possibly available
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: for a lot of the people.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: I can't even imagine him making this film afterwards because
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: this is rooted in a sort I would say French New Wave and Bonnie and Clyde,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: sort of breathless
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands make a great triple bill if you want to do like
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: that lovers
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: on the run almost thing.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's all about iconography and everything, right?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I think here there's this thing where you are basically in the headspace of
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: a person
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: who's trying to process an incident which happened some time ago,
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: but it's still clouded
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: in a sort of mesmerized indifference towards everything that happened.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like odd and really whimsical,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: but like It's violent, like it's really cruel
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: and cold.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And think it's wonderful to see.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what this is what you said,
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: like you know, there's a lot of things going on
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: in all three of these films in the sense They are all very dark films,
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: but the way the
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: filmmakers have treated them has such a strange touch to them that
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: the darkness never
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: feels Like I mean I think the which we'll talk about later The Chaser is very dark,
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: but
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: like
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Yeah, it's the most it's the most like poison-tinged film of them all.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: yeah
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: You know, it's like people really drank from the poisonous chalice a lot there.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: yeah, I think I was just like, how has Malick made this film and then done the stuff
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: what he does later?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because the I mean yeah, it's a great thing.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think it to see a filmmaker change his sensibilities or probably fall in love more
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: with
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: the world later on than he was with it before because here it feels like someone
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: who is
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: Concerned about how America is and how America has sort of almost consumed
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: this idea of violence and consumed this idea mythology, iconography, and everything.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this whole,
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: you know, fascination with something that's grand and that can't actually
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: live up to what it is, I think is fascinating in Badlands because Malick will later
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: then go on and himself look for these grand ideals in his work.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: that, but even as a film the experience of watching it is odd.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: and I mean it in the best possible way.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: Like I d I can't pin it down very definitively and I think that's a great thing.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: and very rare.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua Polanski:
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: My relationship with Terrence Malick is actually fraught,
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: I would Maybe the almost like
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the opposite of Dhruv.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: I had struggled to really connect with his work for a long time.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: And because of that
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_02: And like knowing that with the things I tend to like in cinema,
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: that Malick is a person
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: I should like.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: I had been like kind of spacing his films out and like, all right, y you know, maybe
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: a year from now I'll understand this and I'll get its appeal.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: I guess also like the flip side, I have a master's in theological studies.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: and in many ways, I you know I have read Heidegger.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: that's my world.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: And Malick is in many ways like creating the aesthetics from this.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: And nothing ever really resonated with until Badlands actually,
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_02: watching it for this podcast,
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: which was a really rewarding experience.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: I I'm grateful
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Wait, so you had never seen it before, Josh.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: I had never seen this was my first watch of Badlands, intentionally so.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_02: Hugo Emmerzael: Oh my god.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: I almost saw it about two months or three months ago,
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Grand Rapids, the museum up here
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: in Grand Rapids, Michigan had a series of Malick films that they were showing.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: and they did them in order,
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: I believe, and I missed Badlands and then I ended up seeing
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: New World instead.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: And that was also my first time.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: Hugo Emmerzael: Yeah, The New World is one of my favorite films of all time.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: And I really didn't like that one.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the reason I didn't like it
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Interesting, that's a good start.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: But I think the reason I didn't like New World is also
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: the reason I did like Badlands.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: and that is I think that there's this romanticization in New World
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: that never feels truly
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: opposed.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: It feels celebrated.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that it in a way that really just gives me
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: pause and you know,
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: I have a I should also say I have a lot of family that are members
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: of the Sault Ste.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Marie tribe of the Chippewa Indians.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: and that's an important part of my background.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I think That the romanticization of that story in the context of the founding
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: of America
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: kind of just turns an inside of my stomach in a way that is like tough for me
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: to look
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the other way.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: And on the flip side, I think this Bonnie and Clyde idea actually kind
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: of gets at maybe like a more core like element of American culture.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: and even just like in a simplistic way of we shoot first and deal with
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: the consequences
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: later,
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think that the gun and violence in particularly mean,
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: it does feel uniquely American
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: in the way that guns are a problem here.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: Not to get too personal or anything, but I you know I live in Michigan and grew up
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: in Ohio I remember distinctly returning to Ohio a few years ago
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_02: after they had passed
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: open carry.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: And seeing an AR-15 in a grocery store.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: No, this is so insane,
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: And seeing an assault rifle in a grocery store and then like having images like that
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: and
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: returning to something like Badlands,
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: it really does feel like he has his fingers on the
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: pulse of American culture in a I think that like anti romanticization this time
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: as well
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: way I think that the violence is just this rupture in the social worlds and
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: a way that don't think is hopeful at all.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: would argue that Badlands might be the most
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: Hugo Emmerzael: Bleak, yes, maybe
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: bleak of these three films.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: I mean none of them are particularly hopeful.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: but I think Badlands at least has going against it that it doesn't have the comedy
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: that
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the other two feel like they have more of.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I have a different relationship with Malick than maybe most, but watching
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: this film does make me more interested in going to the rest of his filmography.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Here you can kind of see the schematics still very much at play, right?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can kind of see him slipping into the role Dhruv that you
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: so perfectly identified,
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: of a certain type of cinema that was emerging that is part of a youth culture
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: that is responding to America as we were perceiving it
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: then very much I feel also influenced
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: by a certain revolt against the war in Vietnam and all
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: of these American imperial enterprises
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: in the sense that it is a film about these false constructions violence
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: that people have
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: to believe in and then finding out how bad they actually are, right?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's also a film that's very much at odds with itself for how it wants to stick to
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: the
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: characters and their story as it unfolds.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: while also figuring out how much it can roam and drift
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: in its other formal registers,
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: including the voiceover that is quite specific in the in the work of Malick
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: because course,
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: in every subsequent film,
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: the voiceover becomes less linearly applicable to the things
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: that you are actually seeing,
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: as in there's less causality between what's being heard
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: and what's being shown.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Why I think the film connects very nicely and why it ultimately
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: also leads me to,
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: for instance, really love in The New World that Malick is incredibly
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: good at evoking or capturing people as they surrender to this larger thing,
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: this utopian
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: thing that you described, Dhruv.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: Which to some degree I would like to believe that Malick
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: wants to show us that these things can exist on Earth if they are agreed
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: between two people,
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: but how fragile that bond how slippery that contract almost is as if this is a place
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: that
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: can be only temporarily reached in a kind of almost orgasmic bliss.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: and then soon to be abandoned almost like Adam and Eve,
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know, are leaving the paradise
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: on Earth.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Which is why I very much appreciate your criticism of The New World, Joshua.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Yeah.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: by no means,
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: you know, limiting it, but I thought that this romanticization in The New World
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: is him sublimating that to the fullest,
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: and then that just becomes a kind of formal register
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: that film works in, which I find incredibly endearing because it's the film that
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think cinematically of his captures the best,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: what it is to be swept up in that bigger
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: thing that is much greater than yourself or the culture that you came from
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: or anything
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: in between.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: In the meeting of Captain John Smith and the princess, you know, of the old
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: world as they discover America or try to establish Jamestown.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: I find there that the film just kind of found a full audio visual fruition of his
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: entire vision almost,
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: which here seems still Somewhat naive and brittle, and yet there
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: are these incredible moments in Badlands when Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen step
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: into
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: the frame together, they meet each other.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: And just the glances that they exchange.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I would like to actually revisit.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: More Malick after this and see if I'm actually
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: also beginning to feel like because a lot of people also have this perception
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: where early
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: Malick as in like the seventies Malick.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: is the Malick for them.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: And later Malick slips more and more into a sort of romanticization
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: where they lose him,
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: I think for me it's just I'm like, how can anyone look at the world
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: like that?
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm f a bit in awe of how he can look at the world in that way because
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I can't.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think this whole idea for me was
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's a wonderful contrast between like the performances of the leads also
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: At least
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: this time is when I noticed it, where Sissy Spacek is supposed to become almost more
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: elusive, opaque, more like a person who you don't understand.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And Martin Sheen sort of becomes more and more caricatureish because she also starts
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: to
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: see him more and more as.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: The James Dean stand-in, who's then celebrated at the end.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought it was a fascinating contrast between those two performances
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: and how those
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: two sort of inform the entire sort of drama of Badlands
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Yeah, it's true, because she first is the construct, right?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Yeah.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because she's like the schoolgirl,
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: the girl next door that he meets and falls in love
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: with and sweeps off her feet.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then she just grows up to become so incredibly cynical
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Hm.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: so soon because basically her boyfriend is a psychopathic,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: narcissistic facsimile of James
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Dean and Bonnie and Clyde and a couple of other people,
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Yeah.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what why it s might be the bleakest is because I think the ending sort
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: of has that idea of her realizing that her becoming a person is not
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: the thing that's celebrated.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: It's him becoming the caricature that's celebrated.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I always remember her final like smile.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: to him,
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: which is almost like a, yes, I'm still buying into this whole myth of you, which
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: everyone also is reaffirming.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like, It sits so wrongly and it's then
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: juxtaposed with like this wonderful view of the clouds.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: And I'm like, yeah, like he won't make this again.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: in whatever way or shape possibly because I think he's actually a romantic at heart
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: and
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I think he l he does believe in a more pure world.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: So yeah, it's fascinating to like see it now it's an artifact of his he will never
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: remake.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Of course,
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Malick himself has often been perceived as incredibly elusive and hard to catch,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: including this mysterious twenty-year almost hiatus of film.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Making after Days of Heaven and then it took him what 18 years to make
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: The Thin Red Line.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: However,
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: I would be remiss if I would not mention John Bleasdale's book, The Magic Hours,
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: the biography of Terrence Malick,
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: which very accurately tracks also what he did in these
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: 20 years,
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: which was A lot of different projects, a lot of big under enterprises in terms
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: of like trying to set up different films,
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: also working in theater, trying to make a kind
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: of immersive cinematic theater and all of these other experiments.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: So he was not fully gone or just shifted to philosophy proper, right?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: also he does not have that many films, right?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: So every individual film sits very deeply within his author and points
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: at something very
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: specific,
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: like this one as Where he starts finding his footings, where he's also establishing
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: so many of his key themes,
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: but also is still somewhat fixed to the grid of a traditional
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: screenplay.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Which by the way is also in the time that he was working on this film was
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: against the backdrop of the first, year that the American Film Institute.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: was having all of these directors coming out of their stable,
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: including David Lynch, who's
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: on the same basically curriculum working and tinkering away at Eraserhead.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: So there's so many insane stories.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: Jack Fisk, their pr production designer, shared production designer.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: Jack Fisk as well,
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: I will tell you one tiny story though related to Malick because I've
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Yeah,
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: never spoken with Malick,
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: but I did once speak with Ennio Morricone who scored Days of Heaven.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was somehow allowed to interview him in his house in Rome,
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: a year before he passed away,
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Wow.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: which was Absolutely surreal.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: Also, the flight on our way to Rome had like an eight-hour
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: delay.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm on the airport.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like not sleeping.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're arriving in the morning and it's like,
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: okay, we're going to Mr. Morricone's
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: house.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh my god.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I never do this on the record.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: I have never brought anything to anyone to sign in terms of our work,
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: you know, when doing
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: interviews.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: But I figured, hell, what the hell, you know, this is Ennio fucking Morricone.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: I have to do it.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I brought the vinyl soundtrack of Days of Heaven.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: right?
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: And after the interview, I'm like maestro.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: I'm sorry, but Can you maybe sign this record that you've done the score for?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: And he holds it.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: He's like sitting and he's already what 89 or something And he holds
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: the record and he's staring at it intently and for like 20 seconds pass.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: then he And looks up at me and he says, "It's a very good movie."
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: And he signs it and that's it.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I mean that's wonderful, 'cause I know the other stories I think James Horner was
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: really pissed off at Malick for basically ditching most of the music he made for
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: The New World
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hugo Emmerzael: Many people are very pissed off, yes.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: because he loves classical music.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah,
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hugo Emmerzael: sadly.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well whereas I also know many actors wanted to work with him on a later stage,
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: in his career to just tap into a different mode of directing to see a alternative
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: to a more unreal studio way of going about doing that.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like I know Natalie Portman and Ben Affleck were very interested in seeing how he
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: works just to see the other side of things so that can help them identify who they
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: are as a director, whatever that may be in some of their cases.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Yeah.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Anyway,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think if we have veered off into the territory of Natalie Portman's directing
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: career,
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: it's time to maybe Josh Jump to the next film, which is Danis Tanović No Man's
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Land.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now here's the only film of the three that I had to catch up on the occasion
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: of this podcast.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I will not say more than that I was Very impressed with what I saw
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: and thankful that you suggested it.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: But now I think it would be a good moment for you
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: to explain why we are discussing this film today.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Oh thank God I for a second I thought you were gonna make me talk
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: about Natalie Portman's
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: debut film.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: we can go back if you want if it's easier than,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know, the war between Bosnia-Herzegovina
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: [Clip from the trailer for No Man's Land (2001)]
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: and
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: yeah, Tanović is a very important director.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: He's probably the most important director in the history of Bosnia.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that really interests me about him as particularly as a debut
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: Hugo Emmerzael: Wait,
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: can I immediately interject and ask why in per why in particular do you have such
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: Joshua Polanski: yeah.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: an interest in Bosnian cinema?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: it's through No Man's Land.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: Is how it started.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: Hugo Emmerzael: That
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: I mean I'm mostly interested in his films.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: so I live in Grand Rapids,
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: Michigan, which I believe has the third most Bosnians in the
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: world outside of Sarajevo.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: The amount of Bosnian restaurants here, we have Bosnian mosque.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: so I I'm surrounded in a small way as well and you know am able to Occasionally
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: even see Bosnian movies in movie theaters because they know
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: the Bosnian audience will
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: will turn up for them.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: Was through No Man's Land.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: I did at the very beginning of COVID a 30 country 30 day challenge
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: where I watched 30
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: movies and 30 days from 30 different countries.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: The thing we did during COVID.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Did you also have a sourdough starter in the meantime?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: No, I got into pickling.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: and this was the film that I had from Bosnia.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: and it was the only time in my entire life that I had watched a film start
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: to finish.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: and then immediately rewatched it.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: I d I no time in between.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: just went right back to it.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: I think it was like three in the morning when I was restarting
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: it.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: it was just not like anything I had seen.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: I was a bit surprised at how few people have logged it on Letterboxd,
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: as well as his masterpiece
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: film I think is Circus Columbia.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: Despite the fact that I mean it basically anybody that's
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: watched it in terms of like critics and festivals, it's been, you know, his entire
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: career has been Well awarded, I would say.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: this is also so insane that it won from Amélie and then it just kind
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: of relatively faded
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Joshua Polanski: he's
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: into more niche corner slash obscurity.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: That's crazy.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: it won the Screenplay Award at Cannes.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: He's won Golden Bears, you name it.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: a little bit background on Tanović.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: So Bosnian War in the nineties.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: He's a student at the University in Sarajevo and studying
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the arts.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: And the men are drafted, of course, or you know, they have to serve a year in
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: the military and The way that Tanović chooses to spend his time in the military is
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_02: by
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: recording the war and the genocide.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: He breaks into his school to steal two cameras.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: and just starts following around the army and end up recording more than 300 hours
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: of
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the war and the genocide.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: I think that the w ghost of genocide and of ethnic cleansing
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: have followed his entire career.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think you see that, you know, very abundantly and
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: clearly in No Man's Land.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_02: But you see it all the way through even some of his, you know,
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: like more insignificant and English language titles like The Postcard Killings
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: with Jeffrey
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: Dean Morgan.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you see it most literally in his film with Colin Firth, Triage, which
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: is about a war photographer in Kurdistan,
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Colin Farrell, I have to interject.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Joshua Polanski: Colin Farrell ups
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Big difference, very different Colin.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: sorry, g mixing up my Collins.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: But he's a war photographer in Kurdistan.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: so I think you see it maybe most literally there.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: but a lot of the themes that will show up throughout Tanović's career you see
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: in No Man's
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: Land.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the war, artifice,
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: sort of
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: negligence of the United Nations,
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: the role of memory in serving are as like a cultural preservation and act
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: of resistance.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: what I find so interesting when you have all of these big themes floating around
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: and also
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: apparently a director who as a documentarian before you know turning
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: to fiction has shot
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: so much footage of what was like such an incredibly painful war, such a tragic war,
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: such a like convoluted geopolitical crisis
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: that This film is surprisingly irony-tinged.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: It is occasionally very funny.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Artifice really shines true in all of these constructs,
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: either through language or through media.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: or the cinematic apparatus themselves or maybe even the construct of the trench
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: as this
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: kind of divider of something that in actually feels too arbitrary to really divide
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: in
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: like what is a dividing exactly, right?
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: If not only the Bosnians and the Serbs, but
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: I found that very interesting that there's these constant slate of hands almost of
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: the
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: director,
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm very curious if you know more also about this tonal mode that he sits
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: in and how that applies to No Man's Land,
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: which is basically about two soldiers stuck
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: in the trench,
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: but they are from the opposing armies, which sounds like the beginning
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: of a bad joke.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: But it's the start of a good film and a and a great career, apparently.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Joshua Polanski:
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think another thing that's like really related to that when we talk
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: about particularly
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the trench.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: Is the description of this movie almost sets it up like it's gonna
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: be a both sidesism thing.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that's probably what a lot of American critics
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: assume it is w when they go to watch it, but you never That never happens.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: You know who the bad guys are this entire film.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: I think that sort of moral clarity has been persistent throughout his vision.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: But in terms of tonal, to return to your he's got a modality of poetics, I guess
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: is the way I would word it.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: There are some films that are more in this vein of this
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: kind of black comedy,
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: really heavy politics.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think of Death in Sarajevo is one of the other films kind
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: of fits in this tonal vein, which is set entirely in Hotel Europa on the I think
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the hundredth anniversary of the assassination of Franz
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_02: and there's also a really humorous bit involving the United Nations and that
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_02: as well.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: And then Late Summer, which is of his more recent films.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: It's streaming on the Klassiki channel right now.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: Highly recommend it.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: That is also a really humorous film.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: it's a black comedy then he also has films like The Life of an Iron which is
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: a dramatization
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: of a news story about a Roma and kind of their struggle for healthcare.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: and has the real Roma family play their parts.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: it's almost neorealist it is bleak.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: You I saw one of his descriptions where the reason
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: he said he made it was he couldn't believe that the same people
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: that were saving their
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: neighbors from Serbian snipers were now letting their neighbors die
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: because they don't
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: have health
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: So that again immediately establishes this connection that you said at the beginning
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: when
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: discussing this film, right?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: That everything is still also informed by these traumatic
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: episodes.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: Joshua Polanski:
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: that may be another point of maybe in a slight way No Man's Land is like kind of
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: an outlier
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: in that it's actually about the people who inflict the violence rather than
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: the people
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: who are normally the subjects of it.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: But even know, you have the Roma family are very
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_02: clearly kind of on the bottom of the social ladder But even within that context, I
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: think that the soldiers here in No Man's Land they're really just stooges.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: They're not the people in charge.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_02: They're just as much victims of the violence
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: as they are people inflicting it.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would say that he has these different
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_02: strands of the poetic where he's always kind of balancing like real and documentary
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: in interesting ways.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes it leans more towards the documentary, and sometimes
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: it leans more towards fiction, where he's trying to say something about the real,
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've messaged Joshua on the group also saying that I'm very glad
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: that you introduced
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: me because I actually weirdly enough have never I had never heard of him and
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: then I checked
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: his filmography.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And he's done an Indian movie also, which is also s interesting, where
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I was like, I had heard of the film but I didn't know the director's name.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I was reminded most of actually Paths of Glory while watching this at least parts
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: of
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: it the whole bureaucratic sort of you know the
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: weight of it basically crum crumbling upon everyone.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think for me,
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Paths of Glory was always supposed to be a sort of, you know, everything
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: you do will never lead to anything good.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: Like every decision is already preordained.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: as this film starts too, and I love the sort of you begin in the fog of war, which
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: is ironically the most peaceful time of the f film of course.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: one of the first shots,
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: like I got an impression that okay, this film is not going to,
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know be like soft at all in the way it deals with its subjects
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: and like it'll do what
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: it is required to take this film where it leads to.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like to me there was constant sense of foreboding that I know
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: where this all is headed
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: and I know it's not a good place where it's headed,
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: but where it heads is arguably the
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: worst.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: Place where I had thought worst in the sense of just feeling the worst for everyone
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: involved, especially the person who's in the trench, the third person.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the what you were saying about realism and documentary,
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: the great things for me takes the Hitchcock sort of bomb under
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: the table principle actually,
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: like literally in one sense, like you have a bomb under a person here.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: as a construct,
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: but then the way it sort of spins the drama around it think informed more
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: by documentary and sensibilities.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like the hand it's not handheld camera work,
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: but like it's really Not bothered with and again I apologize
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: for even bringing this film
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: in,
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: but I was thinking about how to do good satire and how to do good like black comedy
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: sometimes, and I had just watched Digger before this.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: So I immediately was like, you know, there are ways of execu
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hugo Emmerzael: As one does.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the meme with The Boss Baby, right?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Man as who has only seen Digger watches his second film.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: This reminds me a lot of Digger.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's giving me Digger vibes.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Yeah.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: no.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like, you know, there there's a method to do all this, and I feel I
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: think what you're saying about the documentary really plays its hand
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: in filmmaker not
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: using extra techniques to sort of zhuzh up the suspense
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: or like you know create extra
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: things like it feels like all the tension it in it is really like palpable I think
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: the narrative is like familiar,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: but it's done so well that I think I really responded
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: to
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's also very interesting what you say,
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv, about like, you know, tackling
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_01: the ghost and also the conceptualizing of the front is that I I've watched
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: a lot documentaries
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: from Ukraine made during the war, right?
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it is very interesting to put the specter or the prism of war in like
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: the same track
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: as the course of film history and just to also see how certain wars within
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: the media reality
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: in which they have unfolded have informed or have,
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: you know, been informed by the visual
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: language of the time or the conceptual approach of certain directors.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: And there is a kind of back and forth.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard exactly pinpoint those things,
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: but I mean what I always thought was very interesting about also,
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: for instance, this specific,
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: you genocide in 1995 is like you said as well Josh this like wholesale failure of
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: the
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: UN and the armies in charge, the Westerners, the Big Brothers in charge, just
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: the control completely slipping out of their fingers.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: But while the world is kind of watching because the cameras were there.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's one of those somewhat proto wars that have informed us about
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: the regurgitation
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: of the conflict through the digital Which now we have like everywhere you go on X
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: the
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: everything app or on the Telegram channel or on whatever
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: And you can basically get your
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: fix of anything that's happening in the world that is fucking grim and awful, right?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: But this was one of those very specific moments
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: where there are actual TV journalists
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: with big Bulky cameras just showing the whole powers powerlessness of so many people
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: in
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: that situation,
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: which is an interesting trigger for filmmakers who want to have a more
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: conceptual relationship between the material they have and the reality that
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: the material
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: is coming from, right?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I can feel that in his films, and I find that there's a strange
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: connection to a couple of,
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: and this is somewhat evil to say, and please don't get me wrong,
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: because I am not getting into that politics.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: But for the record, I am not condoning anything their country is doing.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: But a couple of Israeli filmmakers like Amos Gitai or Samuel Maoz,
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: who are also more on
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: the pacifist.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: Side or are also actually pro-Palestinian and anti-IDF, but who also have
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: always complicated all the complications of the conflict,
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: you know, through their films,
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: which I think is a very interesting proposition and here it plays very true.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: by virtue of I think the biography of this director as well.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's a really interesting comparison you bring up,
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: which I'm not familiar with those
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: filmmakers, but
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: actually the Amos Gitai I think has a kind of very silly connection with Tanović
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: because
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: they are both directors of this incredibly ridiculous 9/11 omnibus film.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: Joshua Polanski: Oh,
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Which also includes one of the most egregious short films ever by Sean Penn.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: directors from all over the world.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you also have Youssef Chahine from Egypt, and then
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: you have Danis Tanović from Bosnia-Herzegovina But it also has a short
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: from Amos Gitai,
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: that also made me think about Tanović's films in the sense there is a conflict,
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: there's
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: a tragedy happening,
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: and immediately it gets too complicated and then the press comes
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: And they even make it worse basically, so
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: it's an interesting comparison because outside of his filmmaking career,
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_02: Tanović is also
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the co-founder of a political party in Bosnia that translates to Our Party.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_02: that is trying to push beyond the kind of nationalistic mentalities
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_02: that are really governing
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the post-war in the country.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they have three presidents from all three of the
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: different ethnicities.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's a small party or really more of a movement, but this
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: sort of like post-ethnic where do we go next?
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: Optimism, I think is really interesting in comparison to those Israeli filmmakers
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: that you bring
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: also interesting that like most famous Bosnian director
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: that I know is Jasmila Žbanić, who made Quo Vadis, Aida?
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_01: which was the most,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, relentless direct reckoning with the Srebrenica genocide.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_01: as it was just a incredibly,
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, detailed fictionalized reconstruction very often
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: can be very evil to spectate But in this case it worked for me.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: I thought it was an incredible film.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: All our previous films also have this circling around
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: the thing and then ultimately having one film that goes straight into this heart
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: of darkness
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: and it's kinda interesting that he starts In the war,
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: and then all of his other films
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: seem to just be informed by the ghost of it, right?
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean he's got other f films that like war plays a central role in, but not this
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: Joshua Polanski: war,
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: you said at the beginning that his masterpiece was Circus Columbia, What makes that
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_02: Hugo Emmerzael: the masterpiece
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: this is his other direct film that's really about the conflict.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_02: it's set in an idyllic town in the southern part of the country on the eve of the
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: And The violence we as a viewer know is just because of the time and place and
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: but it
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: comes so suddenly and so violently and heartbreakingly, that sort of
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: like reading an a novel by like Gabriel García Márquez or Halldór Laxness.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: the individuals become like representations of their country and of the politics
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: of the time in like this way that's like intentionally symbolic.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: it's beautiful with these lush greens of Herzegovina.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: I guess it has that romantic cinematography.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: And then it destroys it a way that only war can do.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: it's a simple narrative in that way.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: But it's also what makes it so powerful.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a good transition the unexpected violence to talk about the last film
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: of the three
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: which is the one that I wanted to discuss with you which is Na Hong-jin's
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: The Chaser this
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: is a film that came to me in a very,
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: you know, interesting moment in my life as a young
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: Cinephile I was still in high school in 2008 and I was in this kind
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: of optional cinema
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: class that my arts teacher taught decided that every year from then on he wanted
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: to take
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: his kids to Rotterdam Film Festival and then we would watch four films a day
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: and go back
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: home.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: Saw some absolute dog shit like a Venezuelan post-apocalyptic animation film that
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: I completely hated and forgot the title of,
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: But then at the end of the day we saw The
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Chaser
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: [Clip from the trailer for The Chaser (2008)]
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: i it it's an interesting film to revisit because when I'm a teenager I'm blown away
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: by
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: very obvious things because here we have A police detective story,
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_01: but actually it's not
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: really a police detective story because the detective is fallen out of his ways.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: He's actually a kind of petty pimp and all of his staffers These young sex workers,
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: are
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: disappearing and seemingly it all happens after they've all seen the same client.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: which brings him back into police detective mode to find the man
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: who might be responsible
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: for bringing the hammer to the head of all his valuable staffers.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: it is this jarring contrast between a kind of over-insistent slowness in the film
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: and
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: then these like virtuosic displays of grotesque violence that,
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_01: of course, when you're
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: fifteen, make an incredible impression on you, right?
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: So I was like absolutely blown away.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like the hammer was landing on my face.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: But then Revisiting it later,
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: also maybe in the context Na's later work which includes
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_01: The Wailing another l let's say hybrid genre film and his recent opus,
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: and here your mileage may vary a bit, Hope,
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: which played this year in the midnight section of Cannes.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: revisiting it,
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like mostly was struck by the kind of misanthropic yet Interesting
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: perspective on humanity.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, we this is the era in which so many of these films
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: are just,
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: guttural rain,
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: torrential rain,
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: just disgusting cities, very Taxi Driver-, Se7en-inspired rot and decay
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: and then to find something in that makes you care about why
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: of these things are happening.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that was kinda interesting, how this bleakness and desolation in his hands
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: does point towards something slightly optimistic.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: I don't know.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal:
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: so I just the wonderful trivia and the sort of joys of watching Bollywood films,
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: or at
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: least I used to watch a lot of Bollywood films.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: Now it is They are so bad that you have to make sure you select them judiciously.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Anyways,
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: I watched The Chaser this year two three months back for the first time but I
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: had already seen the film because I had seen an unofficial remake of it in
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Oh my god.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because the film is also remade in America, right?
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: I did I didn't know this,
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: but no, it that this isn't an official remake hundred percent.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: This is unofficial.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Murder 2, which is
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Murder 2.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, the to continue your trivia or correct myself The Chaser
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: was never remade,
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_01: but they dropped the trailer of The Chaser in the US for the Korean
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: film.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: Saying that it soon will be in an American remake, but here is the Korean genre
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: I think.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: film that shocked us all.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then apparently the remake never came, so it was only the
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: Hugo Emmerzael: original in a limited US release But
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: and I remember liking Murder 2 when I saw it,
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: considering I didn't know the story of The Chaser.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: this was not the case when I watched the Oldboy remake in Hindi, which was the worst
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: We will unpack that in a later episode, maybe.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: thing I've seen.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: But chaser as you said I think the Se7en comparison
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Hugo Emmerzael: That deserves its own episode.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: came to me a lot while watching this.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: With the Na films I've only seen I'd haven't gotten
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hugo Emmerzael: Yeah,
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: an opportunity to watch Hope,
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: unfortunately, as of yet, because it didn't release here.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I've seen The Wailing and I think the I'm generally quite impressed
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: by South Korean
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_00: cinemas ability to mix tones,
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: but then not compromise the essence of the story, which
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like in The Chaser,
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: it doesn't feel like it backpedals to provide you like a very comfortable,
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: amicable ending where everything is fine, So yeah.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Yeah,
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think that Na is like very interested in stories where there's kind of like a
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: lack of almost catharsis or pathos.
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like The Wailing as well, especially feels for me
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: very relentless in that sense in the ending of the film.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Yeah.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: How it's kind of like it just becomes bigger and grander and more majestic
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: and strange
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: and mysterious,
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: but ultimately it's just about just like This sucking down in yeah, I
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Oh, yeah, it feels horrible.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: Hugo Emmerzael: don't know.
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: The
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I that that's I think the other thing which you said, right?
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: That if you if these are South Korean variations of American stories,
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: the appeal, at least
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: for me, of them has also been that they are committed to doing the dirty work, also.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: It feels so the entire film feels so scuzzy.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: Like I just don't know any other word to like describe it other than that.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: But also I remember watching it and just being like He caught the killer
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: that quickly.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: where else will this film go?
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_00: That was the other question I had while watching it.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it stretches to a point where it doesn't feel overlong
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_00: or like doesn't feel
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: like it's again pointing to the failures and just everyone is so horrible
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: in this film
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: Joshua Polanski: else.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: except for the kid.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: I love everything I've seen by Na.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen The Wailing, Hope, and Chaser.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_02: and at least from those three films, I think I've come to always expect a curveball.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: sometimes it's narrative as in this one,
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: and sometimes it's more of a tonal curveball,
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: as in Hope.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: But I think I've just I've come to realize that Na throws curveballs.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: I really loved this film as well.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_02: I loved all three of the films that we're
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: talking about.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: Talking And maybe actually to connect it to No Man's Land thematically
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_02: is I love the farce element with this like subplot that's happening in
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: the background
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: of like somebody throwing shit at the mayor.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: mean it runs the entire course of the movie.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: in some ways, I suppose he could call it you know, like a comedic respite or
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: whatever.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: But also think it's doing something a little bit deeper and in pointing to you
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: know what is really the problem and how did a society that in which the serial
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: killer can be cultivated and most importantly maybe in which the society
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: that fascinates
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the serial killer how did we get here?
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that shit throwing it sort of like,
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: you know, metaphorically points us in the direction of, you know, government.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: that is how we got here.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: mean,
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: and that's also how it connects quite nicely, right, with Memories of Murder, which
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: is also like in that same era,
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: of course, the much better known film of Bong Joon-ho,
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: but it's like these are films that take these
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: over familiarly like neo-noirish tropes
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: and then also show a lot about the faltering bureaucratic system and all
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: of this like
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: hierarchical-political machinations of South Korean society and its etiquette
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: and how
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: then one of these people as a cog in the machine is supposed to either behave
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_01: or not behave.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: but it is interesting how it feels a bit yeah cheekily in the background running its
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: course but I agree with you as well I think these kind
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: of things actually are integral
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: right to such a film so that it feels that you are really in a milieu so
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: that you can
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: really have a sense of the place and its texture and the zeitgeist around it.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think the genre stuff works with the whole aspect of what you were saying about,
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_00: you
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: know, how these random things seem to be going on.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: these films I mean they risk the run of feeling a little tonally divergent
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: but like I
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: think the whole idea is that they feel more fully realized in a way
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: because they have
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: these odd singular construction in a way.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: Like it doesn't feel like it's a grim like it's just grim.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's that element of Pulling back and maybe looking
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: at it something comedically,
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: but that comedy, of course, is also covered in mud or murk or whatever.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's a I think with South Korean cinema,
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: there is always whatever I've seen
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: at least,
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: there's always this element of a lot of things going on, but it doesn't feel
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: like it's overstuffed for whatever I've seen at
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: as I said at the beginning, you know, we were kind of also just looking at the entry
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: point into this podcast.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: Not to evaluate in front of all of our listeners, but I am hope
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: you're having fun discussing all of these films here on mic as well.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Absolutely.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been great.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: Yeah, this is great.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, even just to be able to explore these films and to meet both
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_02: Dhruv Goyal: yeah, absolutely.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: of you, to meet our fellow co-writers is nice.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: we are getting to know each other through this process,
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: which I think is a very valuable
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Yeah
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: experience as well.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Leads me also kind of to the outro in which I would like to ask both
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Yeah, absolutely.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: of you, Where can we find you?
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have cooking?
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Is there anything that you would like to plug to the listeners?
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski:
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_02: my website where I kind of track all
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_02: of my professional film criticism is therewerenogodsleft.com.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: is a quote from the movie Pompeii by Paul W. S. Anderson.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: I'm a Paul W. S. Anderson head as well.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: in good company then.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm on Rotten Tomatoes, etc.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: I in terms of what's cooking, I have some stuff cooking with
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: the Eastern European Streaming Service and podcast and journals.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: Joshua Polanski: look over there for some interesting stuff on Eastern European film.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I mean v much more limited.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think mostly at InRO only, whatever writings are coming
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: through.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's a piece coming on Burning the new Lee Chang-dong.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I'm kind of preempting your plug of the episode.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal:
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_00: but a piece on that and then I run a podcast with a bunch of other critics and
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: Indian it's called Queen Is Dead.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: I have not started that podcast.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: I do not know where that name comes from.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: But they have the people who started it know the origins of that name.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: But it's basically us trying to talk about world cinema.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: in all shapes and form.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: We focus a fair bit on Indian cinema, of course, because a lot
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: Dhruv Goyal: of us are into it.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, both those places I think right now are the places to see
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: whatever work I have here
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: We'll drop that in the show notes as for me well one of the things I got cooking
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: of course
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: which Dhruv was already suggesting is more episodes of In Review
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: On Mic soon we will be
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_01: back with a retrospective episode on Lee Chang-dong as his new film Possible Love
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: is opening in US theaters, limited, before Netflix release.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_01: Also expected on the timeline soon will be a bonus dispatch
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: from New York Film Festival
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: where a couple of our writers are on the ground as we speak.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_01: to dig through the weeds and find the cinematic gems out there,
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, we will naturally,
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_01: as the spooky season is amongst us very soon,
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_01: try to latch on to a Halloween themed episode
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: with some spooky movies, which I think we already covered to some degree today.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_01: to find me besides on In Review Online is mostly on my Instagram,
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: which is @hemmerzael,
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_01: my first letter,
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: and then my Surname, I'm realizing more and more how awful my surname
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: is for international listeners,
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_01: but again, as always, all of the things will be in the
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: show notes Then it rests me nothing else than say Josh, Dhruv, it's a wrap.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Congratulations.
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for being with me here today.
• 56:29
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: That's such a pleasure.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: I wish we could do this immediately right now again, or at least
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: tomorrow.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_01: Joshua Polanski: Yeah, thanks for having us.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: Dhruv Goyal: Thank you so much.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_01: In Review On Mic is brought to you by the team of In Review Online,
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_01: produced by Chris Cassingham,
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Emily DuGranrut, Luke Gorham and me, Hugo Emmerzael.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael:
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: The gorgeous music is by Dutch musician and composer Bozwart,
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: with episode contributions
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: of Dhruv Goyal and Joshua Polanski.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Want to be in the loop for our next episodes?
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: Like and subscribe to our channel wherever you find your podcasts.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hugo Emmerzael: In the meantime, thank you for listening and see you soon.
• 57:12
  [Outro music]