Latest / The Kulturecast / The Witch (2015) — "Wouldst thou like the taste of butter? A pretty dress? Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?"

Transcript

The Witch (2015) — "Wouldst thou like the taste of butter? A pretty dress? Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?" · The Kulturecast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Wearing were.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Let us pray we will conque this wilderness will not
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: consume us.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: It's not saying it's hello everyone, and welcome to the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Culture Cast. I am your host, Christashi, and I am
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: joined by one good friend and another who I have
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: just been meeting in the last couple of minutes. But
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you know, hopefully, depending on how this conversation goes, I
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: don't expect it to go poorly. We'll see. She comes
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: from Texas Tech where she is a lifelong student by
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: her own admission, and she is a colleague of doctor
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: pearl Mutter, who, as you know, if you've listened to
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: this show before, doctor pearl Mutter comes highly regarded, so
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: I think she would come highly regarded as well. Julie
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Brannon Hi, and also joining us the aforementioned hair professor,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I think is what he wanted to be called at
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: one point, all the way from the Swiss Alps, professor
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: of Media and Communication over at Texas Tech, doctor David
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: pearl Mutter. Well again, sir, he required there's me to
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: call him doctor. No boy, wouldn't that be something? On
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: this episode of the Culture Cast, we're talking about a
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: film that I believe I may have covered in the
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: past on someone else's show, or I may have talked
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: about it on my show. But I know that my
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: opinion on this movie has changed several times since I've
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: watched it the first time many moons ago, when it
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: came out in the pastoral year that was twenty fifteen. Geez, mother,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: eleven years eleven years ago, feels like a lifetime time. Yeah.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: On this episode of the Culture Cast, though, we're taking
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: a look at yet another film that doctor Perlmutter is
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: bringing to the plate. We're talking about twenty fifteen's The
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Witch or the Witch if you really want to get
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: stylized with it.
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: So.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: The film is directed and written by Robert Eggers. He
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: has gone on to work on and write such films
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: as The Northman, Nosferatu, The Lighthouse, which, in my opinion,
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: is one of the fartingest, gayest movies you can ever watch.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: But boy, it's fun. It is nothing like The Witch.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: If this movie is is dour and kind of mean spirited,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: the Lighthouse is just kind of gay and a lot
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: of farting. Yeah. Robert Eggers spent a lot of time
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: researching the topic of The Witch. He spent a lot
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: of time making this historically accurate, and he spent a
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: lot of time casting the main cast. There's about four
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: people in this movie, Anya Taylor Joy, Ralph Innocent, Kate Dickie,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: and Harvey Scrimshaw, with Ellie Granger and Lucas Dawson rounding
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: out the children cast. Anya Taylor Joy and Ralph Innoson
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: and Kate Dickey and Harvey Scrimshaw play a family who
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: after being ousted from their community due to Ralph Innoson's
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: religious beliefs, they live out in a secluded forest or
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: a farm that they build near a forest and lo
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: and behold, as they always say, the devil is in
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: the woods. Well, this time they might be right. The
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: devil might actually be in the woods. Or the devil
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: just might be your goat that lives on your property,
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: that stands on two legs and was apparently a real
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: pain in the ass on set. I am going to
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: kick it to doctor pearl Mutter first because I know
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: he asked questions, and then Julie, you and I will
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: attempt to answer said questions, but I will give you
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: the floor after he has done. But doctor pearl Mutter,
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: you brought this movie to the episode, but I know
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: that this movie did not resonate with you the way
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: I think it. Well, I don't know. Robert Eggers, I
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: think has gone on record saying recently that he's not
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: a big fan of this film. Probably not for the
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: reasons that you weren't, though, So before.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: He starts, I just want to go ahead and take
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: the actual blame. I suggested this movie.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Well, there's no blame.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: He went along with it.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: There's no blame. I mean, maybe doctor pearl Mutter is
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: blaming somebody, but I'm not. Let's just be clear here,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: but thank you for hoisting yourself on your own petard
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: as it were. Uh So, doctor Pearlmutter, you have the floor.
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: I I am really I've been waiting now for like
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: a week and a half, two weeks since I got
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: your list. I am so curious what vexed you pun
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: intended about the Witch.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Well, first, I do want to give credit, and it
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: is credit to Julie, who I've worked with before, and
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: she she's a technical logical virtuo so here, but she
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: also has has a lot of deep insights about the
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: culture and from a different perspective, you know, grew up
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: in a different place, different different age, group, and it's
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: always I always enjoy our conversations. And she suggested this movie.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: I had not watched it, and one of the reasons
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: I had not watched it was that horror is just
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: not my genre. And I find it difficult to talk
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: about in class because often there's some especially modern horror,
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: there's some deeply disturbing things going on, and I feel
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: uncomfortable assigning eighteen year olds to watch something I would
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: not assign.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Ever, I mean there are some classes that would assign it,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: but probably not yours.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I actually I think and maybe both
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: of you would agree that, like if this was a
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: graduate course and like sources of modern horror or something like.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: That, feminine studies even.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Yes, I mean there's all sorts of specialty things. I
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: just wouldn't assign it for a general undergraduate God, no, kids.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: I have a professor friend who told me in his
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: film class, he programmed Imama to Tombien and there were
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: students that found it to be too sexual of a
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: film that is the point of the film. Times have changed.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: I remember when I was in grade school, they put
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Indiana Jones on a VHS on the projector in class.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think they'd be showing even that anymore. Unfortunately
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: or fortunately, but this is pushing the line, I think,
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: more than either of those movies.
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in defense of modernity. So I want to give
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: a little like three or four minute introduction to my
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: reaction to this film, and then I really want to
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: turn over to you, guys. I have a series of
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: questions and I think you have the answers. I missed something,
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: and I'm sure you will tell me what you saw
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: that I missed, but let me start off with what
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: you just mentioned. So my journey in films started when
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: I was a kid in watching films, and like a
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: lot of kids, I watched films that were specifically targeted
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: for kids, like the original Disney movies when we used
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: to refer to a Disney movie. I saw those Disney
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: movies opposed to modern Disney movies or Pixar movies or
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: something like that. But I didn't My parents were not
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: a fictionados of the horror genre, so I really it
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: just wasn't my genre. I just didn't go to see them,
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: especially as a kid. And it was only when I
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: became a young adult and it was a rebellious you know, Oh, yeah,
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: let's go see a scary horror movie. That we go
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: see a scary horror movie. I was a teaching assistant
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: in the late eighties, which seems like a long time
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: ago to the great film scholar Amos Vogel, who wrote
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: a book called Sources Sorry Film as a Subversive Art.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: That's the title. Everybody should read that book. And the
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: course where I was a teaching assistant was Sources of
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: Modern Cinema and it was about four hundred people in
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: a room, and yeah, he showed some pretty advanced film,
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: so I'll use the word advance like that. They were
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: films where there was body horror and there was you know,
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: mass death and things like that, which I would feel
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: uncomfortable today for different reasons showing to an unknown group.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: Just walked in the door thinking this was going to be,
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: you know, a film class, and didn't know what was
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: going to be in it. So I came into this
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: film and Julie recommended it, and I'm glad you recommended it,
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: and I'm glad I saw it. This is a beautiful film.
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: Let's start out that way that like every shot of
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: this film, it reminds me a lot of Barry Lyndon
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: Stanley Kubrick, like, like, if you just freeze a frame
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: of this film and look at it, you go, that's
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: a painting. It's set in the sixteen thirties. I think
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: it works to believe, and every frame looks like a
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: colored woodcut. It's very cpish, it's very you know, drowned
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: out tones. It looks like these are almost a documentary
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: of the time. I remember sitting there watching and going like,
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: what a beautifully composed shot. And the barn looks right,
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: and the goat looks right. The costume you look sometimes
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: their shoulders and the way that they sewed a little
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: flap over the shoulders. And I looked up some of
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: the woodcuts and etchings and a few paintings we have
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: of period costumes, not necessarily always of because you know,
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: a lot of the stuff we have of Pilgrims and
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: that time were made one hundred years later or three
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: hundred years later, and so the costume on some of Victorian,
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: you know, nineteen sixteen, seventeen, nineteen, different times, wasn't exactly right.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: But but like, this is a beautiful movie, beautifully on
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: the cinematography, the soundtrack, everything blew me away. In awe
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: and appreciation except for the plot. Again a plus for everything.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: The acting Anya Taylor Joy deserved an award. The mother,
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: the father, the kids are are a little shaky. Sometimes
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: it's hard for kids to play period with accents, and
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: the accents I thought varied a little bit.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: I looked this up and because I was sort of curious,
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: you know, these were some of them were British columnists.
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, the kids were probably born the colony of
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: Plymouth and such, but the parents were probably born back
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: in England. So you've got to imagine a short of
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: Shakespeare plush, you know, Queen Elizabeth plus accent. So like,
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: everything was great, except I was sitting there watching and
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: I guess we're gonna have to get into it because
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: it is, you know about the movie. In the first
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: couple of minutes of the movie, a baby is murders
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: and I personally, this is one of my stop stops.
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: Is like, gosh, I don't like children being killed in
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: movies or in real life, but I mean, especially in movies.
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: I just I repel myself from that. I understand plot vies.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: It has to happen, especially if something's historical, and then
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: it gets darker. That sounds like a ridiculous sentence, doesn't it.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: A baby is murdered, and then it gets darker. It
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: does get darker. It gets darker and darker until the
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: last I would say minute and a half where it
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: is this transcendent, truly beautiful movie in a different way.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: And I'm talking about the last scene. And again we're
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: assuming people have watched this movie where.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: It's outside of the it's outside of the what are
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: we calling it here, the statute of limitations? The limitations
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: have passed. We're eleven years now, so yeah, ten years
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: to watch this movie. If in the last ten years.
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: You know away the ending. But of course I need
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: somebody to explain the ending to.
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Me, explain it, and then somebody will you you'd say
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: it that somebody will explain it, we promised.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: In a typical horror plot, either the evil that everybody
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: is worried about is actually true and you know, the
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: monster in the woods turns out to actually be a
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: monster in the woods, maybe with a twist and horror ensued.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: Or it's the Scooby Doo plot where you know it
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: turns out to be a guy in a costume, or
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: somebody has some other nefarious thing going on. I guess
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: there's a third possibility in this one. All the paranoid
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: ravings of people who come off from our modern sensibility,
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: no matter how religious you are today or how atheistic,
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: they come off as like inordinately like fearful of things.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: That probably I mean, there are a lot of things
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: to be worried about in the woods. Just on historical context.
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: This is a time of the first contexts at that
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: time of Native Americans, indigenous peoples, and the English colonists
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: there had already been going on a long colonization by
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: Portugal and Spain, some contact with the English. This is
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: not Jamestown, this is near Plymouth. And he was a
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: time called the Great Dying because there was a massive
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: die off by disease of the Native Americans. Now I
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: think we only see Indigenous Americans like for a few
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: seconds one time, and leaving we see some native people's
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: first peoples they're called in in Canada. I like that
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: sampeen into the town and then we wonder, right like,
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: because new colonists would have been fearful of the woods.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: The woods were very scary. I have a good friend
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: from college who wrote a dissertation. His there was Derek
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: Bouse and he wrote about the wilderness in American movies,
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: and the idea from especially the European College is the
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: wilderness was scary. It was full of danger. You know,
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: there was a bear, there was people who were fighting
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: for their land against them. And of course as the
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: sixteen hundreds evolved, there was a series. There were good
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: it was off and on, like there was a thanksgiving,
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: you know, and they did eat together. On the other hand,
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: there was like terrible wars where lots of people were killed,
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: and there was this great dying from European diseases of
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: the native people. So a lot was going on. But
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: you don't necessarily think that the ravings about like Satan
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: is about to get us all turn out to be
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: true if we treat this as like factual events and
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: this isn't a dream, and this isn't the occurrence at
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: Owl Creek Bridge where like Ana Taylor Joy died in
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: the first scene and this is all this is all
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: like the minutes before she's dying. It all turns out
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: to be true. So I need some good explanation on
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: a couple of levels. First, is this the filmmaker saying
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: is this filmmaker agreeing with the extreme paranoia of the
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: people that's saying, like, yep, it's all true. Monster in
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: the Woods really is the monster. There's a scene at
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: the end again where a parent the black goat called
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: Black Philip. There's a whole discussion we can have maybe
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: later about why Black Philip and the meaning of Philip,
• 15:13
  Speaker 3: especially post Armada where the King Philip of Spain tried
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: to invade England with an armada and was defeated by
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: the weather as well as by the English. So Philip
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: was not like a great you know, it was a
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: dangerous name and a name that quannotated the horror in itself.
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: And the goat turns out to be what a beautiful
• 15:37
  Speaker 3: scene where you see the foot and one foot is
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: a goat and the other foot is a man, and
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: then there's yeah, and he's got a blackbeard with a
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: black hat sort of like okay, this is sixteen thirty
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: circa Satan. And then I love this, like, you know,
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: the devil tries to tempt you, and he's going to
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: give you something to commit yourself to the devil and
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: to sign his book, the Book of Souls. Right the youth,
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: you commit yourself the devil. And in most stories where
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: I've read, people want power, right like I want to be,
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: you know, presidents of the United States. I want to
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: be president of a company. I want a billion dollars,
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: you know, I want all these things. And the young
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: lady here wants butter and a pretty dress, and I thought, gosh,
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: that is so sixteen thirties, you know, like in terms
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: of like what would be like the most wonderful thing
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: that she could think of? Butter, fresh butter. They've been
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: starving in a pretty dress. And she signs the book
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: and then there's this I don't know how to describe it,
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: except the theeal scene golden lighted of her in the
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: woods with we take to be other witches. We've been
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: introduced to one character who you know is supposedly a
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: witch as well, and she flies up into the air
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: and what a magnificent scene. I didn't get how we
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: got there, And now I'm going to stop talking.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Well, what I really felt like this whole movie was
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: about was how a father pride is actually what tears
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: apart the family and her. So first I want to
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: acknowledge thomasin her name is Thomas, and sin I thought
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: that was interesting. I thought that was fun. Doubting Thomas
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: is one of my favorite figures from the Bible. But
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: this whole family finds it to be a sin to
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: question those things, to the point where they all get
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: kicked out from the village because they are too rigid,
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: too uncompromising. Like that's what I took from it is
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: that they are far more Puritanical than the other Puritans.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: So he gets kicked out on all of this, And
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: it's all about his pride and how he will not
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: lean on others for his pride, or how he makes
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: others take responsibility for his sins, like he makes his
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: son Caleb lie to his mother about where they were
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: gone to and why they were gone that one morning,
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: he he lets Thomasin take the blame for the silver
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: cup being gone. He lets all of this happen to
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: his children without speaking up for them, and then makes
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: them and doesn't admit to any hit of his wrongdoing
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: in why they got kicked out and thrown into the
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: wilds in the first place. And the only time that
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: he ever admits that is when he's alone at night
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: when he thinks no one can hear him. But so
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: all of that is is this, But we also for
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: thomasin her this whole story to Meet was about her
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: finally getting out from the crushing weight of her family.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: So I viewed the ending as a very happy ending.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: Same same same, By the way, like genuine with no
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: no shred of irony, I think it is rather meant
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: to be a rather uplifting end.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: She so she's finally free from being constantly blamed by
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: her fail family, from being constantly having to labor, having
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: to do all of the work, and yet still getting
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: like no love. She even tells her mom as she
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: is trying to keep her mom from killing her, I
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: love you, I love you, And then she has to
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: defend herself. But she's finally free from all of this,
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: and so her all of her father's pride has brought
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: all of this hardship onto her and her family, and
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: she finally is free.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: Of all of that.
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: At the end, as much as she is mournful and
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: she has still feels like she has lost everything, this
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: is also when she finally like finally, she's finally not
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: under anybody else's direction, and whether she's damned or not
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: is almost beside the point at then, because like for
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: the first time she has agency, and.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: At the end of the movie, she's completely hosed either
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: way because her entire family is dead and she is
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: a woman on her own in the middle of the
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: woods of sixteen thirties New England. What is she gonna do? Anyways,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: if the devil comes knocking at this moment, I'd be
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: making that trade too, because what choice do you have
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: in that moment? I mean, but to be fair, and
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: I think that this is very much like to your point, Julie,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: I think that is very much like you know, a
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: doctor Pearl Mutter. I'd love to do a podcast on
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: midsummer with you, boy. I think that would be I
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: think you'd really have a I think you would have
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: less of a hard time with that movie than you
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: do with this movie, because that movie has no child
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: killing whatsoever, and actually well, and the other thing is
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: like it very much is also in the modern day
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: fairy tale vein, especially the extended cut, which literally has
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: an opening like like triptick painting that shows the entire
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: plot of the movie and then it kind of opens,
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: which is amazing, like in this movie. I think for me,
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Doctor Pearl Mutter, and I think that this is probably
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: the thing I would say, if you want to give
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: this movie a little bit of the grace with like
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: the child killing, grim fairy tales did the exact same thing,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: and I would say that this is kind of in
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: that vein of like a grim fairy tale, of like, look,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: this is trying to be as period accurate as possible.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: And hansel On Gretel, we know why they were given away.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: They were given away because he couldn't feed him. And
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: if this were real life, he would have killed the
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: youngest one and they would have eaten him. That's what
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: would have happened. I mean, Unfortunately, like child cannibalism was
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: a lot more prevalent than I think they talk about,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: but it is it was common, like I mean, it
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: was like it's not a pleasant topic, but I mean again,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: if the options are let your whole family die or
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: one goes and the rest of the family survives, I
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: mean again, I don't think it would be surprising to
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: learn that that was a thing that happened in these
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: kind of frontier situations. I think it's kind of I
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: think this movie traffics a lot in the grim fairy
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: tale world of like child killing, not as a way
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: of like shocking the audience, but more as like a
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: matter of factism to show that like the world is
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: in fact, while this is a fairy tale, the world
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: is still a really awful place. Because again, like in
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Hansel and Gretel, the parents are giving up the kids
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: because they can't feed them, and so it's ironic that
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: they're giving them to someone who's going to fatten them
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: up and then eat them. Like that's the irony of
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: the story, is, like that's who they're given to. Is
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: you know, a witch who fattens them up to eat them?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I will say, doctor Perromutter, to
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: your point, child murder is not a particularly endearing topic
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: for a film to be trafficking and trafficking and however,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: it doesn't bother me. I'm saying that I understand for
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: a large portion of the population, not a supremely positive
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: topic to be yielding on. And by the way, it's
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: not just one kid that dies this movie, by my approximation,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: it's like three or four.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: Well, whenever I watched it the first time through, I
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: didn't read that scene as baby sacrifice. Initially I read
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: it as circumcision. Oh, because that is a thing that
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: there's plenty of examples of infant foreskin being used in
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: rituals even throughout history. True, And it was like I
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: realized what threw me off, and it was how gentle
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: the lady is with the baby, like gently touching it
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: before she takes a knife to it. But then it
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: immediately cuts away and all you see is her like
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: pounding mush in a bowl, So you.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Don't see the baby be murdered.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: It's all implied. So but it's fun because it does
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: go against those like horror movie tropes early on started
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: out doing like you don't hurt kids and you don't
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: hurt animals, and this film was like, we're gonna do both.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: Right Frankenstein. And Frankenstein was portrayed as negatively as he
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: was because he murdered a child, Yeah, drowned a child.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Like to your point, doctor pearl Mutter, people have a
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: real aversion to children being murdered. Are children? Is it
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: animals then children for you, doctor Pearlmutter? Or children? That
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: I'm serious, Like there's like a there's like a dividing
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: is it animals than children or children than animals?
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: You know, let's there's two responses and thank you both.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: And I know you're going to give me more, but
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: like this was a really helpful analysis. First, let's talk
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: about the circumstances of the time. Okay, So if this
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: is the sixteen thirties, sixteen twenty, the Mayflower land within
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: a few years, there's like a year they're starving right right,
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: because they did not come prepared. If you read the
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: story of Jamestown and the Plymouth Colony, these people, it's
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: you know, if you were going to start a space
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: colony now, you would like have all these these you know,
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: we need somebody who's a geologist, we need somebody who's
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: a soil scientist. These people went over now for different reasons.
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: Some people, especially the earlier Collists and Jamestown, thought they
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: were going to find like gold mines. They would just
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: dig gold and to go back to England and sell it.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: The Pilgrims, the Puritans were escaping religious oppression. You know,
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: they were oppressed and they had their particular view of
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: the world. Everybody at that time, whether you were the
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: King of King of Spain, or you or a peasant
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: or somebody in the wilderness. Child mortality was a reality
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: of human existence. On this planet for most of our
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: existence was The anthropologists talk about this and we've talked
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: about it on this show before. You know, you go
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: to those the graveyards of those people from the sixteen
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: thirties and they're still in New England, their graveyards and
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: you see the tombstone and you can see from one
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: family five children under the age of five who died
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: childhood disease, starvation, maternal mortality. I mean, the most dangerous
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: thing a woman could do for most of human history
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: is give birth right, and the most dangerous thing, you know,
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: as a child lived past age six or seven, and
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: they might very well lived age seventy. I mean there
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: were a lot of old people. But like the children
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: in metality rate was thirty forty percent. Just imagine that.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: The horror of that talk about the horror movie, you know,
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: the idea that like thirty to forty to fifty percent
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: of every child and they didn't love their children any
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: less than we do. Yeah, so there's a built in
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: horror there that I think, the fear. And of course
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: they did, I mean, they did have doctors, they did
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: have medicines, but like they weren't that good. I mean, yes,
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: and I'm sure the Native Americans famously had, you know,
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: things that they knew in the woods that you were
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: the equivalent of aspirin or the you know, treated fever
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: and things wounds and things like that. They did have that.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: But like, we have some hope, right that if our
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: child is sick and we go to a hospital, somebody
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: really knowledgeable who went to medical school and like has
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: the entire pharmacopeia of humanity available. But so I sort of, Julie,
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: maybe maybe we're on the same page here. I understand
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: the extreme fear and paranoia of those people that they
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: have no control over the world and so they have
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: to look at faith as their only hope of Like,
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, how do we stop from starving? Like, well,
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: maybe we could do a better job of growing corn,
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: but we you know, we didn't grow grow ma's back
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: in England. We have no idea how to do it.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: That the local peoples have helped us a little bit
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: and we've traded with him. How do we stop disease?
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: How do we stop a woman from dying? And we
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: don't know. We just all we have is prayer, right,
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: So I understand their extreme fear, and there were a
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: lot of religious disagreements between them and things like that.
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: But I guess what I need further explanation on is
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: so everything the father was worried about technically just technically,
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: everything the father was worried about in his pride was
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: factually correct, yes or no, because he kept worrying that
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: the devil was just out there coming to take his
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: family and wasn't he right?
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: A sidebar question that I have for Julie to answer
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Doctor's question, do you feel like the film has an
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: unreliable narrator in the character of thomasin Man.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: I well, I don't know if she's an unreliable narrator.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Untrustworthy main character has that for a question?
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: I don't even think that, because I think that she
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: is the most trustworthy of any of the characters that
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: you have in front of you. She's the only one
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: that has any kind of like humility. She's the only
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: one that actually like stays faithful up until the very
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: end she starts the hymn during the travel sequence. She's
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: the one that tries to keep the family unified and together,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: even but her dad is like choosing he'll let his
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: family darve and suffer rather than try to go back
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: to the village and be like we've deep But as
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: far as like unreliable narrator, the part that meet me
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: go this is I think that this is not all imagined.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: Is whenever Samuel is first stolen from her, the baby
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: is first stolen from her, and she doesn't run into
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: the woods, she stops right before entering the woods, and
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: then the camera cuts to the witch walking through the
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: woods with the baby. There's nobody there, there's no there's
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: no other point of view except the baby. So the
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: point of view that we're seeing isn't anybody else's. It's
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: it's just a thing that is happening. And so I
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: that's what makes me think that she's that this isn't
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: her not it's not necessarily because I don't even feel
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: like the dad is the one that thinks that there's
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: evil out there. He what he really imposes on his
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: children is that they are born with sin, and it's
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: the mom that tends to realize there's witches out there.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say, I think doctor promoter, I
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: would say no, but yes, but no, because I think
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: to Julie's point, like there's in my mind there's two
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: there's three interpretations of this movie. So you have these
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: straightforward interpretation, which is I think the one that I
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: think we could all agree on, which is, there's a
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: family and not just whiches. Uh, there's a family and
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: they're in the woods, and they're in the woods next
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: to a forest, and in the forest there seems to
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: be a witch. That witch is hexing and vexing the
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: family in some capacity, and the witch drives a wedge,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: and the devil through the witch, drives a wedge between
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: the family members to the point where there's no connection anymore,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: and they all end up dying and the only one
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: left is now isolated, and she has only one choice
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: at the end, which is to fall into alignment with
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: the devil. I think we're all in kind of agreement, right,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: That's like the basic plot of the right However, there's
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: also the other interpretation, and this again, this is I'm
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: just putting this out there as a possibility. I mean,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: there is a possibility that Thomasin is just a witch
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: the whole time.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: That's fair.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: I mean she is kind of like leaning into it
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: a fair amount. And to be fair, at the end
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: of the movie, who is in a better position than
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: her really nobody, Like she has effectively shirked the bounds
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: of what you could interpret to be a patriarchal society,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: and now she is living amongst strong women like herself
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: who will do whatever it takes to be successful or
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: live a quote delicious life unquote. I'm not saying there's
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: anything wrong with that. Frankly, I think it's interesting because again,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: I think as much as the ending of this movie
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: is like a yes girl moment, it does feel a
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: little mid summary in that respect, because at the end
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: of Midsummer, I know there's a lot of people that
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: take it as like a you go girl moment, but
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: it is not a you go girl moment at all.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: It's like it's such a horrifying thing that happens at
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: the end of that movie. And I would say, in
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: a lot of ways, this movie has a similar ending
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: where it's like, yes it is. I still stand by
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: what I said before, Like it is an uplifting ending.
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: She has shirked the bounds of this like, you know,
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: really oppressive by the movies extent matriarchal society or patriarchal society,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: but like now she's in a concubine with the devil. Like, Okay,
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Like by my approximation, that's not much better.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: But at this point in time, I'm probably better off
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: taking my chances with Satan than a God who, by
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: this movie's approximation, is not there for them. That's the
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: other thing, Like God is not there for them. They
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: pray to God, and Caleb is praying to God in
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: that moment where he pukes up the apple and God
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: does not come to help him. Yeah, So, like I
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: mean again, the devil is manifesting himself in the woods,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: so you know he exists. If God is unwilling to
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: make his or her presence known, I guess it would
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: be hard for me to not fall in league with
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: the devil if I were a character who had been
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: living in England and been taken over on a ship.
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Because there to your point, doctor Pearl Mutter Thomason is
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: probably the only one who remembers what it was like
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: to live in England where yes, there may have been
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: squalor and disease and other things, but you add access
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: to processed goods and like mildly processed goods and other things,
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: and there was some ease of living that living on
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the frontier in America across the pond, where you can't
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: just dial up a door dash to get your groceries.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: It's just I mean, even in England there wasn't any
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: of that obviously, but it was more you were more
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: able to do certain things easier than living on the frontier.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: So Thomasin's the only character who can remember anyway, So
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: she's probably like Florence Pugh's character in Midsummer The devil
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: kind of is able to walk into a room and
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: pinpoint who the easy mark is and can see the
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: pressure points very easily. And what benefit does the devil
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: get out of an old, older man or an older
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: woman when like, you have this beautiful woman here, like
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: who will be able to do exactly what this old
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: hag and the witch has been trying to do and
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: has to go out of her way to make herself
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: look beautiful. Thomasin can live for like twenty thirty forty
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: years before she ever has to worry about it.
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, gosh, you brought us some really great points.
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: You are pointing out that technically, from what we know,
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: if it exists, Hell was a patriarchy, I mean, but
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: not again, who knows I don't know. I don't claim
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: special insight into heaven or hell. Definitely, if you read
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: Dante's Inferno and Purgatory and Heaven, it's pretty delineated what
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: some of the traditional views were in the Catholic Church.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: And of course the people in this are Protestants, so
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: but they too had a patriarchal vision that God was
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: male and that Satan was male too. So it's an
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: interesting question about the decision of the filmmaker to make
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: if this is supposed to be safe. It's a very
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: traditional film in some ways, right, I mean because thing
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: the Black Goat, which is it's interesting. I purposely did
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: not like read reddit or watch other YouTube videos about
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: this because I wanted your fresh reaction. I wanted my
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: own fresh reaction to this. But there is this old
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: going back ten thousands and thousands of years of Pan,
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: the great God Pan, who is a goat god now
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: a hybrid of goat and man. And there's this interesting
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: ancient story. It's not in the Bible, but if you
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: just look up on Google Great Pan is dead. This
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: idea that there was a like people heard when the
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: tomb in the story of the told the New Testament,
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: when the tomb opened for Jesus. That simultaneously these people
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: heard Pan is dead, that the old gods were dead.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: That's not in the Bible, but like that's a folkal legend.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: It's associated with religion. Goat God. And then again it's
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: a very he's an eighteen his sixteen thirties, devil. Right,
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: he's got a black pointed beard and a black hat.
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: But what struck me? So then you said something else,
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: and I'll just again, I'll raise an issue and then
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: be quiet. Hell is the absence of God. There's a
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: very good short story about this by Ted Chang, who
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: wrote a short story that the Amy Adams film The
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: Arrival was based on. But that comes from Second Thessalonians
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: one nine. The apostle Paul describes the fate of those
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: who do not know God. Quote I mean, obviously this
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: is a translation. They will suffer the punishment of eternal
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: the glory of his might. So that's been interpreted as
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: the idea that separation from God is the greatest punishment
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: that you can give somebody being in the wilderness, and
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: the idea that like is God, here is God in
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: these dark woods of this new land that has never
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: known the feet of you know, missionaries or Christians like us.
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: That was a real fear of them back then. So
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: I like the way that movie recreates that. Please Julie
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: go ahead.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: Even Catherine voiced that because she said at one point
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: like did the devil not meet Jesus in the wilderness?
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: And I thought it was so funny whenever they first
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: come to the spot right before the woods and the
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: wilderness where they're going to set themselves up, that they're
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: seen on their knees giving thanks and they kissed the earth.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: And something that just popped into my head whenever I
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: watched it was it's so funny that he's kissing this
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: earth that is not it's definitely not his land. He's
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: outside of their community and therefore outside of God's protection,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: and he thanks God for a land that he's still
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: finding really unsafe and really precarious. But this is something
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: that's it's so interesting because at least witches and natives
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: typically have are portrayed, and I believe really are they
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: find the earth more sacred than Christians tend to. And
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: so I thought that was interesting that he's kissing the
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: earth that he's thanking God for this land when it's
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: witches and others who this land belongs to at that time,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: but he doesn't. They don't know that yet. And so
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: but I thought that was interesting because Catherine brings that up.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Even in Before I forget about it, Thomason talks about
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: the glass windows in their house in England. So I
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: think that they were fairly well off when they were
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: in England. So this is a much more squalor place
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: that they live now.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: And I and I think for me that that, you know,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: I think it's if you're gonna as the devil isolate somebody,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: you isolate the person that has had the experience and
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: the things being taken away. And I also think, you know, again,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: you know, doctor Perlmutter, you ask like, well, you know,
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: is this proving that you know the paranoia of the Father?
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, I guess by the movie's approximation, it is
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: like in some ways, like I would say, the thing
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: that we can also probably all agree on in this
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: movie is that the movie makes a very strong case
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: that in this universe that the movie has created, the
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: devil is real, the devil exists, and the devil can
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: walk on Earth, and those are all things that the
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: movie establishes. Whether or not we can agree on other things,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: I think is kind of, you know, beside the point.
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: I think we can all agree, like the movie has
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: made that clear. So I think it's very interesting that
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: once again, like the movie is showing us one it's
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: seemingly showing us only one side of the conversation. We
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: never see the side where God came into this point,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: and by the movie's approximation, God does not exist. Like
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: it's a very nihilistic movie in a lot of ways,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: Like we never see God intervening in any capacity to
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: help these people, like to do anything. Like the question becomes,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: have they, like you said, doctor Pearlmutter, have they isolated
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: themselves from God intentionally by doing what they've done and
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: in being away from the community and out on their own,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: have they made themselves lesser? I don't know. But I
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: also don't know if by staying in a community that
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: they felt not a part of for their religious beliefs,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: is that really a genuine I don't know, Like, I
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: don't know if that's a real genuine way to live
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: either by these people's account, because they came halfway across
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: the world just to get away from persecution already, like
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: and now they're being persecuted while they're here, Like you
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: know that's yeah, it's pretty you know it's pretty. You
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: know that's I would say, that's pretty intense stuff to
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: feel that level of persecution, to be willing to leave
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: your community in this in this way, like on the frontier,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: making your life harder for yourself. Low.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes. And what I was thinking of was, Chris,
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: one of the very first conversations you and I had,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: and I, Julie, you got a chance to listen to it,
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: But Chris and I talked about Cabin in the Woods.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Many moons ago.
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: Now Love Bitch has some parallels in the sense that
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: remembering our conversation of it, at least, it's still my
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: view that Cavin the Woods was a commentary on the
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: audience right on, like this long tradition of this genre
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: of let's take some healthy teenagers with normal thoughts and
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: torture them and punish them for those being a normal teenager. Yeah,
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: we the audience pay money and enjoy it, and it's
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: and the film ends, and again I don't mind giving
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: them the end of the way there with this magnificent
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: dialogue Sigourney Weaver as the head of the project there where,
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: in order to appease the ancient gods, they agree to
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: torture some teenagers every X number of years to saying,
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: you know, you got to save the world. You have
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: to die. To the last two teenagers alive, you have
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: to die in order to save the world. And one
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: of them the I was calling the Shaggy from Scooby
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Doo character, because I think he actually physically looks like
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: the Shaggy escape Scooby very close. If this is what
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: we have to do, If like ritually killing children essentially
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: is what we have to do to keep the world,
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: maybe we just have to call off the world, like
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: give somebody else a chance, you know, giant rats one
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: hundred thousand years from nover like that. And I thought,
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: what a power. And it was a very powerful end.
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: And I did, I mean, I didn't appreciate all the mayhem,
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: but I understood in Cabin in the Woods the mayhem
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: was in service of this moral Just now, you guys
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: have mentioned Grim's fairy tales a lot. The speculation by
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: a lot of people who study folklore is that they
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: were lessons, right, they're like, Okay, something is does a
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: monster in the woods, because kids, it's not really good
• 43:00
  Speaker 3: for you to wander in the woods. In pre you know,
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: prehistoric times or in medieval times, there were dangerous things
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: in the woods. Just don't don't do things. And here's
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: here's a story about some bad things that happened to
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: kids who who did that. I saw this film and
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: again I want to go back to the last couple
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: of minutes, and I like, maybe you to explain we
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: are seeing reality. Is that what both of you are arguing,
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: like this actually happened.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I think the film has set up,
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: is that this is all literal.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: This is what's actually happening. She is literally a she
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: has literally signed her name in the literal Book of
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: the Devil, and she is a literal witch.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: Now, yes, And that moment of ecstasy where she you've
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: used the word uplifted a couple of times, and again
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: for anyone who hasn't seen the film, she is literally uplifted,
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: like she flies through the air exactly like some of
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: those old paintings you see of witches. And she's not
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: on a broomstick, you know, and she's not wearing a
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: pointy hat, but like she's naked, and we infer that
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: sheese naked and she flo She's lifted up into the
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: air into the trees. These these glorious you know, old
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: growth trees. Uh, I want to insert here. You know
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: that there's this if you read a Natural History of
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: North America, before we started cutting trees down, it was
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: said a squirrel could like not touch the ground all
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: the way from like Maine to Minnesota because the tree
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: cover was so dense, so that the trees were were
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: important symbol of you know, the wilderness, the uncut tree,
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: the giant tree. But anyway, she is lifted up. Explain
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: that moment to me. Is this real happiness? Is she
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: sound fulfillment? There?
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: What happens the next morning? I tell me more about
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: that last scene of what it meant.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: Well, So she she her whole family's been killed. She
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: she killed her mother for the last one after her
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: mother tried to kill her. She's been in shock and
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: mourning before she has even been given the book to
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: write in.
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: She's covered in blood.
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: And then it goes inside of her house and takes
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: off her outer clothing and then grabs I think it's
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: her dad's jacket and puts it on and just lays
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: her head on the table and falls asleep until night
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: has fallen. She gets back up. She wanders around to
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: look at all of the destruction because all of her
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: family's goats have been killed. Except for Black Philip, everybody
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: else is dead. She's standing by candlelight covered in blood
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: and starts asking Black Philip to speak to her, and
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: he finally does, and you know, late leads to the
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: which style like a taste of butter, a pretty dress,
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: which thou like to live deliciously? Wouldst thou like to
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: see the world? And she and that's when she's like,
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: do you see a book? Or he asks do you.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: See a book?
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Before thee and she signs it. I thought it was
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: interesting that he does. She says that she doesn't know.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: At first I thought she was saying she can't write
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: her name like she she will not, But then it
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: occurred to me she doesn't know how to write her name.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: She doesn't know how to write, and so she has
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: to have somebody guide her hand. So it's like, this
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: is none of this is.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: This is why I.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Don't think that she's necessarily an unreliable narrator, because it's
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: not like this is all triumphant villainy that is happening.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: It's a poor girl who's left with absolutely no options
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: and has one door still opened her like we've talked about,
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: So everyone she's loved is dead or gone, the farm
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: is destroyed. She's gonna be sent away anyway, and if
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: it goes back to the village, she'll probably be hanged.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: So the devil never corrupts thomasin all of her family
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: and theology left her with nothing, and he just shows
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: up last to pick up all of the pieces. So
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: I thought that was interesting. And so whenever she says yes,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: I want to see the world, Yes, what would you
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: have me do? I think that is her only option.
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: And now I do think she was manipulated into that option,
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: but I do think it's better than dying or being
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: abused or being hanged. And so I think as she's
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: walking through the field naked towards that fire, towards the
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: other women who are dancing in ecstasy around the fire,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: who are chanting, she seems so scared at first, but
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: then she starts laughing on her own and that's when
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: you can see all of the woods moving behind her,
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: which I thought that was beautiful. She you just see
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: her framed in it and all of the woods moving
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: around behind her to show that she's lifting up. And
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: I loved it because now she's she's just been so
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: crushed under having to do all of this labor on
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: the farm because she, you know, she was expected to
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: watch the twins, watch the baby, clean out the manure,
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: fetch the water, all of these things that she's being
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: asked to do. And now she doesn't have to have
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: that labor, but she also doesn't have to have her
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: mother blaming her for when things don't get done. Where
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: she doesn't have all of this lovelessness. At least, even
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: if her soul is damned for all eternity, she gets
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: to experience some bit of love and happiness during her
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: time on Earth. I think that, I think that's where
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: it leads us.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: And I would I would add on to that, because
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: I think you're right to go back to my comparison
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: to Midsommer. At the end of that movie, you have
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: a character who is watching. In this movie, we're not
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: having them watch something transformative, a we're kind of seeing
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: a little bit further down the road than Midsomar gives
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: us this this movie. If this movie ended the way
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: Midsomar did, it would probably well it ends on that
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: same note, but this movie would have ended like ten
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: minutes early in terms of like the where the character
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: is left, but we are left with that same visual
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: of like what I would and I know Robert Eggers
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: calls it the sublime and I would agree. It's like
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: it's like horrific ecstasy because I feel like in Midsomar,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: the character in that movie feels this same like is
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: more is less aware than the character is in this one,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: Like in in the which Thomasin is left with no choice.
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: In Midsomar, Danny has plenty of choices.
• 49:44
  Speaker 3: But she got home.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she could have still gone home. She just chose
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: not to really like in a lot of ways, but
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: she was intentionally isolated in that movie, and it made
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: it easier for the things to happen that did happen here.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: The isolation is of no fault to Thomasin's own like
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: it's it's forced upon her by her family. So the
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: devil kind of already has a leg up versus where
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: the cult in Midsomar does, but they both end on
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: that same visual of a woman's face in kind of
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: divine ecstasy. But similarly to Midsomar, there is an underlying
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: sense of the real horror that's going on, because in
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: Midsomar at the end, she's you know what's gonna happen
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: when she hits seventy two, Like we've seen it, yeah, literally,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: like she's seen herself in the future already, so we
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: know where that's headed. And in the Witch, we know
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: where it's headed. We've seen what Thomasin's gonna look like
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: when she gets older, Like she's going to be this
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: old crone in the woods off by herself, eating children
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: and being up to no good. It'll be fun for
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: a while, but then it won't be so much fun
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: anymore when the reality sets in. It's the it's the
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: old you know, it's the old vampire gag, right of, like, well,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: now that you're a vampire, you have to you know,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: suck people's blood. And it's like, oh what, no, Like
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: it's like, well, that's that's the give and the take.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: That's the trade off. That you don't get all of
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: these things without giving something up. It's like being a
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: skin walker, right, which I know you're not even supposed
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: to say the term, but not I know, I know
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: it's being one of them that you give up a
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: piece of your humanity. I believe you give up your
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: soul for that. So, like there's always a trade off
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: with these stories, with the supernatural, especially a supernatural of
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: the evil or religious evil. You always have to give
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: something up. With the devil, it's your soul. With this,
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: you know, skinwalkers, it's your soul. With other things, it's
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: your you know, something x Y, your first newborn, something
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: like that. You always have to give something up. And
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: so I think with this it's just you know, Thomasin
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: looks at the situation and goes, I have no choice.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: I have been intentionally isolated by the devil who is
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: not playing fair because he's the devil, and you know,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: Satan lies, like that's his whole thing, Like you know,
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: that's literally one of his things. And so I don't know.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Like again, like Thomasin as a character at the end
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: of the movie is damned, but she was damned either
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: way because well she just I mean, your other choices
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: just die in the middle of the woods. Yeah, because
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: like Julia said, if she went back to her village.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: What she gonna tell him Native Americans killed my family?
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: Like come on, you know, like I guess you could
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: say that, But what what?
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: Where is?
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: Where is the grim's fairy tale message? Right? Where's the
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: lesson here? The lesson is, don't go into the woods
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: where you think the devil lives, because on the off
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: chance that you're wrong, that you're right or in hopefully
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: wrong in some cases, that the devil does live out there,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: he's gonna kill you and your family and corrupt, because
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: that's what the devil does. It's like Tony Soprano. He
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: says it in the in one of the episodes of
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: the second season. He's like, you know Frog and the scorpion, Davy,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: you know scorpion stings. What are you gonna do? Devil corrupts?
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: I think that's again. I give this movie a plus
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: in so many categories, and one of it is the struggle,
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: especially with modern horror. Right is that? And there've been
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: some really funny comedies. I think Key and Peel did
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: a comedy sketch and Studio C Channel did the comedy
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: sketch about like why a lot of horror movies don't
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: make sense. It's because hey, there's a cabin there, and
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: there's a rumor that they're like there's a murderer in
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: the woods. Uh, you know what, let's go at Cabo instead.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: You know, like a lot of modern horror has to
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: figure out a way to trap somebody in a situation
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: where they can't just like go into town, call the
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: police and check into a marriotte, you know, to get away.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: That's how you get away from the devil.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's the whole conceit of Cabin in the Woods, right.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So this movie recreates a time where everything was scary, right,
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: every you'd eat a meal and you don't know if
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: there's batchel. I mean, you know, you died three days
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: later after you ate a peach, right, and you don't
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: know why, and and your your your child dies of
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: a fever because there's we'll know why. And so the
• 54:00
  Speaker 3: fear of everything and the face that there was something
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: that would protect you from everything was so ingrained into
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: growing up, you know, from childhood, and they showed that,
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: like the small children there. It's interesting to me though,
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: that four kids growing up in that thing, the two
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: younger children, not the baby, but the two little children. There, boy,
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: they pull out Black Philip, the goat who wanders in
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: by the way, if I were really scared of like
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: the devil, I would actually, if I were the parents,
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: I would be sort of suspicious of a black wondering.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: No, doctor Pearl Mutter, he's the least suspicious thing. I
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: like how their dad's just like, there's no way this
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: goat could be the devil. Brother really, you know what
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: the devil looks like man.
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: Especially with his two children that are the most mean
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: to him and everybody else are like Black Phillip's our
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: best friend in dancing with him and singing about him,
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: like singing creepy songs by the way.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's funny how in some ways they're insufficiently paranoid.
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: They could have been even more paranoid. Let's eat the goat, Like, okay,
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: this black goat, I think that's gonna be our dinner.
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: You know, the last there is a couple of days
• 55:17
  Speaker 3: will salt it, you know, the blackfil Let's not take
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: a chance.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: And I feel like with the kids in Black Philip,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: it's very funny. I feel like that's almost the movies
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: like Rumination on the Salem witch trials of like, but
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: you know, the parents are so easy to believe these
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: children who are saying, like, you know, oh my god,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: Thomasin is a witch. She's hexed us and vexed us
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: and she's making us do all these crazy things. And
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: it's like, but yet the answer is so obvious. It's like, no,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: it's not Thomasin, it's actually this goat. Who the parents
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: if they sat for two seconds and thought about it, yes,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: it sounds insane. But accusing your own daughter of witchcraft,
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: I feel like, is a bigger jump than thinking if again,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: if you're willing to believe that the devil lives in
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: the woods, why wouldn't you be willing to believe that
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: the devil could be a literal goat on your property?
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: That's maybe my like again, like it's the grim fairy
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: tale of it all, Like the parents, it's like an
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: old horror movie right from like the eighties and old
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: Jesus dating myself here believe the parents, Like the parents
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: don't believe the kids. That was always the trope, That
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: was always the trope, and they lean into that here
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: even a little bit like ralph Inson doesn't believe Thomasin,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: for whatever reason. It's like, bro, I don't know why
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: why you believe all this other crazy stuff, but the
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: goat being the devil is a bridge too far, like
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: okay or that.
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's it really frustrated me the scene
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: with Caleb uh Caleb's possession, because it's it's so clear
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: that they're like faking not being able to say prayer,
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: that they're pulling a crucible here, whereas I saw her
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: dancing with the devil, and it's like, why didn't you
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: say anything anytime before this? Like you there there were
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: much better times to bring this up rather than while
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: your brother is dying.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: I'd like to point out, as much as I know,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: doctor Perlmutter, we started this podcast talking about child murder,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: those two kids being missing at the end of the movie,
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: could not care less like thank you goodbye. Like those
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: kids the witch came and ate them, and you know what,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: they kind of deserved it, like they were playing. They
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: were playing that they were possessed, you know, you know
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: what they say, f around and find out and I
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: think the in the assumption at the end of the
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: movie is that they did.
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: Let's tell a little story here, so I don't know
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: if both of you have read the Little House on
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: the Prairie books, but I did growing up, and they're
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: extremely well written. They're beautiful books, and they tell you
• 57:45
  Speaker 3: about another time and place. They are different. Up. In
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: one of the books, there's a moment there which every
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: parent thinks about and goes like, Wow, how different parenting
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: was at this time. So these books, gosh, I believe
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: they're in the eighteen eighties, eighteen seven seventies books The
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: Childhood lower Ingles Wilder, and there's this one book describing
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: a little boy. It's during harvest time, and everybody's right,
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: everybody's harvesting, and this little boy is screwing around. He's
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: running around, he's, you know, pretending to do this, pretending
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: to do that, and he runs around and he stumbles
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: over a hornet's nest and he's stung by hornet. Now,
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: a modern middle class American family who's nine year old
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: is stung by multiple hornets, would A do nothing and
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: continue with their activities or b rush the kid to
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: you know, the emergency room. Right well, they're gathering the harvest.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: And she makes this point, this is why these books.
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: You know, the TV show didn't really do justice to
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: the seriousness of the books which dealp with starvation and
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: things like that. Well, they wrap the kid, this boy
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: in some wet blankets, put him on the porch, and
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: go back to harvesting, because if they don't get the
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: harvest in, everyone are gonna go hungry and hostly. Nobody
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: in town was going to have any special medicine or
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: something like that. Wrapping a wet blanket was probably all
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: you could do for me. And if he dies, he'd
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: I mean, they would warn him. But like, there was
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: nothing else to do. There was limited choices. And I
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: and I always find that such an interesting thing of
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: all the lengths people have to go to today for modern
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: horror to make it plausible that that's a choice, you know,
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: fa to face the devil U. But back then there
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: what else could they do?
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: And and I I'm not completely sure I agree that
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: like she's going to be an ecstatic beyond the moment,
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: like the next day.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think she is, Like I think I
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: think the next scene. I think that's why you end
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: the movie here, because the reality of what comes next
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: Witch too well, yeah, electric WITCHILIU like doesn't it doesn't
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: work as well and that's why, like doctor Pearlmutter, I
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: think you would really enjoy mid Somar because Midsomar a dress.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: This is that question in the movie in a really
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: interesting way filmically, using like just the language of film
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: that I think this movie doesn't really care about doing
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: because again, like at the end of this movie, it
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: is a little bit trying to be a little bit
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: more uplifting, no pun intended, but I do think that
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: the characters in this movie at the end of it,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: thomasin is like the next scene is like you're, you know,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: like like Goya, like you're essentially like you know, you
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: and the devil are having a good time and not
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: necessarily all the right positions. Is kind of you know
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: what Goya was always talking about, Goya and the Devil.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, come on, all of that, like you and
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: the devil, Like if you're a witch, you are having
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: Sabbath with the devil. Yeah, they don't show the bad part.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: They just show the good part. I mean, that's what
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: this movie is saying. I mean not in reality obviously,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: but that's where I mean again, because like you said,
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: what would we see after the after the credits, Like
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: nothing super positive?
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: I feel like the blooper real was uncalled for sick,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 3: you know, and really you.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: Should love a blooper reel for this movie.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: I mean, there's some films which shouldn't have a blooper reel,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: and this is definitely one of them where they you know,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: they're they're breaking, they're joking.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: And how about that Ralph Inoson though, Huh, what a
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: great actor with a great voice. I wish I had
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: his voice. My god.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: The adults and the Taylor Joy Anya Taylor Joy were fantastic,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: and I want to give credit to the to the
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: little boy and the little girl. I just felt that
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: they were being asked to do a little bit carry
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: a little bit too much.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: A little girl who played Mercy really was incredible though,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: Like she had most of the lines out of the
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: two of them and did such a good job making
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: me hate her.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, Well, it's very.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: For a child. I mean, a child actor can be
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: lovable and you can also hate them.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: Well, I was gonna say it's very The example I
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: always use is Sharon Stone and Casino, Like I hate
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: her in that movie, and that's the intent of the
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: filmmaker and the screenwriters. Like I'm not meant to like
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: and that's the same like no the kid, the child
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: like there are very few films where child actors and
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: an Anya Taylor Joy's case, like, you know, young adult
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: actors kill it. This hard. Horror tends to be the
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: genre where we get a lot of either really bad
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: child actors or really good child actors. I mean a
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: lot of great actors. Recent actors cut their teeth in horror.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: Anya Taylor Joy is one. Another person. Jacob Tremblay is
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: another one. Oh god, what's her name? She's in everything.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: She was in five Nights of Freddy's two, she was
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: in a bunch. I mean, she's in She's in like
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: everything to the point now where when she's in a movie,
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: it's just her. It's her for like five minutes now,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: and that's all they need of her time is just
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: five minutes in a movie.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: It's it's pretty for a reason to recommend this movie,
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: you know. There are definitely there's lots of actors in Hollywood,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: and so McKenna gray and some of them I have
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: trouble watching because I just don't think they're very good.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: There are still a few people who are stars in
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: the old sense, like like there's just something about them
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: on the screen that's radiant. If you go back in
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: time and watch Elizabeth Taylor in Ivanhoe at seventeen years old,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 3: no one who sees that didn't know, My God, a
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: star is born. And yes, I think she was. Anna
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: Taylor Joy was sixteen, I believe when this film was made.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: And you know, you really your head goes back because
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: you're going I mean, her physical beauty, her is somewhat
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: unusual physical beauty, like she's not a traditional Hollywood starlet
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: or something like that. Yeah, but just there's something fascinating
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: about her, literally fascinating, like you want her to speak,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: you want her You were interested in the movement of
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: her arms. You know, her eyes her unbelievably and I
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: don't know whether they're physically larger than other the normal
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: human eyes, but they seem like they're abnormally gigantic and
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: just she I can't imagine. This is one of those
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: things where you can't imagine somebody else in that role.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: Not even remotely. Anya Taylor Joy reminds me a lot
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: of Juno Temple, where it's just like when she's in something,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: she's just I don't know what she's doing but she's
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: great because I think she elevates even the smallest thing,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: and like, obviously this is a massive role for her.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: But then something like Split where she's sharing screen time
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: with James McAvoy and she's amazing in that too, And
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: that's like the next thing that she's in. I you know,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: i Anya Taylor Joy. The last thing I saw her
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: in of like big things. Obviously she was in Furiosa,
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: which she's pretty amazing in that, especially having to take
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: up the reins for Charlie's Dron, who is amazing in
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: the role in the first Mad Max movie. But I
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: thought she was really good in The Menu, which I mean,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: again a horror movie or not, I don't know what
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: to classify that movie as. And then I know she
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: was in one of doctor Pearlmutter's favorite films, the AI
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: created and generated The Gorge, which is a film that
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: comes up way too often for how unbelievably bad it
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: was good in it. Of course she was good, because
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: she's good at everything. If you told me Anya Taylor
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: Joy was in Mortal Kombat too and she was amazing,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: I would go, yeah, I believe it, Like I'm not,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: you know, she's I mean she's good in the Super
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: Mario Brothers movie, and she's given about an inch of
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: runway to work with, Like, you know, just go be
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: Princess Peach, okay, like you know, Anya Taylor Joys is
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: I think to your point, Doctor Pearl Mutter. And this
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: is something that's kind of lost on American audiences who
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: don't watch Indian cinema as much as I do. American
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: cinema doesn't have movie stars anymore. Indian cinema does where
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: you're like asked to do eight million different things saying
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: and dance and do your own stunts or something. American
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: actors aren't asked to do that anymore. And I don't
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: know if that's a good or a bad thing. Like
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: I remember there was a an article in maybe Variety
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: or GQ a couple of years ago when that insufferable
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: Top Gun sequel came out that was like Tom Cruise
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: the last real action or the last real movie star.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: And it's like, as much as I don't like Tom Cruise,
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: I unfortunately would be inclined to agree with that sentiment
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: that they just don't make actors like him anymore. That are,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: when he's in something, it's treated as a big deal
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: or as like an event or people are I guess
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: more aptly. And this is the thing that Indian cinema
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: has that American cinema has kind of gone away from.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: People will go see a movie because he's in it.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: Him being in it is enough. And like I went
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: and saw an Indian film last year called der Honda,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: and people were cheering when the main actor showed up
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: on screen. Tell me the last time anybody did that
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: when you were watching an American film like and it
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: was one of those things where I was like, yeah,
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: you know what, the the love and joy of filmmaking
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: is still alive elsewhere, and it's because, to your point,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: doctor Pearl Mutter, they still treat their actors kind of
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: like a big deal because their actors are doing more
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: than just showing up and acting. And I'm not saying
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: that's not enough here. It's just I think we've kind
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: of as a culture gotten complacent with not very much
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: being enough, and some actors I think, really go for it.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: And Anya Taylor Joy is in a class of like
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: Michael B. Jordan and Jesse Plemmons and Emma Stone that
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: are just a cut above their contemporaries. And I mean
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: we've talked about Bagonia Doctor Parlmutter, a film that I
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: had no interest in watching, and then once I realized
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: who was in it, I was like, Okay, this movie
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: is gonna be amazing, and guess what it was and
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: why because the actors who were in it were amazing.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: And that's the thing anymore. It is almost The analogy
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: I would use is like people used to cheer for
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: sports teams, and I think cheering for teams is derivative
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: of the reality of like the especially with certain sports,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: like the value of the people singularly on their own
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: and cheering for like an athlete as opposed to a
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: team has become more popular amongst people younger than me,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: because you know, as someone who's a Dallas Mavericks fan,
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: we Luca and some of us still like him and
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: care about him, but he's no longer on our team,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: so we feel weird cheering for a guy who's on
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: the Lakers, but we cheer for him as a player
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: because he elevates any team that he's on. Actors, really
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: good actors, have that same effect on a movie. They
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: can elevate something that would otherwise just be your run
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: of the Mill movie into something that I think is amazing.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: And if you have like five of those people involved
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: like you like you do in this movie, where you
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: have great child actors, great adult actors. We've barely talked
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: about Robert Eggers, but my God, talk about a guy
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: who knows what he wants how to get it. And
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: I'm almost I'm disappointed to say this goes he like
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: commits to the bit. It almost makes me sad though
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: to say that, because I would say there's a caveat
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: now because he stopped committing to the bit so much
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: with The Northman and Nosferatu, two films that should have
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: been in there, like Native Languages and weren't. And if
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: you're gonna do the Witch and you're gonna do the
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 1: Lighthouse as movies that commit to the bit, don't stop
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: committing to the bit. Bro, that's part of the fun, like,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: because nobody commits to the bit anymore, like no one,
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: you know, two thirds of the way. Like I miss
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: the days of the Blair Witch Project where it's like, Nope,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: we're gonna keep ourselves out of the limelight for a
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: while to pretend like we're dead, Like you know, that's
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: a little manipulative and exploitative. But I miss that, I
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: miss committing to the bit and going, well, you know what,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: this is a movie that I have the actors learned
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: German in a you know, in a Western Austrian dialect
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: so that they can deliver the lines like you know what.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: I find that immensely hilarious that you have to make
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: actors do that, a B that there will be some
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: actors that will lovingly do that, and then three that
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: the audience is going to sign up to sit through
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: that nonsense. I'm on board. And he didn't do that
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: with Moos Faratu, and it detracts from my enjoyment of
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: the movie ever so slightly because I watched this movie and,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: like you said, doctor Pearl Mutter at the opening of
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: this podcast, this movie is like somehow you took a
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: camera and threw it back to the sixteen thirties, Like
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know how else to explain it, Like he
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: captured something that most filmmakers don't capture, which is a
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: time and a place succinctly, even if the movie is
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: off putting and upsetting and it features all kinds of
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: wild stuff, take all of the like the supernatural weirdness
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: out of the movie. What Robert Eggers achieved technically is
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: Kubrickian in terms of the levels of like attention to detail.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Like you said, doctor promoter Barry Lindon movie, I'm not
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: a huge fan of, but I can respect it technically.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: The Revenant like movies that use natural lighting. I mean
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: even no Saratu does. But yeah, like, I think the
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: thing about this movie that bums me out is Robert
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: Eggers doesn't like this movie anymore. He's like, I think
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: this movie is not as you know, as not exactly
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: what I wanted it to be. And it's like, man,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: that's maybe just keep it to yourself.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: That's disappointing because there's so many good little things that
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: are throughout here throughout the movie. Like specifically, the one
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: that takes me back to getting my undergrad and art
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: education was Caleb's possession and he's quoting scripture but it
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 2: gets really erotic, and I was immediately taken back to
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: what were the ecstasy of Saint Teresa Bernini's sculpture, and
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, it's this, It's exactly this, but
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: he's experiencing it. But it's also like a twisted form
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: of it, because it's a possession and and he's being
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 2: killed in the middle of it, and so I thought
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: that was so beautiful and so interesting. There's so many
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: little things.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: The app that.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: Whole Caleb's whole possession I thought was the most beautiful
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: as far as like all of the imagery that's hidden
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: in it, because like he has the apple that falls
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: out of his mouth. It's the original sin. It's also
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: the first sin that he tells his mother, original sin
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: being like the eating of the forbidden fruit. It's said
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: that Adam could not swallow the fruit entirely and it
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: became lodged in his throat, and that's how he got
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: the Adams apple. And so the apple literally gets launched
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: in his throat and he has to spit it back out.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: But it's not just biblical, it's also the poison apple
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: and fairy tales. So that whole little scene like if
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: he could, he can, he can dislike the whole rest
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: of that movie, but that particular scene, I was just like,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 2: this is a really beautiful scene.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: No, I was gonna say, like I'm with you in
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: terms of like what what Robert Eggers is able to
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: achieve as a filmmaker I think, for the most part,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: is really right now unmatched in a in a literal
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: sense in terms of his ability to craft a world
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: that feels again imminently like real and lived in, but
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: also slightly elevated in terms of the reality. I mean,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: even with something that I would say is the most
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: realistic leaning, which is no sfaratu like, it's still like
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: fairy tale adjacent like it's it's heightened reality. It's not.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: It's playing about it the same pitch that the Witches.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: But I'm sure his next film, which is where Wolf
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: spelled the German way wer Wulf, which is supposed to
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: come out later this year, and it has a lot
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: of the people that have been in a lot of
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: the other things he has worked on, and it takes
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: place in thirteenth century England with a bunch of English actors.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: Maybe it'll be I mean, it's I mean, that's the
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: easy layup. It's like, oh, it was just do thirteenth
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: century England and cast a bunch of English actors. Lay
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: up here you go, like, if there's not as much
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: work has to be done, granted you don't have Willem
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: Dafoe speaking in German on screen. I just don't think
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: anybody is working at Robert Eggers's level right now other
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: than maybe are a astor genuinely in terms of in
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: the horror space. And I think that that. I think
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: that there are other people that are trying to get there,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: but I don't think that anyone else is able to
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: get there, because the level of work that has to
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: go into these movies is more than I think a
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: rational person should be willing to.
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: I guess my closing lines for this movie first to
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: thank both of you for this class. I hope I
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 3: got to be minus at least big, because you really
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: have done it for a terrific job, Julie and Chris
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: and explaining to me some things that I guess it
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 3: wasn't that I missed them as much as I didn't
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: appreciate how they fit together. And going to what you
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: both have said about this movie that some movies, you
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: are watching a plot like you're going, okay, there's you know,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: they've got to deliver the fuel to the station the
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: mountain or something, or you know they've got to win
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: the battle or something. You're following a plot from A
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: to Z and you like the movie or not based
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: partly on like, well, that was a good plot. Lots
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 3: of interesting things came up, and you know, twists and
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: turns and and so on. But sometimes you watch a
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: movie to be transported into an alternate reality, and that
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: reality could be in reality that's never existed, you know,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: a very good science fiction film, or it could be
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 3: a reality that that did exist, but is so far
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 3: from the modern sensibility of being a middle class American
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 3: in twenty twenty six that you need this immersive experience.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: And I think Robert Edgers as a filmmaker, as you're saying,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: from what I've seen, I didn't actually see a couple
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: of couple. I saw a North Norseman. I didn't see
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: us fraud.
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: To did you like the Norseman?
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: I thought he was trying to achieve what this film
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: we're talking about, The Witch did achieve, which was that
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: you felt you were in not just another physical world,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: not just another material world, but another spiritual, psychological world.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 3: And that's what the Witch achieved, is right, I live
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: in this world again. And I've said a couple of
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: little details of like, okay, you know, imagine massive child
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: with mortality, which for some people on this planet does
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: still exist. Imagine, you know, the constant threat of death
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: and childbirth, which, first off, some people on this planet
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: still exist, not as much for us. But but but
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: you know, there was there was a line and I
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: don't know who said it. I can't have said it.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: It's too clever. It goes back to and you know,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: I guess maybe we could meet again to do the
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: Odyssey is actually it sounds like it's adjacent to this
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 3: film in some in some ways, but.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: Chris Nolan movie signed me up by can't wait, But
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: I big nothing to say. That's what.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: In the ancient world, they had gods everywhere, right, like
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: like a tree was a god, and there was a
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: god of rivers and it was a god that there
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: was a god terminus, a god of like borders, you know,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: like in the in the pagan reality and in the
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: pre monotheistic reality, everything was it could be a god.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: And so there was this wonderful phrase and again I
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: don't know who said it. It can't have been me,
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: that like you should be kind to strangers because you
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: never know when they might be Zeus disguise, and that
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: the good ones sorry about Zeus visiting these people and
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: they're kind to him, and he rewards them. You know,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 3: they're a sort of a pre Christian, pre pre Jewish,
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: pre pre Abrahamic morality tail because a lot of them
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: were morality details. Right. The Honesty has morality tale in it.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: But I think this film really did this amazing job
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: of immersing us in a world where the horrors were real.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, the devil, the devil was real. The they
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 3: were out the evil forces were out there, and they
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: were planning to kill your family. You know, the most
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: paranoid delusion possible turned out to be right. But also
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: that you understood the physical horror of just living in
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 3: this day to day existence where starvation and murder and
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: just death was all around you.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, dead animals did like having to deal with with
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: just taking care of your your animals that died was enough,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: so so much.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: Sorry, go ahead, well please talk about that. I mean,
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 3: we live in the world where you know, I love cats.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: I'm just gonna come out and say it. Don't don't
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 3: censor this from the show, Chris, Okay, I think we
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: all love cats on this ship. We don't allow anybody
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: who doesn't love cats to be on the progress.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 2: Travis.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, my cat heard you. Yeah, he has a very
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: I do. He's around here somewhere.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: I don't know where he buyers his music like my cat's.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: But but yeah, like, Okay, you're a middle class American.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Your cat is.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: Sick, you have resources, right, Yeah, certainly here in West Texas,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: we have a Texas Tech We have a fantastic vetschool.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 3: You know, like your cow is sick, your horse is sick,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: there are resources. Back then the disaster of your goat
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 3: died and that's the goat that gives you milk for
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: your children, you know, to have some protein and some realities. Right,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: Just what a horror What a great horror film. I
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: don't necessarily like the way I got to it, but
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: in terms of like it was so disturbing to me
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: to see what happened here. But thank you for explaining
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: why I had to be disturbed. And I'll end there.
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: I'll also add on, yeah, and you know we we
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: we talked about you know, you asked the question like,
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: was was the paranoid Father proved right in the end,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: And I'll go back to my training as someone who
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: watched all of Barney Miller, a show where the paranoids
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: have proof as they would say this this story if
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: you want a doctor Pearl Mutter, you could have had
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: this story end with after she levitates into the air.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: Peter Fulk closes the book that he's telling the story
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: to Ben Savage in the bed as he's fallen asleep,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: because that's I mean, that's and you know, but I
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: obviously not of this time. But again, like this feels
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: like a story that a mother or father in sixteen
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: forties New England would tell, or you know, even in
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: this time would tell their family like well, mom, why
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: don't we go out into the woods, And it's like, well,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: did you ever hear the story of thomasin and and
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: you know, again you wouldn't tell the parts of the
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: baby Poltice or the other things obviously, or again, if
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: you were telling it to maybe an older kid, you would,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, again, what is the point of showing teenagers
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: who were in this country that like red blood on
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: the road, like those like in drivers that it's the
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: same thing. It's like to scare them senseless so that
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: they don't act recklessly while driving the witch if you
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: really wanted to look at it is just it's a
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: parable like you know, you don't but that's the thing,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: Like what do we get from it in the end,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: Like patriarchy doesn't know what they're doing. The woods are
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: in fact deep, dark and scary, so don't go out there,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: like always trust in community. I don't know, you could
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: take a bunch of things away from it. I think
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: ultimately the real message of the story is, if you
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: want your family to die in sixteen twenties New England,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: maybe do it if you live in a community, because
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: otherwise there's a less than zero percent chance that the
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: devil is somehow involved, and now you're his concubine.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: Uh. I love all of this. I loved all of that.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: I don't really know when I can tell you that
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: I got out of like the story of this movie
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: as much as I can tell you. I got so
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: much enjoyment out of all of just the little references
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: throughout the movie to other fairy tales, to other Puritan times,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: to UH, to other cultures that are in here. I
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: thought that was I thought it was really cool. I
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: loved even like the uh there's a dead bird fetus
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: in the egg and we you know, we see witchcraft
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 2: in historically being blamed for blight and failed crops. And
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: dying animals, and animals not being able to be produced
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: or not being able to reproduce.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: Uh So I.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: Just thought, and the references to art, the references to
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: all of the wood cutting, woodcut paintings, and uh a
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: trial dialogue from which which trials.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: All of that was just so.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: It was done well, It was researched well, it was
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: put together very beautifully. I like that the first time
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: that you watch it, it's more ambiguous. The second time
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 2: it's pretty obvious that this is all real. But I
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 2: love I loved that. I really enjoyed that for the
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: whole movie. I do wish it hadn't been filmed so dark.
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: It was so m boy it is huh boy, and
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: man Eggers was just like, you know what, hold my beer.
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: Here's No Sparatu, a movie that's even more impossible to
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: watch if you're if your TV's not tuned correctly, or
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: if you're watching it with a glare, you're just like,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: what God's name am I watching? And The Witch was bad,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: but No Sparatu is somehow worse, like genuinely one of
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: the hardest, Like you have to watch it in like
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: a basement or a home theater or something like I'm
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: not even joking, it's impossible to watch on some tvss
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: Doctor Prolmutter. I'm glad you picked this movie because I
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: hadn't watched it in a while. And Julie, obviously, I mean,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: but you know, I again, like you know, it's to
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: your point about asking, like what what is what is
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: the whole point of the movie. I think, ultimately, like
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: the point of the movie was for someone other people
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: to watch it and interpret it through their own lens.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: And I think that that's ultimately what someone like Robert
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Eggers has succeeded at doing. And that's not every filmmaker's goal.
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: And when you find a filmmaker who that is their goal,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: you kind of tend to follow the things that they
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: do and watch the things that they do, and the
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: things that they do end up being kind of an event,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: or they end up not just being a movie like
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: the next ari Astor movie or honestly, the next Robert
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: Eggers movie, like It's it's kind of a thing worth
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: going to the theaters to watch. Seeing those faratu in
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: theaters was much better than watching it all at home,
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: like it was. I was actually able to enjoy it
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: at the theater h and so it's it is one
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: of those things where like I think Robert Eggers wants
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: his movie to be tearor torn apart and reput back
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: together and looked at, because I think he spent all
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: that time getting to that point, doing all the research,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: getting all of the source material, like Julie said, like
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: all of the subconscious conscious choices that were influenced by
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: years of research, and just the things that he likes
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: and cares about, like it's it's his. It's an external
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: manifestation of his like inner in and that that's probably
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: why he doesn't like it, because it's probably too much
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: for him, and I don't I don't disagree, Like it
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: is a lot as a movie, but I also think
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: it's a movie that it'll probably be put into the
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: old US, you know, historical vault like all the other
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: you know, important movies for you know, at least American culture,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: because I think it's there are a few films better
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: that speak to that time and place and experience. And yes,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: it is a witch in it, but the manifestation of
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: that is a reality I think is just a bonus
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: for this movie. Getting to see all the other stuff
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: I think is really why you would show this movie
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: to other people, and especially to someone who wants to
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: see what that looked like in a really believable way.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: And so it's fun that we have an American filmmaker
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: doing that because there wasn't really anyone else for a while,
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: and so he's kind of taken that mantle. So it's exciting.
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: So maybe maybe we'll do the odyssey. That's doctor purmmutt.
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: I don't put that out into the world. I don't
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: want to go see a Christopher Nolan movie, and I
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: really don't want to have to go see one in theaters.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: I would rather go see Mortal Kombat in theaters, which
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go do. So maybe that says more
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: about me than it does the kind of assignments I
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: signed myself up for, Doctor Promutter. Julie both, thank you
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: so much for the conversation and picking the movie and
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: for showing up. If you want to hear more of me,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: going over to Weirdingwaymedia dot com, where this show and
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: all the other shows I work on can be found. Yeah,
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: this is the part of the show where I say
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: Patreon dot com is a thing you can go to.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: Five dollars is a month, is not a whole lot.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: Ten dollars gets you access to all the bonus episodes
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: of Ranking on Bond. Five dollars a month gets you
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: access to all the bonus episodes, and there's like twenty
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: or thirty of them, and that's the thing you want
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: to do. But like, rate and review the show on
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: iTunes or Spotify, wherever you get it, make it one of.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: Those two places.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: Please, Doctor Pearl Mutter, Julie Bull, thank you so much
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: for joining me. And yeah, we'll catch on the next episode.