Latest / Houselights: A Film Director Podcast / A Little Princess (1995) - Alfonso Cuarón | Houselights #158

Transcript

A Little Princess (1995) - Alfonso Cuarón | Houselights #158 · Houselights: A Film Director Podcast

0:03
Welcome to the net party. Hello everybody home, and welcome to House Lights.
0:23
We are opening our first entry into the house of Alfonso Coran, and
0:29
I am very excited because this is one of my favorite directors of all time.
0:35
He has done so many great works, and you know, I don't
0:40
love everything that he's done, so don't think that this is just going to
0:43
be a love fest from beginning to end. But his style, his panash,
0:47
if you will, just really you know, grabbed me at a very
0:50
young age. So I'm very excited to talk about it tonight. And we
0:54
were going to start with great expectations, but we called an audible at the
0:58
last moment and we realized that we're like, why are we Why are we
1:02
starting with great expectations? So we decided to start with his first English language
1:07
film with a little Princess, and so that is what we're doing tonight,
1:11
and so we're going to continue to do that. We're going to focus on
1:14
his English language films. And some of you might be thinking to yourself,
1:18
Tristan, what's the deal, why are we being so problematic here and only
1:21
doing his English language films. Well, I'm gonna I'll tell you why.
1:25
Hypothetical listener. I refuse to watch YouTube Mama Tambien again for obvious reasons for
1:30
those of you who have seen it. And if I watch Roma one more
1:34
time, I will probably cry myself to death. So I get too emotional
1:40
during Roma. So English language films, that's what we're going to do in
1:44
this House of Quran. So I am your co host Tristan Rudel, and
1:48
with me as always is Darren Moser and John Mills. And Darren, I
1:52
want to ask you a very pointed question because here we are three men talking
1:57
about a little princess. When was the first time that you saw this movie?
2:00
And if this was your first time, what did you know about the
2:04
movie? I mean, you say, three men watching this movie, yet
2:07
we're all three men with daughters, so I'd say, yeah, we're specially
2:10
suited. Gosh. This this was probably one of those I know it's not
2:16
a Disney picture, but it probably had a giant VHS like you know,
2:21
this was definitely I think it actually did really well on VHS. I think
2:24
it made like thirty five million dollars. It definitely captivated that secondary market.
2:30
Yeah, because it did not do well in the theaters, No, like
2:34
it bombed, and the release and then but it got so much critical acclaim,
2:38
it got awards, and they're like, let's re release it. And
2:40
then the re release bombed, and then they're like, you know what,
2:43
even if you have a great movie with a great script and a great you
2:46
know, like a great message and story and everything like that, doesn't mean
2:49
people are going to go see it. I'm quoting here. Yeah, I
2:53
didn't. In nineteen ninety five. This was not exactly going to be in
2:55
my wheelhouse. This was not something I was looking to watch, and I
3:00
was aware of it because of all of the praise. I remember seeing posters
3:04
for it. I remember seeing maybe an ad or something floating by where something.
3:08
You know, they were like a little Prince Sue everybody loves it sort
3:12
of thing. But you know, there was zero percent chance I was going
3:15
to spend the money to go see it, because that's right when I was
3:19
heaviest into watching you know, big budget action movies on screen and stuff like
3:24
that and going out with my buddies and everything, and like, you know,
3:29
you know, the movies we were going to go see were things produced
3:31
by like Dean Devlin and that sort of stuff, and so A Little Princess
3:37
didn't didn't. I mean, it was in my awareness, but this was
3:39
the first time I watched it, and it's like, it's not something that
3:43
I ever sat and said, oh, I'm not going to watch this.
3:46
It was just always something that was like, eh, you know, maybe
3:49
something I wasn't. I was that way I was when this came out.
3:51
I was nine, and so when I came out on video, I was
3:53
probably ten and my dad was the one and said, hey, you should
3:58
watch this, and I go, no, not the Little Princess. Nah
4:00
nah, And I'm not going to do that. I'm too manly at ten
4:02
years of age to watch this watch this little girly little princess film. And
4:08
he was telling me, he said, he's like, he's like, no,
4:10
you do not understand. This is a great story. It's been remade
4:14
tons of times. This is He's like, it's shot well the art direction
4:17
as well. He's like, you're going to enjoy this and I'm like,
4:19
no, no, no, you go through yourself and then he smacked me.
4:23
But no, it was no, it was it was it was something
4:26
that I refused to watch for a very long time, and it was just
4:29
it's it was this weird machismo. It just yeah, see, I mean
4:33
for me, it wasn't like a machismo thing. It was just like the
4:35
what is the movie about. It's about a little girl in her imagination and
4:39
she's in a certain school and it's rated G. And I had the same
4:43
reaction that so many other people do when they see rated G. Oh it's
4:46
kids movie, and I'm older than the both of you, and so a
4:49
rated G movie in nineteen ninety five, like, I'm not gonna go see
4:55
a Don Bluth movie either or anything like that. I might catch it on
4:57
video, but like, yeah you Bluth and video no. But like,
5:01
but you know, like something comes out. It's like, yeah, Disney
5:05
had had its heyday in the early nineties and everything in the mid nineties and
5:09
everything, but it's like they marketed the hell out of that but also managed
5:14
to twist the market in such a way that when you saw that G rating,
5:17
it was still death. It was still gonna drive people away from it
5:20
because they're like, hey, I'll catch it on PBS eventually or something.
5:24
I don't know, you know, G is just like it's it's not something
5:27
that rolls out the red carpet to everybody, total tangent. But I remember
5:30
I don't know if this is a real memory or if this is made up,
5:33
but I thought I remember reading something about Shakespeare in Love where when you
5:40
watch it, all of a sudden just there's some really you know, like
5:44
really intense graphic sex scenes in nudity, and as you're watching it and the
5:47
rest of it, it's completely betrays the tone, like what's going on here?
5:53
And I could have sworn that I read somewhere that they intentionally added that
5:57
stuff as reshoots to make it a rated our film to appeal to adult audience.
6:02
But that doesn't make sense to me because PG thirteen always gets more money.
6:06
I don't know, but this could be another podcast altogether talking about the
6:11
rating system and how that appeals to the audience. But it just made me
6:14
think of the reverse, or I should say, the opposite of what you
6:16
were talking about. I mean, even though the money would follow PG thirteen,
6:20
maybe they were smarter and they were going for the audience they knew would
6:25
like the film most like in a way of like, yeah, you're gonna
6:29
make less money, but you're going to have more people talking good about it
6:32
because they're all adults. Yeah, I mean setting Shakespeare in Love aside though,
6:36
right, like, please set it aside. I'm sorry it was it
6:39
was supposed to just be I know. But like another hurdle is, you
6:43
know, based on the novel A Little Princess. I never heard of that
6:46
thing so written in nineteen oh five. I mean, you know, if
6:50
it was like, oh, this is based on a story by Doctor Seuss,
6:55
then even g rated people my age would have been like, oh,
6:57
yeah, we got to go see it's a new Doctor Seuss movie. You
7:00
know. Mary Pickford, Mary friggin Pickford did an adaptation of this. That's
7:04
how old this story is. Yeah, that's that's That's something where it's like
7:10
you hear your grandparents talk about how when when they were young and everything was
7:14
two bits, you know, they went down and they saw it. They
7:16
saw it six times in the theater because they didn't kick you out at the
7:18
end of showings and stuff like that. So it's down to the nickelodeon exactly
7:24
the cinematograph. Then I'm assuming the story changed a bit because this is set
7:29
in nineteen fourteen, which yep, let me check. The bath is after
7:31
nineteen oh five, so obviously, unless they were predicting the Great War.
7:39
Oh, there's a there's a Japanese adaptation too. I'm gonna I'm trying to
7:43
find a copy of it. But there's a Japanese adaptation where it's the say,
7:46
it's the same story where except it's a little bit skewed, a little
7:50
older, where she's like, oh, I grew up in India. I
7:54
spent time in India, but then I had to go back to Japan,
7:57
but at a high school, boarding school. Okay, And and yeah,
8:00
so there's there's adaptation. There's been a TV movie. There have been a
8:03
few TV movies. There's been multiple cinematic adaptations. I think the first one
8:07
was Mary Pickford in the twenties, I think nineteen twenty six, and there's
8:13
been adaptations since. But I do think that this was the first one where
8:16
Becky was a black woman or a black girl, I should say. Okay,
8:20
and I always thought that was a really nice change. I really like
8:24
that dynamic of the video. Now, John, was this the first time
8:28
you've seen this? Yeah? Yeah, I was saying, this is the
8:31
this is the you know, you said that like you hadn't seen it,
8:33
like it wasn't in your Wheelhouse and everything like that, but like you didn't
8:37
see it later in life, like this was the for this podcast. This
8:39
was the first you've seen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this was the
8:43
finally there was an excuse to see it and be like, oh, yeah,
8:45
I remember hearing about this thing, oh so many years ago sort of
8:48
now, Darren, I didn't get an answer out of you. Yeah,
8:50
we probably either on VHS, but actually thinking about it, we probably saw
8:56
this in theaters. I have a younger sister, so we probably all will
8:58
win and saw this in that, Like I could see my parents doing that
9:01
for sure. So I couldn't remember the plot, like it's been decades since
9:09
watching this, but I knew it was one of those Yeah, it's like
9:13
that mid ninety golden light look that makes you sad, Like that's the vibe
9:20
I remember, you know, and boy did it payoff? But oh my
9:24
god, speaking of look. Okay, so this movie got nominated. I
9:30
cannot remember if it won for Best Cinematography and Best Production Design. It was
9:35
nominated for Cinematography and Art Direction Art Direction and it did not win either for
9:41
the Okay Awards. But this one, this was an interesting looking film.
9:46
Alfonso Kuran first English language, cinematic adventure, and it was good. Look
9:54
like he threw the color green at you hard. I don't know if you
9:58
noticed this. It takes it took a keen eye and a sharp wit to
10:03
really catch the subtle cues of green in this film, but it was I'm,
10:09
of course being sarcastic. But what did you think about the before we
10:13
get into the story, the acting and everything like that, because it was
10:16
because it was nominated for cinematography and art direction, What did you guys think
10:20
of that? Like, John, what did you think about the cinematography of
10:22
this movie? I thought there were moments that I thought really worked well in
10:26
terms of evoking a sort of it's not necessarily the right word for it,
10:31
but it's sort of like a story book or like a children's book sort of
10:35
approach to color. I think specifically of when the leaves change, and there's
10:41
there was always a very conscious sense. I mean, you mentioned the color
10:43
green, but then there's also that golden yellow of the leaves changing and the
10:48
yellow of the flower, and those things are always set against these very drab
10:52
gray backgrounds. So but even the grays are rich in the background, and
10:58
it all serves the purpose of making that color come forward more so it was
11:03
very obviously a very color rich where I would where I would say, I
11:07
could see somebody offering some sort of criticism. Is I think that it worked
11:11
to a disadvantage in some of the camera movement shots where the artifice is a
11:18
little too visible, So like I could look at this and say, this
11:22
is really artfully done and really purposely put together, and I really like what's
11:26
going on, But you know, I can see a little ripple and the
11:33
curtain when the magician does his trick sort of thing, and I'm like,
11:35
ah, you know, if we just pulled that a little bit over this
11:39
way or maybe decided there. There was one shot in particular where it was
11:43
moving around a car and it was closer to the end, and it's a
11:48
nice enough shot, but it has this wobble to it where you can tell
11:52
it's not necessarily what they They weren't necessarily intending a wobble because there's no like
11:58
documentary in sort of vibe to it, but you can tell us the wobble
12:03
of like, well, okay, we stepped up on the curb, but
12:07
you know we couldn't. You know, this is the Yeah, this is
12:09
the best. This is the best of the bunch that we got, so
12:13
let's just go with this one. And I'm not sitting there and being like,
12:15
oh, it's garbage, but it's like, you know, there were
12:18
just a little there were some little rough moments. How dare you? I
12:22
mean there were there were just some little rough moments where, like I thought,
12:26
it was really really well put together visually but not I could understand why
12:31
it would be nominated for an award but not win the award sort of thing,
12:35
if that makes sense. This was photographed by Emanuel Lubski, which he
12:41
legend. Yeah, good lord abs legend. This guy photographed Birdman. H
12:48
I mean that alone. I mean, okay, he did Children of Men,
12:52
Gravity, The Revenant, and Birdman. If he never did another motion
12:56
picture, that's all he would need on his resume. The thing that fills
13:00
me with great joy, though, is that he also worked with Tim Burton
13:03
on Sleepy Hollow, and that's a film where whatever other problems there might be,
13:09
boy, did his visual sensibilities really work there? Like I can easily
13:15
look at Sleepy Hollow and say, oh, the same guy shot that,
13:18
Okay, yeah, Like I can see that in this movie. I can
13:22
see that guy at work here, and I enjoy that. I like that.
13:26
He also did mit Joe Black, which I would love to do.
13:30
I'm Martin breast wing. I've never seen it, and a breast but I
13:33
love the fact that you want to do a breast wing because it's like,
13:37
now I want chicken, right, I want chicken now, and we'll let
13:39
can we find somebody with the last name leg and we got like a whole
13:43
thing going there. Technically it would be House of Breast, which evokes a
13:48
whole different sorts of imagery there we will get a whole new audience. This
13:52
guy also did the Cat and Hat you know, which was shot really well.
13:56
If you've seen it, it was shot well. He did some Terrence
14:00
Malley films as well, with The New World and to the Wondering Tree of
14:05
Life. Life come on, Tree of Life, Tree of Life. I
14:07
mean, so this guy knows what he's doing. So to see a little
14:11
princess and you know, Patrick Doyle did the music which he also did for
14:16
Great Expectations, which was yeah, which we'll talk about next week. But
14:20
one thing like I think you hit it on the head where there was a
14:24
lot of great stuff, but you could tell that the nineties were showing,
14:28
you know, with some of their some of the things that were going on,
14:31
with some of the mistakes that was going on. Now. Stephen Weisberg
14:35
edited this movie, and he of other Quorn's works. He he edited Great
14:43
Expectations. He also edited Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban, so he
14:46
brought his own people when he got into the to the Harry Potter franchise and
14:50
everything like that. But even though he's he's done some good stuff, and
14:54
he's also done some not good stuff, and he's no longer with us,
14:58
And I don't want to speak ili dead, but I just think this was
15:01
a poorly edited film. You know, I know we're getting through the technical
15:05
stuff, but there were so many things that I didn't enjoy. And I
15:09
don't know if it was it could have been Qoran's influence, and I don't
15:13
know if it was, if it was Weisberg's doing or not. But there
15:18
were certain scenes where I feel like, yes, I understand that you're you're
15:22
showing the passage of time by fading to black, but I feel like we
15:26
did it a little too much. And there was also dissolves mid scene when
15:31
there didn't need to be dissolves mid scene. There there were so many dissolves,
15:37
and I understand that sometimes like when you're when you're doing something really dreamy
15:41
or fantastical, you can do a dissolve, or when you're showing the passage
15:45
of time could the dissolve wasn't invented un till nineteen ninety six, so I
15:48
don't know what or the cut. The cut wasn't invented, so I don't
15:52
know what you're talking about. Justin that's just what we had good enough,
15:56
you know, I think that I agree with you. I made that joke.
16:00
Whereas like I said, oh, I'll catch it on PBS sometime.
16:04
This has a very This very much has the feel of a BBC thing I
16:10
would have happened to cross while watching TV with my dad. And that is
16:14
the only way I can describe the editing. And it's completely in agreement with
16:18
what you just said where I'm watching it and I'm and my sense of the
16:22
editing is this is somebody who isn't up to speed on how the American market
16:30
expects its cinema delivered to it, especially at this time. That's a you
16:36
know, I'm not putting any Obviously, I'm not putting anything down or saying
16:38
anything bad. I'm just saying, like, just like watching a BBC thing,
16:42
it's like, oh, you can look at a BBC thing and you're
16:45
like, the film stocks different. The way they light it's different, and
16:48
the way they cut it together is totally not the way I'm used to seeing
16:51
things. That just doesn't click the same way. Absolutely, absolutely, app
16:53
that's so astute. Yeah, exactly, it is. This is a guy
16:57
who was born in Mexico City and you know, was born in the sixties,
17:02
and that's that's that's so astupid. Like if you if you watch YouTube
17:07
Mama Tamien and and some of us are talking shop or even if you've seen
17:15
some of his shorts like Vengeance's Mind or or Marcotta It's just Which, which
17:22
is a TV series. But like if you see some of the stuff that
17:25
the the not sentimentality, but the mentality is different, the style is different.
17:30
It's just from from culture to culture. That's one of the things that
17:33
makes films so unique and beautiful and rich is that everything is so different in
17:37
the mentality is different. And you know, with his with this being his
17:44
first English language film, that's interesting that we might have been seeing that transition
17:51
from a kind of a Mexican style filmmaking to an English language like British or
17:57
American kind of filmmaking like, which I feel is kind of lingers in Great
18:03
Expectations, which we'll talk about next week, but is nowhere near at present
18:07
as it is in a Little Princess. You know. It's interesting because I
18:11
think that that speaks to something that people don't always take into account as well,
18:15
which is number one, critics responding so well better maybe than the average
18:22
audience at the time would have probably that perspective of seeing more international films,
18:27
so they don't notice that difference, like there's a sort of certain blindness to
18:32
it. Their brain just sort of automatically kicks into speaking that visual language sort
18:37
of thing. Yeah, and I think that might be why the critics have
18:41
that great encounter with it, and then others like myself come at it.
18:45
I wonder if the average audience, the person paying the ticket to go into
18:51
the theater, they're not equipped in that way, and so they don't understand
18:55
that even though Quirn and the people he's working with have a film mob up
19:00
to this point, like they're back. They're not completely at square one,
19:03
but they're basically sent back earlier in their career trajectory in this in terms of
19:10
this market, right, Like, this is almost like a first film in
19:14
that sense, it's a really accomplished first film. It's something where I think
19:18
looking at it and saying, oh, look at the great history that this
19:21
guy has bringing to it, And you're like, oh, well, why
19:22
didn't that work too well for me? Whereas your mindset when you go into
19:26
this, if it's like this is his first film, you're like, oh,
19:27
I can't wait to see the next thing he does. Do you get
19:30
what I'm going at with that? I totally get what you're going at.
19:33
Yes, absolutely, And I think you know, once we get to great
19:37
Expectations next week, we'll be able to have a basis of comparison to really
19:41
see where he's grown or changed or altered in his style. Now, Darren,
19:47
I want to switch gears a little bit with you here. Now,
19:48
as you mentioned earlier in the podcast, we are all girl dads and this
19:55
is a movie very much about a dad and a daughter. Reallyshi and show
20:00
now, what did you do you? What do you think about? How?
20:03
How can you tell us how old your daughter is and if you would
20:08
show this film to her. So, my daughter is eleven, and this
20:14
movie would emotionally destroy her. She is definitely in the I Love you Mommy,
20:19
I Love you Daddy, and like misses us when she's away for the
20:23
day. I don't think she could handle the emotional rollercoaster that this little girl
20:30
goes through. So I think I'm gonna wait for the teenage angs years when
20:33
she's not as loving. No, but yeah, I think she would enjoy
20:40
this movie, but I would there would be repercussions, So we're not going
20:44
to do that just yet. With this. It's interesting because I was I
20:49
was peeking into the history of the story and it goes back. It was
20:56
a it was a short story in like eighteen eighty eight, like it wasn't
21:00
a full on novel till nineteen oh five, like you, like you said,
21:03
But it it made me think of play vibes because it's pretty much in
21:07
one location throughout. It started as a play. It actually was a short
21:11
story and then a playboy, and I could totally see that because the boarding
21:15
house is pretty much where we spend ninety percent of our time. So yeah,
21:21
it and The only other thing I'll say based off of the look that
21:25
you guys are describing is for a movie set prior to electricity, or it
21:30
has electricity, but a movie set with many candles. I love how much
21:36
light we get in nineteen ninety five. I love that I can see I
21:41
can still see everything as opposed to nowadays. If it was lit like that,
21:45
it would be so dark. It would be like, you know,
21:48
we don't need lights. It's a natural light, the candle. It's like
21:52
no, no, no. See. The irony of that is that we're
21:56
talking about how this director of ptography goes on to do The Revenant and you
22:02
want to talk about a movie that's really committed to the natural light thing.
22:04
True, boy, howdy, that movie's really all in on that move.
22:08
So I you know, yeah, this is this is still in the Okay,
22:14
we have a light set and this is the sensibility hasn't changed, not
22:18
one wit. This is this is still in the you know, T two
22:21
comes out four years before this, This is still in the Boy that Moon's
22:23
sure bright and Los Angeles, okay, right, Like wow, I could
22:27
see everything in the darkened hills around Miles Dyson's house, Like yeah, I
22:33
think though, that if you're gonna have this G rated movie that's supposed to
22:37
be accessible to children, they definitely wouldn't put up with that. So I
22:42
don't think it was a consideration, but it definitely the works sperience is going
22:45
on without it being pitch black and dark. Well, you also have a
22:51
terrific performance from the lead actress. And I want to I want to see
22:56
Yeah, I want Okay, I want to. I want to jump in
22:57
on that. Matthews played Sarah Crue and she was born and raised in Chicago,
23:06
and she's a member of the Pritzker family and JB. Pritzker is Illinois's
23:11
governor, which is where I'm located. And she The reason why we haven't
23:15
really seen her much anymore is because when she got a little bit older,
23:18
I went. I think when she got to nineteen, she sued her family
23:22
and got five hundred million dollars. Well, good for her. Wow,
23:26
wait to go listen. If my parents had had that kind of money,
23:32
as much as I loved them, I probably would have done the same thing.
23:34
No, no, no, no, you could spare it. Well,
23:36
it went, it went beyond. It wouldn't beyond her parents because the
23:38
Pritzker family came from the Hyatt hotel chain, like they own they're they're like
23:45
like eleven of them are billionaires on the Forbes List. It's insane. Oh
23:48
yeah, said the initial lawsuit was six billion, so she got away pod.
23:53
Yeah, you ain't very high. But she apparently she's doing a lot
23:57
of good with the money. But Lisel matthew U that's her stage name.
24:02
I want to I want to talk about her performance. And I'm just gonna
24:04
come out right with it. I didn't. I didn't like it. Really,
24:07
yeah, I it could be my own issue. Like when I said
24:11
this, because I watched this with my with my wife last night, because
24:14
she had seen this movie a bunch of times. She likes this movie.
24:17
She hadn't seen it in years, and I'd seen it maybe only once before
24:21
when I was really really young, so I didn't remember a lot about it.
24:25
But as you know, as we finished it, she asked me what
24:27
I thought, and that was one of the things that I said. It
24:29
was just like I thought the acting was really terrible. She thought I was
24:32
crazy. She thought I was absolutely crazy, and that that Sarah and Becky
24:37
and Ermengarde, which is really hard for me not to say, uh,
24:42
you know, and all that did did a really good job, and I
24:45
just thought it was really flat and very kitty. Am I wrong? Okay?
24:51
This is one of those things where it's like I think that the acting
24:52
actually is is great for what it's what they're going for, which is really
24:59
one of those best candid compliment sort of things, but isn't intended as such
25:03
it's trying to tell. I mean, I mean, the way I took
25:07
the whole thing is like this is this is in a sense like a almost
25:11
you know, almost like a fable sort of thing, like this is the
25:14
story she's telling her daughter later about a time in her life. Well,
25:18
I mean not even that so much as like it's almost like a Grim's fairy
25:22
tale where it's like it's this journeys of a child through what you expect with
25:26
the bad headmistress and the bully kids and the sort of like it's a series
25:32
of episodes that a kid can relate to and say, oh, I may
25:37
not be in that situation, but I'm familiar with being the outcast. I'm
25:41
familiar with having the teacher who's a jackass. I'm familiar with these sorts of
25:44
things and I can relate to them, and so I think actually her performance
25:49
I wouldn't sit there and say, oh, oh my my gosh, this
25:52
is this is the greatest child actor in all time. It's something where I
25:56
think what she's delivering to the screen is exactly but the stories calling for,
26:02
which is sort of like a slightly more mature than her age narration sort of
26:07
role where it's like she's the she's the guide through these stories, and so
26:11
she has to be a little bit uh you know, just what she is.
26:15
And also I think I think it speaks to the time period. Maybe
26:18
it's something that Quiran you know, comes at with maybe I don't know,
26:22
even a better understanding somehow or something, but like the way kids behaved in
26:27
that time period, maybe that's something they're going for. Is like that,
26:30
you know, you see the way adults interact with kids back then, they're
26:33
expecting more adult behavior from the kids than we might expect today, sort of
26:38
thing. So I think I think her performance is good. I do,
26:41
and I think it's I think it's something, it's what the story needs.
26:45
I don't think it's gonna I don't think it's gonna go down and the uh
26:48
you know, the Annals of Acting History is like the greatest female lead performance
26:53
in cinema history by a child. But I thought it worked. I thought
27:00
it worked for this story. So like on the spectrum of Dakota Fanning and
27:04
Sophia Coppola, you know, like where where would you like land her down?
27:11
Well, which Dakota Fanning role are you talking about? You know,
27:14
I don't answer that, I'm just being a jacks. But so it's interesting
27:19
because with Liesel Matthews, like with the two leads, I should say the
27:23
two kid leads, because you have Lisel Matthews playing Sacu and you have Vanessa
27:27
Chester playing Becky. Lisel Matthews we also see in Air Force one and Vanessa
27:33
Chester we also see in Jurassic Park a Lost World. And I really enjoyed
27:40
their performances. Like they're a little bit older there, they have a lot
27:42
more to do, you know, there's a lot more physicality to each role,
27:47
and it's just amazing how much can be accomplished in just a couple of
27:52
years. But let's I want to talk about the overall story. So obviously
27:56
this story is not meant to surprise and have mystery or anything like that,
28:02
Like you know, father's alive and comes back and it's a happy ending.
28:04
I'm shocked, exactly. That's that's what I'm talking about. That's that's exactly
28:08
what I'm talking about. Like, as you're watching it and they said that
28:12
like oh he was, you know, presumed dead, they're like, oh,
28:15
well, okay, well then he's going to come back. And then
28:18
when you like, like a Marvel villain, nobody no dead, nobody no
28:22
dead even in Marvel. If there's a body, that doesn't mean anything.
28:26
Also true, but like you know, like he shows up at the neighbor's
28:29
house, You're like, oh, okay, well then you know, like
28:30
he's going to show up at the end and they're going to have a moment
28:32
and everything like that. But even though we knew what was going to happen,
28:37
there's still that emotional Catharsis at the end when the dad gets his memory
28:41
back and screams. You know, Sarah Darren, what did you think about
28:47
that journey, the journey of the story, Like even though it was predictable,
28:51
you know, how did you feel were you along for the ride where
28:52
you frustrated? What were you feeling? Yeah, No, it's just as
28:56
John was talking about kind of the fableness of the story. It made me
29:00
think a lot of Kenneth Brono's twenty fifteen Cinderella, which is very much like
29:07
you know again as far as like the overall plot of you know, you
29:11
know, have patients be kind like that is kind of that mantra that she
29:15
does. So yeah, so Sarah has that same kind of I mean,
29:21
she's she's oozing lead character vibes the entire time, like everything is happening around
29:26
her. It's her story for sure, But I don't know, I just
29:32
I liked the quaintness of the message, even the little parts of like,
29:37
you know, the the Indian being like, hey, you should take him
29:41
in even though he's not your son, because hopefully someone is taking in your
29:47
son, you know, just like the wisdom that's coming out of these characters,
29:51
because humans don't really often act like that. But no, I felt
29:56
like I was an American girl novel, like the little Girl with the glasses
30:00
look like Molly. Like I it was very much that vibe, you know,
30:04
soft candlelight. But yeah, those overall I relate to that comment.
30:10
That's so accurate. But I could also I mean, like we said about
30:14
this being, you know, derived from a play. I could see this
30:18
up there with like Annie, like I could see this cranking out and oh
30:22
yeah, and he's coming back to theater, you know, a little princess
30:25
because you got the boarding as far as the broad strokes, you got the
30:27
boarding school person that you know, it's the similar vibe. Obviously different different
30:33
story. But I'd say the only part that kind of was a little wand
30:38
wavy was the magic of India, like every time, like India is great
30:45
and all, but it it just was like and I don't know, I
30:48
know, cinema plays those same three chords from that instrument to represent India,
30:55
like for all of time, but bring out the gitar. But it's just
31:00
something about you know again, I get that the fact that the characters had
31:03
an experience in India, that's where they grew up, like it's important to
31:07
them, but it kind of became this like magical. It was like a
31:11
fantasy. It was it was like a fantasy India, which was a little
31:15
weird. I think the only time that I got pushed over the edge with
31:21
that was when was when Becky and Sarah woke up and everything was decorated and
31:26
they had hot and decorated all that. Yeah, so, you know,
31:30
like at first I thought it was a dream. I thought it was all
31:33
just them pretending like they were the night before, and we were just seeing
31:36
what they were, you know what we're what they were dreaming. And then
31:38
as the scene went on, I turned to my wife and I'm like,
31:41
wait, this is real? Like how was this real? How did he
31:45
get the chafing dishes into that room, put a plank over the alley,
31:51
and walked across, Like I'm assuming that's how, because so he broke into
31:55
a school for girls and decorated a little bit. Now I'm supposed to think
31:59
about it was a different time, Tristan, Okay, I mean, like
32:04
the early nineteen hundreds. It's just worked different. She sent the police into
32:07
that guy's house like she owned it. She's like, oh my gosh.
32:10
I was like, who are you like these please have nothing better to do.
32:15
It's like, I'm sorry, you're guilty of being poor. We're gonna
32:17
go round you up to throw you away. And also she calls them up.
32:22
She's like you're like get here as soon as possible. And then like
32:24
four or five cops running with the run out and they're like, let's go
32:29
mat I'm like, let's go men like you, you're getting the tactical swat
32:32
gear on to go raid the little girls. No, but but again,
32:36
but again that gets is sort of like the children's story aspect of it us,
32:39
right, that the authority figures are always overbearing and larger than life.
32:44
It's in that just if any No I know, but like, if anything,
32:47
I think that actually touches on something where it's like, this is a
32:51
children's movie made by somebody who isn't necessarily of the natural disposition to make a
32:58
children's movie, if that makes sense. A story like this is more suited
33:01
to somebody with Spielberg's sensibilities about life, like seventies and eighties, right,
33:07
But like that's this story. Well, but but that's it's not even specifically
33:13
Spielberg. It's that type of director turns this story into a willy Wonka like
33:20
the stuff's crazy in the right way sort of thing, whereas this is somebody
33:23
telling it with this sort of odd adult earnestness that doesn't line up with the
33:30
child's story aspect of it, right, Like she would imagine things, we'd
33:34
actually see them as the audience. But then it would snap and it's like
33:37
she's back in her real world. Like we would never have that world peak
33:42
into reality, right, you would violate that line again. It's it's Hook.
33:46
It's the imaginary dinner scene. Speaking of Hook, Arthur Mellot is in
33:51
it as Charles Randolph also known as Toodles from Hook. Yeah, when he
33:55
popped up on the screen, I was like, oh my god, it's
33:57
Tootles. He lost his marbles. But yeah, so with what we were
34:00
talking about, like with the headmistress, Miss mentioned like she's so over the
34:06
top mustache swirling that it goes into that childhood fable types. I ran a
34:10
boarding school and I hate children, Like, okay, good life man,
34:15
no joy, no stories. I'm like, geez, this place terrible.
34:21
It reminds me of the whale biologist in Futurama. I hate whales. Why
34:24
did I become a whale biologist? That's that's a long story and I don't
34:29
feel like telling you. But in addition to the Indian man decorating and bringing
34:36
in hot food in their room and having having robes their exact size and everything
34:42
like that, having Miss mentioned at the end being a chimney sweep, all
34:46
of a sudden, That's when I'm like, uh, I'll see her up
34:49
on the roofs guys, I just don't see it. That's that's when I
34:52
was just like, okay, all right, okay, let's let's we talked
34:57
about from a child's point of view. And and Tristan, I want to
35:00
get your thoughts on what I want to call the greatest height adjustment shot of
35:06
the nineties. I know exactly what shut your and it's an amazing shot,
35:12
like but it's a little, a little on top, you know, it's
35:14
a little bashing you on top of the head, but not too bad.
35:16
It's when towards the end kind of confrontation with miss marcham meetchim mention mention,
35:24
and she's asking, She's like, I don't accept your your view and she
35:30
says, I understand it, but I don't believe it. And didn't you
35:32
your father ever, you know, call you a little princess, And and
35:36
it goes from shooting up at her and down at at Sarah. The camera
35:43
pigs down, it goes down to Sarah's looming Sarah, so that Sarah looming,
35:47
and it goes and it pigs up on Mention and herself is going to
35:53
like is kind of leaning down herself, and you notice it, like it's
35:58
very I mean, I'm not believing that Sarah's you know, James giant peach
36:04
growing and looking down on her. It's obviously some symbolic of the power dynamic
36:08
in that moment. But what did you think about that? I thought it
36:14
was really fascinating. I thought there was more than a few times like that
36:17
where I'm like, Okay, I see what you're doing. I see what
36:21
you're doing. Like it, it's cinematic storytelling. It's visual storytelling. Whether
36:24
it worked for you or not, whether you thought it was two on the
36:28
nose or not, is immaterial. They are conveying the message through the medium,
36:34
through the physicality of where the camera is placed, and that I really
36:38
appreciate. And there was one other shot that I really enjoy and there's a
36:42
reason why this was nominated. And there was one other shot where Sarah is
36:45
trying to calm down the little girl who's having a tantrum because her mother has
36:51
died, and there's that giant clock in the background and she's talking about how
36:57
her mother is an angel, and they of their hands back and forth like
37:01
together they are moving their hands and it's just a it's a tight on both
37:05
of their hands waving through the air, but you know, in front of
37:08
the clock, and it's so symbolic about you know, the time that we
37:12
have left on this earth and how you know, like time flies when when
37:15
you're a child. And there's so many things that you can read into it,
37:19
and it's a beautiful shot, but it's also has a message to it.
37:22
And that's one thing that I really appreciate about this particular movie. Is
37:27
that kind of messaging. I hope that answers your question. Yeah, no,
37:30
And it was interesting. A lot of the shots and very well shot
37:34
movie. I either felt like I was down at a child's level or I
37:39
was one of the girls up on the banister looking down, like looking down
37:44
at the lower story and what was going on over there. There was a
37:47
lot of like looking through keyholes and you know just where the camera was is
37:53
just very very intentional, very well done. Once we get to children of
37:58
Men in this House, Quran, well, well, we will talk a
38:01
lot about perspective and this is something that this director is very adept at doing.
38:07
And you know, I kind of joked about Sofia Coppola earlier, but
38:10
Sofia Coppola as a director, she makes you feel what the protagonist is feeling.
38:16
If the protagonist is happy, you feel happy if the protective If the
38:19
protagonist is is bored, you're going to be bored. Quran. He allows
38:24
you to see through the eyes of the protagonists, not necessarily always feel it,
38:29
but you are going to get their perspective, and that's one of the
38:32
reasons why he is one of my favorites of all time. So, John,
38:37
let's go ahead and go into how many how many lit candles are you
38:40
giving this film? You know, I go back and forth, and I've
38:45
been I've been thinking about it, and I'm just going to say it has
38:47
the trajectory to increase if I decide to watch it again. But I'm pegging
38:53
this one at a solid three, which is it didn't set me on five.
39:00
I recognize everything put together, and it's a type of movie where I
39:05
think, if you watch it with the right eye, you say, oh,
39:07
I would be interested to see what came next for the director and oh
39:13
he worked with the director of photography again, Oh, what what did that
39:16
look like? Because I think these two could have a very good collaboration that
39:22
sort of reaction to it. So it's a three. I'm not lit on
39:24
fire. I'm not running out and saying, oh, guys, we gotta
39:28
watch this. But but you know it's good. I liked it, Darren,
39:31
That's where I land. And and we didn't give enough love to Patrick
39:35
Doyle for his scope because I thought we score You're right, like Patrick Doyle.
39:40
Patrick Doyle is fantastic. And I keep talking about the future because I
39:44
love Korn's filmography so much. But I'm going to give Patrick Doyle a lot
39:47
of love next week. But he is He's one of those people that I
39:51
will just tune him up on Spotify and just let it fly, just like
39:54
just whatever he's done, I just let it fly in the background. And
39:58
we also didn't talk about Liam Cunningham. You know, very young Liam Cunningham.
40:00
How many people know him from from the Game of Thrones fame as Captain
40:07
Krup. But Darren, like mis mentioned, you do not give half stars,
40:12
you do not give half measures. So she does give any stars.
40:15
What are you giving in this motion picture? I agree with John it's I
40:22
think a solid three. I mean, it's been decades since I've watched it.
40:25
I probably will watch it again with my kids eventually when I think they're
40:30
they're ready. But for all in all, it's interesting. I approached it
40:37
with a little trepidation because the only part that I kind of remembered was the
40:42
fact that this was a movie I remember seeing that made me feel. And
40:47
it's like I often joke, like, very rarely do I say, you
40:52
know what, I want to pop in Schindler's List, Like Schulders is a
40:54
great movie, but it is going to make you feel. And so I
41:00
was approaching this like, Okay, I need to watch this again, and
41:05
I'm going to kind of keep it at arm's length and like let it in
41:07
because I know it's going to be emotional. Yeah, I mean, and
41:10
especially this being the first time watching it as a father and having my own
41:15
little princess. See what I did there. But yeah, I definitely give
41:20
it a solid three, and we will watch his career with great interest.
41:27
I you know who am I to go against? You go against us all
41:31
the time? True, Wendlin Wild It's just last week. Let's pull up
41:37
there. Come. It was a half star difference in Windle and Wild.
41:42
No, this is a three. So you love Windle and wild, and
41:45
we don't. That's obviously the difference we noticed with that point five percent.
41:49
Also true, the three stars is exactly what came to mind for me as
41:52
well. If it wasn't for Lubski, this would not be a three star
41:57
film for me. I think it would be two point five max max if
42:02
it wasn't for Lebeski. I think that. And that's not necessarily a knock,
42:07
like saying two point five is just kind of like in middle of the
42:09
road, it's fine, whatever it exists. But when you get the art
42:14
direction, which is separate from Lebeskie, of course, but when you get
42:16
the art direction and you get the cinematography mixed together, mixed with us,
42:20
it truly becomes a feast. And it's yeah, this is I'm not like
42:25
you said, like you said, John, I'm not on fire about it,
42:28
but this is a well made picture and so for that it gets a
42:30
solid three across the board. So next week we're actually going to deliver what
42:36
we promised last week with great expectations, which came out in nineteen ninety eight.
42:42
So please tune in next week as we continue our House of Quran,
42:45
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