Latest / The Cine-Files / SENTIMENTAL VALUE, FRANKENSTEIN, TRAIN DREAMS - 2026 Oscars Best Picture Series

Transcript

SENTIMENTAL VALUE, FRANKENSTEIN, TRAIN DREAMS - 2026 Oscars Best Picture Series · The Cine-Files

0:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to our continuing series talking about the 2026 Best Picture Nomadies here on the cinephiles, I am John Rogodroids always.
0:19
[SPEAKER_01]: By my fellow cinephile, Steve Moore, sorry Steve.
0:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm very good and I've been cinephiling it up because I've recently watched a bunch of Oscar nominated movies and I have some thoughts on some of them.
0:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so we're going to get into three of them here on the show just to let you know we're going to be talking about train dreams, sentiment of value and getting rid of the total Frankenstein here on this particular selection and then the last four films will come out a little bit later on in the week if you're listening to this as we're chronologically
0:46
[SPEAKER_01]: putting them out, but let's start with train dreams, Steve.
0:49
[SPEAKER_01]: This one starring Joel Ederton from Clint Bentley, based on the novella, Train Dreams by Dennis Johnson.
0:57
[SPEAKER_01]: This one follows Joel Ederton as the robber grainier, his 80 years of his life in this movie.
1:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's not a,
1:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Spectacular life an incredible life by cinematic standards, but it actually kind of profiles how amazing a life can be even if it's a simple life and the journeys you go on and the things you realize as you reflect back on your life before as you get older.
1:25
[SPEAKER_01]: What were your thoughts on?
1:26
[SPEAKER_01]: this particular movie here from again, director clamp Bentley.
1:30
[SPEAKER_02]: It's funny.
1:31
[SPEAKER_02]: As I said before, I really do like the slate of films nominated for Best Picture this year, and I've been thinking about why that is.
1:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And we're right at this moment, and you and I recently recorded a short about the current, you know,
1:44
[SPEAKER_02]: about the current slew of AI Slop that is showing up and it's all of this superman fighting the Hulk and talking through his fighting Brad Pitt.
1:54
[SPEAKER_02]: And the thing we are talking about is the thing that really makes this year's movies work for me, which is that
2:02
[SPEAKER_02]: The thing that is missing from all that AI stuff we've been seeing is humans is human vision is a human filmmaker saying this is how I see the world.
2:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think we've gotten like lulled into an idea that that maybe could that we could just replace that with a computer and this movie is a perfect example of why you can't do that.
2:23
[SPEAKER_02]: This movie is a unique vision of a unique life presented in a unique way that I never knew that I needed to see that it never occurred to me was a kind of movie I wanted and I love this film.
2:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Love it from top to bottom.
2:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this is, you know, for all my enjoyment of the superhero movies, jewell-referencing, Steve, and the 10-pole films.
2:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you enjoy some of them as well.
2:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, good.
2:47
[SPEAKER_01]: There's always fun, that's always fun in that, right?
2:49
[SPEAKER_01]: But the reason we do the show, the reason we love movies, are movies just like this.
2:55
[SPEAKER_01]: These quietly simple films that are actually deceptively about more complex things that are making a commentary about our existence, about our lives, and are performed by incredible actors like Joel Ederton and Felicity Jones and John Deale and Kerry Condon and William H. Maysey seeing them all course through this man's 80 years of his life.
3:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And Joel Ederton's performance is so simple and beautiful and touching here.
3:22
[SPEAKER_01]: and we see him experiencing the world and also the idea that you have to dial in at some point in order to function in the world and really walk out of the world with understanding of what your life might have meant or might have been.
3:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And these are the kinds of films that really I think are the foundation of being a cinema.
3:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can still love Raiders, you can still love Avengers, and game all those kinds of things.
3:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think for a lot of us who are cinephiles, these are the kinds of films where we kind of lay our ground work in.
3:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And because it opens itself up to so much analysis and interpretation.
3:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And the feeling we get, that it's speaking to us directly, even though it's speaking to everyone in the theater.
3:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's the gift of a film like this.
3:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And I knew from the first trailer that this was going to be an extraordinary movie.
4:04
[SPEAKER_01]: I love this movie.
4:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I absolutely love this movie.
4:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's in my top five of last year.
4:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And it is Joel Ederton's performance.
4:11
[SPEAKER_01]: It's Clint Bentley's direction.
4:12
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's what we see here, as I said, a man who is like experiencing life on the outside.
4:18
[SPEAKER_01]: We get the narrator, Alah, the assassination of the Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford style.
4:23
[SPEAKER_01]: That's Will Patton.
4:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And we kind of go through his life and see his experiences.
4:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And we keep waiting for that.
4:30
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the remarkable thing?
4:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we're so trained.
4:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what's the thing that's going to make this unique?
4:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And the uniqueness of it is because it wasn't a unique life.
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: The simple life, the normal life, the everyday life, is as unique as any big, grandiose life or character
4:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, incredible way.
4:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's one of the things that I was so blown away by with the movie.
4:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I've seen it three times now because it just is very language movement through this man's life that I found very comforting as I watched it.
5:03
[SPEAKER_02]: It's interesting to me that you mention movies like Raiders and Avengers End Game and things like that because I think about, you know, the knock on Spielberg, particularly early in his career, he was making these popcorn movies for for big audiences that weren't necessarily deep and the thing about that is is the intention was different, is that you think about
5:25
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to stop the Nazis from getting the lost arch or they'll take over the world.
5:29
[SPEAKER_02]: We have to stop Thanos from destroying half of humanity and half of the universe.
5:34
[SPEAKER_02]: Like those are big themes.
5:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And you totally understand why a whole bunch of people would be drawn to see movies like that.
5:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And what this movie did for me was it was very much like
5:46
[SPEAKER_02]: No, this seemingly unimportant person, living a life through an important moment where the earth doesn't hang in the balance.
5:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Someone whose story is never been told, is worth telling.
6:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is what was so great about it.
6:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll tell you, and it's also because as you mentioned, it's got a language pace, it has a lyrical tone.
6:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it gives you time to contemplate, I think,
6:14
[SPEAKER_02]: that I just contemplated in this film, that it presented so powerfully, is just the passage of time.
6:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
6:20
[SPEAKER_02]: And the big thing that I felt in watching it was like, oh, this is really a man's story who where the story is lost.
6:29
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, like, yes, there's this movie, but in reality, this person becomes forgotten.
6:35
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and then you, and what I felt so strongly was all of the people that he meets along the way, the personalities of vloggers in those camps, what it was like traveling on those trains, what it was like after the fire, what it was like watching his world change step by step.
6:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And all of those people are people who are probably don't have movies made about them, but all of their stories are deeply human.
7:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And
7:01
[SPEAKER_02]: just being able to see that time in America, I thought was really, really powerful.
7:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I agree.
7:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there's the line at the end of the movie, you know, after he passes on, it says, as he misplaced all sense of up and down when he's in the by-plane, he felt it last connected to it all.
7:16
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is what I think was a really great way to wrap up this movie in my mind, because we get caught up in the idea that, oh, the great philosophers, the great contemplators of life, right?
7:30
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of us contemplate with life means a lot of us wonder moments where we're really connected and feel like we're connected to the earth and the energy and the universal vibes of what's going on and then other times we feel this kind of disconnect and how where why find my place where do I belong now and we see him going through these stages.
7:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, talking about him from the narrator.
7:52
[SPEAKER_01]: He was like six or seven years old.
7:53
[SPEAKER_01]: He has no idea who his parents were.
7:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So he had to make a living, bigger these things out.
7:58
[SPEAKER_01]: He ends up becoming this logger.
8:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he's just kind of doing his job.
8:02
[SPEAKER_01]: He meets these weird people.
8:03
[SPEAKER_01]: He watches a racial crime with that Chinese person thrown off of the bridge, but doesn't act on it, but it haunts him.
8:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's a regular person in that moment.
8:11
[SPEAKER_01]: He was in a state of shock watching this app.
8:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So quickly, and couldn't, but the course, the heroic life is the guy who jumped in and tries to stop it, but this is the real life for most people.
8:21
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you see this, and you're just shocked by it happening, and you maybe beat yourself up that you didn't do anything, and so it haunts him.
8:28
[SPEAKER_01]: But then he meets, you know, Felicity Jones' character, and that now dials him in to a whole new other existence.
8:34
[SPEAKER_01]: But he's still going off and doing the logging and he's working with these interesting characters as he said steep the way a mage macy character Which a lot of people felt should have been nominated for a best supporting actor so distinct and unique and interesting and then what what he loses and then what he does with and then he ends up like
8:50
[SPEAKER_01]: uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh
9:20
[SPEAKER_01]: as he has to transition a multiple jobs to survive in it, and at that end, feeling finally connected to it all, he finally understands it before he passes on.
9:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's that's a lot of people's lives.
9:33
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're lucky that by the end you feel like, oh, I get it now, or I feel like I understood it, and I think that's what's great about the food.
9:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, none of us are given an instruction manual for life.
9:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And you're right, this is life.
9:48
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, obviously, this guy through, went through real struggles, you know, throughout his life.
9:54
[SPEAKER_02]: But like all of us feel behind the ball and are trying to figure out what to do and trying to figure out who to be and where to go.
10:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And you see in his plotting way,
10:05
[SPEAKER_02]: this guy because he's not, he's not going to solve the mystery of life this guy, right?
10:10
[SPEAKER_02]: This guy's just trying to figure out what he's supposed to do.
10:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And the, I mean, the tragedy, you know, of the, of the, of the Felicity Jones relationship.
10:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And, and because you just feel like, oh, they have this thing, you know, just like, he's figured the thing out.
10:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And then, and this is what life does is like, okay, you go, okay, my life's going to be about this and life comes
10:33
[SPEAKER_02]: What is my life like what is this like what am I supposed to do because and he knew that you know he had to make money and so he had to go to these jobs, but then his experience on these jobs were so filled with
10:46
[SPEAKER_02]: cruelty and pain and and wacky people and interesting people and friendship and connection and then as it goes on it's also he becomes even more isolated with you know he's doing he's now the old man on the same job and that doesn't work you know as well for many more I really think and it's interesting to there's this
11:07
[SPEAKER_02]: spiritual aspect, and an aspect that I would say of deep sadness and a bit of madness, you know, is that he, you know, and it's so interesting when the, you know, the friend comes out to visit with him and sit and talk.
11:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And you could see just all this compassion for this guy, you know, who has gone through this terrible thing.
11:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And understanding of who he is, you know?
11:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
11:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, that's the gift of the movie is the simplicity of life, and then all these things that course through his experience as he goes through them.
11:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the direction of Clint Bentley here, Steve, we should move to that.
11:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I didn't know too much about this guy as a director.
11:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is, I won't say that this is a masterpiece, but there is, this is really close in the way he directs this film, and no one's going to like Clint Bentley is the next best thing, and he should be, he's on Nolan's level, but there's something about his direction here that is good is anything I've seen in the last 20 years, and how he is able to take us through this story, which could easily have got boring, could easily have distracted you, could easily have been like, oh, let me look at my phone.
12:15
[SPEAKER_01]: There's just something about the way he directs this, the pacing of the movie.
12:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, the performance is here that he gets out of his actors, that I just found to be so interesting, and I couldn't stop watching the movie.
12:26
[SPEAKER_01]: It's why I've come back to watch it multiple times, because there's something about the direction that keeps, keeps hooking me and taking me through the progression of this man's life.
12:37
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I just found it to be brilliant.
12:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there is such a sure hand.
12:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I think he says, this is second feature.
12:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's, you know, doing a slow-paced movie about a dude who doesn't talk much, set in a, you know, this wouldzy setting, that's not easy to pull off and have me and gross the whole time, you know, because the advantage of making the popcorn movie is someone's coming to kill you, you know what I mean?
13:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you have to, and you're going, the whole point is to make it the most spectacular exciting, thrilling, and evolving thing.
13:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's super hard to do, too.
13:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's really hard to pull off.
13:17
[SPEAKER_02]: But it's very different from going like, no, no, we're just going to watch this guy go to work.
13:21
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
13:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and then we're going to watch him at home and we're going to see, you know, and we're just, and now we're going to meet this person from the forest service and we're just going to have this conversation.
13:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, that conversation is so,
13:37
[SPEAKER_02]: You have a feeling that something important is happening in the conversation.
13:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And again, because, I think I mentioned this in one of our previous reviews, is there many kinds of movies where I generally know where the movie is gonna go?
13:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
13:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is one night, I don't.
13:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I have no idea where it's gonna go.
13:54
[SPEAKER_02]: So when he's having this conversation, I'm like, oh, my story brain is going, oh, and this is gonna be a new friendship in his life and this will be some to do that.
14:02
[SPEAKER_02]: No, that's not where it's gonna go.
14:04
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, and that's again for a, you know, relatively new director, that's tough stuff to pull off.
14:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
14:13
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the film allows you to analyze that conversation, because I mean, after that conversation, he hears his wife and he sees and he has that moment with his child, right?
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's almost like Kerry Condon is telling him, you know, that
14:30
[SPEAKER_01]: The hermit thing in the woods is important as in it.
14:32
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he's almost, she's almost saying to him.
14:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Your life is important, whether you're this big person on the stage or this person hiding out in the woods, there is a matter to you're like, and it's almost like she's offering him some closure from this pain.
14:46
[SPEAKER_01]: So the fact that he sees his wife and his child and has that experience and then wakes up the dream, it's almost like a closure type of thing where he's moving past it because she talked about losing her husband.
15:02
[SPEAKER_01]: from that long illness.
15:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So there is almost a shared pain, right?
15:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's no therapist sitting down.
15:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people don't do that.
15:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people don't see that.
15:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't of can't afford it or don't want to go that route.
15:15
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's in conversations with other people who have experienced pain that they find a nugget of wisdom or a way to put their loss in context or move past it because there's a bit of healing that goes on in sharing, right?
15:28
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think
15:29
[SPEAKER_01]: for the whole film he's not actively trying, but he is contemplating connection to things around him.
15:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that conversation, you could interpret it as a way of giving him closure from the movie.
15:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I think those are great points.
15:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's funny that you talking about that scene in terms of that his life matters, that it has meaning, that it's just as important as any other life.
15:52
[SPEAKER_02]: Kind of relates in a weird way to the Avengers and Indiana Jones, which is the, this movie is saying,
15:58
[SPEAKER_02]: this lumber carriage driver guy living up in the woods in Idaho is just as important as Captain America in Indiana Jones.
16:06
[SPEAKER_02]: His story, his life has just as much meaning as just as much power to it.
16:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And the thing I was thinking about too, you know, we live in a world where we're just constantly bombarded with ideas and stuff and things going on.
16:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And so,
16:19
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you can't help but seeing people throwing out quote unquote solutions to whatever your problems are and whether or not those are actually good solutions is an entirely different topic.
16:29
[SPEAKER_02]: But like with this character.
16:32
[SPEAKER_02]: He has no, he's not watching TV.
16:35
[SPEAKER_02]: He's no social media.
16:37
[SPEAKER_02]: He's, you don't see him reading the newspaper.
16:39
[SPEAKER_02]: This guy is alone with his thoughts, trying to figure out how to exist in the world and has no guides.
16:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So when he has this conversation, the conversations he has with what you may face, you know, with one at the end with his friend, all of these conversations,
16:56
[SPEAKER_02]: That's it.
16:57
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, these are the moments where he learns, like particularly, I think, with the way Mitch Macy character, like, that's a person who teaches him about what life is.
17:05
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like, and he learns those little, tiny lessons and then he crunches on them in his mind, you feel day after day after year after year, trying to think his way through or be his way through this problem of who am I supposed to be in the world?
17:22
[SPEAKER_02]: You know,
17:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, I think a guy like this in a different situation could have become a great thinker through universities, through if you'd be found away into some teacher guiding him into something and then boom, he's out here like contemplating and thinking you out and writing these kinds of things and could have been this.
17:41
[SPEAKER_01]: And but this is the life that he was handed and did and lived.
17:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And but there's like you said a lot that he
17:48
[SPEAKER_01]: contemplates the considers and choose over and doesn't run away from it.
17:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And even the scene where you see, you know, at the beginning where they're nailing the boots to the tree as a way of symbolizing that you actually existed, it's transitory.
18:01
[SPEAKER_01]: So the whole film is trying to show you that everything is transitory.
18:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And the only life you can live is your own, and, you know, seeking connection is a way of dialing into what life is all about.
18:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you do it?
18:15
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you handle the after effects if the connection goes away in the way that does in the movies?
18:19
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's so much to consider as you're watching the film, as you're watching.
18:23
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know,
18:24
[SPEAKER_01]: This is where Joel Ederton is the best.
18:27
[SPEAKER_01]: The quiet simplistic performances, the contemplative performances, is where I enjoy Joel Ederton the most.
18:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's so such a great leader for this.
18:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was, I was upset that it wasn't nominated for Best Actor because I think he's incredible lens.
18:44
[SPEAKER_01]: I totally agree.
18:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, this film is nominated for four Academy Awards, Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinema Talk for Best Original Sound.
18:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know that anyone thinks that I have a chance to win any of these except maybe cinematography for a Dolfo Veloso, but I don't know what's your feelings on these nominations when we move on from this movie and what chances do you think it has?
19:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's probably what I think.
19:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I probably think it has very little chance for any of these things.
19:12
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's funny.
19:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I really like this year of films.
19:14
[SPEAKER_02]: In another year, I think cinematography definitely is one.
19:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Adapted screenplay is another one that's sort of interesting, but when you have huge film films like Centers and One Battle After Another, it's going to be real tough for this movie to compete with those.
19:29
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, well, let's move on to another film.
19:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also about life, Steve, in a different way.
19:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm much more modern take here.
19:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is a Norwegian film here from Director Joaquim Trier.
19:43
[SPEAKER_01]: He co-wrote it with Esco Vaughn.
19:45
[SPEAKER_01]: It is sentimental value.
19:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It follows Sisters Nora, who is played by Renata Renzvi, Renzvi, an Agnes Inga Ebsdata Lilias in their union with their estranged father, Gustav, who is a great filmmaker, but on the tail end of his career,
19:59
[SPEAKER_01]: played incredibly by Stellan Skars' guard as he has written a new movie that is very much about his daughters or his daughter.
20:13
[SPEAKER_01]: We have L fanning coming in as an American actress who is going to play the part after his daughter who is an actress now that's Nora turns it down.
20:20
[SPEAKER_01]: So, and we explore the relationships in the damage and the heartbreak and issues between them and we go all the way back to multiple decades to grandmother's and things of this nature.
20:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And this all set in this one, mostly set in this one house that has passed on from generation to generation.
20:37
[SPEAKER_01]: So, your thoughts on this movie, Steve, and your feelings on it.
20:41
[SPEAKER_02]: There, there movies you start out, I really believe that the openings of movies in the first many shots of the movie do do a tremendous amount to make you know how you're going to feel going on.
20:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And the opening of this movie is we're in that house.
20:56
[SPEAKER_02]: To me was I got to relax in my chair because you go like, oh, this filmmaker knows what they're doing.
21:03
[SPEAKER_02]: Like they have a plan.
21:04
[SPEAKER_02]: They, they understand the tone of the way it begins in that stuff in the house was so powerful.
21:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And then.
21:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, it's like, I didn't know exactly where we were going to go and how was going to be.
21:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll tell you one thing, who's funny.
21:19
[SPEAKER_02]: We recently had Shenamah Klung on and talked about Wonder Man, the TV show, and one of the things we discussed is that the opening of episode 1 of Wonder Man where an actor is doing some stuff was unbelievably stressful and difficult to watch, and the opening of this after the stuff in the house where she's backstage having a panic attack.
21:38
[SPEAKER_02]: going on.
21:39
[SPEAKER_02]: It was so rough to watch.
21:41
[SPEAKER_02]: It was so stressful.
21:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And what it does is it immediately, I mean, just the image at the very beginning, there's an image of a crack going through the house.
21:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we go to this woman who's having this panic attack before going on stage.
21:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's like, Oh, this is going to be a movie about trauma about the hidden things that haven't been dealt with, that sit underneath.
22:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And what are the things that I think is so successful at?
22:05
[SPEAKER_02]: is just how fucking hard it is to talk to someone that you love who has hurt you or someone you have deep.
22:12
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a pass there and you can see with her and Stella's scars guard is like, it's so hard to get someone to hear you, to get someone to understand, to get someone to connect with what your experiences.
22:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think this movie does a beautiful job exploring that.
22:28
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's a fascinating film for me,
22:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I found myself as an audience member judging both Nora and Gustav.
22:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually thought the daughter, who is the most putupon, is it Agnes, Agnes is the character that I most connected with in the movie, the idea of her navigating these two mercurial people in her life.
23:00
[SPEAKER_01]: and having love for both of them because both of them were essential to certain sections of her life, right when growing up the dad and then when the dad left and the issues with the mom, the sister comes in as she tells her near the end of the movie, tells Nora how I know you don't
23:17
[SPEAKER_01]: know that you can care for people, but you took care of me when everything fell apart when mom was down, when all this went down, you took care of you know.
23:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's just something about her journey through the movie that I found myself more interested in.
23:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But the other two characters, I had to really have a conversation with myself because it's challenging.
23:36
[SPEAKER_01]: They're challenging people to care about.
23:38
[SPEAKER_01]: because I found myself judging them.
23:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is part of getting older for me, as a human being, I find that some of these characters, and I'm sure you've had the experience of Steve as well.
23:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you find yourself judging these characters rather than going like, you know, you've got to create space and grace to understand these characters, which is what the movie is essentially trying to tell you, is that you can be caught in the cycle of trauma, you can be caught in the anger and the frustration and all of this kind of stuff.
24:02
[SPEAKER_01]: but until you find your way to process it, to put in its context to create understanding, you won't be able to move on with your life.
24:11
[SPEAKER_01]: You'll be haunted by it constantly.
24:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that's what you explore in their relationship.
24:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And even by the end, there's no kind of like, I'm sorry dad, I'm sorry, Grayson.
24:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's none of that.
24:26
[SPEAKER_01]: There's just this long look between them after a scene is shot.
24:30
[SPEAKER_01]: where it's kind of an understanding of both of them, they don't need to say anything.
24:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Me putting you in this movie, tell you I'm much, I love you, me committing to doing this movie, tells me, it tells you how much I love you, and that's what we're doing, and that's how we're working on.
24:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's no big grandiose Hollywood come together moment, it is much more subtle, which I think is how it is for most people's team.
24:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we see what we see in the movies, but most people, it's sometimes it's an unspoken thing,
24:59
[SPEAKER_02]: way to do it by the end of the movie you know I think those are great points and what you made me think of is what's interesting you really we know that there's trauma in their past we know that they're married you know that the dad's marriage with mom split up and that he went off to make films and they felt someone abandoned by him we actually get very few details like this this kind of movie when you're going like oh we're going to deal with childhood trauma
25:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, you're going to see that trauma and the trauma is going to be pretty traumatic.
25:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And what, this is what you made me think of, and I'll try to see if I can figure out how to say it the right way, but I'm sure you and I both had long-term conflicts with various people that we shared with each other.
25:45
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you have these conflicts, particularly with family members or people that are friends of a long time, you develop a list of stuff.
25:53
[SPEAKER_02]: This is this thing.
25:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And for the most part, most of that stuff doesn't sound like anything.
25:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
25:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all little things that are part of this greater pattern.
26:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm sure I've certainly had this experience where I started to list the stuff, and then it all just started to sound so petty, you know?
26:10
[SPEAKER_02]: But even I knew this was super important, but I'd like when you said it, and I think what this movie does, that's so, we did.
26:16
[SPEAKER_02]: it not having that big cathartic moment where they express everything is you know what it wasn't the individual stuff it's not the little it's bigger it's things that you actually can't really express you know what I mean like there's moments where uh oh there's the great moment where they're talking about the kid and the kid had said I see you you know the tell that story and then and then Nora has sort of a panic attack
26:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And it doesn't explain and they never go like why did those particular words get you in that particular way, but they did, you know, and then we're left as the audience to sort of contemplate and fill in kind of what that means and it's the same with the conclusion, you know,
27:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
27:09
[SPEAKER_02]: But we don't actually see the mechanism by which that happens exactly.
27:13
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like that isn't what it is.
27:16
[SPEAKER_02]: But the way the other thing that really struck me watching this movie and related a lot to Hamlet, which is Hamlet in its way is showing the healing power of art.
27:27
[SPEAKER_02]: And this movie in its way is showing to some degree the healing power of art, and I think the distinction is that Hamlet actually isn't about the artist.
27:38
[SPEAKER_02]: It isn't really about Shakespeare and his needs to create that art.
27:42
[SPEAKER_02]: This is about the artist.
27:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And what is going on is like,
27:47
[SPEAKER_02]: art is these characters way of dealing with their trauma.
27:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
27:51
[SPEAKER_02]: They're way of expressing the things that actually they can't express that well in words.
27:56
[SPEAKER_02]: They are driven to do art in order to deal with the pain.
28:01
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's funny too, because we just talked about train dreams.
28:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's like, this is how, how is this person moving through their life?
28:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And this is how they choose it.
28:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And here's another movie.
28:10
[SPEAKER_02]: This is how these people are getting through the pain and difficulty of life.
28:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's the thing, when you finish watching the movie, you go like, well, goddamn, there's essentially flip coins of the, there's flip sides of the same coin, both Gustav and Nora, because they're both artists.
28:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're both,
28:27
[SPEAKER_01]: driven by this thing that you can't really explain or characterize or quantify that drives them to create the work.
28:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, her panic attack, tax, sorry, panic attacks, you can say our correlative to his drunken knights when he calls and leaves messages.
28:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's how he deals with his trauma.
28:50
[SPEAKER_01]: She, her trauma is through panic attacks, he is through that.
28:53
[SPEAKER_01]: She lives a life where she sleeps with a married man,
28:56
[SPEAKER_01]: who she has these panic attacks, she had a suicide attempt.
29:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are all driven by her desire to stay in the anger of the unresolved feelings of trauma.
29:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And this whole thing.
29:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So in a way, the film is almost making a commentary on like, how you damage yourself if you don't try to seek
29:16
[SPEAKER_01]: understanding and closure and some kind of way to navigate your life where you let those feelings go, let the hate go, let the pain go because all you're doing is hurting yourself.
29:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Gustav in the same situation, he's damaged his relationships with his daughters.
29:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So much of that Agnes who has never, I think from what we here in the movies never stood up to him, takes him to task about wanting to use her son in his movie.
29:39
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a pretty emotional scene for Agnes' character, which I think,
29:43
[SPEAKER_01]: makes it more powerful than the passive aggressive snipes that Nora and Gustav make to each other whenever they're in the same room with each other because it can barely stand to be in the same room with each other and you see that that's how agnes has come to this place of understanding both of them and choosing to see the positive about them as people rather than staying in the in the pain or
30:05
[SPEAKER_01]: hurt that they've caused her through her life.
30:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think there's just this commentary about it.
30:10
[SPEAKER_01]: So that by the end, Gustav, when Rachel walks off the film, when Elfen, and he's like, he is devastated by that, because I think he realizes like, I tried to make this thing work a certain way, and it's not, and I don't have the power to do it like it, because I need her.
30:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I need her to be the lead of this movie.
30:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I need my daughter to be the lead of this movie.
30:29
[SPEAKER_01]: This is how it has to work.
30:31
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's just a healing power of art, but also why creatives turn to art sometimes is also because they're navigating their own pain through the work, through the creativity, and it's a form of therapy at times if it's done correctly.
30:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you see that with both of them, I think, throughout the whole movie, you know?
30:49
[SPEAKER_02]: First of all, as far as the Agnes character, man, I feel it, because I've been Agnes many times.
30:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I've been the more like calm person around people that had big, strong emotional arcs, and you're just sitting there going like, how do I keep this together?
31:07
[SPEAKER_02]: How do I make this just a little bit more okay?
31:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, you can't solve other people's problems for them.
31:13
[SPEAKER_02]: They have to find the way themselves.
31:19
[SPEAKER_02]: and you have that great scene with the two of them in bed, yeah.
31:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's so much about her, she is aware that she pushes into Missy Away and the her feeling it's a good thing that he's married because that makes her, it makes it impossible for the relationship to go to the next level and that makes her safer.
31:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And then he says, I'm getting a divorce.
31:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
31:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And she has this romantic
31:47
[SPEAKER_02]: but he's not gonna be there with her and his aloneness after that moment is so painful and it totally to be parallels things with Gustav that we see multiple times in the movie where you see
32:01
[SPEAKER_02]: He am observing the world, him having lots of feelings and not really having anyone to express them to.
32:08
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, he doesn't have anyone to share with.
32:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he's isolated alone.
32:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, I think Elfany's really good in the movie.
32:15
[SPEAKER_02]: It's all as a bit weird to be with her in there, but she is good and I particularly love
32:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Gustav sort of seduction of her when they go to the beach and all of that and you see what's magical about Gustav and here's the thought that occurred to me.
32:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Did you watch the recent Martin Scorsese documentary that was HBO or not yet?
32:36
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's on my list of things to watch for sure.
32:38
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it's good.
32:40
[SPEAKER_02]: But here's a quick spoiler alert is they interview his kids and one of the and they kind of talk about well it was great going to the set
32:50
[SPEAKER_02]: because that's where we saw Dad alive.
32:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
32:54
[SPEAKER_02]: That's where he lived and that the, and it was painful to hear them talk this way, which is that all of this glowing, the sun of energy, you know, like the power of charisma and all this stuff that flowed out when he was on the set.
33:10
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not the dad that they knew, you know?
33:13
[SPEAKER_02]: And I found that to be a very painful kind of thing.
33:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what I saw with Gustav, you know?
33:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
33:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And Agnes calls him out on that, right?
33:20
[SPEAKER_01]: With air when she says, like, he's like, this was a great time.
33:24
[SPEAKER_01]: We worked on that film together.
33:25
[SPEAKER_01]: The World War II film that we see in the film that affected Rachel so much.
33:29
[SPEAKER_01]: We see that in his mind, that was a great father, daughter or moment, right?
33:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it happened on his terms and it his
33:38
[SPEAKER_01]: amount that he could handle it, but then he moved on to the next film and was in love with those actors playing those roles.
33:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And her is like, you're my father when you left after the move, like you didn't care for me in the same way after the movie, as you did while I was on the set.
33:55
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there is a, you don't you understand this break, this way that you can do this thing, right?
34:00
[SPEAKER_01]: That is, you
34:01
[SPEAKER_01]: really fascinating.
34:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And we see Nora do the same thing to her when Nora starts ignoring her calls.
34:07
[SPEAKER_01]: When she says to Agna Cister, like you know when you had a suicide attempt once, if you ignore my calls, you know what that does to me, like why aren't you thinking about me?
34:17
[SPEAKER_01]: And Nora the whole time has been trying to take down her father for not being considered to them, but here she is not being considered to her sister.
34:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So
34:25
[SPEAKER_01]: there's the similarities and there are approaches to these things in their lives and there's that which I thought was a little bit of artistic and balance a little too much on the nose when we're seeing their faces blending into each other.
34:35
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, you don't need to show off.
34:37
[SPEAKER_01]: We get it, but if you want to put the hang the lantern on it fine, we get it that they're all just kind of caught up looking for the demeanor versions of each other.
34:44
[SPEAKER_01]: But like that is what is happening.
34:46
[SPEAKER_01]: And I kind of love that as it goes on.
34:50
[SPEAKER_01]: And I do think the Rachel thing is supposed to feel out of place, right?
34:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's almost like a meta thing that she is out of place in this movie.
34:58
[SPEAKER_01]: When you're watching Alphanning in this movie, because the characters out of place playing the character of Nora in that film for Gustav.
35:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there is that element of it.
35:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't just, yeah, I feel like Elle is like, if we can say this and quantify it, like the worst part of the movie in terms of acting, but not that she's a bad actress.
35:19
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just everyone else has given so much more to do, you know?
35:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the thing with that Agnes moment where she's not returning or nor is not returning your calls.
35:28
[SPEAKER_02]: And all the little moments like that I see you moments where you watch Agnes watching Nora.
35:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And you have this person that's gone to obviously a really dark place in the past and you never stop having that worry.
35:41
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, and the thing that I think is I totally believe that people deserve grace for their childhood trauma, for psychological issues, for whatever struggles they're going through.
35:55
[SPEAKER_02]: But there's also a weird thing where people, as grownups, it'll blame their parenting and their trauma for their bad behavior as grownups.
36:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's a certain part where I'm like,
36:08
[SPEAKER_02]: fair.
36:09
[SPEAKER_02]: That's real and I have sympathy for that.
36:13
[SPEAKER_02]: But now you're spreading around your own trauma.
36:15
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like this is the, is that a certain point, you're, you're the adult here now, you know, and those things matter and what's so interesting, there was the moment where I think the, the guys she's having her fair with, they start talking about therapy.
36:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, I mean, she has major panic attacks.
36:34
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, she's like, it is.
36:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a big deal.
36:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's
36:38
[SPEAKER_02]: He says I should see a therapist is as if that's the most ridiculous thing in the world.
36:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you know, like it was so crazy to me where it's like, no, you're suffering in a serious way.
36:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not changing.
36:51
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe give that therapy thing a shot, you know?
36:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
36:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly, but for their own process, I guess therapy is not an option, so it becomes that moment, therapy in a way happens in that moment where
37:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Agnes comes to confront nor after nor is called in sick to not even though she's not sick.
37:17
[SPEAKER_01]: It's because Gustav has essentially shaken her confidence with this idea like if you don't like go of your anger, you're never going to be this great artist, which infuriates her because the last thing you want.
37:29
[SPEAKER_01]: to hear advice from is the person who has hurt you and have their advice be right.
37:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But yet clearly she knew in the back of her mind he was right, which is what fucked her up even more.
37:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And so Nora going to see her and talk to her and say, it's, I want you to read this section of the script, which is those section that Rachel had acted earlier in the film.
37:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want you to understand, like, in essence, he is apologizing for his treatment of you,
37:56
[SPEAKER_01]: through the film, through the character that he's written here that's essentially based on you and talking about his trauma from his past, with his mother, Gustav's mother who was involved in resistance, killed at seven years old by the Nazis, that kind of stuff.
38:09
[SPEAKER_01]: He is essentially apologizing for the trauma that he has transferred on to her and how he treated her.
38:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't think he feels compelled with Agnes because Agnes is always probably forgiven him.
38:19
[SPEAKER_01]: But Nora is the one who has been the most angry at him.
38:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is what inspires him to write this script.
38:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's the reading of the script that the walls, the dams, the dam breaks a little bit.
38:32
[SPEAKER_01]: The walls break down and there is a sense of
38:35
[SPEAKER_01]: understanding even when she talks about the suicide attempt to Agnes says it's almost like he was there and then she says he wasn't but it's almost like he was there if you read the script and so it's probably because Gustav is probably trying to kill himself a number of times as well from his own trauma so there's a sense of connectedness to or similarity in the connectiveness of their trauma that they share and that led to possible suicide attempts by both and that's in that way you know so it's a powerful scene what it leads to really well
39:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there's a way, you know, part of why you do art is to express things that you can't express any other way.
39:12
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's funny.
39:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I think people, people often make the mistake of when they read something that might be somewhat autobiographical or that they go, well, this must be you.
39:22
[SPEAKER_02]: This must be truth as if this is a one-to-one thing.
39:25
[SPEAKER_02]: At least for me, it's never a one-to-one thing, but frequently there are emotions coming out of characters.
39:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, they're my emotions.
39:34
[SPEAKER_02]: They have to come from me.
39:35
[SPEAKER_02]: And so like, it's definitely how I deal with the things that I'm feeling and things that are hard to express and things that absolutely comes out in my writing.
39:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
39:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it's a
39:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I do have to say that I think there are some moments that are little too pat in how they work in the movie and how the pieces fit together a little bit by the end, little slight convenience to which kind of didn't, didn't have me have this massive effect afterwards where I was like, oh wow, this is an incredible
40:06
[SPEAKER_01]: film.
40:07
[SPEAKER_01]: I was very impressed by the movie, but I wasn't necessarily like, whoa, this is given me a lot to think about type of movie.
40:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe for some people listening to us, it was that for them.
40:16
[SPEAKER_01]: It just wasn't 100% for me, but I did thoroughly enjoy it.
40:20
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the performances, and I loved a lot of what they were saying about the non-clean
40:29
[SPEAKER_01]: resolving that trauma within this particular context of this family, you know, and even the house, I wanted to ask you about that before we wrap up, Steve, I don't have that experience.
40:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I have, you know, we've lived in the same house since 1970 or my parents, I've since 1979.
40:44
[SPEAKER_01]: My mom still has that house.
40:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I never stay at that house anymore because it holds too many horrible memories for me for a number of reasons and what's going on there.
40:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I just never stay anymore at the house.
40:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been 10, 15 years since I've stayed at the house.
40:59
[SPEAKER_01]: But I know for you, you've got that element of like, you know, stay been in one place, multi-generational type of stuff.
41:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So was there the symbolism of the house?
41:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Was that something that appealed to you as you were watching the movie, how it passed on from generation generation.
41:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And then how he sells it to make the movie.
41:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Sorry.
41:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but the mortgage by house to make a movie, that brings true to 100%.
41:23
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's funny, my parents moved into the house that they're, and I think in 1975, so my mom is my dad is obviously no longer there.
41:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
41:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I have the opposite experience.
41:33
[SPEAKER_02]: My mom's house is the, I love staying there.
41:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So that is, that house is such a special place, it's beautiful house.
41:42
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I do.
41:42
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think,
41:44
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like I think of my grandmother's apartment on a clay street as that kind of a play.
41:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Like their places where they're just special, you know, they've been in the family a long time and they take on significance.
41:56
[SPEAKER_02]: I also think by the way, the design of that house, like every inch of the interior exterior, it was a personality.
42:05
[SPEAKER_02]: It was a place.
42:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It wasn't just some, you know, boxed house.
42:08
[SPEAKER_02]: This was like this place in Norway, you know?
42:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
42:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
42:12
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a description of this kind of architecture for the house that I want to see if I can find real quick, because I've never heard or known about this kind of architecture.
42:25
[SPEAKER_01]: OK, it's Norwegian architectural idiom called Dragustil, which is Dragon's style.
42:32
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what this wood structure is with steep cables.
42:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's apparently striking example of a turn
42:40
[SPEAKER_01]: It's best described as Viking Victorian.
42:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, totally, I get that.
42:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
42:48
[SPEAKER_01]: What about the direction here as we wrap up this conversation on sentiment of value?
42:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Thoughts on walking cheers direction at the cinematographer from Castor Tuxin, even the music I thought from Hania Rani that I thought worked really well in the film.
43:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's beautifully shot, it looks gorgeous.
43:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it's really well directed.
43:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's funny.
43:09
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not my favorite movie on the list, and that doesn't mean I didn't think it was a really good movie.
43:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought it was very well-made, it was emotional, it held my interest.
43:19
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just their other films that I'm just way more drawn to than this one, you know.
43:24
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the second film I've seen of his, because I saw the worst person in the world a few years ago, which also started running at Rensby and I
43:33
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to go back and see his other films.
43:36
[SPEAKER_01]: People talk about reprieze.
43:38
[SPEAKER_01]: He also did that Oslo August 31st film, which I think is about the terrorist attack.
43:46
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it might be or not as something else, I guess.
43:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But I kind of want to take a look at these films and see about walking, share a little more, which I don't always find myself drawn to watch more of a director's films necessarily, but this one certainly put the hook in me, at least for that.
44:00
[SPEAKER_01]: All right Steve, sentiment to value is nominated for 8th Academy Awards here, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actors for Renetta Renzvi, Best Supporting Actor for Stellan Scars, Guard, L Fanning, and Inga, Ibsdata, and Lilia, as we're both nominated for Best Supporting Actors, Best Rises Group Play, Best International Feature Film, and Best Film, Editing for Olivier Bougey-Kutei.
44:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So your thoughts on what it has a chance to win, where am I getting things at your thoughts?
44:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know.
44:27
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think the having two supporting actress nominees for the same movie just that tends to cancel each other out.
44:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?
44:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
44:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Like as people who love the film are going to vote for one or the other.
44:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Although I think
44:43
[SPEAKER_02]: They're both great in the film, Elfanyne, as you said, feels appropriately out of place.
44:50
[SPEAKER_02]: The one that seems most likely to win is the international feature film.
44:55
[SPEAKER_02]: That one seems as far as the other ones, it's such a hard year.
44:59
[SPEAKER_02]: So I kind of go, well,
45:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, it's not going to win best director.
45:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think it will win, you know, Stella and Skarsguard, he's great.
45:09
[SPEAKER_02]: He's great in the film, but there are more spectacular supporting actors, you know, with Sean Pan and Del Rolendo.
45:16
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't see really a chance for that there.
45:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Best original screenplay.
45:20
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a good screenplay, but then you've got sinners, you know, and so it's like, and other films as well that are really good.
45:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, I'm not sure what it would get here.
45:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for me, it's, I would agree with you.
45:34
[SPEAKER_01]: The way I look at it and see where it's at.
45:36
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, I think, picture no way, director, I don't think so, actress no way, which you see.
45:42
[SPEAKER_01]: That's pretty much a given.
45:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Supporting actors where the possibility lies, but I'm with you, I don't think Stella did anything that grandiose in this movie to put him ahead of everyone else.
45:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think he won one of the awards recent, I was a quick choice of one of the awards he won.
45:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I don't understand.
46:01
[SPEAKER_01]: I really would not have nominated L.
46:03
[SPEAKER_01]: in the movie.
46:04
[SPEAKER_01]: She has a couple of really good moments like the scene when she's reading from the script and has that emotional moment with the actress who's playing her mother.
46:11
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought that was a really nice moment.
46:12
[SPEAKER_01]: But, anyone that she's coming to remove herself from the movie, I think that's a really great scene as well, but there's not much there that I found merited in nomination.
46:22
[SPEAKER_01]: I love Elle, but I'm just surprised by that one.
46:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Bessers who know, bestener in a feature, I agree with you, bestener in a national feature.
46:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe even editing, I don't know how they look at editing
46:33
[SPEAKER_01]: multiple black fade to blacks throughout the movie is that an element of how that happens to the movie is the editing going back and forth in time.
46:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that a much more effective thing that could get an Oscar?
46:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, but yeah, international features by where it's at for sure.
46:46
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, look at just looking at the editing ones.
46:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Every one of them has super interesting editing.
46:53
[SPEAKER_02]: F1, Marty Supreme, one battle after another, and sinners, they're all super interesting in terms of the way those films are cut.
47:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So I just don't see that this, again, I'm gonna say it for the 900th time.
47:05
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the worst at predicting things.
47:06
[SPEAKER_02]: So I wouldn't make any bets based on what I'm saying, but that's how I see it.
47:10
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, whether that's our conversation on sentiment of value, let's move to our last film in this particular section of the best picture nominees here is conversation and that is
47:28
[SPEAKER_01]: in the bribe movie that is out in theaters right now is we're recording this starring Jesse Buckley uh who we uh will be speaking we spoke about our last conversation on him that so Steve I don't have to tell you the Frankenstein story everybody knows the Frankenstein story this is told in a uniquely interesting way Guillermo del Toro probably in my opinion the most artistic film he's ever delivered here and I love the performances from Oscar Isaac Jacob awardee in crystal faults a little bit
47:58
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you thought's overall on this movie and yeah, feelings on this one?
48:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I might disappoint a whole bunch of people.
48:05
[SPEAKER_02]: This movie is the one I am most mixed on.
48:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
48:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
48:10
[SPEAKER_02]: On the one hand, in terms of its visuals, production design, costume, makeup, cinematography, it is stunning.
48:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Like every second of this movie is absolutely stunning and filled with all of the
48:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
48:27
[SPEAKER_02]: What my feelings about this in a weird way really reflect my feelings of the book, which is maybe a sign of how well done this is, which is, I mean, it's an odd book.
48:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And the thing about reading that book is that it's really all about the creature.
48:42
[SPEAKER_02]: When you get to the creature story, I am 100% involved in the book, and that is how I felt about this movie.
48:49
[SPEAKER_02]: The first 40 minutes or so, despite being well-acted and well-shot, and I just don't like Victor Frankenstein.
48:56
[SPEAKER_02]: Like he just a jerk, and it's not that all the guys' performances bad.
49:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I think his performance is good.
49:03
[SPEAKER_02]: I just did not care.
49:05
[SPEAKER_02]: throughout the first 40 minutes of the movie until the creature shows up.
49:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And once we get to the creature's story, I was 100% in.
49:12
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what I mean, but I'm that I'm mixed.
49:15
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I just don't, I just can't say I love the whole movie.
49:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't say I love the creature in the second half of the movie, definitely.
49:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, wow.
49:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we are gonna disagree on this film, I guess, because I loved it from the first moment on.
49:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought Oscar Isaac was great as Victor Frankenstein and found myself connecting with that character in a way that I'd never connected with him before in previous iterations, whether it's the old Boris Carlaw film or the Kenneth Prana movie.
49:41
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if there's ever been another, I don't know, I don't know if there's tons of questions.
49:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there's tons of questions, but like, but maybe Gene Wilder, you know, there you go.
49:51
[SPEAKER_01]: But I loved what Oscar Isaac did.
49:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought this was really interesting.
49:55
[SPEAKER_01]: A man who is driven by his hubris is arrogance.
49:58
[SPEAKER_01]: His concededness.
49:59
[SPEAKER_01]: We're seeing Timothy, Shalaman, real-time kind of possibly be blown apart for his arrogance and his hubris right now.
50:06
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's an essence.
50:07
[SPEAKER_01]: There is this belief in his talent.
50:09
[SPEAKER_01]: He's got this cockiness within him.
50:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's willing to go to the...
50:13
[SPEAKER_01]: asked what people would say is the correct place to go in order to achieve what he wants to achieve and seeing that play out in the movie and the ramifications of that point of view, of that drive, of that ambition, of those violations of the human law, I think, come to bear in their relation.
50:33
[SPEAKER_01]: But just like our film Sentimental Valley, we just talked about,
50:37
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a sense of a father, a son, a father, a child dynamic here that has to be resolved by the end.
50:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And both of them have to give grace to each other.
50:47
[SPEAKER_01]: After essentially terrorizing each other for a majority, the back half of the movie, that I think is so powerful.
50:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I cried at the end when they have their
50:59
[SPEAKER_01]: confrontation and closure in the ship like I was like, oh my god, I'd never seen that in a Frankenstein movie.
51:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So for me, there was some real power in that I think my issues come with like I think my agoth characters severely underwritten.
51:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I think his brother is severely underwritten.
51:17
[SPEAKER_01]: in the movie as well.
51:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So those those impacts of their characters doesn't carry as much weight for me, but I love what Oscar did.
51:24
[SPEAKER_01]: I love a Christoph wall does such a great he's becoming such a great character actually come in and deliver powerful stuff and then have things happened to him.
51:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thought Jacob a Lord he was exceptional as the monster.
51:36
[SPEAKER_01]: I said this in my out of theater reaction when I walked out like he should be nominated for Best of Boring Actor and I was not surprised that he was.
51:42
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just
51:43
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, it is one of Guillermo del Toro's best films that he's ever done, even better than shape of water for me because there's something about connecting to the grandiose guy who crosses the lines and we see the results of his sit of what happens to him.
52:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And the the pathos of the monster comes through so powerfully as well throughout the whole movie.
52:05
[SPEAKER_02]: First of all, 100% agree about Jacob Alardy.
52:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, that's why I mean, it's like, the minute he shows up on screen, I was a 100% at, totally involved, the design of the creature is incredible.
52:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Incredible, the color control, the way it contrasts with when he's in that basement, the withholding of red and having it just be,
52:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Maya or with other places like all of that stuff is beautifully done.
52:32
[SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, the story of the creature, that kind of a story, is when I will always be drawn to, whether it's, you know, whether it's Frankenstein or whether it's data in Star Trek, the
52:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't fit into the world, and I'm trying to figure out how he fits, and it's funny too.
52:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I can remember reading the book, the whole sequence of the monster and the family and him hiding out and secretly trying to help them and then creating the relationship and then being driven away.
53:05
[SPEAKER_02]: That's all in the book, and that's always been the most moving and
53:09
[SPEAKER_02]: terribly painful part of the whole story, and I think there've been various kind of versions of this, whether it's Gene Hackman, Young Frankenstein, and things like that, this is by far the most successful.
53:24
[SPEAKER_02]: You become just so sympathetic with this monster in this case.
53:29
[SPEAKER_01]: You can't pray.
53:30
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't you can't bring them to June hack with me.
53:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I just relive it in my mind It's maybe one of my favorite scenes in the whole movie Just him sletting shattering his glass and setting one for yeah, it is so at the comedy stuff.
53:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, all that whole sequence It's just so Devastating to see what all of that because it's just a
53:48
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a person trying to care, but with kind of an infant's point of view because he's not mature enough yet mentally to understand all the things that he's doing there, but of course those are all learning experiences to what he is by the time we see him at the beginning of the movie then later on at the end when he shows up.
54:05
[SPEAKER_01]: at their ship fully, we see that those are all learning experiences, stuff with him and me a Gotham, the connections they have down underneath like that, the connections that they am, it's almost like one of these people that loves nature and loves animals in a way that she cares for, but then it becomes something much more in their connection, in their spiritual connection, which ends up leading to her death.
54:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of that that he carries with him that is his anger and was I mean it's very simple We also see Victor's beginning and so there's again similarity to sentimental value We have what happened to his mom in sentimental value affecting Gustav in the present and his relationship with his daughter And we see that Victor is driven to achieve these things because he had an asshole Dominary loveless father who whipped him if he didn't remember all the different
54:53
[SPEAKER_01]: hearts of the body and the different terms for all the medical stuff that's going on.
54:56
[SPEAKER_01]: So there is this sense of trying to prove himself to the world because his father destroyed his self esteem.
55:02
[SPEAKER_01]: So the arrogance and the cockiness is covering up this part of him that is has a self confidence issues about what he's doing.
55:11
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's his acty puts on until he sees that the trauma from his father is passed on to the creature and that is
55:19
[SPEAKER_01]: the resolution in a way by the end that I think is powerful from this movie.
55:23
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, dude, I love this film.
55:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I do.
55:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I love this.
55:26
[SPEAKER_01]: This is my kind of rolicking fucking monster movie that I thoroughly enjoy, you know.
55:31
[SPEAKER_02]: By the way, just on on Victor's father, I think Charles Dancy has carved out a niche for himself there.
55:39
[SPEAKER_02]: because nobody's better at being that particular kind of a dick, you know, yeah, I agree with all those points and I kind of feel like with this movie that it's I'm going to watch it again at some point and I'm sure I will appreciate more I just was so turned off by Victor
55:59
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, because it just continues like, what are you doing?
56:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Why are you doing it?
56:03
[SPEAKER_02]: This like, oh, oh, you know, and the other thing I think, by the way, I'm fascinated and maybe this will be a weird thing to bring up of, because it doesn't exist like in the original Frankenstein movie, this doesn't exist, but in the book and obviously in this movie is,
56:19
[SPEAKER_02]: the ship frozen in the ice, like this, it's, it's so bizarre that that's actually where all of the story of Frankenstein is told.
56:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And I find that just one of those fascinating settings, novelistic settings.
56:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And the way they handled it and handled way, way del Toro created the characters of the captain and what was going on in the ship.
56:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And that absolutely terrifying nature of this creature.
56:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, went, yeah, when he's coming at you, it is terrifying.
56:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, when he is moving the ship by himself, Jesus Mary mother of God, and then when he gets on to the bridge of the ship and he's like throwing them all around and yeah, you're right dude, it's a it's a foracity that's truly unsettling when you see it happening for sure.
57:03
[SPEAKER_01]: What about the cinematography here by Dan Loussen?
57:07
[SPEAKER_01]: He was nominated for the cinematography.
57:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you like the look of it and even the music by Alexander Displot who was a fantastic film composer working out?
57:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I think he also did shape of water.
57:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So what are your thoughts on the cinematography and the music?
57:20
[SPEAKER_02]: both great.
57:21
[SPEAKER_02]: And the cinematography and production design costume design make up here, they're all in lockstep.
57:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you can't get this great look.
57:30
[SPEAKER_02]: If the cinematographer doesn't understand every single color and every single paint treatment that is going on to the set.
57:38
[SPEAKER_02]: And the people making the costumes and building the sets can't make sure that they're going to look great unless they understand what the cinematographer is going to do.
57:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this is directing, you know, is like coordinating all those departments and creating this, this is without question in my mind, you know, year of many beautiful looking movies, this is the most beautiful of the films.
58:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, just like the every shot is a work of art, as far as I'm concerned.
58:05
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, I mean, it's nominated for 9 Academy Awards, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor for a Lordy Best Adaptive Screening for Del Toro, as we said, as I said, best cinematographer Dan Lousson, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Make-up and Ernest Dining, Best Emerges Score from Alexander Desplatt, and Best Sound.
58:21
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot here, Steve.
58:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So that tells you how much the Academy love the movie.
58:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you think it has a shot to win any of these nine categories?
58:34
[SPEAKER_02]: production design, costume, and makeup and hair.
58:37
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a strong bet.
58:39
[SPEAKER_02]: For costume design, I just find Ruthie Carter a tough person to beat ever, and center is so iconic, and it's costume look.
58:47
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think this has a really good chance for those.
58:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, you know, it's, it's so hard because you get into, well, best sound.
58:55
[SPEAKER_02]: How's it going to do going up against a movie like F1, you know, which is such a sound field movie.
59:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the score, but there are a bunch of other great scores.
59:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I think it's, I think they will come away with a couple of awards, but it's a tough, it's a tough year.
59:09
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I agree.
59:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I would say production design, cost of design, absolutely has a really good shot at winning both of those.
59:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe make up and hair styling, maybe.
59:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I think it could pull an upset and best supporting actor, which you could below already.
59:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, there's Trump and his great.
59:25
[SPEAKER_01]: I think Stone, people love Stone and Scar's guard.
59:27
[SPEAKER_01]: People love Benicio, but Jacob delivers like an incredible performance of the monster.
59:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that,
59:35
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll, could go a long way with the sympathy of the voters who enjoy this young actor coming up with delivers this really moving portrayal of the monster that affects you, is the heartbeat of the movie.
59:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, yeah, so like this may be enough to put him over.
59:52
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think there could be an upset.
59:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I think shot pen will still win, but there could be an upset if Jacob a Lordy takes this thing and would not be surprised to be does on us.
1:00:02
[SPEAKER_02]: It's very possible and I won't make any predictions, but don't don't count out Del Roy Lindo.
1:00:09
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yes, for centers, yes, 100%, I mean, this to me is the toughest actor category, I think, you know, like these are some root, you know, and I would be thrilled of Jacob already one, I would be totally not surprised if Sean Penn won and I would be over the moon thrilled of Delaware, Linda won.
1:00:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:00:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, though, that's our thoughts on Gamma Dautoro's Frankenstein.
1:00:33
[SPEAKER_01]: We hope you enjoy this conversation we had on Train Dreams, a sentiment of value, and Frankenstein will be back.
1:00:39
[SPEAKER_01]: With our last four film series, Speaking of center centers, we'll be in that mix, one bad left or another, the secret agent and Bogonia.
1:00:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are going to, that's how we're going to wrap up our series.
1:00:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't forget, we have our Oscars or sorry, our cinephiles awards there on Saturday, this Saturday at 3pm PT, the ballots are out for you all to vote on them.
1:01:02
[SPEAKER_01]: They're on the free tier of the Patreon.
1:01:04
[SPEAKER_01]: What else do we have to say about this, Steve, that I might have missed here.
1:01:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's patreon.com slash the cine files and you'd cost you nothing to vote.
1:01:11
[SPEAKER_02]: You just had to go join the free tier and you couldn't go to the ballot there.
1:01:15
[SPEAKER_02]: We would prefer, I mean, my feeling is with this is all the honor system.
1:01:19
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I am not voting on any category where I have not seen all the things in that category.
1:01:23
[SPEAKER_02]: And there are a couple of those this year.
1:01:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm still trying to get through some more films.
1:01:27
[SPEAKER_02]: So maybe I'll be able to vote a more, but that's our feeling, but that's totally up to you.
1:01:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And look, if you wanna go vote for who you think should win best picture, maybe you wanna tell your friends, maybe they won a vote, maybe you wanna create an Oscar campaign or a cinephiles award campaign on your own.
1:01:43
[SPEAKER_02]: No reason not to do it because this year, for the first time ever, we will be doing a cinephiles deep dive on the winner of our best picture award.
1:01:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Your chance to choose what movie we're going to do is by voting in the cinephiles award show.
1:02:00
[SPEAKER_02]: So check it out at patreon.com slash the cinephiles.
1:02:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And do we have an end day and time for them to, where the voting, we have to cut off the voting so we can calculate the numbers?
1:02:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I believe in order to have price waterhouse Cooper and all of them do the full tabulation and have it legally verified, we do need a full 24 hours in advance.
1:02:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So voting will close the day before.
1:02:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so Friday on the 13th, Booty will close or 13th, yeah.
1:02:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then we'll do our, we do our show, Saturday the 14th at 3 p.m. PT.
1:02:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And for my fellow Centerfile Steve Morris, I am John Roca here.
1:02:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for listening to this installment in our 2026 Best Picture Oscar series.
1:02:43
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll be back with the last four films.
1:02:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Down the road this week.