Latest / Left of the Projector / Ivan's Childhood (1962) with Revolutionary Left Radio and Amanda

Transcript

Ivan's Childhood (1962) with Revolutionary Left Radio and Amanda · Left of the Projector

• 0:16
  Evan Intro: Hello and welcome to Left of the Projector. I am your host Evan,
• 0:19
  Evan Intro: back again with another film discussion from the left.
• 0:22
  Evan Intro: If you would be so kind as to rate the show on your platform of choice,
• 0:26
  Evan Intro: it would help more listeners find the show.
• 0:28
  Evan Intro: And if you're a Patreon subscriber, I greatly appreciate your support.
• 0:31
  Evan Intro: You can also support the show if you go to Patreon slash Left of the Projector pod.
• 0:37
  Evan Intro: You can also follow on all social media at Left of the Projector pod on Instagram and threads.
• 0:42
  Evan Intro: This week on the show, we continue our series with Brett of RevLeft Radio and
• 0:46
  Evan Intro: Amanda on the films of Andrei Tarkovsky.
• 0:50
  Evan Intro: You may know by now that we've covered Stalker and Solaris, and we bring you
• 0:54
  Evan Intro: the first feature film directed by Tarkovsky, and that is Ivan's Childhood. It was released in 1962.
• 1:01
  Evan Intro: Ivan's Childhood delves into World War II from the perspective of a young child
• 1:05
  Evan Intro: who has lost his entire family and is now spying for the Soviet partisans and Red Army.
• 1:11
  Evan Intro: Brett and Amanda have been incredible partners in this ongoing series,
• 1:14
  Evan Intro: helping me parse out, honestly, films that scholars have spent decades talking about.
• 1:19
  Evan Intro: I've grown a deeper understanding of film and these sorts of films from the
• 1:23
  Evan Intro: Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, and other areas.
• 1:26
  Evan Intro: It's really been a joy to have these ongoing conversations with Amanda and Brett.
• 1:31
  Evan Intro: I hope you enjoyed this week's conversation on Ivan's childhood.
• 1:35
  Evan: All right, well, Brett and And Amanda, thank you for coming back on the show
• 1:38
  Evan: to talk about yet another Tarkovsky film.
• 1:40
  amanda: Always a pleasure.
• 1:41
  Brett: Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to be back.
• 1:43
  Evan: Yeah. And as everyone heard in the opening there, we're talking about Ivan's
• 1:47
  Evan: Childhood, which is Andrei Tarkovsky's first full-length feature film, which came out in 1962.
• 1:54
  Evan: And I think before we get into sort of the general talk about the film itself,
• 1:58
  Evan: talk about some of the components that I think are pretty important,
• 2:02
  Evan: I thought we kind of just start I'll start off with something a little lighter,
• 2:05
  Evan: as you know, Tarkovsky films can be a little heavy, a lot of themes,
• 2:09
  Evan: and this one is about the themes of World War II in the Soviet era.
• 2:15
  Evan: So I thought I'd start off by just saying, if you could have dinner with an
• 2:18
  Evan: actor living dead, it could be a director. Curious who you would pick, and...
• 2:23
  Evan: Guess briefly why you would uh you'd choose them and it could be andre tarkovsky.
• 2:28
  Brett: Okay i could take a shot of this first um i have
• 2:31
  Brett: maybe one one director is pretty obvious um you know
• 2:34
  Brett: stanley kubrick is one of my faves um love everything that that he's pretty
• 2:38
  Brett: much put out 2001 a space odyssey one of my favorite films of all time um so
• 2:43
  Brett: you know of course i'd be interested in talking to him but as an actor one of
• 2:47
  Brett: my favorite actors that jumps to mind And as somebody I'm trying to work through the entire sort of, um,
• 2:52
  Brett: you know, all the, the entire catalog of their work is, is Daniel Day-Lewis.
• 2:57
  Brett: Um, only very recently started getting into him, um, on a couple of flights
• 3:01
  Brett: I had in the last year or two.
• 3:02
  Brett: I, I watched the entirety of, of his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln.
• 3:06
  Brett: And then also finally watched There Will Be Blood.
• 3:09
  Brett: Um, and I'm just, you know, one of those actors that is fascinating and captivating.
• 3:13
  Brett: I'm not sure what there'd be to talk about. I mean, you know,
• 3:16
  Brett: some of these people, you get them in a room and, you know, they're great artists
• 3:19
  Brett: or they're a great actor, but they might not have a lot of the same shared interests.
• 3:23
  Brett: But, you know, that jumps to mind. And then, of course, Nicolas Cage is another
• 3:26
  Brett: interesting figure that I would like to sit down and chat with.
• 3:30
  Evan: I think he would have something to say, Nicolas Cage, for sure.
• 3:34
  Brett: Absolutely.
• 3:34
  Evan: What about you, Amanda?
• 3:36
  amanda: The first director that comes to mind is Inge M. Berman.
• 3:39
  amanda: He's a Swedish director. he did The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, a bunch of stuff.
• 3:43
  amanda: I speak Swedish. I learned Swedish in college.
• 3:47
  amanda: And so a lot of his films helped me learn. And it's kind of interesting that
• 3:52
  amanda: this film in particular really reminds me a lot of The Seventh Seal.
• 3:57
  amanda: If you haven't got an opportunity to see it, I'd highly recommend it.
• 4:01
  amanda: And then as far as actors, this is a hard one because it's hard to decide.
• 4:06
  amanda: I want to know what kind of person they are. I think,
• 4:09
  amanda: Kind of an offhand one would be like Richard Gere, mostly because of his experience
• 4:14
  amanda: going to Palestine and just kind of have a sit down conversation with him.
• 4:20
  amanda: Because as you know, like actors are used oftentimes to push state propaganda.
• 4:25
  amanda: And, you know, it's really propaganda in this case. And it kind of backfired.
• 4:30
  amanda: So I really would like to have a conversation with him to kind of see where
• 4:34
  amanda: that switch was, you know. And obviously, Nicolas Cage, I'm trying to piggyback off of you.
• 4:41
  amanda: That guy, so I live in Portland, and he filmed a movie here called Pig.
• 4:47
  amanda: Great movie. And we were kind of looking for him, hoping that we'd run into him.
• 4:54
  amanda: Because we heard that he's notoriously bad with money. Maybe he would hook us
• 4:58
  amanda: up because he thought we were cool or something.
• 5:00
  amanda: Yeah we actually ate at the food carts yesterday that um a lot of the scenes
• 5:04
  amanda: are filmed at or yeah the food carts and uh yeah just a centric guy you know very centric guy.
• 5:13
  Evan: Yeah he's uh definitely a legend i was just talking about it with someone earlier
• 5:17
  Evan: from the his new movie long legs but for for my pick since i kind of have to
• 5:21
  Evan: think about this lot i think i would pick for the actor i I think I would go with Jane Fonda,
• 5:26
  Evan: just because I've seen a lot of her early work.
• 5:30
  Evan: And I know that just from a movie I watched, and I'm blanking on it at the moment,
• 5:33
  Evan: she was supposed to be cast in a film, but was unmarried.
• 5:38
  Evan: Chosen was not chosen because of her views on
• 5:41
  Evan: uh palestine as being pro-palestinian and
• 5:44
  Evan: so she was left out of the uh the she wasn't
• 5:47
  Evan: called back for the for the movie and so you
• 5:50
  Evan: know she's since the beginning of her career has gone out and
• 5:53
  Evan: spoken been pretty outspoken about not just palestinian rights but
• 5:56
  Evan: lots of other you know the various vietnam war
• 5:59
  Evan: and things like that so be curious to see how those have influenced
• 6:01
  Evan: her career and then from a director if i'm going to pick one of
• 6:04
  Evan: each i'd probably go with paul verhoeven i'm a
• 6:07
  Evan: huge fan of his you know more uh i guess american films you can think of starship
• 6:12
  Evan: troopers and he's always been a favorite of mine so he would be probably one
• 6:16
  Evan: of one of those in another in another episode i said stanley kubrick so i don't
• 6:21
  Evan: want to repeat but that would be another i would love to these are all i mean
• 6:24
  Evan: it can't really go wrong i suppose but um.
• 6:26
  Brett: I don't know this is probably for for the uh exclusively for the terminally
• 6:30
  Brett: online line, but did you recently see the Zionist online,
• 6:35
  Brett: the Brianna Wu, her take on Starship Troopers, that it's not a mockery of fascism,
• 6:39
  Brett: but it's actually a sincere portrayal of nationalism? Did you see that?
• 6:43
  Evan: I did see that. I remember when there was this whole, I think,
• 6:46
  Evan: I guess it was on Twitter and some other people were talking all about Starship Troopers.
• 6:50
  Evan: And I did, one of my very first episodes of this podcast, maybe the 15th episode,
• 6:54
  Evan: was on Starship Troopers, and I re-released it around the time that all of that
• 6:59
  Evan: kind of discourse course is going on.
• 7:00
  Evan: I'm like, I don't know anyone could watch that movie and not get it.
• 7:04
  Evan: You have to be just obtuse to not... I don't know. It's...
• 7:09
  Brett: Absolutely.
• 7:09
  Evan: It's kind of crazy. I think there's a lot of movies I've done.
• 7:13
  Evan: A lot of Verhoeven movies, like Robocop, I think people even,
• 7:17
  Evan: don't realize is this uh.
• 7:18
  Brett: What honorable one just jumped in my mind um humphrey
• 7:21
  Brett: bogart oh i would love to to sit down and chat with him he's uh i don't know
• 7:26
  Brett: i just love the old you know film noirs and just like a certain feeling you
• 7:30
  Brett: get when you watch those old films and i just have always been captivated by
• 7:35
  Brett: any movie that that he's in and just his acting and stuff is hypnotizing so
• 7:38
  Brett: he's he's high on my list as.
• 7:40
  Evan: Far as uh tarkovsky is concerned we've kind of stuck with some of the The original
• 7:44
  Evan: two episodes we've done, we've done Solaris and Stalker, some of the later films in his career.
• 7:50
  Evan: And now this, we're going back to 1962, which is Andrei Tarkovsky's very first feature film.
• 7:56
  Evan: And there's kind of an interesting story that I'll kind of briefly mention,
• 8:00
  Evan: just how he ended up directing the movie.
• 8:02
  Evan: Apparently, it was an entire other group of people, a different director was
• 8:07
  Evan: starting on the film, had written the screenplay, had, I think,
• 8:09
  Evan: filmed some of the movie and they didn't like it.
• 8:12
  Evan: They thought it was terrible. I guess these are most films or other people behind
• 8:15
  Evan: the scenes. And so they fired him.
• 8:17
  Evan: And someone that was one of Andrej Tarkovsky's mentors had told him about they're
• 8:23
  Evan: looking for a new director for this movie.
• 8:24
  Evan: And he literally applied, you know, through some kind of application process,
• 8:27
  Evan: won the chance to direct it, rewrote most of the film.
• 8:31
  Evan: And then when he submitted it to the Soviet Union to have it be reviewed,
• 8:35
  Evan: he actually left out all of the dream sequences and also the love,
• 8:39
  Evan: kind of the love interest scene from the script. So they didn't even know those
• 8:42
  Evan: were going to be in the movie. He filmed them anyway.
• 8:44
  Evan: They came, it came out and kind of the rest is history if you, if you will.
• 8:48
  Evan: But I'm curious, being that this is a very different kind of movie than the
• 8:52
  Evan: other two we've watched. And those are kind of longer, lots of single shots.
• 8:56
  Evan: This is more, more or less traditional and kind of a, put that in quotation marks.
• 9:00
  Evan: I don't think anything Andre Tarkovsky does is traditional, but in a traditional
• 9:04
  Evan: sense of just kind of how more films at that time were done.
• 9:07
  Evan: I'm curious, kind of your first impressions when you watched it before we get into it.
• 9:11
  amanda: I think one of my first impressions is that I guess you don't really see a whole
• 9:15
  amanda: lot of war films that aren't glorifying war.
• 9:20
  amanda: And also are from a Soviet perspective. One thing that I could see throughout
• 9:26
  amanda: it, even in like the character's eyes, was like trauma, you know?
• 9:30
  amanda: The trauma of the war and even one of the soldiers is like, oh,
• 9:34
  amanda: when the war is over, go see a doctor about those nerves, you know?
• 9:37
  amanda: But I think, I'm really glad that we did this out of order just because this
• 9:42
  amanda: is such a different film that it's not a complete representation of Tarkovsky
• 9:46
  amanda: and his capabilities, But it is kind of sort of a creation story at the same time.
• 9:51
  amanda: I mean, the Soviet identity dramatically changed after World War Two,
• 9:57
  amanda: as you know, any traumatizing event would.
• 10:00
  amanda: But yeah, that's my first impression.
• 10:03
  Brett: Yeah, I agree that watching them out of order was interesting because you got
• 10:07
  Brett: to sort of already know where his sort of cinematography and his art in general is going.
• 10:13
  Brett: And then you can go back and visit his first ever film.
• 10:16
  Brett: And one of the things that I noticed is the beautiful cinematography is absolutely there.
• 10:20
  Brett: There this this very unique Tarkovsky esque way of, you know,
• 10:25
  Brett: moving the camera of every image being a painting of, you know,
• 10:29
  Brett: beautiful, beautiful camera work where, you know, this film could could have been a silent film.
• 10:34
  Brett: Right. There could have been no dialogue and not a lot would have been stripped away.
• 10:38
  Brett: Way like you could have made this this film without dialogue and
• 10:41
  Brett: that's a testament to how you know just talented tarkovsky is
• 10:45
  Brett: and how much emotion that he can evoke with very little dialogue just by using
• 10:51
  Brett: the visual poetry of cinematography and then the other thing i noticed that
• 10:55
  Brett: really struck me as is the the basic plot like if you you know from our previous
• 11:00
  Brett: discussions on solaris and
• 11:01
  Brett: stalker there is much more um ethereality
• 11:06
  Brett: um much more surreality um ambiguity
• 11:10
  Brett: in the plot in the temporal um
• 11:13
  Brett: tone like you know the the chronological order in which the movies take place
• 11:17
  Brett: uh you know sometimes you can sort of you're sort of uncertain about where the
• 11:22
  Brett: plot is at any given moment etc but this this film was was much more straightforward
• 11:26
  Brett: much more you know right down the middle as far as plot goes.
• 11:30
  Brett: Right? Very chronological, very easy to follow.
• 11:33
  Brett: And of course, I think that has its benefits when you're trying to work on a concept like war.
• 11:40
  Brett: And of course, this is his first film, so maybe he doesn't feel as artistically
• 11:44
  Brett: developed or free to move in the directions he later would move in.
• 11:48
  Brett: But yeah, for a Tarkovsky film, this plot was very easy to sort of follow.
• 11:53
  Brett: It was very chronological and lacked some of the more,
• 11:57
  Brett: I wouldn't call them indulgences necessarily, but some of the more ethereal,
• 12:02
  Brett: metaphorical, and symbolic stuff that would come later in his catalog of work.
• 12:09
  Evan: It's interesting you mentioned that because I was watching an interview with
• 12:12
  Evan: an author who wrote a book on a bunch of Tarkovsky films.
• 12:16
  Evan: And she actually said, you know, she's obviously probably watched it hundreds
• 12:20
  Evan: of times or many times to write a book on his films.
• 12:23
  Evan: But she actually said something that's interesting. saying this is not necessarily counter to
• 12:26
  Evan: what you're saying brett but it's i'm wondering what do you think of this the very
• 12:29
  Evan: opening scene of the movie is uh kind of
• 12:32
  Evan: uh you see ivan the as the child kind of um he's you know on an apple cart he's
• 12:37
  Evan: it's you know this very beautiful nice kind of um music in the background it
• 12:43
  Evan: kind of seems like oh this is a very beautiful film and then you're immediately
• 12:46
  Evan: taken the opposite direction you see that this is now a dream he
• 12:50
  Evan: wakes up in a barn and he's dirty and everything.
• 12:54
  Evan: And so her theory or her comment was that you actually watching it only one
• 12:59
  Evan: time, you are a little bit confused sometimes what is the reality just because
• 13:03
  Evan: the cuts that he does sometimes are not very obvious. They just kind of immediately flip.
• 13:08
  Evan: And so there is a little bit of confusion sometimes when there is a dream.
• 13:11
  Evan: I think if you're watching closely and looking to analyze it,
• 13:14
  Evan: maybe it's easier to tell.
• 13:16
  Evan: But But I'm wondering if you think that that's actually, he does try and confuse
• 13:19
  Evan: the audience a little bit in giving you these weird back and forth sequences.
• 13:24
  Evan: And sometimes when he cuts, it'll be like a really close up and you don't really know where you are.
• 13:28
  Evan: You don't know whether it's going to be another flashback or it's a different
• 13:31
  Evan: flashback or it's modern time.
• 13:33
  Evan: So I think that's where you see his future style in action, where he does still
• 13:39
  Evan: try and give you that bit of kind of give the audience something they're not expecting, I guess.
• 13:44
  Brett: Yeah, no, I agree with that. And in fact I had in my notes I didn't get to it
• 13:48
  Brett: quite yet But with the exception of the dream scenes,
• 13:51
  Brett: You know, because I think you're saying that there's that's the seed of what
• 13:54
  Brett: would later become kind of, in some respect, entire films is this dreamy,
• 13:58
  Brett: ethereal, you know, chronologically sort of confused and ambiguous way of doing things.
• 14:03
  Brett: Those were sort of instantiated in these dream scenes.
• 14:07
  Brett: And, yeah, the cutting back to real life and back to the dreams,
• 14:10
  Brett: it did get confusing at certain times, especially on your first watch.
• 14:13
  Brett: I'm sure if you go back on the second watch, you can really nail that down.
• 14:17
  Brett: But for me, it just felt like this, you know, it's it's it's it's literally
• 14:22
  Brett: a shift from dreaming into reality.
• 14:24
  Brett: But reality is a nightmare. And so you're he he has these dreams of a sort of childhood deferred.
• 14:31
  Brett: Are they actual memories from his childhood or are they sort of dreamy reminisce,
• 14:36
  Brett: you know, a sort of nostalgia for something that never was because he was stripped
• 14:40
  Brett: of his childhood? I don't exactly know.
• 14:42
  Brett: But the dream world is the only world that Ivan can enter where he still has a childhood.
• 14:47
  Brett: And then he wakes up into the nightmare of the adult world, you know,
• 14:51
  Brett: lost his both his parents, lost his sister to the Nazis.
• 14:54
  Brett: And so I had that dream reality back and forth. And yeah, they blur together
• 14:58
  Brett: the way that they're edited or such that you don't exactly know.
• 15:02
  Brett: Exactly where you are in any given moment. It takes a second to orient yourself.
• 15:05
  Brett: And there's just this, yeah, this oscillation between the dreams of a childhood
• 15:10
  Brett: that Ivan and all children deserve and then the nightmare reality of war.
• 15:14
  Evan: Yeah, definitely. I think that's well said. And one of the things I was thinking
• 15:20
  Evan: about, I've seen, I think when I was right after college, I went through a phase
• 15:23
  Evan: of watching lots and lots of war movies, World War II, Vietnam.
• 15:27
  Evan: Maybe not at the time I wasn't watching movies like this, but I think of how
• 15:30
  Evan: many movies there are about World War Two, and sometimes it's,
• 15:33
  Evan: you know, a specific unit or, you know, a rescue mission or the,
• 15:37
  Evan: you know, the beaches of Normandy, all these different things.
• 15:40
  Evan: But this is not any of those things.
• 15:42
  Evan: It's kind of something altogether different. It's based on a book.
• 15:47
  Evan: And it's, you know, we see the war through the eyes of a child going back and
• 15:51
  Evan: forth, as you said, between kind of the realities, the cruel reality of the
• 15:56
  Evan: real world and war and then the, you know, this dream or, you know,
• 15:59
  Evan: what you wish life could be like.
• 16:01
  Evan: I'm curious what you think that makes it, you know, in a way it's risky to make
• 16:06
  Evan: something like this. It's not like other war movies.
• 16:10
  Evan: And I'm wondering what makes it, I don't know, compelling or what makes it different?
• 16:15
  Evan: And do you think it is, can you think of any other, you know,
• 16:18
  Evan: war type movies where they really kind of press this button of,
• 16:21
  Evan: you know, childhood and youth or even just avoid, there's no battle scenes there's
• 16:26
  Evan: no the only shooting you really see are flares in the air a few times and you
• 16:30
  Evan: hear some gunfire but there's no actual war like you're you're only seeing the result of war.
• 16:36
  amanda: Well there is there is some bombs that do go off
• 16:39
  amanda: i i actually re-watched it and i
• 16:42
  amanda: was like oh yeah there's there's there's some bombs that do go off when
• 16:45
  amanda: they're in like the trenches kind of about three quarters of the way
• 16:47
  amanda: through i think right um but that's pretty much it um
• 16:50
  amanda: the perspective of like being from it's
• 16:54
  amanda: more humanizing i think it's not the movie's
• 16:57
  amanda: not so much about like the war as
• 17:00
  amanda: much because it's just a lot of dialogue and
• 17:03
  amanda: a lot of human interaction um i think it's like the emotional emotional
• 17:07
  amanda: part of war i guess the the trauma as i stated
• 17:10
  amanda: before and doing it through a child's perspective that
• 17:13
  amanda: is forced to be part of the resistance um
• 17:17
  amanda: forced to sacrifice their actual childhood to
• 17:20
  amanda: seek revenge and throughout the film you notice
• 17:23
  amanda: that like the older characters are trying to kind
• 17:26
  amanda: of like maintain his innocence trying to maintain his childhood in a way of
• 17:32
  amanda: like no kid you need to go to military school you know like you need to go to
• 17:36
  amanda: boarding school or whatever um and so it's just a very humanized uh aspect which is
• 17:44
  amanda: something that actually was starting to happen a lot in Soviet film in the sixties.
• 17:48
  amanda: Um, and so, um.
• 17:51
  amanda: That's, I guess that's what kind of makes a difference, not specifically about,
• 17:54
  amanda: because you don't really actually know where they're at.
• 17:56
  amanda: If they are in Russia, I mean, at the end, you see that they're at,
• 17:59
  amanda: you know, wherever the headquarters of all these Nazis are.
• 18:04
  amanda: I really like the use of real, real scene footage towards the end when they,
• 18:08
  amanda: you know, took out the Nazis. That's just always exciting.
• 18:13
  amanda: But yeah, it's a very humanized aspect.
• 18:16
  Brett: Yeah. And to add to that, you know, definitely movies jump to mind.
• 18:20
  Brett: There's like the classic American way of doing these World War Two sort of movies,
• 18:25
  Brett: which I think Evan was alluding to.
• 18:26
  Brett: Very straightforward, very much like here's this one platoon.
• 18:29
  Brett: Let's follow them. You know, Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down,
• 18:32
  Brett: you know, kind of like action movies that don't really get too deep into.
• 18:36
  Brett: I mean, they're good films in their own right, but they don't really get too
• 18:40
  Brett: deep into the psychology, much less these sort of different lenses,
• 18:44
  Brett: like a childhood lens, for example.
• 18:46
  Brett: Speaking of Kubrick, you can think of Full Metal Jacket, which had obviously
• 18:51
  Brett: humor that this film lacks, but also just the psychology of the soldiers themselves.
• 18:57
  Brett: It dove a little deeper while still having that action element.
• 19:01
  Brett: So it was a fun watch, but also a criticism of the war in and of itself and
• 19:05
  Brett: a diving into like, you know, that one soldier who goes sort of crazy and,
• 19:09
  Brett: you know, blows his own brains out that that psychology there.
• 19:13
  Brett: But this is very unique that it's so much through the lens of a child.
• 19:19
  Brett: Of a war orphan, right? He was orphaned by the war.
• 19:23
  Brett: This dream sequences, as I was saying earlier, that allude back to the childhood
• 19:27
  Brett: he might have had at one point or should have had in a just world.
• 19:30
  Brett: World and then you know to amanda's point at the end when there's
• 19:33
  Brett: like that footage of of you know the the soviets
• 19:36
  Brett: winning and taking over nazi headquarters etc
• 19:39
  Brett: i think it's it's not a coincidence that
• 19:43
  Brett: tarkovsky again shows dead children um he
• 19:47
  Brett: shows how the nazis killed their own children so there's
• 19:49
  Brett: that one scene of gerbils lined up next to all of his
• 19:52
  Brett: dead children and then another nazi commander i'm not sure who they
• 19:55
  Brett: were referring to who um shot all his
• 19:58
  Brett: kids in the attic and then hung himself and so
• 20:01
  Brett: you know when we're talking about seeing it through
• 20:04
  Brett: the childhood lens obviously the the lens
• 20:06
  Brett: of ivan and from a pro-soviet which any human being
• 20:10
  Brett: should have in this context especially a pro-soviet um
• 20:13
  Brett: you know perspective but then at the end like yeah nazis are are brutalizing
• 20:18
  Brett: children by starting this war brutalizing children all all around europe but
• 20:22
  Brett: the nazis themselves are sort of brutalizing um their own children in a sense
• 20:27
  Brett: They start this insane manic war for these fascistic expansionary reasons.
• 20:32
  Brett: And it all leads with their defeat and then to murder your own children.
• 20:37
  Brett: I think there's a separate question there of...
• 20:41
  Brett: You know it made me think in the moment like if you're in those circumstances,
• 20:45
  Brett: like wouldn't you still want to give your kids a chance at
• 20:48
  Brett: life like um you know like yeah you're going
• 20:50
  Brett: to be punished you can kill yourself etc um i
• 20:54
  Brett: guess there could be some fears about like you know pillaging or
• 20:57
  Brett: something when the soviets come in there's lots of lots of
• 21:01
  Brett: um discussion on both
• 21:03
  Brett: sides of that war about the atrocities being committed by
• 21:06
  Brett: the others there's a little fear there that maybe death is less
• 21:09
  Brett: of a punishment for your children than what could come but in
• 21:13
  Brett: most instances you can't imagine entire platoons of
• 21:16
  Brett: people coming in and just you know murdering children unless they're
• 21:19
  Brett: israeli or something but um sad as sad as that is um but yeah just the the moral
• 21:26
  Brett: question of of murdering your own children but that's that's not really pondered
• 21:30
  Brett: in the film it's just the the stark reality of of of the war itself traumatizing
• 21:35
  Brett: ivan and other children like
• 21:36
  Brett: him but then the nazis themselves um exterminating their
• 21:39
  Brett: own children and just like that that reinforcing that
• 21:43
  Brett: lens of trying to see the absurdity and the irrationality and the brutality
• 21:48
  Brett: of war and the way you highlight that best is to try to see it through the the
• 21:53
  Brett: eyes of of fundamentally uh you know sort of ontologically innocent beings you
• 21:58
  Brett: know children so i i found that to be interesting yeah i.
• 22:02
  Evan: Think it was the first word that i wrote down in my notes i wrote you know,
• 22:05
  Evan: a child's wonderment and innocence.
• 22:08
  Evan: And that kind of, to me, is the word that describes the movie.
• 22:12
  Evan: I think you, Amanda, said the people, the other soldiers want Ivan to have kind
• 22:18
  Evan: of a quote-unquote normal life where he can keep this innocence,
• 22:22
  Evan: that they want to prevent him from continuing to be this sort of spy behind enemy lines.
• 22:27
  Evan: And it's just, I think what makes it such a different kind of war film,
• 22:33
  Evan: It takes place during a war, but I almost don't even like to say it's a war
• 22:38
  Evan: film in the way we've been talking about it.
• 22:41
  Evan: It's that innocence that they're trying to withhold.
• 22:45
  Evan: And that's what those dream sequences are showing you. They're showing you that
• 22:49
  Evan: once upon a time, Ivan did have this innocence.
• 22:51
  Evan: He loved his mother. They went apple picking.
• 22:54
  Evan: They picked water from the well. They had this sort of normal life.
• 22:58
  Evan: And it's the war that kind of took that all away. and he's led him to being
• 23:04
  Evan: bitter and angry and want vengeance to do whatever he can to avenge.
• 23:10
  Evan: As you said, being an orphan, he's lost that innocence.
• 23:14
  Evan: And there's lots of moments throughout the movie where they try and give him
• 23:17
  Evan: a bunch of comics or kids' magazines.
• 23:22
  Evan: And he's like, I've read all those.
• 23:23
  Evan: And all the attempts to try and give him any sense of normalcy is just always just stripped away.
• 23:31
  Evan: And I think that's part of the impact of war is that you can shield yourself,
• 23:37
  Evan: even like those Nazi children. you know they're kind of shielded from what's
• 23:40
  Evan: going on but at the end of the day they also suffer everyone suffers.
• 23:44
  Brett: To add to that um the the way that the the older soldiers are portrayed is also
• 23:50
  Brett: obviously as amanda was saying incredibly humanizing um but they all were rallied
• 23:55
  Brett: around the shared love and protection of the boy um and and there's like this
• 24:00
  Brett: broader metaphor of of you know,
• 24:03
  Brett: a whole people trying simultaneously to shield the boy from the terrors in the
• 24:08
  Brett: sense of like, you should go to school, not be on the front lines.
• 24:11
  Brett: But also at the same time, just doing whatever they can to protect the boy.
• 24:15
  Brett: And there's a deeper sense that in war, like this war is happening in some sense
• 24:20
  Brett: to protect the future, to defend everything that is most sacred and holy for
• 24:25
  Brett: a community, for a nation, for a people, which is represented in their children,
• 24:29
  Brett: which is, you you know, the future of this entire society, this way of being.
• 24:33
  Brett: The Nazi children were killed in the end. The Nazi regime was coming to an end.
• 24:38
  Brett: And for the Nazis, for Goebbels and Hitler and, you know, all these others,
• 24:42
  Brett: they were picturing this thousand-year Reich and their children,
• 24:45
  Brett: you know, trying to breed these Aryan, you know, children to have this future that they imagined.
• 24:53
  Brett: That was destroyed by them starting World War II and ultimately losing it.
• 24:58
  Brett: And so I can see the dead Nazi children at the end as kind of reminiscent of
• 25:02
  Brett: that as well, but the soldiers, the lieutenants.
• 25:06
  Brett: Protecting this boy um spending so much time trying
• 25:10
  Brett: to protect him trying to put him on a right path even though the
• 25:13
  Brett: the context in which they're operating in makes that sort of
• 25:15
  Brett: impossible i think was a was a kind of a beautiful element
• 25:19
  Brett: of the film um and you can't watch this film and i mentioned israel earlier
• 25:23
  Brett: sort of flippantly but don't get me wrong like you can't watch this film without
• 25:27
  Brett: thinking about what's going on in palestine right now and that this exact trauma
• 25:31
  Brett: is being inflicted on children en masse as we speak.
• 25:36
  Brett: You know, some recent numbers coming out of Palestine suggest that over 150,000,
• 25:42
  Brett: 180,000 human beings have been murdered at this point.
• 25:46
  Brett: And Gaza is 50% people under 18 years old, so children.
• 25:50
  Brett: And so you're talking tens of thousands of children.
• 25:53
  Brett: And the ones that are surviving often will be missing one or both of their parents.
• 25:58
  Brett: Many have lost their entire families their entire
• 26:01
  Brett: extended families and that's why you
• 26:04
  Brett: know we talk about israel as the nazis of our time
• 26:07
  Brett: they're perpetuating the same sort of brutality and cruelty and it's the children
• 26:13
  Brett: of that society that really bear the the horrors of it because they're sort
• 26:18
  Brett: of fundamentally innocent and the least capable intellectually to deal with that And so,
• 26:25
  Brett: you know, I did think about Palestine the entire time.
• 26:29
  Brett: And the last thing I'll say on this point is it reminds me of this James Baldwin
• 26:32
  Brett: quote that I think really kind of gets at what we're talking about here, too.
• 26:36
  Brett: Baldwin said, quote, The children are always ours, every single one of them all over the globe.
• 26:43
  Brett: And I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this
• 26:47
  Brett: may be incapable of morality itself. self.
• 26:50
  Brett: And I've always loved that quote. I think it's beautiful.
• 26:53
  Brett: And I think it really speaks to what we're talking about here in seeing the
• 26:56
  Brett: children of humanity as our children,
• 26:59
  Brett: all of our children, and that anybody with a developed, mature sense of morality
• 27:04
  Brett: needs to see the children of the world as not Palestinian children or Arab children
• 27:11
  Brett: or Russian children or German children,
• 27:13
  Brett: but as human children that we all have a deep responsibility for.
• 27:17
  Brett: And one of the ways in which that responsibility is completely abandoned is
• 27:21
  Brett: when we bring down the whores of war on top of the heads of fundamentally innocent children.
• 27:26
  amanda: Absolutely and all wars are always a war on children yes and and also makes
• 27:33
  amanda: me like the going back to how the nazis um you know they killed their own children
• 27:38
  amanda: um you know there is a line you know like any loss of life is is a tragedy but
• 27:44
  amanda: killing kids fucking sucks.
• 27:50
  amanda: Beyond anything, you know, but, you know, I think about like with Israel,
• 27:54
  amanda: like, um, you know, one of the hostages was returned safely after the father
• 28:00
  amanda: thought his daughter was dead.
• 28:02
  amanda: And he was actually kind of like relieved thinking that she was dead because
• 28:06
  amanda: it's that, that mentality that it's better to die than being taken hostage,
• 28:12
  amanda: um, because of just the generations and generations
• 28:15
  amanda: of hate being taught um which
• 28:19
  amanda: is very reminiscent of how you know children of the
• 28:22
  amanda: nazis were taught to think about jews you know and um the hannibal directive
• 28:27
  amanda: is something that has now been shown to be implemented on october 7th and it's
• 28:34
  amanda: just it's the parallels are just you can't not recognize it um it's yeah so.
• 28:41
  Brett: Absolutely and how zionism itself um teaches children from a very young age
• 28:47
  Brett: to hate muslim arab palestinians um to dehumanize them and so you have like
• 28:53
  Brett: these interviews that come out sometimes of young kids you know um just just
• 28:58
  Brett: regurgitating the most insane.
• 29:01
  Brett: Fascistic anti-human rhetoric as
• 29:04
  Brett: if it's just common sense because this this
• 29:07
  Brett: fascistic settler colonial society has inculcated
• 29:10
  Brett: this barbarity into the minds of their
• 29:13
  Brett: children which in and of itself is a form of brutalizing children
• 29:16
  Brett: which your own children by teaching them this hatred
• 29:19
  Brett: this this fundamental division this dehumanization of the other um that is also
• 29:24
  Brett: child abuse you're literally murdering palestinian children and you're sort
• 29:28
  Brett: of stunting or murdering the psychology and the moral development of your own
• 29:32
  Brett: children to keep this fucking insane project going um and And it's just,
• 29:38
  Brett: it is absolutely disgusting.
• 29:39
  Brett: And the fact that so many people in this world, especially, I mean,
• 29:42
  Brett: in the imperial core in the West, seem to lack moral clarity on this point is
• 29:46
  Brett: just absolutely fucking astounding.
• 29:49
  Brett: And, you know, people that really fancy themselves intellectuals and morally
• 29:53
  Brett: deep thinkers, you know, I mean, Sam Harris, for example, wrote an entire book
• 29:58
  Brett: on morality and how we can root morality in a sort of scientific objective,
• 30:03
  Brett: a basis or whatever. And he's just a full on Zionist.
• 30:06
  Brett: And, you know, these people are fucking sick in the head, but they fancy themselves
• 30:10
  Brett: like truly deep moral thinkers while they do everything but condemn the mass
• 30:17
  Brett: slaughter of innocent human beings, families, and importantly, children.
• 30:21
  Brett: So it's just stark to see that, you know, in real time.
• 30:25
  Evan: And just from a, from like a personal note, just as people maybe have,
• 30:29
  Evan: maybe I mentioned other episodes and across of our episode with Intervention Pod,
• 30:34
  Evan: where we talked about kind of the having myself grown up as a Jewish person
• 30:41
  Evan: going to a, you know, a Jewish school and being pushed all of these Zionist kind of lies and myths.
• 30:48
  Evan: Maybe not to the point of seeing, you know, Muslims and Arabs as lesser people,
• 30:52
  Evan: but, you know, going to Israel, participating in a multiple day IDF program.
• 30:58
  Evan: I mean, they very much, I mean, I won't go too deep into this.
• 31:02
  Evan: Us. You could spend a whole hour as we did.
• 31:04
  Evan: But it's very easy to see how you can create these myths about people.
• 31:10
  Evan: And you could see how, when I think about those Nazi children that are killed
• 31:15
  Evan: at the end, I mean, they would perpetuate the same lies and beliefs about Jews,
• 31:21
  Evan: that the Jews are now going and doing it against Arabs and Muslims.
• 31:25
  Evan: So it's really just a pattern too, where it's also impossible to separate that.
• 31:30
  Evan: I hate to use the word conflict, but what's going on in Palestine and Gaza to this movie.
• 31:37
  Evan: So I'm glad you both brought it up and I think it's an important point.
• 31:41
  amanda: Yeah. There's also this Naomi Klein quote.
• 31:44
  amanda: I'm sure you all have heard about it and seen her book, Doppelganger,
• 31:48
  amanda: which I haven't fully read, but essentially saying that the Zionist mentality,
• 31:55
  amanda: that is taught is not the freedom of oppression, but the freedom to be the oppressor, something like that.
• 32:01
  amanda: I'm kind of butchering it, but that's definitely on par.
• 32:06
  Evan: The way we were taught about all of the various wars, the Yom Kippur War,
• 32:10
  Evan: the 67, all these different ones was that Israel, of course,
• 32:14
  Evan: was the victim and had to defend itself as we see being perpetuated to this day.
• 32:21
  Evan: But on a separate note, there's one theme that then I'm going to wait on it
• 32:26
  Evan: because I think it's, uh, I'm going to leave it alone.
• 32:29
  Evan: And that's, although maybe it does kind of fit into what I'm going to mention
• 32:32
  Evan: now is I saw an article online that referred to Ivan's childhood as,
• 32:38
  Evan: you know, a film about kind of like the tree of life.
• 32:40
  Evan: There's lots of moments in this movie where I think trees are very intentional
• 32:44
  Evan: and important to the plot.
• 32:46
  Evan: And I think it goes into something else I had seen about it talking about the movie as kind of a.
• 32:53
  Evan: Can be viewed as this different form or these various
• 32:55
  Evan: forms of dualities the child's idealism versus
• 32:59
  Evan: kind of the cruel reality of war which i think we've already talked about but
• 33:01
  Evan: i think it's uh very interesting to look at that perspective when it comes to
• 33:07
  Evan: how they use trees so the very opening scene you see some apple trees and you
• 33:11
  Evan: see ivan sort of floating above the trees and then immediately they show him
• 33:15
  Evan: kind of uh at root level literally where you You see dirt and roots of those trees from the ground,
• 33:20
  Evan: and then it flashes to the current time.
• 33:23
  Evan: And several times throughout the film, there is a scene in a grove of birchwood trees, yes.
• 33:30
  Evan: There's a couple of scenes in a field of birchwood.
• 33:33
  Evan: And then there's also a moment when Ivan wakes up from one of his nightmares
• 33:37
  Evan: or dream sequences, and he immediately sees there's a log of a birchwood kind
• 33:42
  Evan: of behind him before it kind of brings you back to reality.
• 33:45
  Evan: And then at the very kind of the last moments of the movie, you have him going
• 33:49
  Evan: through the swamp on the German side, you know, through these large trees that
• 33:53
  Evan: are just growing in muck and dirt.
• 33:55
  Evan: And they're kind of having to get their way through into the Nazi side.
• 33:59
  Evan: You know, maybe representing the evils of the Nazis. So I'm curious if you noticed
• 34:03
  Evan: any of those aspects of trees in it at all.
• 34:06
  Evan: And if there's anything to that, you know, I don't put anything that Tarkovsky does as accidents.
• 34:11
  Evan: And especially also brings me to kind of my question that you could also answer
• 34:16
  Evan: a part of this is there's this sort of random moment around 30 minutes in of
• 34:20
  Evan: this little love story amongst Masha,
• 34:22
  Evan: who's a nurse and her, you know, commanding officer or a commanding officer
• 34:26
  Evan: that seemingly doesn't really fit into the rest of the movie.
• 34:29
  Evan: It's kind of like a little mini vignette that's i mean i'm curious what
• 34:32
  Evan: you both think to see if it doesn't fit or if it does
• 34:35
  Evan: fit but it takes place in that birch field and that moment where the the the
• 34:40
  Evan: general not the general the lieutenant kisses masha is over sort of a pit where
• 34:45
  Evan: you see the kind of the roots of those same trees so all of those things kind
• 34:49
  Evan: of fit together to me as as something and i'm not maybe sure what it is well.
• 34:53
  amanda: On the on the topic of birchwood um,
• 34:56
  amanda: just doing like i i was really curious about because i was
• 34:59
  amanda: reading your notes and i didn't really notice like how prominent they
• 35:02
  amanda: are throughout i mean even like one of the cabins or
• 35:06
  amanda: the shelters is made out of that same birchwood i
• 35:08
  amanda: think right um and so i kind
• 35:11
  amanda: of was like okay what's the symbolism of this and so i think like
• 35:14
  amanda: birchwood is i guess it's a pretty prominent in russia
• 35:17
  amanda: um it symbolizes femininity and um
• 35:21
  amanda: fertility warms kindness peace tranquility and
• 35:24
  amanda: harmony they use it a lot in paintings and
• 35:28
  amanda: art and stuff like that and as you said like Tchaikovsky is
• 35:31
  amanda: nothing is accidental so I think
• 35:34
  amanda: that that yeah just kind of like okay so the best way I could like compare it
• 35:41
  amanda: is so I'm Mexican and like we're we're all about corn maize you know we come
• 35:48
  amanda: from from the corn um it's a really it's a staple of like how our people survived there's like entire,
• 35:55
  amanda: analogs written about tortillas and um i've read them all um but i think that
• 36:00
  amanda: it's kind of like with that you know like um birchwood is like a symbol of russian
• 36:06
  amanda: pride russian um i guess nationalism whatever i tread lightly on that um because
• 36:12
  amanda: that could be taken one way or another.
• 36:16
  amanda: But I just kind of think of it as like, yeah, that's like the symbol of,
• 36:20
  amanda: Of Russia, of the Russian identity, I guess.
• 36:25
  Brett: Yeah, that's that's interesting. For sure. I didn't know that had that meaning
• 36:29
  Brett: in those sort of cultural signifiers in that society. That's fascinating.
• 36:33
  Brett: Yeah, I mean, I always love one of the best things about watching a Tarkovsky
• 36:37
  Brett: film is this this profound eye for nature that he has,
• 36:42
  Brett: how he in every film that I've seen of his so far has these long lingering scenes
• 36:47
  Brett: where he keeps the camera on nature is always sort of placing human nature in
• 36:53
  Brett: the broader context of the natural world.
• 36:55
  Brett: Writ large um there's an interesting this is one of those things i'm not quite
• 36:59
  Brett: sure what to make of it as amanda like he was alluding to like you know it means
• 37:03
  Brett: something but you're not quite sure in the very opening scene um ivan is in
• 37:07
  Brett: like this you know i think it's a yeah one of those forests.
• 37:10
  Brett: And he comes face to face with like a spider web and is
• 37:13
  Brett: sort of like you know interested in it whatever and then
• 37:16
  Brett: later in the film masha um walks by
• 37:19
  Brett: like a tree that's the exact same type of tree and um
• 37:22
  Brett: kind of freaks out about cobwebs and steps back and she's
• 37:24
  Brett: like i'm i'm only scared of spiders um so the
• 37:27
  Brett: sort of like this this um natural thing
• 37:31
  Brett: this spider the spider web it's at
• 37:34
  Brett: one it's at one point delightful for the child um
• 37:37
  Brett: that is uh sort of innocent in a
• 37:40
  Brett: way of like not of just sort of like you know garden of eden
• 37:43
  Brett: style innocence and then as a later more
• 37:46
  Brett: developed up to mature person learns that this
• 37:49
  Brett: is a is a threat or a danger and can kind of jump back from
• 37:52
  Brett: it again not quite sure what that means but probably something
• 37:55
  Brett: he's trying to say there um with the with regards
• 37:58
  Brett: or i'll get to the love the love thing in a second with with
• 38:01
  Brett: masha and the kiss but one quote i found very illuminating regarding tarkovsky
• 38:07
  Brett: and how he does images as we're wrestling with the meaning of certain things
• 38:11
  Brett: um there's this quote where he says quote We can express our feelings regarding
• 38:16
  Brett: the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means.
• 38:19
  Brett: I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress, metaphorically, not symbolically.
• 38:26
  Brett: A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula,
• 38:31
  Brett: while a metaphor is an image, an image possessing the same distinguishing features
• 38:35
  Brett: as the world it represents.
• 38:36
  Brett: An image, as opposed to a symbol, is indefinite in meaning.
• 38:40
  Brett: One cannot speak of of an infinite world by applying tools
• 38:43
  Brett: that are definite and finite we can analyze the formula
• 38:46
  Brett: that constitutes a symbol while metaphor is a being
• 38:49
  Brett: within itself um and it
• 38:52
  Brett: it falls apart at any attempt of touching it end quote so i think that's kind
• 38:56
  Brett: of interesting and in that regard if you would take him at his word and then
• 39:00
  Brett: assume that he's doing that here um there is sort of a non-meaning it's just
• 39:05
  Brett: sort of meant to be an image that evokes feeling um and tries to get at the infinite space,
• 39:12
  Brett: and indefinite sort of aspects of human life which i found very interesting
• 39:17
  Brett: you know kubrick is different i think kubrick does a lot of symbols like kubrick
• 39:21
  Brett: is putting things in his film that have definite meanings he's trying to get
• 39:25
  Brett: you to catch on to these little easter eggs of meaning,
• 39:28
  Brett: and it's sort of interesting to think of tarkovsky as we've described him in
• 39:31
  Brett: previous episodes as a sort of anti-kubrick in a way where he just sort of steps
• 39:36
  Brett: back from even that meaning and just sort just has the image itself playing a role.
• 39:42
  Brett: So it's really, really hard to say. I'm interested to hear what both of you
• 39:45
  Brett: think about it, but I'll get to the Masha point in a second if either of you
• 39:49
  Brett: have any thoughts on that.
• 39:50
  Evan: Yeah, that's kind of a separate. I just brought them up because of the moment
• 39:54
  Evan: when they're in those trees.
• 39:56
  Evan: But yeah, I think the article that I didn't fully finish reading it,
• 40:00
  Evan: the kind of where it talks about the trees of life, it also actually mentioned
• 40:03
  Evan: the spider moment you're talking about too.
• 40:06
  Evan: And I really liked that line that she's only afraid of
• 40:08
  Evan: spiders you know you're literally in a war scenario against
• 40:12
  Evan: uh the nazis and the thing you fear is spiders you
• 40:15
  Evan: don't fear you know you don't fear nazis you don't fear all these other
• 40:18
  Evan: things but i think that the you know the it seemed like
• 40:21
  Evan: all of the different trees did have different kind
• 40:24
  Evan: of just the way they looked and i think that quote kind of puts that
• 40:27
  Evan: into light is that they evoke different things in those
• 40:30
  Evan: different times you also see the scene where uh they go
• 40:33
  Evan: across the river and they see a several of their comrades have
• 40:35
  Evan: been hung they're hanging from a tree i don't
• 40:38
  Evan: know if i recall what kind of tree it was but you now you
• 40:41
  Evan: see you know that moment i think there's also a time when
• 40:44
  Evan: the um when ivan is talking to that
• 40:47
  Evan: sort of older man you know outside of the ruins of his house and he's looking
• 40:50
  Evan: for a little nail to hang up a picture which is also a really great scene we
• 40:55
  Evan: can also talk about and i think there's a moment where they show a tree behind
• 40:58
  Evan: it too so there are all these moments where they use these trees not simply
• 41:03
  Evan: as symbols but to kind of evoke something as you're watching it.
• 41:05
  Evan: And I think they're, you know, as Tarkovsky does in all of these,
• 41:09
  Evan: in all of the movies I've seen, it's just, it makes you, you can watch it three
• 41:12
  Evan: different times. I think have three different feelings each time you watch,
• 41:16
  Evan: you know, those, those scenes, which I think is what makes it so, them so powerful.
• 41:19
  Evan: But I don't know if you, if you have something to add, Amanda,
• 41:21
  Evan: we can, if not, I guess we could talk about the, the kiss too.
• 41:25
  amanda: Yeah. You know, Brett, I didn't actually really put two and two together with
• 41:29
  amanda: the cobwebs, like in the beginning with Ivan and then with Masha.
• 41:33
  amanda: And, And now that I'm thinking, like taking that and like, oh,
• 41:36
  amanda: that's got to mean something, you know, there's a few things,
• 41:40
  amanda: a couple of things that I think about with that, like cobwebs.
• 41:43
  amanda: I think about how in order for a spider to build a cobweb, there has to be some
• 41:51
  amanda: sort of calm and time, you know, a short period of time.
• 41:55
  amanda: I don't really know where I would go with that, but I just, how do spiders build cobwebs?
• 42:01
  amanda: That's my ADHD brain, like, oh, that's going to be researched later.
• 42:05
  amanda: But I also think about Ivan and Masha, like those two characters, like Ivan and,
• 42:11
  amanda: I don't know. I know that Masha's older, but she has such a childlike quality to her.
• 42:17
  amanda: Also, I guess an air of innocence that Ivan also have.
• 42:21
  amanda: And they're kind of both on different reactions to the war.
• 42:26
  amanda: I don't really know what she does. I guess by default, she's kind of a nurse
• 42:31
  amanda: or something, which is kind of very gender specific, but whatever.
• 42:36
  amanda: But those two characters, I just
• 42:39
  amanda: really feel like they both have an air of innocence to them and it's don't feel
• 42:45
  amanda: like it's too much of a coincidence that they both encounter cobwebs at different
• 42:49
  amanda: points where he sees it and then she runs into it um yeah we could walk we could
• 42:54
  amanda: probably make a whole podcast on just that.
• 42:57
  Evan: Totally yeah i was just gonna add one thing there's actually i'll link to this
• 43:02
  Evan: article i think it's pretty fascinating there's one moment when ivan is walking
• 43:05
  Evan: through a bunch of kind of the ruins of a house and all of the pieces of wood
• 43:10
  Evan: that are kind of broken apart look very much like a web,
• 43:14
  Evan: which again, can't be, you know, has to be intentional or it's kind of the same visual kind of sense.
• 43:21
  Evan: And so I think there must be more to that too that, you know,
• 43:25
  Evan: that I think is fascinating. But yeah, go ahead.
• 43:27
  Brett: Yeah, there's this oscillation with the trees between the delicate nature of
• 43:31
  Brett: them and the brute nature of them.
• 43:33
  Brett: So like I think of the cobweb, obviously,
• 43:36
  Brett: being like this delicate structure that is pinned to a tree that
• 43:40
  Brett: even a strong gust of wind could sort of disturb the
• 43:43
  Brett: delicacy of that of that web and then masha
• 43:46
  Brett: sort of when they're out in the forest with the lieutenant she's sort
• 43:49
  Brett: of like nimbly walking on one of the branches and walking back down it um sort
• 43:54
  Brett: of in this very like balanced and and delicate way but on the other hand you
• 43:58
  Brett: have like the nooses so on the same sort of you know a tree can hold the delicacy
• 44:03
  Brett: of a spider web It can also have the brute force of hanging somebody by the neck until they die.
• 44:08
  Brett: And then when they're in the swamp sort of like at nighttime or on the edge
• 44:12
  Brett: of the river in the marsh at nighttime, doing their little operation,
• 44:18
  Brett: as it were, towards the end of the film, one of the trees just tips over in the water.
• 44:23
  Brett: And, you know, you have all like the artillery shells in the background or the flares or whatever.
• 44:27
  Brett: And then you just have this huge tree fall over and it doesn't come close to
• 44:32
  Brett: the boat, but there's just this brute nature of it falling, splashing in the
• 44:35
  Brett: water, making this huge impact.
• 44:37
  Brett: And so, again, this sort of oscillation between the delicacy of nature,
• 44:42
  Brett: the delicate, limber, balanced form of it, and, you know, the way that human
• 44:48
  Brett: beings can use or destroy it at the same time.
• 44:51
  Brett: So I thought that was interesting. And the other thing I wanted to say with
• 44:54
  Brett: regards to Masha and the little love situation they have here,
• 44:58
  Brett: which you said that some people criticize as sort of being irrelevant or unnecessary,
• 45:03
  Brett: I kind of see it as, one, deepening the personal character of the lieutenant.
• 45:12
  Brett: You can see this other aspect of him outside of simply protecting Ivan or simply
• 45:16
  Brett: playing his role in the war.
• 45:17
  Brett: Um but also there is this tension between
• 45:20
  Brett: the two lieutenants that are watching over Ivan I don't know
• 45:23
  Brett: if they're two tenants colonels whatever captains um the
• 45:26
  Brett: younger one and the older one um where the
• 45:29
  Brett: younger one does seem to have some tension with regards
• 45:32
  Brett: to Masha but never overtly tries never makes
• 45:35
  Brett: a pass at Masha never makes it clear that he's flirting with
• 45:38
  Brett: her um but when he finds out that that her
• 45:41
  Brett: and the other lieutenant are out in the woods together he starts
• 45:44
  Brett: running after them um and i'm not sure what
• 45:47
  Brett: that means there's like almost a fear in the way that he runs is he running
• 45:51
  Brett: to break up some sort of love scene is is he worried that masha might be in
• 45:57
  Brett: danger in the hands of the other captain or lieutenant when they finally meet
• 46:00
  Brett: up the two men um nothing is really set nothing is said between them nothing is made clear but.
• 46:07
  Brett: It's sort of a question mark of why the younger one runs in to the woods with
• 46:13
  Brett: such ferocity, only to find the other captain and not really do much about it.
• 46:18
  Brett: So I don't know exactly know what that is.
• 46:20
  Brett: There seems to be something like a brewing love triangle there,
• 46:23
  Brett: but also that is subordinated between the two men,
• 46:28
  Brett: at least with their with their shared goal of like protecting and caring for
• 46:34
  Brett: Ivan and perhaps to make that love triangle.
• 46:37
  Brett: Um an overt thing that that causes division
• 46:40
  Brett: between them would put into a compromising
• 46:44
  Brett: position their shared goal of protecting Ivan so I don't know I was just kind
• 46:47
  Brett: of playing with those ideas and if if if I'm on the right track there then you
• 46:52
  Brett: know that's not that's not a meaningless aside but that is a sort of deepening
• 46:56
  Brett: um of the overall narrative that Tarkovsky is purposely trying to do and show us so I.
• 47:01
  amanda: Think also the the younger lieutenant or
• 47:04
  amanda: whatever he is I kind of also get the
• 47:07
  amanda: impression that because they seem like they're
• 47:10
  amanda: close in age that there's some sort of kinship
• 47:14
  amanda: with that i don't know if it's romantic or if it's just you know because it's
• 47:18
  amanda: someone that is his age um but there's also been criticism that the scene was
• 47:23
  amanda: like sexual assault you know borderline sexual assault and you know i i hate
• 47:30
  amanda: to be like well times were different then but the times were different then.
• 47:35
  amanda: People's perception of what's romantic.
• 47:38
  amanda: And I looked for, you know, in watching that scene, and then she runs into her old college peer.
• 47:46
  amanda: She looks longingly into the forest, looking for perhaps the younger guy,
• 47:53
  amanda: perhaps the, what's his name, Holen? Holen?
• 47:57
  amanda: Colon i think they pronounce it like colon or something like that
• 48:00
  amanda: i don't know i think i think to say
• 48:03
  amanda: like i see comments like online because i follow like the
• 48:06
  amanda: turkovsky like um instagram and he
• 48:08
  amanda: posts like video clips or they post
• 48:11
  amanda: because because turkovsky is dead um they post
• 48:16
  amanda: video clips and they posted that scene some people are like oh so
• 48:19
  amanda: romantic and other people like sexual assaults and
• 48:22
  amanda: it's like yeah i don't i don't know you know
• 48:25
  amanda: never read the comments but sometimes times um it is
• 48:28
  amanda: and i think you also i don't know if you mentioned this
• 48:31
  amanda: uh evan but i think you mentioned your notes about it
• 48:34
  amanda: being like oh yeah you did um about how he like
• 48:37
  amanda: kind of scoops her up and they're kind of over this abyss
• 48:40
  amanda: type this trench kind of deal
• 48:43
  amanda: um i don't know i don't really know what to make of it um but it does feel a
• 48:50
  amanda: little strange the scene does feel a little strange because of like i don't
• 48:54
  amanda: know she seems like she's not really into it but then she seems really into
• 48:58
  amanda: i don't know it's like it's it's a little uncomfortable um but well the i don't know the.
• 49:03
  Evan: Trench aspect the trench aspect i think makes it what i think is probably the
• 49:08
  Evan: most interesting aspect i mean it's kind of i don't know the scenes maybe eight
• 49:11
  Evan: minutes long something like that but one of the opening scenes with ivan is
• 49:15
  Evan: you see him kind of uh walking along sort of a trench
• 49:18
  Evan: area there's kind of a uh i think it's right before in this very opening dream
• 49:22
  Evan: sequence to kind of show the roots of the trench or something like that to me it almost seemed like,
• 49:28
  Evan: masha being sort of saved or kept innocent in the same way they want to keep
• 49:32
  Evan: ivan you know his innocence you know from falling into kind of like the trenches
• 49:37
  Evan: of war you know maybe it's you know.
• 49:39
  amanda: If if.
• 49:39
  Evan: She was uh romantically involved she could you know leave the war and not have
• 49:44
  Evan: to be you know know, be part of it anymore.
• 49:46
  Evan: And I don't know really what to make bread of the lieutenant running.
• 49:49
  Evan: To me, it also felt like this weird fatherly instinct or brotherly instinct.
• 49:54
  Evan: I mean, I know they're the same age, so fatherly doesn't sound right.
• 49:57
  Evan: But initially, the lieutenant doesn't seem to be wanting to care for Ivan.
• 50:01
  Evan: It's kind of like this weird thing he has to do. He doesn't even really believe
• 50:04
  Evan: he is who he is, that he's this spy for the Soviets.
• 50:08
  Evan: And then over the course of the rest of the film, he becomes protective of him, helping him,
• 50:13
  Evan: you know, trying to watch out out for him and eventually goes
• 50:16
  Evan: along on his final mission with him so i think maybe the
• 50:18
  Evan: lieutenant's running because he's uh you know
• 50:21
  Evan: has that same protective feeling of masha as he does for uh ivan so i don't
• 50:27
  Evan: know i also don't think the scene is uh you know out of place i mean it it feels
• 50:32
  Evan: slightly out of place but i don't think that the meaning and and what it could
• 50:35
  Evan: be is uh i think it would be a disservice to not have it yeah.
• 50:39
  Brett: Some um hanging over the ditch and kissing yeah you can
• 50:42
  Brett: make many different um it's a beauty it's a fascinating image where she's just
• 50:45
  Brett: sort of dangling over the abyss and he's you know grabbing her holding her up
• 50:49
  Brett: and kissing her something about the impulse of of love or the the romantic ideal
• 50:53
  Brett: even in the in the brutality of war,
• 50:56
  Brett: But yeah, it's like, is she just playing coy or is this like sort of a creepy
• 51:01
  Brett: ass situation? It's kind of hard to say.
• 51:05
  Brett: There's probably, I mean, this is the 60s and 70s, so I'm not exactly sure what
• 51:08
  Brett: you can expect from male directors at that time, but there's probably almost
• 51:12
  Brett: certainly a feminist critique of Tarkovsky's portrayal of women in general.
• 51:17
  Brett: I remember, I believe it's in Stalker where the wife was just very hysterical
• 51:22
  Brett: and fraught and didn't have a lot of dimension to her personality.
• 51:25
  Brett: Personality and masha has this similar sort of one-dimensional um
• 51:29
  Brett: you know very naive almost like reducing the woman to
• 51:32
  Brett: a child um you know in a sense
• 51:35
  Brett: um was being done here again 60s
• 51:38
  Brett: and 70s male directors patriarchal societies i'm not
• 51:41
  Brett: exactly sure what to make of it but there is a sense in
• 51:44
  Brett: which i'm not i don't feel like tarkovsky at
• 51:47
  Brett: least in the films i've seen maybe i could be wrong i've certainly haven't seen his
• 51:50
  Brett: entire catalog but that that women don't
• 51:53
  Brett: really play incredibly strong or or
• 51:55
  Brett: dominant roles whatsoever um and
• 51:59
  Brett: so that you know that's probably room for criticism there but
• 52:02
  Brett: but yeah i don't know it's fascinating scene and it was it
• 52:05
  Brett: was um i heard somebody describe it as that scene where they're kind of like
• 52:08
  Brett: dancing in the woods like slow motion dancing they're twirling around each other
• 52:12
  Brett: she's walking up the um you know the balance beam of the tree and walking back
• 52:16
  Brett: down um hiding behind trees you know um it was a beautifully shot and sort of
• 52:22
  Brett: choreographed a scene for sure.
• 52:25
  Brett: But again, it's really hard to squeeze specific meaning out of it.
• 52:30
  Evan: Yeah, I think that's I mean, yeah, none of I don't think anyone could accuse
• 52:34
  Evan: Tarkovsky of any of the scenes not being, you know, shot and lit and all of
• 52:41
  Evan: the things aspects of it.
• 52:42
  Evan: But yeah, I think you're right though. I've seen one of the biggest criticisms is females.
• 52:47
  Evan: There's never any female protagonists in any of his.
• 52:50
  Evan: As far as I can think, at least not a lead protagonist. I mean,
• 52:54
  Evan: there's some characters like in Solaris, the wife.
• 52:58
  Evan: But another thing that's... Actually, Amanda, you brought this to my attention,
• 53:03
  Evan: or you mentioned this to me, and I hadn't given it as much thought.
• 53:06
  Evan: I think this goes back a little bit to the conversation comparing this to the
• 53:10
  Evan: conflict in Palestine and Gaza.
• 53:13
  Evan: We learn about the Soviet partisans, sort of this resistance movement that aids
• 53:18
  Evan: the military and runs its own little operations.
• 53:21
  Evan: And that's how Ivan becomes involved with the Soviet army.
• 53:26
  Evan: It seems like he was working with them, one of these groups,
• 53:29
  Evan: because he was angry that he had lost his entire family.
• 53:32
  Evan: And there is some cooperation.
• 53:35
  Evan: I'll be honest, I'm not deeply familiar with all
• 53:38
  Evan: of the workings of how the collaboration went along
• 53:41
  Evan: with the you know the rent army and uh these groups
• 53:44
  Evan: but i do think uh what you said amanda is interesting about
• 53:47
  Evan: how that group the partisans could be viewed
• 53:50
  Evan: as this sort of resistance or revolutionary group and you know maybe from that
• 53:55
  Evan: perspective ivan himself is sort of like a young revolutionary doing the things
• 53:59
  Evan: he can do risking his life you know he doesn't seem afraid of death at this
• 54:04
  Evan: you know at any moment in the movie uh maybe there's a couple scenes when he's having these kind of
• 54:09
  Evan: nightmare dream sequences as he's waiting for, you know, to go out on his missions.
• 54:14
  Evan: But I don't know how you make of those things.
• 54:17
  Evan: And if either of you know more about the partisans, I'm curious how it might fit in.
• 54:21
  amanda: I tried to do just some brief research on the partisans.
• 54:25
  amanda: And I do have to note that one of the things that I noticed most,
• 54:28
  amanda: especially researching online from the Imperial core is that there's always
• 54:34
  amanda: this reoccurring narrative of like resistance groups being,
• 54:39
  amanda: ragtag or useless or ineffective
• 54:43
  amanda: um i forgot like what some of the highlights are but it does kind of remind
• 54:47
  amanda: me of when you go look up the filipino like new people's army that's been around
• 54:53
  amanda: for what 50 years now one of the first articles you'll see is like oh 48 years
• 54:58
  amanda: of doing nothing thing or, you know, just kind of thing.
• 55:00
  amanda: And, um, I think that, uh, I mean, that's intentional, of course,
• 55:05
  amanda: you know, creating a narrative words are a minefield, but, um, I did. Yeah. Like, uh,
• 55:12
  amanda: I would really like to do more research. I don't know, Brett,
• 55:14
  amanda: if you know more about the partisans with your time with like guerrilla history.
• 55:20
  amanda: I'm sure you probably have the episode, but yeah, that's just something I wanted to note.
• 55:26
  Brett: Yeah, I'm not sure if we have ever done an episode on partisans in particular.
• 55:30
  Brett: Certainly would be worth doing one. I have much to learn about the Soviet partisans
• 55:35
  Brett: in particular, not super well read on exactly what they did.
• 55:39
  Brett: But what I do know just from general understanding of history is that in the context of an invasion.
• 55:46
  Brett: Partisans or the sort of civilian guerrilla fighters that work alongside or
• 55:52
  Brett: in sort of a dialectical back and forth with conventional military strengths
• 55:55
  Brett: are sort of like a natural emergence.
• 55:58
  Brett: Emergence you can think of it in the bay of pigs situation you
• 56:02
  Brett: can think of it in vietnam you can think of it in
• 56:04
  Brett: the the spanish civil war wasn't necessarily
• 56:07
  Brett: an invasion it was a civil war but you know left-wing areas being invaded by
• 56:12
  Brett: right-wing forces and partisans were a natural emergence to that so you think
• 56:16
  Brett: about it in the soviet context you have this expansionary nazi war machine coming
• 56:20
  Brett: further and further east you know committing atrocities as it goes you know
• 56:25
  Brett: Coming into your territory,
• 56:27
  Brett: it's a natural response for people who are not part of the conventional military
• 56:31
  Brett: to begin to just do their own operations, their own ambush attacks,
• 56:36
  Brett: their own forms of resistance.
• 56:37
  Brett: I mean, you can look in what was put up against the American invasion of Iraq
• 56:41
  Brett: and Afghanistan, a very similar situation.
• 56:43
  Brett: So I think in any context in which there is an invasion of a homeland by another
• 56:49
  Brett: external force, there are going to be the emergence of these sort of naturally organized.
• 56:57
  Brett: Um militant guerrilla warfare-esque groups
• 57:00
  Brett: um who start to who begin to resist um and
• 57:04
  Brett: you know that's uh that's clear now that the degree to
• 57:07
  Brett: which they work with the conventional military um i
• 57:10
  Brett: think that can probably differ depending on certain contexts
• 57:13
  Brett: there could be probably more hostile relationships but for
• 57:16
  Brett: what i understand about the soviet partisans there wasn't a hostile
• 57:19
  Brett: relationship between them and the red army there was a funneling
• 57:22
  Brett: of of intelligence of weapons etc and they
• 57:25
  Brett: they saw the partisans as a crucial part of
• 57:28
  Brett: the overall fighting force um so yeah i see the partisans
• 57:32
  Brett: as as a good and really a natural force that
• 57:35
  Brett: emerges in the face of invasion and you see it over and over shit even going
• 57:40
  Brett: back you know to the american revolutionary war um you know you you didn't really
• 57:44
  Brett: you have the development of something like a conventional military on behalf
• 57:48
  Brett: of of the american colonists but you know guerrilla warfare tactics were definitely used and the sort
• 57:54
  Brett: of ragtag guerrilla ambush groupings were a huge part of their initial assault against the British.
• 58:01
  Brett: So yeah, any context of invasion, this sort of thing is going to emerge naturally.
• 58:05
  Brett: And I think that's very interesting. And definitely we're studying more.
• 58:09
  Brett: We should do an episode on that at some point.
• 58:11
  Evan: The only thing I did find in my... Also, I didn't have a lot of...
• 58:14
  Evan: I didn't get a chance to do much digging on it, but apparently a large amount
• 58:18
  Evan: of the partisans that involved in Ukraine part of the Soviet Union were actually
• 58:25
  Evan: formed through the interior ministry.
• 58:29
  Evan: Of the Soviet Union.
• 58:31
  Evan: So it wasn't necessarily just a bunch of, it could have been just some farmers
• 58:36
  Evan: or random people banding together and going across enemy lines to kill Nazis or stop them.
• 58:43
  Evan: But I think it also, there was aspects of it being,
• 58:46
  Evan: an organized thing beyond just those kind of areas.
• 58:50
  Evan: So to your point, Amanda, of, you know, yes, there probably was a combination
• 58:53
  Evan: of sort of ragtag groups of people.
• 58:55
  Evan: But then also, I think it became very organized at some level,
• 58:58
  Evan: because it does seem in Ivan's childhood that there is some coordination because
• 59:03
  Evan: they had a meeting point.
• 59:05
  Evan: I think we mentioned another tree references that Ivan was supposed to meet
• 59:08
  Evan: at a specific tree where he would then be able to be brought back to the partisans.
• 59:13
  Evan: And I think we see that the partisans, was it the partisans
• 59:16
  Evan: who are are hanged or is it the still soldiers i
• 59:19
  Evan: don't remember now i'm not sure but either one of them it
• 59:21
  Evan: clearly there there's this uh coordination so uh it
• 59:25
  Evan: is a a fascinating thing that yeah i don't have too much
• 59:28
  Evan: other context and i know at the beginning we talked about some of those real
• 59:32
  Evan: life footage you mentioned amanda the uh you know using of actual footage from
• 59:36
  Evan: you know victory day and you know the the way that the film is kind of shot
• 59:41
  Evan: is it sort of kind of cuts off from the the actual incursion,
• 59:45
  Evan: Ivan's last kind of mission that we see to victory day, a time of celebration.
• 59:50
  Evan: But I think, uh, something that maybe is very well depicted in this is you have
• 59:54
  Evan: that celebration and all these different shots of how it is, you know, great.
• 59:58
  Evan: They defeated the Nazis, you know, that the Soviets defeated the Nazis.
• 1:00:01
  Evan: Let's, let's be clear, uh, versus the, the American involvement.
• 1:00:05
  Evan: Of course they had some involvement, but I don't need to go that far,
• 1:00:08
  Evan: but I think it's, I really like how they created this, uh, they show the prison
• 1:00:15
  Evan: that the lieutenant enters where he finds out that Ivan had died.
• 1:00:19
  Evan: And you see a guillotine, you see the ropes for additional hanging.
• 1:00:25
  Evan: So you do see victory, but you are very clearly shown the cost of war.
• 1:00:31
  Evan: I don't remember the exact number, but something like 30 million Soviets died.
• 1:00:37
  Evan: Maybe it's way more than that. Maybe I'm way underselling it.
• 1:00:39
  Evan: But countless millions of men and women died to defend their country.
• 1:00:46
  Evan: And I just like the way that it's depicted at the end, that there is no happy ending.
• 1:00:52
  Evan: And then maybe after we get your impressions on that, I do want to talk about the very last scene too.
• 1:00:57
  amanda: So towards the end of that, okay, first of all, war is a racket.
• 1:01:01
  amanda: That's why I always think war is a racket. um and
• 1:01:05
  amanda: there needs to be uh more
• 1:01:08
  amanda: people talking about how the soviets did when you
• 1:01:11
  amanda: know outside of our our bubble of people like
• 1:01:14
  amanda: people that actually understand comprehend and care about history um but one
• 1:01:20
  amanda: of the scenes that i aside from like the real footage of them like just defeating
• 1:01:26
  amanda: the nazis taking over one of their headquarters is the scene where there's all
• 1:01:31
  amanda: these like books and files like strewed all over the place. And they're,
• 1:01:35
  amanda: you know, taking bundles,
• 1:01:38
  amanda: And it pans out to this scene where there's kind of like on the left side of
• 1:01:42
  amanda: the screen, I took a picture of it, but there's a left side of the screen.
• 1:01:45
  amanda: There's like, I think maybe like an eagle holding the Nazi symbol.
• 1:01:48
  amanda: And they say, and the dialogue just really stuck out to me. He said,
• 1:01:53
  amanda: won't this be the last war on earth?
• 1:01:55
  amanda: See a doctor about your nerves, Galston. That's like the young guy again.
• 1:02:00
  amanda: But hold on, you were killed and I'm alive.
• 1:02:04
  amanda: I think i must think
• 1:02:07
  amanda: of persevering peace um and i think you know aside from the very last scene
• 1:02:13
  amanda: that really encapsulates a lot of the theme of the film um and yeah i just wanted
• 1:02:22
  amanda: to mention that i don't know where i was going with that but war's racket and.
• 1:02:26
  Brett: Um building off of that uh One thing I was thinking about was this quote that's
• 1:02:32
  Brett: been going around on right-wing social media circles, and Joe Rogan made a big deal about it.
• 1:02:39
  Brett: It's this absurd sort of thing where they talk about hard times create hard
• 1:02:44
  Brett: men, hard men create good times, good times create weak men,
• 1:02:47
  Brett: weak men create bad times.
• 1:02:48
  Brett: We're all aware of this sort of thing. and there's
• 1:02:51
  Brett: this um one there's this irony that people like joe
• 1:02:54
  Brett: rogan who you know live this incredibly comfy life
• 1:02:57
  Brett: has been a millionaire since his early 20s um you
• 1:03:00
  Brett: know has never faced any sort of violence of this type at all whatsoever um
• 1:03:05
  Brett: puts himself mentally in the category of of of hard men right all these all
• 1:03:10
  Brett: these conservative dorks um who who think in this way are are sort of immediately
• 1:03:15
  Brett: assuming that they are the hard men even though they live these super coddled,
• 1:03:20
  Brett: relatively comfortable lives.
• 1:03:22
  Brett: And I saw one of these figures, I think it was Bronze Age Pervert,
• 1:03:26
  Brett: one of these again, these fascist
• 1:03:28
  Brett: sort of dorks that are very big and right-wing social media circles.
• 1:03:32
  Brett: What they'll often do, and I think BAP did this explicitly, is just like sort of,
• 1:03:38
  Brett: um fetishize war as like super
• 1:03:41
  Brett: important for the develop like you know people who these all these
• 1:03:44
  Brett: people have not never been to war but they precisely because
• 1:03:47
  Brett: they haven't lived in war they fetishize it and romanticize it as a way of of
• 1:03:53
  Brett: of you know adding dignity or maturity or meaning to people's lives and they
• 1:03:57
  Brett: you know this is it's this in it's this um thing that you can't take out of
• 1:04:01
  Brett: human nature it's deeply ingrained in human nature and it's we're alienated from
• 1:04:05
  Brett: our ability to go ransack the
• 1:04:07
  Brett: next village or, you know, go to war for a cause bigger than ourselves.
• 1:04:11
  Brett: And these are always uttered by, by, you know, weak men,
• 1:04:14
  Brett: men that, that live very comfortable coddled lives because other people before
• 1:04:18
  Brett: them have fought and died and been traumatized and brutalized and created a
• 1:04:23
  Brett: world, at least for a time where that they, they can be okay to fetishize war.
• 1:04:27
  Brett: But anybody who's actually been in war, they're not romanticizing war.
• 1:04:32
  Brett: They're not fetishizing it.
• 1:04:34
  Brett: They're doing everything they can to never go back there.
• 1:04:36
  Brett: And it also makes me think broadening out of our own disgusting bourgeois politicians
• 1:04:41
  Brett: who are who've never seen a war they don't want.
• 1:04:44
  Brett: I think of figures like Lindsey Graham, John Bolton, Nikki Haley,
• 1:04:47
  Brett: fucking John Fetterman.
• 1:04:49
  Brett: Right. And you can go down. You can I can keep saying names for the next hour and a half.
• 1:04:53
  Brett: We all know who these people are these people who themselves
• 1:04:57
  Brett: are have never fought and would
• 1:05:00
  Brett: never be asked to fight constantly beating
• 1:05:03
  Brett: the drums of war wanting to create wars
• 1:05:06
  Brett: bomb countries bomb iran give israel everything
• 1:05:10
  Brett: they need use ukrainians as a proxy for your
• 1:05:12
  Brett: fight against russia these people who just see human
• 1:05:15
  Brett: lives as chess pieces they can move around aboard
• 1:05:18
  Brett: board and who get some sort of psychological gratification from
• 1:05:23
  Brett: beating their chest in this egoic way where you
• 1:05:26
  Brett: know they think that they're these war hawks and these
• 1:05:29
  Brett: these tough-nosed realists who live these lives of
• 1:05:32
  Brett: complete luxury and comfort all of them millionaires all of them surrounded
• 1:05:36
  Brett: by basically servants and staff doing you know their bidding they don't even
• 1:05:40
  Brett: have to do their own grocery shopping and yet they're so willing you know just
• 1:05:44
  Brett: frothing at the mouth Wanting to create war after war after war.
• 1:05:49
  Brett: And all of these people are the weak men that that quote is getting at while
• 1:05:56
  Brett: they think of themselves as tough men. And then you look or tough people in general.
• 1:06:01
  Brett: And then you look at the actual depravity of war, who actually suffers.
• 1:06:05
  Brett: I mean, just look what's happening right now with with Palestine,
• 1:06:08
  Brett: mothers and families and grandmas and entire bloodlines being eradicated,
• 1:06:13
  Brett: toddlers being sniped in the head,
• 1:06:15
  Brett: you know, medical supplies being
• 1:06:17
  Brett: so non-existent that you have to do deep surgeries without anesthetic,
• 1:06:22
  Brett: starvation used as a as a as a weapon of war.
• 1:06:25
  Brett: And all of these people have full bellies and they're uncomfortable,
• 1:06:29
  Brett: air conditioned houses, fetishizing and romanticizing brutal wars that as they
• 1:06:34
  Brett: speak are being brought down on the heads of innocent human beings.
• 1:06:38
  Brett: And so I just wanted to point out that glaring hypocrisy and to sort of ponder
• 1:06:43
  Brett: for a second the sadistic and absurdist psychology of people who think and fetishize like this.
• 1:06:51
  Brett: And we as communists, as people on the radical left, we want to get we want
• 1:06:56
  Brett: humanity to mature beyond class society and beyond war.
• 1:07:02
  Brett: And I don't think you can ever mature beyond war without maturing beyond class society,
• 1:07:07
  Brett: without those divisions amongst a people amongst the nation,
• 1:07:11
  Brett: rich and poor, but also globally, those incredibly skewed dynamics of the incredibly
• 1:07:16
  Brett: poor and the incredibly rich.
• 1:07:19
  Brett: That entire system creates the context for more war.
• 1:07:24
  Brett: And I think it's not a part of our human nature any more than any negative low
• 1:07:31
  Brett: base element of our evolution is part of our nature.
• 1:07:34
  Brett: Like chimpanzees often rape people or, you know, rape other chimps.
• 1:07:38
  Brett: This is a part of our evolutionary history from lowly beasts, right?
• 1:07:43
  Brett: Does that mean that it's some inexorable part of our human nature to always be like that?
• 1:07:49
  Brett: Or can we use our reason and our capacity for deep reflection and moral development
• 1:07:54
  Brett: to grow up beyond the need to act like that?
• 1:07:57
  Brett: And so anybody that says that class hierarchies are natural to or are just inextricable
• 1:08:04
  Brett: from our human nature or that war itself can never be transcended,
• 1:08:08
  Brett: I'm always incredibly, incredibly suspicious of the sort of people who seem
• 1:08:12
  Brett: committed and need that to be true.
• 1:08:14
  Brett: I do believe in the capacity for human beings to evolve beyond these things.
• 1:08:19
  Brett: And I think it's really our obligation as sentient, you know,
• 1:08:23
  Brett: moral and rational beings and self-reflective beings in the cosmos to grow the fuck up beyond that.
• 1:08:29
  Brett: And I hold out hope that one day humanity will.
• 1:08:32
  Evan: Are you saying that these guys playing Call of Duty didn't make him into real
• 1:08:35
  Evan: men that could withstand that?
• 1:08:38
  Brett: Exactly.
• 1:08:39
  Evan: That's honestly like...
• 1:08:40
  Brett: Exactly. That's all it is for them.
• 1:08:42
  Evan: Yeah, it's literally a game to them. And yeah, it's...
• 1:08:44
  amanda: Not to bring up another movie, but to bring up another movie.
• 1:08:48
  amanda: I don't know if either one... I know, Evan, you've seen... I don't know,
• 1:08:52
  amanda: Brett, if you've seen Civil War, the A24 film that came out in the spring.
• 1:08:56
  Brett: Oh, not yet. Not yet.
• 1:08:57
  amanda: Um, there, there is kind of some parallels with that, with like the,
• 1:09:01
  amanda: the warmonger from his high tower.
• 1:09:04
  amanda: Um, and the final scene, I don't want to ruin it for you. See,
• 1:09:07
  amanda: um, but, uh, maybe you should go watch that after this.
• 1:09:09
  amanda: Um, but there are some parallels right there with that, with that point of, you know, reality.
• 1:09:15
  amanda: Is portrayed in that in that film with nick offerman's character who plays the president of,
• 1:09:23
  amanda: america um i think they i don't even know if they
• 1:09:25
  amanda: call it the united states i think it's called america but uh yeah there's
• 1:09:29
  amanda: there's some parallels there with like the man in the high
• 1:09:32
  amanda: tower you know um the the soldier
• 1:09:35
  amanda: that is so brainwashed into dehumanizing
• 1:09:39
  amanda: other people that don't look like you that they sit in
• 1:09:42
  amanda: a nice comfortable room and push the button
• 1:09:45
  amanda: on the drones that kill entire families or people at weddings
• 1:09:48
  amanda: and in shelters and but you know
• 1:09:51
  amanda: that doesn't make strong strong men um you know men men out men women out in
• 1:09:56
  amanda: the field doesn't make them strong just like it doesn't make a child strong
• 1:09:59
  amanda: to get beat up by their parents it makes them traumatized it makes them angry
• 1:10:04
  amanda: it It makes them resentful.
• 1:10:09
  amanda: It makes them not the whole human beings that they could have been,
• 1:10:13
  amanda: not to say that they won't ever have that potential, but it is definitely a
• 1:10:20
  amanda: stunting of maturity in humans and individuals.
• 1:10:25
  amanda: But yeah.
• 1:10:27
  Brett: Well said.
• 1:10:28
  Evan: Yeah, I think, I guess before we finish up,
• 1:10:32
  Evan: I wanted to, since in the other episodes, it makes sense we talk
• 1:10:34
  Evan: about the very last scene and i'm curious kind of
• 1:10:37
  Evan: your maybe your impressions and i've seen some different things
• 1:10:40
  Evan: written about it so the the final scene after we get the
• 1:10:43
  Evan: victory day and we learn that ivan had been killed you know by the nazis uh
• 1:10:47
  Evan: during the war we get a kind of a dream sequence or some kind of vision sequence
• 1:10:53
  Evan: where you see ivan and his sister presumably playing sort of hide and seek on
• 1:10:58
  Evan: a beach and it's you know very similar reminiscent of very opening scene,
• 1:11:02
  Evan: kind of a very, you know, symmetrical opening and closing of the movie by Tarkovsky.
• 1:11:08
  Evan: But the thing about it is that Ivan at this point is dead. So I'm curious,
• 1:11:12
  Evan: this is maybe kind of a pointless exercise in like what your theory or how you would look at it is.
• 1:11:17
  Evan: Obviously, it can't be from his perspective as a dream sequence because he's now dead.
• 1:11:23
  Evan: But some things I've seen say, you know, maybe it's more of a perspective of
• 1:11:27
  Evan: the sister or the mother, or Or this is the vision of what the lieutenant would have wanted,
• 1:11:33
  Evan: you know, Ivan to have been able to achieve, you know, had he not had to have
• 1:11:37
  Evan: been involved in the war, had there been no war.
• 1:11:41
  Evan: So it is this sort of idyllic ending to it.
• 1:11:44
  Evan: And I think it's a better ending than having it kind of be that,
• 1:11:47
  Evan: you know, slightly darker, depressing, you know, the seeing all the horrors
• 1:11:53
  Evan: that the Nazis have for have, you know, have have committed.
• 1:11:56
  Evan: So, yeah, I wonder what you all think of the last the last scene.
• 1:12:00
  Brett: I mean, you know, there's no way to know for sure, but I kind of think of it
• 1:12:03
  Brett: not from a specific person's point of view, but from a universal sort of zoomed
• 1:12:08
  Brett: out perspective, Like a sort of non-individual perspective,
• 1:12:11
  Brett: a perspective of humanity itself, of just sort of reflecting on the fundamental
• 1:12:16
  Brett: innocence and the childhood that could have been, should have been,
• 1:12:20
  Brett: would have been, if not for the horrors of war.
• 1:12:23
  Brett: And um it's just sort of a sort of
• 1:12:25
  Brett: sad uh nostalgic almost uh you
• 1:12:29
  Brett: know what if in a sense and no and no single
• 1:12:32
  Brett: individual is dreaming that or thinking that it's just
• 1:12:35
  Brett: like zoomed out like the the eye in the
• 1:12:38
  Brett: sky is thinking it or reflecting on that maybe but one thing it it harkens back
• 1:12:42
  Brett: to is that that earlier quote that i that i read from james baldwin about all
• 1:12:47
  Brett: the children are ours and the moral responsibility and obligation that that
• 1:12:52
  Brett: imposes on all of us who are not children, who are adults.
• 1:12:56
  Brett: And some of us have children, some of us don't have children,
• 1:12:59
  Brett: some want children, some don't want children.
• 1:13:02
  Brett: But I think we should always be suspicious of anybody who is disdainful of children as such,
• 1:13:10
  Brett: whether that is the explicit overt form of supporting wars or fetishizing,
• 1:13:15
  Brett: romanticizing wars or funding and arming you
• 1:13:18
  Brett: know groups of people who are specifically going after
• 1:13:21
  Brett: children as the u.s is is doing right now or
• 1:13:24
  Brett: even in the in the more low level ways where people just sort of have this disdain
• 1:13:29
  Brett: for children this sort of like you know like oh my god they're you know that
• 1:13:33
  Brett: term from like 10 years ago like crotch goblins or you know um i i would never
• 1:13:38
  Brett: i could never imagine myself having kids they're just annoying little you know
• 1:13:42
  Brett: shitty messes or whatever Reverend.
• 1:13:44
  Brett: Whether you have kids or not, it's a totally valid personal choice,
• 1:13:47
  Brett: but I would urge everybody,
• 1:13:49
  Brett: no matter if you have any kids in your life or no kids in your life,
• 1:13:52
  Brett: to try to take seriously this Baldwin idea that all the children are ours and
• 1:13:58
  Brett: that just by virtue of being a human adult,
• 1:14:01
  Brett: you have an obligation and responsibility to try to create a world in which
• 1:14:05
  Brett: children aren't brutalized.
• 1:14:06
  Brett: And that starts with having a love for children is sort of being synonymous
• 1:14:12
  Brett: with a love for our humanity because we were all children once.
• 1:14:15
  Brett: And there's that fundamental, beautiful possibility and hope that is,
• 1:14:20
  Brett: you know, present in every child because they represent the future.
• 1:14:24
  Brett: There's this fundamental innocence, this best of our nature,
• 1:14:28
  Brett: this open-eyed curiosity about the world around them before it's sort of been
• 1:14:33
  Brett: beaten out of them or drowned out by concepts, etc.
• 1:14:37
  Brett: That we We should all have this obligation and think of all the children as
• 1:14:41
  Brett: ours and to have this loving, nurturing feeling towards children and wanting
• 1:14:47
  Brett: to create a better world, not just for ourselves and not even just for our own children,
• 1:14:51
  Brett: but for children as a whole, for humanity's children.
• 1:14:55
  Brett: And I really take that responsibility seriously as a father to my own children,
• 1:14:59
  Brett: but as a human being to try to fight for a world in which all children are safe
• 1:15:06
  Brett: and all children get a childhood.
• 1:15:08
  Brett: And when you see these incidences of war, when you see what's happening in Palestine,
• 1:15:13
  Brett: because that's the most concrete example currently happening,
• 1:15:16
  Brett: all the children in Gaza and in Palestine are being robbed of a childhood.
• 1:15:20
  Brett: They're being brutalized for this 75-plus-year-old European nationalist colonizing project.
• 1:15:29
  Brett: You're destroying babies and lives and futures for entire family lines and lineages
• 1:15:36
  Brett: because of some concepts you have in your head about God's chosen people and
• 1:15:42
  Brett: whose land this really is, etc.
• 1:15:43
  Brett: Etc and um it is so it is
• 1:15:47
  Brett: so absurd and so immature it's like there's almost like it's
• 1:15:50
  Brett: there's a a deeper level of immaturity on
• 1:15:53
  Brett: behalf of people who think like that and who can do that than children themselves
• 1:15:57
  Brett: right we see children as underdeveloped or immature but in some deep sense you
• 1:16:02
  Brett: know the the real immaturity and the underdevelopment come from the adults who
• 1:16:06
  Brett: brutalize them whether that is interpersonal abuse or wartime destruction or anything else,
• 1:16:13
  Brett: and so yeah I just want to like one of my last notes,
• 1:16:16
  Brett: is for everybody to take seriously that Baldwin quote and to think about creating
• 1:16:20
  Brett: a better world where that obligation to humanity's children is taken seriously
• 1:16:25
  Brett: on the individual and collective level.
• 1:16:28
  amanda: Absolutely. Another thing that I think about that we also have to understand
• 1:16:34
  amanda: that it's not normal for people to have to hold up their dead children to get people to care.
• 1:16:40
  amanda: Um like uh i
• 1:16:43
  amanda: personally do not have children but i weep daily
• 1:16:48
  amanda: for the children that i see every single
• 1:16:51
  amanda: day that are brutalized and additionally
• 1:16:54
  amanda: those that do survive that do manage to
• 1:16:57
  amanda: have their limbs you are going to have
• 1:17:00
  amanda: resistance for future generations and no one can be surprised by that no one
• 1:17:06
  amanda: could be surprised that when a child sees their entire family taken out and
• 1:17:11
  amanda: their livelihood jeopardized at every moment that they're going to sit idly
• 1:17:16
  amanda: by when they become old enough to do something.
• 1:17:20
  amanda: But as far as the closing scene, I think that also it goes to your quote, Brett,
• 1:17:25
  amanda: that you talked about symbolism and metaphor
• 1:17:32
  amanda: and how with the image you could take
• 1:17:35
  amanda: many things from that image and
• 1:17:38
  amanda: with that final scene um it could
• 1:17:41
  amanda: be what the viewer hopes the turn
• 1:17:44
  amanda: the outcome is for ivan that maybe he goes to
• 1:17:47
  amanda: heaven and he gets to be or whatever you know rendition of something like that
• 1:17:52
  amanda: like an afterlife or whatever um that he gets to be reunited with with those
• 1:17:57
  amanda: those memories and those peoples
• 1:17:59
  amanda: and whatnot or it It could be what the soldiers would want for Ivan,
• 1:18:04
  amanda: or it could be maybe even flashback, you know, to even before he was dead.
• 1:18:10
  amanda: Not to override exactly like the importance that the children of the world are
• 1:18:16
  amanda: ours and what you were speaking of.
• 1:18:19
  amanda: They are ours, every single one of them.
• 1:18:21
  Evan: Yeah, no, that was beautifully said, Brett. I don't pretend to top or not top,
• 1:18:26
  Evan: but I don't have much to add there except, you know, as someone,
• 1:18:29
  Evan: you know, with children too.
• 1:18:30
  Evan: And wanting to protect them and the same way you want to protect the innocence
• 1:18:35
  Evan: of or the same way that the you know the soldiers wanted to protect the innocence
• 1:18:40
  Evan: of Ivan you want a better world for your children and all children so they don't
• 1:18:44
  Evan: have to one day realize the horrors that,
• 1:18:49
  Evan: We unfortunately have to see on a daily basis on, you know, on social media,
• 1:18:53
  Evan: not on the news, because they would not like us to see those horrors.
• 1:18:58
  Evan: But I don't think I had any, I don't know.
• 1:19:01
  amanda: Unless they're, unless they're Russians or something.
• 1:19:03
  Evan: Yes, yeah, that's true. Unless it fits a narrow, I was gonna say a NATO narrative.
• 1:19:09
  Evan: That's not what I even meant. That was just a Freudian slip.
• 1:19:11
  Evan: A narrative for NATO, I suppose. So I don't know if either of you have any last
• 1:19:15
  Evan: thoughts on it, and if not, I guess we can call it.
• 1:19:21
  Evan: And I know, at least from your perspective, Brett, I think people know where to find you.
• 1:19:25
  Evan: But if you want to remind everyone your shows and if you have anything in particular
• 1:19:30
  Evan: you're going to be working on or anything like that you wanted to share.
• 1:19:33
  Brett: Yeah, first of all, thank you so much for having me on. I really love this series.
• 1:19:36
  Brett: Maybe we can keep it going. This is our third film.
• 1:19:38
  Brett: So if you're just listening to this, go back, you know, both of our podcasts,
• 1:19:43
  Brett: Left of the Projector or Rev Left Radio, and you'll find our other two episodes on Stalker and Solaris.
• 1:19:49
  Brett: Highly encourage people who are just interested in film or interested in history
• 1:19:53
  Brett: to check out the films of Tarkovsky. I mean, you know, one of the greatest to ever do it.
• 1:19:58
  Brett: So highly recommend people check that out. And then as for me and my work,
• 1:20:02
  Brett: I have two sort of fronts that I operate on.
• 1:20:04
  Brett: One is the political front, and you can find everything I do there at RevolutionaryLeftRadio.com.
• 1:20:09
  Brett: That's my main podcast, Rev Left Radio, and the sister podcast,
• 1:20:13
  Brett: Red Menace, I do with my co-host and friend, Allison.
• 1:20:15
  Brett: And then I recently in the last year or so have started a totally separate podcast
• 1:20:19
  Brett: called Shoeless in South Dakota, where me and my childhood friend who is an
• 1:20:23
  Brett: active recovery from alcoholism, we joke around,
• 1:20:27
  Brett: but we also talk deeply about mental health issues, addiction, recovery,
• 1:20:31
  Brett: relapse, and all spirituality,
• 1:20:34
  Brett: all of the things in that whole realm together.
• 1:20:37
  Brett: Human experience. So it's not very political, but it does cover that other aspect of human life.
• 1:20:42
  Brett: So if you're kind of interested in that, you can check out shoelessandsouthdakota.com.
• 1:20:46
  Evan: Awesome. And I guess, Amanda, for you, I can post your link to your social media,
• 1:20:52
  Evan: content as well as your, you also have shirts as well. I guess not only shirts.
• 1:20:57
  amanda: Yeah, I make communist propaganda on Etsy.
• 1:21:03
  Evan: Yes yes um but yeah amanda and
• 1:21:05
  Evan: brett as always it's a pleasure to have you uh on to talk
• 1:21:08
  Evan: more tarkovsky um you know these have been it's
• 1:21:12
  Evan: been a whole lot of fun to uh to get into movies that like
• 1:21:15
  Evan: these i think for anyone out there who you know maybe isn't used
• 1:21:18
  Evan: to watching you know these kind of things i think brett you mentioned and
• 1:21:20
  Evan: maybe the first one you did on uh so are as you know when
• 1:21:23
  Evan: you watch a movie like this it's it would benefit you
• 1:21:26
  Evan: greatly to just stick your phone in the other room i
• 1:21:29
  Evan: know it's hard and you're used to having your phone when
• 1:21:32
  Evan: you're doing things but i think you get a lot out of these kinds of
• 1:21:36
  Evan: films when you just kind of focus on things and you see the nature and the trees
• 1:21:40
  Evan: and everything that tarkovsky brings to it you know not just you know his film
• 1:21:44
  Evan: there's lots of other soviet movies and uh other eras too and just for anyone
• 1:21:49
  Evan: out there this is not coming for a couple months but i'll be doing an episode with the actual,
• 1:21:57
  Evan: existing socialism on East German cinema
• 1:22:01
  Evan: in a few months so anyone out there would recommend watching those kind of movies
• 1:22:06
  Evan: too there's lots out there if you have access to your library you should connect
• 1:22:10
  Evan: it to Canopy if they have access and you likely will find lots of great foreign
• 1:22:15
  Evan: films available to you or you could just go on YouTube but Brett, Amanda,
• 1:22:19
  Evan: thanks again for being on the show it's been a pleasure yeah.
• 1:22:23
  amanda: Thank you and also also long live the resistance.
• 1:22:26
  Evan: Yes and uh you can follow this podcast on the internets and uh all the same
• 1:22:32
  Evan: places as uh as brett's content and the at sea store so we will catch you next time.