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In Review On Mic: The New York Film Festival · In Review On Mic

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to In Review On Mic,
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: the new podcast of film criticism platform In Review Online.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Hugo Emmerzaal and alongside our talented roster of contributors,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: we will bring you in-depth conversations,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: discussions and interviews about cinema old and new.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'm handing over the reins to Chris Kassingham as he is joined
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: by regular contributors Ethan Rosenberg and Robert Stinner on the grounds at
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: the 64th New York Film Festival.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Exploring some of their festival highlights,
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: they exchange thoughts on Sandra Wollner's Every Time,
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Ira Sachs' The Man I Love, and Werner Herzog's Bucking Fastered, amongst others.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Before I hand you over to their festival dispatch, I'd like to thank you for listening.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Please subscribe to our channel,
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: wherever you listen to your podcasts,
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: drop a rating while you're at it, and enjoy the ride.
• 0:56
  [music]
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, everyone, and welcome to In Review On Mic.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Chris Cassingham.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm an editor at In Review Online.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: This week, we're excited to bring a report from the 64th New York Film Festival.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: As usual,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: this year's edition features highlights from many of
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: the most prestigious festivals around the world,
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Marseille, and Locarno.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm not reporting on these films alone.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: I'm joined by two of In Review Online's regular contributors who,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: like me,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: were on the ground at the festival over the past few weeks,
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: catching as many films as our schedules allowed.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: I'll let them introduce themselves, but why don't we start with you, Ethan?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Ethan Rosenberg.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've been a contributing writer at In Review Online for a little over a year.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: I'm based in Queens, New York, and I enjoy going to the New York Film Festival each year.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: So it was great to cover it.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: And you, Robert?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, and I am Robert Stinner.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'm also a contributing writer at In Review since 2024.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_03: I live right outside New York,
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_03: New Jersey, and my other writing fiction essays can be found elsewhere online.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious to know how long both of you have been attending
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: the New York Film Festival, maybe even outside of your writing responsibilities.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: I have been attending since I moved to New York, which was late 2015.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I caught a lot of what I now consider like all-time masterpieces in that festival.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: I believe Tony Erdmann was that year.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Manchester by the Sea was that year.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think 2017 was Transit, The Pet Soul.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's a favorite of mine.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: The batting average is pretty high for the New York Film Festival for me.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so this is actually my first full New York Film Festival.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_03: I was in the process of a move from Washington,
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_03: D.C. to New Jersey while it was going on last year.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_03: I covered it a bit in review last year,
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: so I caught a couple of screeners,
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: but I saw the public screening of Rose of Nevada with Mark Jenkins,
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_03: the Q&A, in person.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_03: And that was just a wonderful first screening at NYFF.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_03: I loved that film.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and this was really fun to do it more in full this year, and I hope to attend many more.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_02: This is my fourth time at the festival, kind of second time really covering it full on.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: I resonate with your point, Ethan,
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: about there being a really high batting average at this festival,
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: because as I said,
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: the programming committee recruits from festivals all over the world.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: Essentially, what are just the highlights of the year, what they perceive to be the highlights.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I think generally the programming committee has a really refined taste.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it makes the festival all the more enjoyable when in some ways
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: the films are vetted, but you're still not guaranteed to agree with everything.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think that makes for a really strong mix of films.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: I want to not waste any time.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: I want to get into some of the films that all three of us have seen
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: and felt compelled to talk about.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: Not necessarily the standout titles in terms of hype that the festival had on offer,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: but the things that caught our attention and when we felt compelled to speak on.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: One of those films is actually one of the highlights of the festival and
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: a film people have really been talking about ever since it won
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: the Uncertain Regard section in Cannes this year,
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: and that's Sandra Wollner's Every Time.
• 4:49
  [music]
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: war noch gar nicht beim Grab, seitdem ich hier bin.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Muss man
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: ja nicht.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_03: Wir gehen Freitag
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: wieder hin.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Du bist mit Jesse auf die Schule gegangen?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: Ja, Mann.
• 5:29
  [music]
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: Robert, can you tell us a little bit about this film and bring us into what's going on?
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_03: So this film takes place in Berlin.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_03: It centers this family.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_03: It's a single mother with two daughters, a teenager and a younger girl.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: And they're getting ready to go on vacation and sort of living their lives.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: And we're following the teenage daughter, Jessie, in particular, for a while.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: And then pretty early on in the film, there is a sudden tragedy involving Jesse.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_03: And so then it becomes about this mother at Mellie and Jesse's boyfriend sort
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_03: of trying to pick up the pieces and move on with their lives.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_03: But it is very much not a traditionally structured brief drama.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_03: It takes on a lot of different perspectives and a lot
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_03: of different filming techniques too, I would say.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_03: Bolner does a lot in how grief is sort of translated through the digital world.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: We see photos from Jessie's camera roll on her iPhone.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of like Minecraft POV playing.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_03: There's drone footage.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so as these three people are sort of struggling to move on with their lives,
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_03: we're seeing ways in which their grief is sort of mediated in different ways.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_03: And then there's this very fascinating final act where the three
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_03: of them take this vacation that had been planned a year before that never happened
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_03: and And then they have this very kind of surreal,
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: very fascinating beach vacation where reality gets quite slippery,
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_03: which I'm sure we'll be talking about in more detail.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: I remember watching this film in the press screening after having heard a lot,
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: but not a lot of concrete information about kind of what is going on
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: in this final act,
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: which really seems to go on forever, but in a really exciting way.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's a two-hour film that feels like three hours,
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: and I wanted more and more and more,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_02: especially in this final act,
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: which occurs in Tenerife and is at this gorgeous resort.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Can you talk a little bit about what exactly is happening and how Sandra is kind
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: of playing with our perception of time and reality?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: There are a few concrete things that really caught my attention,
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_02: particularly involving the young daughter, Jessie.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_03: So just for a little context,
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_03: so this vacation happens after Ella, the mother, played by Birgit Minnickmeyer.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_03: Forgive me if I mispronounce anything.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_03: So Jesse had taken some drugs with her boyfriend, you know, the night before the tragedy.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_03: And Ella sort of wants to recreate that experience from her daughter's perspective.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_03: So she takes all of these drugs and,
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_03: her daughter's boyfriend and her younger daughter are in this So we start
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_03: where our protagonist is in this sort of strange frame of mind.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_03: Then we get on this vacation, and the two younger people really don't know what's going on.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: the boyfriend is taking on this sort of paternal role with the younger daughter,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_03: and the mother is just sort of in this almost panic-stricken state.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_03: But certain things start happening,
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_03: like Mellie,
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: the young daughter,
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_03: starts getting texts on her phone from Jessie, which should not be happening.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_03: They see this very young girl,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_03: this sort of like maybe three-year-old girl,
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_03: who looks exactly like Jessie did as a very young girl on this trip to Tenerife
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_03: in this home video footage that we've already seen.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_03: And they sort of like kind of adopt this young girl on this vacation.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: So time becomes suspended at a certain point, too.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_03: Mellie sort of goes off and tries to find this young girl.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: And they're searching for Mellie.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: And it's also like everybody has sort of cleared out of this resort.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_03: We no longer know sort of what reality we're in.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like the sort of relationships between these people sort of start
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_03: to get shuffled around the roles they're playing within the family.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_03: Jessie herself,
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: whether she's alive,
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: whether this is sort of like whether we've gone back in time,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_03: whether we're in like an alternate reality.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_03: And so it really becomes non-linear.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_03: There are aspects of it which are experimental and pretty audacious in
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_03: the first two acts, but there is still a grounded reality.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_03: And really,
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's unique that in this final act,
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_03: she sort of lets that drift away and trusts the audience to follow.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_03: And I think what that does is that it sort of grounds us in the emotional,
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_03: embodied experience of grief.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_03: Where time is more elastic,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: you're sort of living in the past and in the present,
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: you're trying to envision futures that will never happen as much as you wish them
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_03: to.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_03: And also the ways in which that grief had been digitally mediated
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_03: through different modes of video,
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_03: like iPhone photos,
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: old home videos from 20 years ago,
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_03: Minecraft too,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: ends up really playing a very large part in this film and in the final act.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_03: Those all sort of filter in to the reality of the film as well in this final act.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: So it really becomes this more emotional,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_03: sort of like sensorial experience where the rules of narrative logic are suspended.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that is a challenge for an audience, but a very beautifully executed one, I think.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's just this really heady experience watching this last act of the film.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: When you mentioned this kind of suspension of reality,
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: my abiding impressions and thoughts about how Walner was treating this,
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: her approach to telling the story was really about this kind of idea.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, in a way, she's sort of teasing the audience in a lot of ways.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: Using some conventions of narrative structure and kind of image making.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it starts early on in that first 20 minutes or so
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_02: when we first meet Jessie and her boyfriend
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: and see them hanging out together leading up to that tragedy.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: You're presented with this really long shot,
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: this telephoto lens shot, kind of across an expanse of...
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think cinematic convention sort of prompts us to expect something new.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: Eventful, we'll say.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: And something very eventful does happen.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: And I think what's really interesting about the rest of the film,
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_02: in line with what you've been saying about how we mediate grief
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: and internalize grief...
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: Walner is also toying with us in some ways about what to expect next in the story.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_02: There are other minor storyline details regarding the relationship between
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: the mother and Lux that are a little ambiguous.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: And there are some suggestions about the nature of their relationship.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: In the midst of this grief,
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_02: and she teases out those potentialities for you without giving you closure.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: And in some other instances,
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: she teases out those other potentialities of certain events and does follow through
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: with them.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that kind of unknowingness keeps you on edge throughout the entire film,
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: even though it's kind of moving along in this very subdued way.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: Almost lethargic pace.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: Dreamlike.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: Very dreamlike.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: And that starts to make a lot more sense once we're in the perspective
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_02: of some characters who have taken drugs as a kind of coping mechanism,
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: as an experiment.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: So what you've said really resonated.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Ethan, I want to get a little bit of your own perspective on this film.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a little softer on it than you guys.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: I did like it quite a lot.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: I would say that the strongest act for me was the first act.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Watching the first like 20 minutes or so leading up to the tragedy
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: that you described, I was like, oh, this is one of the best films of the decade.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was really blown away with the style.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And how teeming it felt.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of felt like it was bursting at the seams with humanity I thought
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: of Margaret,
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: which is one of my favorite movies,
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: the Kenneth Lonergan film,
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: just sort of in how it sort of seems to be taking the perspective of,
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: very briefly,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: kind of like a city symphony,
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: but it's narrowing its focus down on this particular family and
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: then more specifically the relationship between And then I thought the movie settled
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: into a groove.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: I was into it and I appreciated you mentioned like the dreamlike quality
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: because it does like melt.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's got this very fascinating kind of like bodily experience
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: where it's just like I was kind of like transfixed.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: The way that I would kind of describe it is Eno empathy,
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Brian Eno empathy,
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: in the sense that it sort of seems like it's taking the perspective of like
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And this is sort of like this being observing this human family from a distance,
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: but an active and empathic perspective.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: It reminded me a lot of Blue Heron as well, which came out earlier this year.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And a dogfight,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I would give the edge to this one, but I think functionally quite similar.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I really like that kind of imagery you offer about a benevolent alien watching.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's incredibly apt for the experience of watching this film.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: Are there any other moments that From the film that kind of have stuck with you.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm thinking of one in particular where we see the younger daughter wandering around
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: the resort grounds in Tenerife.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: We learn she is also potentially accidentally high on some of the drugs
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: that her mother had taken earlier.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: So building on and expanding on that kind of unmoored point of view.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: And she comes across the younger girl who very closely resembles her older sister
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: from when she was a baby, a toddler.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's an amazing moment where a lot of the preceding moments kind of converge
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: on this Are there any moments kind of like that have stuck with you?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: I did love that moment, particularly like the callback to the video.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: But one of my favorite moments is actually something more concrete, which is the fart joke.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're hiking.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it looks like farts.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's an accident.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought that was very natural and it's just like a well-earned moment of levity.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: Reminded me a little bit of like how Ozu used farting in Ohio.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I thought that was a great moment.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: That moment up there, they're high on a cliff overlooking the sea.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: Tensions are high because they're early in this sort of spontaneous vacation
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: and no one really knows what's going on.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a really great point.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and just to bounce off of that too, like,
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_03: the tensions are high and then they all start laughing,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_03: you know, about this fart together.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_03: And Brigitte Minichmeier, you know, the actress has this amazing moment where, you know, she...
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_03: She does the amazing actorly thing where like she's laughing and then it's sort
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: of just like imperceptibly like she starts to cry and
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: then they have this like shared bonding moment of grief too.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: So it's really beautifully done just sort of like a fulcrum point of the sort
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: of grief they're experiencing.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_03: I also want to highlight this moment that happens kind of in the second act of
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_03: the film which is really focused on Ella and Lux.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_03: And Luck starts to really rely on Ella as this maternal figure and vice versa,
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_03: even though there are a lot of complications in their relationship.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_03: And there's one moment where,
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_03: so he sort of just starts showing up in her apartment and she finds him like late
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_03: at night in Jesse's bed.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_03: And he just starts weeping,
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: this like ragged crying, and he's apologizing to her for his role in this tragedy.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_03: And she's comforting him, but she's also saying like, you should have been more careful.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_03: Why did you do this?
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_03: I really want to highlight those two actors too,
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_03: again, Brigitte McMyer and Tristan Lopez, who plays Lux.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_03: I think when you talk about acting,
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_03: especially at this time of year,
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: it sort of all gets subsumed into who might win an award.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_03: Which is all fun and good,
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: but I think it leaves out a lot of performances like we're seeing here,
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_03: which aren't really designed for that,
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_03: but both of them are so emotionally in tune and so present and able to sort
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_03: of capture just these sort of strange emotional outbursts and these moments
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_03: of like sort of emotional restraint and distance too that occur in grief.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_03: And that moment was just so striking to me in how both of them played that.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_03: I thought it was really beautiful.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think we should move on to our next film.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this discussion of acting and performance is a great segue to talk
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: about Ira Sax's The Man I Love.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're playing a woman,
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: you stress the gentle curves of the body movement in a figure eight.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: The head moves in a figure eight.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: The shoulders move like a figure eight.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: The torso moves like a figure eight.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: And your steps move like a figure eight.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: If you're able to add all that as you move your whole body,
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: the illusion of the feminine is created.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_02: Look at that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Kiss that shoulder.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: Kiss it.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_02: A central performance by Rami Malek that could possibly be in
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: the awards conversation if the film is able to find an audience.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't seen this film yet, but both of you have.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: So Ethan, can you take us into Ira Sachs' new film?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that the film was really good and had moments of transcendent brilliance.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: The film primarily takes place in the Late 80s,
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: in New York,
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: following the basically disintegration and decay of the life
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: of this once perhaps had quite a star performer, stage performer.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Whose name is... Help me, Robert.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_03: Jimmy Page.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: Jimmy Page.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: So we're following Jimmy Page and the men and the people in his life as he's on his...
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: The word AIDS is not used in the film, but he's dying of AIDS.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And the only explicit reference to the disease is through AZT.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's a moment between two characters who have a relationship with Jimmy,
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: one of whom is his longtime partner and the other Is the man with whom he's having
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: an affair.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: And beyond that, it's all suggested.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Robert, when we discussed the film after we saw it, we saw it together at the press screen.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Use the word withholding.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought that that was like a key term for describing Sax's approach here.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: So much is inferred.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: So much is suggested.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of that really works for me.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Other aspects of it, I wish had more narrative context.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like I mentioned a little bit earlier in my introduction to the film,
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: the moments that sing here are like next level.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's this moment where Jimmy is performing at his mom's birthday
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: and it is just like this soul bearing thing and it hits, it works.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, it would have worked better if the film felt bigger.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: There are moments when the movie feels really big
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: and it feels like it's tackling New York at this time.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you will, a gay fantasia on national themes.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Not totally unlike Angels in America, really.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: But Angels in America is a play that's like three hours long or more.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: And that was just- It's many more hours than that.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like six, maybe it's six hours.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: So let's split the difference and let's say like Iris Sacks,
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: do this again, but make it three hours.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: like that to me- Was the one thing that I felt was missing is like,
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: we'll have this great emotional moment,
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: but there's not a ton of narrative connective tissue to like,
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: carry us along,
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: it just kind of bounces from like, Oh,
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: here's this, here's that, and we're kind of left to assemble the pieces ourselves.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: But Robert,
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: you reviewed the film for In Review,
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: so you probably spent more time thinking about it than I did,
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: and I'd love to hear what you thought as well.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_03: So first off, I have to correct myself.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_03: Rami Malek's character is named Jimmy George, not Jimmy Page.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Jimmy Page!
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_03: Jimmy Page is the guitarist from Led Zeppelin.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right, right.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_03: Unaffiliated with this film.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm always mixing them up.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_03: So yes, Jimmy George.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_03: Thank you.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_03: And so that's a genre that started in the 1980s,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_03: as it was going on and mainly by gay men who are making,
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: you know, films, books, plays about AIDS with political goals, right?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of the times those had narrative conventions where,
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_03: they wanted to really humanize their characters,
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: gay men suffering from AIDS for this sort of straight audience to bring awareness,
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_03: to bring this sort of humanity to them that maybe people were not recognizing at
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_03: the time.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: And a lot of them were really,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_03: had this bedrock of anger under them,
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_03: anger at the government,
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_03: anger at this sort of like societal homophobia,
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_03: you know, think Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart as a sort of like urtext of that.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_03: And now those are period dramas, right?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: I haven't seen it yet,
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: but we have Andrew Scott and Elsinore coming out this year based on a true story.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_03: I forget the name of the actor, but he plays an actor who is playing Hamlet and dying of AIDS.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: Have not seen it yet,
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_03: but based on the reviews, you know, follow some sort of those narrative beats.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_03: The Man I Love is just stringently resistant to any kind
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_03: of conventional emotional arc related to AIDS that we've seen before.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_03: And any kind of explicit political commentary either.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_03: So Jimmy George is a very tough character to embrace.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_03: So at the start of the film, he's moving back into his apartment after a stint in the hospital.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_03: And so he has this boyfriend, Dennis, played by Tom Sturridge, who is really just his caretaker.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_03: And Jimmy doesn't really acknowledge that.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: He just relies on him.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: Now, meanwhile,
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_03: there's a sort of like hot 20-something who's moved in downstairs,
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_03: Vincent, played by Luther Ford.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_03: And Jimmy sort of like immediately takes up this affair with Vincent.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_03: And they're just having this sort of, in Dennis's view, this very careless, reckless affair.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_03: And at the same time,
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_03: Jimmy is also very focused on a play that he is rehearsing for,
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: though he cannot remember his lines.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_03: We're seeing sort of the first signs of AIDS-related dementia happening here.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_03: And so Jimmy is just, he is very self-centered, self-motivated for all of this.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_03: He's really just trying to grab onto the life that he can.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_03: In this time that he has left.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_03: And that is often at the expense of the other people who are around him.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_03: And he never gets a big catharsis or like a big reconciliatory moment with
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_03: the other characters in this film.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_03: Iris Sachs really leaves that suspended and ambiguous and not narratively satisfying.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_03: Like you're not going to leave this film in like a puddle of redemptive tears, you know, really.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: And it's really focused and And where the movie really comes,
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_03: and as Ethan has said, AIDS is never mentioned explicitly in this.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_03: They do mention AZT, which was the sort of most common drug to treat AIDS in this.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: But again,
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_03: you have to have some context for what this disease is and sort of the history of it
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_03: to really clock that reference in.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_03: Narratively, it's pretty sparse because of that.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_03: Not a lot of long dialogue scenes, not a lot of big emotions sort of mainly telegraphed.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: And where the film really does come alive is in these moments of performance.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_03: Jimmy is a sort of consummate performer in this.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_03: And so, Ethan,
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_03: you mentioned the scene where he's singing the song,
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: What Have They Done to My Song, at this anniversary celebration for his parents.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_03: And it's like everything that he's been suppressing just sort of fully emerges in that.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_03: And it's this very emotional, again, like ragged thing.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_03: And so it's a film that really focuses on the life of these people who are
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_03: And there's a sort of peaks and valleys of that,
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_03: the sort of like ecstasies of that that still occur despite that,
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_03: and the sort of like interpersonal complications that are ensuing,
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: you know, again,
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: Related to what they're suffering from with really no governmental support,
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_03: like very little healthcare support.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's just a really fascinating take on that.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_03: And I agree with Ethan that sometimes it feels a little bit too distant.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_03: There's a little bit too much of a move.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_03: If you don't know,
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_03: if somebody comes into this not knowing anything about AIDS in New York in the 80s,
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_03: they might feel kind of at sea.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_03: But if you're coming at this from a basis of that,
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_03: this is probably a very refreshing film in a way.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_03: Something that's sort of,
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_03: it's like an intervention into the genre, which I found really fascinating.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: What you're describing is what has made me interested in seeing this.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: I just didn't have the time to see it.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: And it's part of what I really love about Iris Saxe's films as well,
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_02: is that kind of really intentional,
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_02: removed That refusal to just hand you anything about a character's kind
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: of emotional, like the granular emotional things.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: You're really not going to be given anything for free,
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: which I really appreciate, even if it frustrates me.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I really appreciate seeing this applied to a story that is, again,
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: if you have the basis of knowledge,
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_02: pretty explicitly about AIDS,
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: even if the word AIDS is not mentioned within the film.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm curious if quickly you can...
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: You can say or speak to Robert what is maybe expand
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: on what you felt was like refreshing about this film in terms of an intervention
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: in this particular subgenre of the kind of the AIDS AIDS drama,
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: particularly since you mentioned like now this is a period film.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_02: We're not really speaking to the present day or,
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: it's not about the present day,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: but in what ways might it still speak to the present day,
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: even if it's not necessarily an explicitly political film?
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_03: This is not a film that is directed towards a broad audience with the goal
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: of humanizing people who are suffering from AIDS.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: It is not with the goal of humanizing gay men and queer people.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_03: It takes that as a basis.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_03: These are human beings.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_03: This is the subculture we're in.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_03: No handholding.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_03: And also doesn't have any explicit political aims either.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_03: it's not trying to,
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: you know,
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_03: spur some change,
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_03: which, you know, again, a lot of these pieces in the 80s and the 90s were doing.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_03: Instead, it sort of asks you to read between the lines what the politics of the situation are.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_03: What Iris Axe really focuses on is the sort of like intricacies of history.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_03: This subculture of these really like downtown artists, theater makers.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_03: And so he said that Jimmy George is based on,
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_03: he's sort of a composite character based on Ron Vauder,
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_03: Ethel Eichelberger, and Frank Maia.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_03: Among others,
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_03: and these were sort of like,
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_03: really just these like sort of virtuosic downtown,
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: like actors,
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_03: performance artists,
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: who all did die of AIDS,
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_03: and so whose memories are not very alive, are sort of marginal.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_03: And this sort of like brings that type of performer to life.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody who is like really a star of this downtown scene doing this sort
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_03: of like outre theater performance art.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_03: There's sort of a line where his brother-in-law played
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_03: by Edmas Bacharach says it's like he really could have been a star.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_03: Like why didn't he go to Hollywood?
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_03: Sort of representing the sort of like tolerant straight point of view
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: who still doesn't really get it.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_03: So that's another thing that I think has been sort of slimly represented.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_03: And
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_03: Iris actually allows that to breathe because, again,
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_03: he is not making this film for the goal of making straight people care
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_03: about gay people.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_03: And that really just allows for a lot of different opportunities
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_03: to explore different aspects of this period of this time and place
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_03: that are not always given space in these films.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm really glad we got to discuss this film because I think it's Again,
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: having not seen it,
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: but generally being a huge appreciator of Ira's films,
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think this has kind of been going under-discussed since its premiere
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_02: in Cannes earlier this year, so I'm glad we could dedicate some time to it.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: I want to move on to another film that I know there was some interest in talking
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: about,
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: and that's Bucking Faster,
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: the new film, the new narrative feature from Werner Herzog.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Jean and Joan Holbrook, allow me to go back in time.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: How did you meet Mr. Mulrooney for the first time?
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: In church.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was not in church.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: This sounds like a contradiction.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: We had seen him before, but we did not really notice him in the garden next to ours.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: After his tours in the limo,
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: he would turn on the music and drink beer and fall asleep on the lawn and snore.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: We saw him through the fence and heard him snoring.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Snoring.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: We always heard him snoring.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: Ethan, you're going, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: So why don't you tell us about this new film?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I had not checked in with Herzog as a narrative filmmaker in quite some time.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: I was under the mistaken impression that his last film,
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: his last narrative, was Queen of the Desert, which was in 2015.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: He has since made two more.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think Salt and Fire is the name of the next one that came out the following year.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then after that, I cannot remember the exact name, but Proto-Rental Family.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a quasi-documentary about a rental family in Japan.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: And this bucking bastard felt to me like a great return to the spirit of his films.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Joan and Jean Holbrook.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: They live in the UK.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it adopts kind of an episodic structure.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: We're kind of launched into their lives through the context of a trial.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're on trial for basically harassing their former lover, who's played by Orlando Bloom.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of thought the film would just kind of stay in that mode,
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: but it actually moves on from that fairly quickly.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: They leave where they live in the suburbs,
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: they go to live in the city,
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: and then the film ends with them living in a rural area with their aunt.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because Lynch is such an inspiration on so many filmmakers,
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: but in my opinion, kind of in the wrong way.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think that a lot of filmmakers don't actually internalize what makes Lynch.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the weirdness.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's the sincerity.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: And this film is more aligned with the lynch of the straight story than it is with
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: the lynch of Wild at Heart or Lost Highway, in my opinion.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, wow.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: He gets it.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like he understands the soul of Lynch and he is actually kind of excavating it,
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: if you will,
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: for this particular film because there's this enormous love and passion
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: and compassion for weirdos, for the marginalized.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: There are so many characters here,
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: not just the Two protagonists who are played really well by the Mara sisters.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: Initially, it feels like a parlor trick, right?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: They do the double dialogue, but it evolves into this very...
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: Deeply felt portrait of Sisterhood.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't see Practical Magic 2,
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: but I imagine this is a better depiction of Sisterhood on the big screen this year.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: Again, I haven't seen Practical Magic 2.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: I could be wrong.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: But there are ancillary characters who are weird or mentally there's like a there's
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: a low IQ character who Like, gets stage time.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: And he's not condescended to.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: He, in fact, plays a role in their kind of self-discovery.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: It reminded me a lot of, like, Casper Hauser, even Dwarfs Started Small.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, that spirit, which I thought died.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: Those movies are more than 40 years old.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I just thought he had moved on from that.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: But he returned.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: And the film concludes with,
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_01: I won't give away too much,
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: but it concludes with a leap into pure poetry that blew me away.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, no way you did this.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: Herzog is 84 years old.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't think he had this in him.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: Same with like Ridley Scott earlier this year, Dog Stars.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like these old dudes still can play ball.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's kind of crazy.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like I really didn't expect this.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: It was crazy.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely the biggest surprise of the festival for me.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: I saw some films that I loved and knew I would love.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: I went in pretty indifferent and kind of skeptical about this.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, I really only went because it doesn't have a U.S. distribution yet.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: Which is insane to me now.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now having seen it, I'm like, this needs to be in every AMC in the country.
• 40:30
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I was really pleasantly surprised by Bucking Fasterd.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: Can you,
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_02: in a minute or so,
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: can you talk about the performances by Kate and Rudy Mara and kind of
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: the intricacies of what they're doing?
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like I mentioned, they are largely kind of doubling dialogue.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: They make a great point to replicate each other's kind of tonal inflections.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, physically, they try to look quite alike.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_01: There's actually a moment in the film where they are trying to open a can of sardines.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: And like, again, this is classic Herzog, right?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: They do everything together, but they have this caretaker played by Donald Gleaton.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: He kind of encourages them to like separate slightly.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: And like allow one to open the can of sardines.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: So there's an incredible piece of acting where we actually don't see their faces.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: You see their hands and their hands are kind of like jumbled in this like mass,
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: this like incoherent mass.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_01: They separate slightly and it's all in this closeup.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: And one of them, I think it's the Rooney Mara character opens the can of sardines.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: And again, it's still in close up.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, that's awesome.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's great kind of collaborative acting.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Of course,
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: we generally think of acting in the face or,
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: you know, expression, but the hands too can be quite a meaningful tool.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: And they were in this case.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: I'm excited to see this.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: It hadn't been a priority for me,
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_02: and I guess that bears out because I didn't see it during the festival.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: So now I really do hope it gets a distribution.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_02: I want to give both of you and myself some opportunity to talk about One film
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: that has really stuck with you for good or for bad,
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_02: we'd stuck to things that multiple people had seen on our,
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: multiple of us had seen for this larger discussion.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: But if there's anything else that maybe just you have seen and want
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: to make sure it gets some time in the spotlight, the stage is now yours.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: Sure.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_03: And this may seem like kind of an obvious pick in some ways, but The Devils.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, so this was actually my first time seeing The Devils in any form,
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_03: though I love Ken Russell.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I figured that this would be a good opportunity to see this for the first time.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_03: So they screened, you know, a 35 millimeter print of this.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I mean, it is just like this towering work of cinema.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I was amazed.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean,
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_03: I reviewed it,
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_03: but it's like, it's hard to even kind of think of things to say about this.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's this like really radical political filmmaking against religious nationalism.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_03: And the irony is so thick that this is about to be the first film released under
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_03: the newly merged Skydance Corporation owned by David Ellison.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, I mean,
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: this sort of like religious and sexual frenzy that these sort of like operators of
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_03: the state whip up in this film is just portrayed as this sort
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_03: of just like naked political ambition,
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_03: this sort of like nationalistic fervor, this power grab.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: You know,
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_03: the main character,
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_03: Urban Grandier, played by Oliver Reed, is really just this flawed human.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: Just this guy who is really just this bulwark against this.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: Somebody who,
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_03: because he acknowledges the fact that he likes having sex with women and that he has
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_03: a big ego, but he also wants to be close to God.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_03: He's very earnest in that.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: That he acknowledges these flaws.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_03: He's just like the bulwark against this who's just...
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_03: Crushed, just absolutely crushed by these forces.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: And just like the style, I mean,
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: this massive style, I mean, the production design by Derek Jarman, remarkable.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: Derek Jarman did the production design on that?
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: Apart from a couple other films, maybe NASA was the event of the festival.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_02: It was remarkable and well-earned.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: Derek Jarman's credit got a huge round of applause when the film ended.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that made me emotional.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_02: It actually made me very emotional, actually.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I actually am getting emotional right now just thinking about that.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_02: So The Devils is, you know, a giant.
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_03: It's remarkable.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_03: And this will just incredibly be out in wide release in, I think, like, a week or two.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_03: A week or two, yeah.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_03: So, like, see this movie.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_03: There's nothing else like it.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: Nobody is going to make anything like it under, you know, the current sky
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: dance.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: I know.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm desperately hungry for some moral outrage.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I want it so badly.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_02: I can't wait to read all of the moral outrage.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_02: If there's any to be had.
• 45:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'll go ahead and say one film that I have just not stopped thinking about.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_02: And for the purposes of time, I've had to pick just one among the two that had stayed with me.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'll talk about another film in the revival section.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_02: Which, as anybody who attends NYFF over the years will realize,
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: often rivals the rest of the sections in the festival.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_02: So this film is an Indian film from 1986 called Report to Mother,
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_02: directed by John Abraham, who was...
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so I made a point to see it.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's really an amazing film.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing example of collective, political collective action, you know, within art.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: So the story is essentially about a young man who is traveling from the countryside
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_02: to university in I believe it is Delhi.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_02: And on his journey,
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: at the very start of his journey,
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_02: he meets with his girlfriend who is upset that he's leaving her.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then while he's on the road,
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_02: counters a roadblock where police are involved because they've discovered
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: a dead body of a young man who has hung himself.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_02: This young man is compelled to go find this person because he Well,
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: he's compelled to solve the kind of the mystery of this young man's death
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: because there's something about this young man's face that he recognizes
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_02: and he thinks he knows this person or he's sure he knows this person
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: but can't remember who he is really.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_02: So the journey of the film is his journey to find out who this young man is and to,
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_02: as the title suggests, report the death to his mother.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: The conceit of the film is kind of subtle to start with and in some ways played as
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: a kind of a joke.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it's about this kind of gathering of information.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: It's this mystery that needs to be solved.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so this young man goes to anyone he can think,
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_02: friends and acquaintances who might have some kind of connection to this young man
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_02: who is from this certain area.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so over the course of the film,
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_02: this group of people steadily collects and grows strength and grows power
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: and information.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: And until,
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_02: by the end of the film,
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's this mass of supporters who have traveled all around the countryside
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_02: to find this dead man's mother.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_02: So the treatment of this kind of gathering of force is treated comedically because
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_02: the characters are running back and forth to the morgue to see the man's face,
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: to see if they recognize him.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's plain of a kind of a recurring joke, a running joke.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then eventually this sort of gathering of force takes
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: on like real political weight because as they're traveling through the countryside,
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: they're encountering masses of protests.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: About the privatization of education and universities.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: This is a young man who is setting out to go to university in Delhi on his own.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: So there's a real immediate kind of import to the culture of privatization happening
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_02: at that time in India and is happening right now as well in India.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_02: There are waves of student protests happening probably as we speak
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_02: that I felt were kind of reflective of what this film is really exploring.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's just a remarkable film.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's light on its feet and really moving and funny,
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: made with like really intentional political aims in the opening scene or kind of
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: over the opening credits.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: Someone, I don't know, perhaps.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_02: Perhaps it's John Abraham, the director, reads a manifesto about community cinema.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a group,
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_02: a programming artist,
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: political movement collective involved with the making of this film called
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_02: the Odessa Collective, which...
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_02: It makes a lot of sense about their inspirations and that plays over
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_02: the opening credits that sets the tone without you really realizing it about
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: the power of collective action and the political power that that can hold
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: when really wielded thoughtfully.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought it's a really remarkable film and hope more people get the chance to see it.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: Ethan, do you want to close us out with a final film, a couple minutes?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: For sure.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Actually,
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: one that kind of stayed in my mind is also a political film,
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: not a revival, but it was a press screening that was pretty sparsely attended.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: Was for A Man of His Time,
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: which is a film about a man who wrote a manifesto about how
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_01: to make France great again around the time
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: He kind of gets sucked into the Vichy government.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: As you could imagine, over the course of five or so years, he becomes a bureaucrat.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: His soul just kind of like drains away.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_01: But I thought that it was one of those, like,
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: humanist,
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: handheld movies that we get a lot of,
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: but with some really interesting,
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: like, Michael Winterbottom-ish, like, stylistic twists.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: I thought a little bit about 24-hour party people,
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: even to a much lesser extent,
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: like, Welcome to Sarajevo in terms of the political content.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: But the movie will interrupt itself with anachronistic music or slight nods to
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: the camera that suggest a wry self-awareness.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: I wish the movie had leaned into that more.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: The film is quite long.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's like two hours, 40 minutes.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I only went to see it on the strength of the recommendation
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: of our Fearless podcasting leader, Hugo.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_01: He loved the film.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: I believe he saw it at a can.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm really glad I did.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: I prefer the direct translation of the French title, which is Our Salvation.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: I wish they had just kept that because again,
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: that Leans into the irony,
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: but there's moments of real grace that are kind of injected into it as well.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was a pleasant surprise.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad I saw it.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's, I think, about as much time as we have to fit in for this episode.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I want to thank Robert and Ethan for joining me.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: There are plenty more films that we still have yet to see and hopefully we'll get
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_02: a chance to see.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_02: And we have coverage of the New York Film Festival on inreviewonline.com.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: And once this is released, we should have wrapped all of that up.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you guys for joining me and talking about all your favorite films from the festival.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what a pleasure.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: For more thoughts on the discussed films,
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: look at our show notes in which we list the mentioned titles alongside further
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: In Review Online coverage on our platform.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_00: In Review On Mic is brought to you by the team of In Review Online.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: Produced by Chris Kessenham, Emily de Granrod, Luke Gorham, and me, Hugo Emmerzaal.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: The gorgeous music is by Dutch musician and composer Bo Zwart,
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_00: with episode contributions of Ivan Rosenberg and Robert Steiner.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: Want to be in the loop for our next episodes?
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_00: Subscribe to our channel wherever you find your podcasts.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: In the meantime, thank you for listening.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_00: Until the next one.