Latest / How To Talk To Humans / Film Review "Companion", Relationships Real & Unreal - #107

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Film Review "Companion", Relationships Real & Unreal - #107 · How To Talk To Humans

• 0:03
  Larry Wilson: Hi, this is Larry Wilson, and this is how to Talk to Humans. This is the podcast that shows you how to improve your communication skills. Are you looking to get a better job? Are you looking to find a relationship? Are you trying to do things in your life that have frustrated you and eluded you so far? I can show you so easily how to change that. Now I can only do it with humans.
• 0:30
  Larry Wilson: If you're looking to deal with vampires or zombies, extraterrestrials, this is not the show for you. But if you're really looking to improve your communication skills, I can show you what I've learned from 40 years in show business working with the biggest celebrities and superstars in the world.
• 0:49
  Larry Wilson: And their secrets are unbelievable. What I'm going to be teaching you during this course of this podcast every week are tools that you can use to communicate toward success. Hi, this is Larry Wilson.
• 1:09
  Larry Wilson: Thank you once again for joining me for how to Talk to Humans. This is. Maybe it sounds like every episode I say, this is going to be a very special episode, but. But I probably really mean it.
• 1:22
  Larry Wilson: Today's episode is going to be very unusual because I'm going to do a film review. Now. In the old days when people reviewed films, there were all kinds of spoilers because they wanted to talk about the film and the structure of the film and what it meant and what it brought out, and that's what's going to happen here. So some people would put a spoiler alert here, but I won't. If this spoils it for you, too bad. I'm thinking that those of you who are particularly interested in communication will be more focused on what I saw in a very interesting film. I saw it on Netflix. The film was, I guess it was recommended to me. I don't really know what the algorithm is looking for, but you must look at the different films that I look at. The film was called Companion, and apparently it's a very, very big deal, or at least it was that week on Netflix.
• 2:34
  Larry Wilson: I don't know, but it seemed like they were saying that millions of people were streaming this particular film. And I did not expect the film as it was. I did not expect to feel the way I did. And I think that's why I felt compelled to talk about it here on my podcast.
• 2:57
  Larry Wilson: It's a interesting premise in many ways.
• 3:01
  Larry Wilson: The film opens with a young man, I guess, in his late 20s and his girlfriend, and they're in the car driving, and they're clearly going for a weekend away at someone's home in the country. And she seems a little goofy.
• 3:22
  Larry Wilson: Her hairstyle is a little goofy and her clothes are a little goofy. Her face, her makeup is a little peculiar, but she seems very pleasant. And she seems madly in love with this boyfriend, just mad. She thinks everything he says and does is fantastic. And apparently she has some anxiety about going to meet his friends. As they're driving in the car, he just says, you know, just relax and don't worry. But then he drops a couple hints. He says, you know, try not to do anything weird.
• 4:03
  Larry Wilson: So clearly he has some idea that there's something a little bit.
• 4:07
  Larry Wilson: And so we get to this gorgeous home, isolated in the woods, very modern, glass and steel, very exciting. And there's a few people there. There's two men who are a gay couple and another man and woman who I think are married, and a man who I think is the owner of the home. And he seems very sketchy. It's hard to say. I think he has a Russian accent and he just seems a little dodgy, like we don't know what his story is. But the other two couples seem very nice. And what's interesting is the gay couple seem, at first, a little bit unlikely.
• 4:58
  Larry Wilson: One of them is sort of overweight and a little nebbishy looking, but the other one's very handsome and sort of looks kind of movie starish. And the movie starish guy is madly in love with the Nebishi guy. And you see, it's funny because there's a. There's a corollary to our main characters who we saw in the opening. Same kind of things where the one who's madly in love can't do enough, can't say enough, can't feel it. Just so focused on this. And there's a number of really interesting surprises in the film. And we find that the main character and the girlfriend.
• 5:52
  Larry Wilson: I should remember her name, but of course I don't. I wasn't taking notes.
• 5:56
  Larry Wilson: She goes down to the lake in the morning, and there's the sort of sketchy Russian oligarch kind of character. And next thing we know, he's sort of making an aggressive pass at her, and she's trying to fend him off. And we know that earlier she had slipped a pen knife into her pocket that she had used to open something. We know she has this pen knife and we see her hand going for that pocket, and we cut away from that.
• 6:31
  Larry Wilson: Now we're back in the house with the people who were there, her other friends, and she comes back in cut covered in blood. And what's quickly revealed is she killed the guy who was assaulting her. And they all seem horrified and how could this happen? And, you know, in the midst of this, as it starts to spiral out of control, her boyfriend turns to her and says her name, says, turn off. And she immediately collapses and we realize she's a robot. And this, of course, is a fantastic surprise in the film, but as we're watching, it may not be as big a surprise. There's something very robotic about her, and I kind of felt like she wasn't a real person. But then as the story starts to unfold, we find out that.
• 7:26
  Larry Wilson: And I guess they call them companions, and other people are disparaging her, saying she's just a sex machine, and the guy saying, no, no, I really like her. And, you know, we have a really great time, blah, blah. What starts to. Sorry, that doesn't start. What starts to come out there? Something's wrong. She's not supposed to be able to harm a human. And so the other people there say, well, we have to. You know, they have some official word, I can't remember, but essentially they mean decommission her, turn her off. And she manages to escape from them and runs out in the woods, and they all give chase. And some of them have firearms that they clearly don't really know how to use, but they're going to try and get her.
• 8:17
  Larry Wilson: And in the course of this, she manages to kill one of the friends who's pursuing her. So obviously, whatever's happened, she's capable of harming humans. And as the story develops, I guess she's maybe she shot or stabbed the Nebishi gay character. And his boyfriend is devastated, just devastated, until someone tells him to sleep also, and we realize he's a robot.
• 8:55
  Larry Wilson: And then as the story starts to unfold more, we find out that the boyfriend who brought this girl to this party has hacked into her system and broken certain codes so that she can kill humans. And then the whole plan was for her to kill their host, the oligarch type character, because he has a huge cache of money in the house that they're going to steal from him.
• 9:27
  Larry Wilson: But part of what's really. What I really enjoyed about the script was how the relationships between everyone keep changing and altering, and people who we thought were human turn out to be robots. And there's a great deal of talk and discussion about what is moral and what is ethical, what is right, and, you know, using these robots to do bad deeds.
• 9:57
  Larry Wilson: Is that right? And, you know, and there's actually, although it May be hard to believe there's good high comedy in it because the robots, of course, want to survive, the robots don't want to be turned off. Or there's an implication that the company that you buy the robot from or maybe you lease them from, the robot will come out if there's a problem. So when they say, oh, yeah, this robot killed somebody, they're like, it's all right, we're gonna come out, we're gonna take. And the guys, we see the technicians talking amongst themselves who are coming out, they say, oh, obviously this guy hacked us to try and commit a crime.
• 10:43
  Larry Wilson: We're not fooled by any of this.
• 10:44
  Larry Wilson: But truthfully, what I found, I won't give away the ending of it there.
• 10:50
  Larry Wilson: I won't spoil that for you. I think you'll really enjoy the film. I thought it was really interesting. The most interesting part, I thought, was how it reflected what I suspect millennials feel about relationships.
• 11:09
  Larry Wilson: It seemed as if their ideal relationship was someone who's incapable of having their own feelings about you, someone who's programmed to feel a certain way. And I thought, wow, do these. I'm just guessing.
• 11:33
  Larry Wilson: I could be completely wrong. What? Maybe the writer and director is a 90 year old person, but I don't think so. It has very much the flavor of someone in their 20s or maybe early 30s. It made me wonder if they don't realize that what's valuable about relationship, what's rewarding, is that we cannot control other people's feelings and emotions and reactions.
• 12:02
  Larry Wilson: And that it seemed very much. I have to tell you, I'm hoping that someone listening to this watches the film and then will email me. I'm curious to know if other people share my thoughts, or if you just want to email me and say, oh, Larry, you're insane. That's also fine if that's how you feel. But I thought it was really interesting that the characters in the film don't really want to have human relations. And they don't say this, but the implication was, it's too scary that real people can decide they like you, they don't like you, they can betray you, they can do all these terrible things. And even though the characters express this desire to have real close feelings, they want to be able to control those feelings.
• 13:01
  Larry Wilson: And I just thought that was so interesting that young people would think it was possible to have a deep and meaningful relationship with someone where they do not have any ability to make their own decisions. I. It struck me right between the eyes, and I thought, I wonder if that's why this film is so popular in the period that it was recommended to me because it was one of those films that was trending.
• 13:39
  Larry Wilson: It was a very big deal. And I wondered, is it because young people see this and go, oh, yeah, that's what I want.
• 13:49
  Larry Wilson: Someone who loves me unconditionally, who will do anything, even kill people for me.
• 13:55
  Larry Wilson: And if they ever do anything I don't like, I can just say their name, say, sleep, and they go back to sleep. Then I can start them up again. And in the film, we see a couple times where they reboot one of the computers, the people, so that they come alive again. I thought might be one of those examples where someone reveals more about themselves through their art than they were aware they were revealing. It was fascinating experience. And like I say, ultimately not a bad film.
• 14:32
  Larry Wilson: Just very unusual, full of surprises, good acting, good production. Through the whole thing.
• 14:40
  Larry Wilson: I wonder if I'm just. If I'm just shooting at phantoms here or if I'm onto something.
• 14:50
  Larry Wilson: Because in my mind, it really was an indictment of how frightened young people are of having relationships where they are vulnerable. I can certainly understand that. Nobody wants to be hurt. No one wants to have their feelings hurt. No one wants to be rejected by someone they love. But if there is no possibility of being rejected, if the person who's the object of your veneration cannot choose how they feel about you, what experience are you really having? What are you taking away from this? It had a very disturbing and unsettling effect on me.
• 15:47
  Larry Wilson: So completely out of character for this podcast. This is your first ever film review for the film companion. And like I say again, I'm hoping maybe someone will see it and let me know if they had a similar feeling that I did or the exact opposite.
• 16:08
  Larry Wilson: And if you had the exact opposite, I'm perfectly open. I'd love to hear.
• 16:13
  Larry Wilson: Maybe I don't see the perspective that you saw, in which case I would love to have you share that with me because it just gives me more things to think about and perhaps more ways to enjoy the film. My producer thinks it's a good idea for me to remind you how to reach me by email. I can be reached by email@larryilsonmethod.com I read every single one and I'll respond.
• 16:48
  Larry Wilson: So with that in mind, I hope that you enjoyed this unusual film review and I'm sure there will be more in the future. This has been Larry Wilson. I want to thank you for spending this time with me and I hope you found this information useful. If you're looking for more, you can find it atthewilsonmethod.com. there's a ton of stuff there. In fact, if you want, you can even speak to me because I'm human.
• 17:20
  Larry Wilson: Send me an email@infowilsonmethod.com because I read every single one. I hope that you'll join us next week in this continuing journey and you'll be with me for the next episode of how to Talk to Humans.