Frankenstein Review, Hedda, Christy, Peter Hujar’s Day

Netflix this weekend. It stars Oscar Isaac as the mad doctor and Jacob Elordi as the creature they told their tales. Now we have our.

atmosphere in the landscape and the setting for Frankenstein. Guess where Debbie and I along with listener Ben Page. Ben's a filmmaker and puppeteer, I met here in St Andrews. The three of us went to see Frankenstein Dundee. I'm not kidding you, so yeah, I had the local infusion in my blood while watching this movie.

I believe, Josh, we are supposed to say like, share, subscribe, I don't know if that actually works or not, but I said.

a big book guy. Apparently, maybe I could connect it to some of the previous movie adaptations I thought, until I visited the Frankenstein in popular culture and listen of films featuring Frankenstein's monster pages on Wikipedia and several hours of scrolling. Later decided I was way out of my depth.

My recollections of mel Brooks Young Frankenstein, the underwhelming Kenneth Branna's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and Tim Burton's Frankenweeny probably weren't going to cut it. Surely I could fall back on the tried and true o tourist angle. After all, what filmmaker has a more fervent relationship with monsters than Guillermo

Del Toro. Here again, I'm lacking some substance. Sure all seven of his features released during the film spotting era, from two thousand and six's Pans Labyrinth to his most recent twenty twenty two's Pinocchio, were reviewed on the show, and I was positive on all six that I considered. But fantasy has never been my specialty, and four outstanding Del Toro titles remain Cronos, Nmic Blade two and Crimson

Peak Before or I can call myself a completist. Even I wouldn't have to strain, though, to find the symmetry between Pinocchio and Frankenstein, or more accurately Geppetto and doctor Frankenstein and their respective creations. After the loss of his son, aggrieving wood Carver fashions a new boy who comes to life. I'm going back to Wikipedia here. Geppetto wakes up and is frightened by Pinocchio. He becomes fed up with Pinocchio's antics due to his newborn lack of self control. I

don't know, sound familiar, Josh. It wouldn't have challenged the brilliant intellect of doctor Frankenstein, played with mono maniacal brio by Oscar Isaac. But think of all the money Christoph Waltz's Henrik Harlander, the arms merchant who backs Frankenstein's grand experiment, could have saved had he simply gotten his hands on a wood sprite to conjure Jacob Elordi's creature to life.

Then I realized you're the one who put Dizzyis Pinocchio on your top ten Greatest Films of All Time list, both the twenty twelve and twenty twenty two editions, which led me to this lowercase e epiphany. Not only do you love Pinocchio, it turns out that you've spent some time considering del Toro's work and what his depiction of

monsters expresses about the human condition. And you've devoted even more time to thinking about the creature and how he functions as a monstrous mirror, reflecting an image of ourselves. Quote doing not what we know we should do, but what we know we should not end quote. Of course, I'm quoting from your book where you were referring specifically to James Wales's nineteen thirty one Frankenstein and other universal horror films of the era. So, mister, fear not enlighten

me watching this Frankenstein? Did you learn anything new about our capacity for sin? Or just bite what I understand to be some fairly significant departures from both Wales's pre code version and Shelley's text. Did del Toro's rendering offer plenty of arresting visual flare but little revelation?

it's right there in her subtitle essentially, and traditionally. I found Del Toro's version interesting on this front because it does take to my mind a little bit of a twist on this that I'm curious to get your opinion on. Traditionally, it is that doctor Frankenstein has chosen to play God, specifically by attempting to create life, right, So we're looking at the very beginning Genesis here, trying to usurp that power of actual life creation, and of course in every

version it goes disastrously wrong. Overall, I think this Frankenstein del Toros Frankenstein on this front. It's not necessarily the most interesting thing about the movie. I'll get to that later, but on this front, I think this Frankenstein is less about the creation of life that urge than it is the prevention of death. And that's maybe a subtle nuance, but I think a very compelling one for where we are in this day and age. Think about the early

demonstration scene where Victor before his medical colleagues. At this point, right, he hasn't really completely gone off the deep end, but he's giving a demonstration to them trying to animate. This is one of the best scenes in the movie. I think these body parts, it's not even a full figure yet, that he's kind of stitched together and animate that in front of them. During this I think this is where

he says it. He boldly suggests that quote God is inept, and the reasoning there is because he's allowed something like death in his creation. So he sees that as a flaw that he has the hubris to fix. We also have a new figure compared to what we get in the book. You mentioned him, Christoph Waltz as Harlan Durr. This is the rich patron who is supporting Victor's experiments.

We learn he's doing this and I don't think this counts as a real spoiler, but he's essentially doing this because he's dying and he wants get out style Jordan Peele's get out. He wants to have his intelligence placed in the creature, the monster's bodies. So this was really interesting to me. It was different from the book, again but timely because think about all the discussion of things like artificial intelligence and and the like. We're kind of

in this new era of transhumanism. We have these billionaires who think that they can push science into eternity for specifically themselves, not necessarily the rest of us, and so we do. We're living with these modern day Harlander figures, and so yeah, the capacity for us in here to me is not trying to create life, trying to cheat death rather than accept it as this condition for our

fallen humanity. I think Frankenstein del Toro's playing with that here, which is, you know, for a property that's been made countless times, to find even that little nuance to investigate and include. I think it's to the movie's credit.

leap the fantasy hurdle for you? You know that you've kind of said, is something like it? Maybe it takes something a little extra for you to really embrace a movie of this nature. Was Franksin able to do it?

I don't have a great answer on the capacity for sin question, and I do think you covered it well. You're right about the prevention of death element, and I can't compare that really to other versions that I don't remember very well or haven't seen, or the Shelley text.

was a little touch. I don't know if you caught it or if I'm reading too much into it, but he has an absolutely despicable father, and there is at least one scene where del Toro seems to really dwell on his father during one of their lessons, and I think there's maybe even two instances of it, and his father is handing him a glass of milk, and later that's that's mirrored by Harlander in two scenes. And the thing is Harlander at this point seems to be completely

on his side, a genuinely sympathetic benefactor. We don't know what you said about him until until later in the film. And while that's true, we also know that there has to be a catch, and he alludes to that early on when their deal is struck and the serving of the Milk to me was a little bit of foreshadowing that, like his father, this this relationship, this partnership, might be part of his undoing at some point.

the beginning of the movie. I remembered so little of the brand now that I was a little shocked to read on Wikipedia some of the plot details and that it apparently did have some of that North Pole Danish expedition in it and Frankenstein, doctor Frankenstein narrating his wild tale to Captain and Anderson. It had some of that conceit,

though not to the extent that this movie does. And watching it, I thought either del Toro made that up or he was being more faithful to the text than most adaptations have been, And it turns out the latter is mostly true, at least when it comes to that framing device and I can say that because I took nine of my film criticism students to see this movie at the Chicago Film Festival at the Music Box, and

the student who apparently drew the short straw and had to ride home in my vehicle sitting in the passenger seat, had read the book very recently, so had a lot of thoughts on the movie and had a lot of thoughts in relation to the book, and so was sharing those thoughts. But I also got to bounce a few questions off them, so I got I got a little

bit of a taste of that. But Josh, at the very beginning I was I was hooked in part again because of the unexpected for me expanse of the story and the expanse I think this is two shows in a row. Now we've used the phrase mees on sen. I think we've upped our cinophile quotient tier our pretentious quotient.

But that giant ship trapped in the ice del Toro, clearly establishing Captain Anderson's hubris that foreshadows Frankenstein's pushing his men past their breaking points labor to release the ship in service of his vision, his mission. The imagery of the creature in the distance on the horizon. There's a shot that is at dusk where you get the blue, yellow, orange, black hues and just this tiny figure of the creature on that horizon, and then that shot of the creature.

I'm thinking of the shot when it's just covered in ice and the ship is now in the distance and the creatures in the foreground and there's just enough of an angle. I think about the great advice that David Lynch's John Ford gives the young Spielberg in the fable mids about how you have to have the horizon somewhere other than in the middle right, and it's just enough of an angle that it gives that frame a real

dynamism and the color. In the week since I screened this at the Chicago Film Festival, I did see a social media video where del Toro goes into detail on how he color coded. As you would expect, he color coded all the sections of the film and all the characters of the film. Of course, that provided depth that I didn't catch on the first viewing, but the broad strokes of those color choices were clear and so striking

on that first viewing. From how green is used and matched to Frankenstein at certain points in places read to me a Goths character as the mother and blue to her Elizabeth, and in the Arctic those icy white blue and gold hues. I found it so enveloping and immersive. And I'll go to the red just for a second. Josh, there's another shot that is stuck with me so clearly from the film, when his mother dies, and even just the production design of the casket, the way the white

almost ivory looking. It looks like a robe folded in on her and you only see the outline almost of her face and the red around her, almost like it's a frozen pool of blood. And there are men standing around her, four of them, and with their feet and the black robes. It it is almost as if it from a composition standpoint, it makes it looks like a swirl. It looks kaleidoscopic, and it also draws your eyes downward

in the frame. It's an overhead shot. But it also almost like the Kubrick technique that I'm forgetting the name of, when it when it draws your your eye, you know, to the end of the frame, except it's doing it in a vertical way instead of instead of in a in a in a in a way across the the shot. It's filled with with frames like that, and exactly like the captain before Frankenstein, I sat there before the screen, just waiting to receive del Toro's story.

things I'll remember most about this Frankenstein. And yeah, we could probably go on and on about the costuming and the production design, and especially Mia Goth's character being you know, interested in insects, particularly butterflies, and every dress she wears mimics the unfurling of a butterfly's wings in some way, or even a little head piece she has that curves around her face. It's just incredible on that artistic esthetic level.

Now I'm sensing that you're saying all that but to set up an enormous butt and maybe maybe we'll just go there and rather than me jump in with something different that that I really liked about the movie.

are we going to get to the Arctic? What series of circumstances will justify this journey emotionally, psychologically but also physically maneuvering these characters from from Europe to the edge of the world in the midi eighteen hundreds. I was in and I stayed in for a good portion of the movie. But I think I can pinpoint the exact moment where del Toro lost me, and I mean the

narrative lost me. But I do think we may need to get into spoilers to really to really make my point, so I don't necessarily want to go there yet, but there there was suffice it to say there was a point where del Toro's narrative lost me, and it felt like, I guess the way I could sum it up, Josh

is it. It felt like even though, of course the movie is not made or I doubt the movie was made in it was not shot in the order in which the narrative unfolds, so it's not as if they put all their effort into the beginning of the film, though of course it was put together. However it was put together even that was probably not put together in the order in which the narrative unfolds. It was probably

put together in pieces. It felt to me like so much care and effort and time was devoted to that opening sequence which I loved, to the flashback to the past which I loved, the one we're referring to with mi A Goth as the mother, the backstory of that character, to those scenes with Oscar Isaac as the younger doctor with all of his brashness and he's trying to upend the scientific community, and and even the part where he is.

He's really trying to create this creature, and the back end felt so rushed to me that it undid a lot of what I thought the front end was setting up.

and so forth. But I love that producer Sam's newsletter, which is out by now to Film Spotting family members I just saw today myself, is touching on this idea of the gothic and gothic films connected to Gothic literature. He's talking about this in the newsletter in terms of Del Toro's output and actually Tim Burton's output, and asking you know, readers to choose between the two. If you're not a Film Spotting Family member, by the way, you're

missing out on these newsletters. So you should really join Filmspottingfamily dot com. That's how you can get this from Sam every week. So I loved that he took this tack because here's what I appreciated about Del Toro's Frankenstein, Adam, And we're going to go into a little bit of literature here, in literary history. But you are a book guy, so I think you'll enjoy this, and I think you'll

have you'll have some thoughts on it. What the movie clarified for me in terms of del Toro, who is often and rightly thought of as a Gothic filmmaker, is this is the instance where something else, another impulse in his filmography, was allowed to flower into full bloom. And that is Romanticism, the literary attrition tradition of Romanticism, which is,

you know, somewhat parallel to the Gothic tradition. And of course that makes sense it would happen here because when you look at how Shelley's novel was born, it was born partly out of her time with two Romantic poets, Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. And so this is a novel that is absolutely Gothic, but swimming in those waters and Del Toro is a filmmaker who's absolutely gothic but has been swimming in romantic waters, I think probably throughout

his career. But the first instance I can think of we really saw this was the Shape of Water, where you have something that is gothic and look but reaching for something more sublime, for something more transcendent, which is what would be more ascribed to the Romantics. Right. And here I'm watching Frankenstein and realizing I should have realized this the instance it was announced that he was doing Frankenstein.

He has pushed Shelley's novel, to my mind, even further into the romantic because he's the one you pointed this out in your setup. He's the one who looks at monsters as lovely creatures. Right. So this has gloomy settings, it has macab dismemberments, it has this gothic stuff, but it has in its creature, it has a heart that yearns for an ecstatic life. And he ends this film with a quote from Byron about a broken heart that

will quote brokenly live on. And so watching this movie really actually thinking about it more afterwards, because it's such

a sumptuous aesthetic movie. I didn't have a lot of these thematic considerations while I was experiencing it, but it was more thinking about it afterwards that it is this flowering of the romantic in his work, and the here's maybe where we can move towards performances a little bit more, because I think it's all rooted in Jacob Elordi's performance as the Creature, which is this romantic expression of this figure.

I thought he was incredible in what is maybe one of cinema's hardest roles to pull off, just because it's so unbelievable, it can so easily be silly. There's a reason we have spoofs of it. And man, I was just kind of enraptured with what a LORDI did with this. Following del Torell's lead, I think towards that romantic direction.

Yet here I was walking out of the theater, and here I am now proclaiming that the best performance in this film by far as a Lordi's as the creature.

He he has his own active creation, he has to create most just through movement, this being that is both recognizably human and unlike any human we've ever seen. I hate to evaluate acting so crudely, but it's so easy. I think this is what you're getting at too. It's so easy to imagine a performer trying to play the creature just like a very overgrown child or Bambi on ice, those long, thin legs barely wobbling along. And a Lord he conveys all the necessary physical immaturity, but also carries

such a spiritual weight on those spinley legs. I was surprised by the relative fluidity of his movement, whereas it would have been more obvious to play it totally jagged and choppy. Yeah, that element is still there, but the performance isn't overwhelmed by it. And of course the longing behind his eyes, his gentleness, You absolutely understand why Elizabeth would be drawn to him, separating out any kind of romantic attacher. You understand why she is drawn to him.

But also when he needs to let loose as the monster a lord, he also summons the rage very effectively as well. And so this praise for a LORDI I agree. I think it's the strength of the film, along with a lot of what del Toro is doing visually. And this disappointment with Isaac, or disappointment with how Isaac is directed maybe or conceived with just a bit too much Gusto gets it another aspect of what frustrated me. And you've said it, but I'm gonna I'm gonna quote you again.

In your book you said, if anything about the thirty one version, you said, if anything, my sympathies lie with the poor creature. Given the legendary Boris Karloff's dignified performance, all sad eyes and limp limbs, I'm never really afraid of Karloff's lost, lurching orphan. Rather it's doctor Frankenstein himself, who survives the film, who serves as a haunting reminder of my own tendency to think that I can do God one better. Del Toro clearly reads the Frankenstein story

the same way you read that, which isn't surprising. His work has always revealed that humans are the real monsters, but his affection for this monster is so overwhelming that it softens the edges of his vision, simplifying the complex, volatile dynamic between creator and creation that should drive the film's emotional and dramatic core. I think that's where it's

undone a little bit. Not only am I not sure we need a Frankenstein, A movie Frankenstein where the creature actually verbalizes to us, verbalizes to Frankenstein, and by extension us, you're the monster. If and when he does say it, and he does here, that needs to hit us as viewers as as hard as it hits or should hit Frankenstein, or at minimum, it has to intensify some existing strong tension.

And here Frankenstein, by this point, certainly, but even before, is so obviously the monster whose moral compromises have ceased being compromises that we as audience members, or speaking for myself anyway, as an audience member, has been conflicted about the creature is just a little bit too angelic, Frankenstein is too demonic. There's not enough blurring of those extremes to make it as compelling as I think it needs to be. Definitely not enough, and this helps get it

my first point. Definitely not enough to launch the final act and the emotional resolution between the two that del Toro tries to offer us.

to him. So I can see that now that would not have worked with what I think del Toro is doing here in terms of moving this towards the romantic necessarily, So personally it doesn't bother me. The Oscar Isaac performance is a curiosity. It's entertaining. He's I don't understand the choice, though, of making him this cocky heart throb. I mean half of his experiments are done shirtless, which you know, fine,

no complaints there, But in terms of the envisioning of this character, I'm trying to understand what they are going for. I found the relation to be a little more fruitful the relationship between Creature and Frankenstein, however, because there is a tenderness that is there from the very beginning, and the push and pull for me is watching Victor Frankenstein follow that instinct and then follow his instinct to move away from the Creature and care for him in any way.

There's a line in this where I believe he says something like I never thought about what would happen after creation. And maybe that's the key to this vision of Frankenstein, because that is why he is the playboy. The playboy doesn't think about being the dad. He just thinks about, you know, what it takes to become a dad that act.

And similarly, this Victor franken Stein is only thinking about the consummation the experiment and not necessarily having to wake up with an infant in the middle of the night. So I think there's some of that that's going on I will defend though the third act, and again, maybe this will move us into spoilers, because there are some exchanges there between Victor and the creature that I found

quite moving. But I agree with you they're not necessarily entirely set up by what we've gotten before in a previous section.

I wanted to say, Josh that where I certainly had sympathy for Victor, and where I also was really provoked by the film in a way I didn't expect to be, is in those first moments after this creation comes to life that line that you said, but even without the line Frankenstein appearing at the foot of his bed and him having to process that range of emotions from fear to elation slash pride to them Now what now, Tom

walking him downstairs, chaining him up? All that work. Think about all that work, the emotional, intellectual, financial, the investment, your life's work, essentially, and really you can think about it as your life's work from the moment you've been born, all the training, your mother's passing, right, all of it's led to this. All of it's led to you creating this and you do it?

was an ob nurse. I I couldn't. I couldn't have felt more comfortable because I couldn't have had a wife who was more comfortable and prepared to take care of a baby.

that's an element that is there. It's certainly there for the interpretation, and it was something that the movie made me think about.

Elizabeth describe things? You know, she talks about God's design when she starts to see some of Victor's early experiments, or when she's talking about insects, right, And I think what she shares with the creature is a capacity for wonder. And this is what Victor doesn't have, because it's partly why he lets go of the rope once the creature is is born, is that's the moment for wonder to

look and stand in awe at this bean. But he's just more invested in creating it, right, whereas Elizabeth shares the sensibility of well, the sensibility of We see the

creature in that wonderfully designed basement. I guess it's a morgue, but it's also like a butcher shop essentially, where he's chained, and it has this gutter running down the middle of the floor, mostly for blood, the blood to run out of the castle, but occasionally water will stream through it, and the creature has this instinct to drop a leaf into the flow of water and be delighted by its path. That's what he shares with Elizabeth, the fact that they

take joy and delight in such moments. These are romantic moments. So I think her character, who is you know not in the novel kind of a variation of a very minor figure in the novel. I think her character is is key as both the foil to Victor and the partner in that way to the creature. So yeah, I think I think Goth is instrumental and very.

And it's not like you're gonna agree with me anyway on this point, because it sounds like you're all in on this movie as a winner for you.

half star from you, though though actually I'm probably not because arguing with you is not the way to get the half star. It's if my cap up to this point, you didn't make it, it's hopeless.

I just know that on screen I felt like it was it was too simple, and there wasn't enough of that push pull for me to really feel like it it delivered in a in a complicated way. Well, those two things collide at the exact moment where the creature tells Frankenstein, you're the monster, which follows This is a point of departure I understand from the book where it's

doctor Frankenstein who kills Elizabeth and blames the monster. But in the in the book, isn't it the creature who actually does kill her out of an act of vengeance because he's mad.

to my point. I only feel complete allegiance to the creature, and I have no investment in what's driving Frankenstein's pursuit, and just purely from a narrative standpoint, my lack of investment and those creeping, that creeping suspension of disbelief, those issues they stem from how briskly the movie needs to get us to the Arctic. And what I felt, Josh, I felt like it was rushing to that resolution after

all that time. I know, I said this, but after all that time, that great time has spent the patience setting up the story within a story, framing all the Danish men, the creature kills, all the time we spend back in the past young Victor with his mother and the trannical father.

sucked all the narrative energy from me. The more the film went on, I didn't buy any of the chase. I didn't buy any of the chase or how it tried to solve it in the end.

held up its reputation, and rightly so. I think it's brilliant for those things. But in terms of the plotting you're talking about and the narrative makes it one of the most difficult properties to adapt. And I don't know if that's why it's continually adapted someone's waiting to crack it, or if it's because my instinct is it's more that vision is so alluring, right, the ideas she had, the way she described it, the passion which with which she

gave the voices to her characters, all of that is to the novel's credit, but in terms of this structure and the narrative it has, it has always held me up when I revisit the novel and given me pause.

So I don't think you're entirely wrong to react to the film adaptation in this way, but I did have a different experience with that emotional investment, And for me, I did not mind so much that I wasn't as invested in Victor Frankenstein, because this movie had gotten me so invested in the creature, and so the question for me was less about Frankenstein's end and how the creature was going to respond to this life that had been given to him, what he was, the choices he was

going to make, And in that sense, I found the ending quite powerful. And there is a sense we're doing spoilers here. The line for me was not so much that you or the monster, but again, a different choice del Toro makes Victor I forgive you. I mean, this is something that's bringing us in a totally new direction, as is the choice for the creature to not leave the scene as he does in the book and set

himself on fire. If my memory or at least say he's going to do that, I think about My memory is a little fuzzy on that, but we essentially are to understand that, you know, he is no more at the end here, what does he do? He pushes the boat out of the ice, saves the remaining men's lives, and the last thing he does, Adham, is a romantic gesture. He looks up to the warmth of the sun. And I guess that is where I found my emotion was in that exce experience, that choice of the creature, that

romantic expression. It's not a defense of how they handle Victor Frankenstein necessarily. I can still see why that might have left you wanting. But where I was and where my my own heart lay with this creature's experience, it was, Yeah, it was pretty enrapturing, actually, yeah.

a questionnaire that new members can fill out if they choose, and Clara did that, so we're going to share a little bit of that here. She wrote in saying I needed something to keep me going through the endless treadmill slogs at the gym, so I went on a quest to find the Ultimate film podcast. After a deep dive online, your show kept popping up like some kind of podcast, Holy Grail, figured why not give it a shot. Turns out that was probably one of the best decisions I

made in a while. I've been hooked since episode six eighty one Lord of the Rings fifteenth Anniversary slash Top five Lord of the Ring scenes the real kicker finding out Adam hadn't seen the last two movies. I mean, what I had to see, what it was like to experience the epicness of LOTR through the fresh eyes of someone seeing them for the first time.

doing what we're doing. Your family membership comes with perks like those bonus shows, but also you get to listen early in ad free and when we say listen early, I mean we don't want to disrupt your routine if you're a Friday morning person or maybe a Monday morning person. But Sam and Joe, with some help from Joe, of course, Sam's been knocking these shows out sometimes like Thursday morning, we're dropping them in your feed.

And we will remind you that another way you can help a show like ours, which, yes, we've been around a long time, but we are still an independently produced show. We depend on your support via things like membership, but also spreading the word, and you can do that by taking a minute to give us a review or rating us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It does help us reach new listeners.

role Tessa Thompson. Heada is Dacosta's adaptation of Heada Gabbler, the eighteen ninety one play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Gibson about a bored newlywed whose former lover is competing with her new husband for a prize academic position. DaCosta updates the setting to nineteen fifties England and makes the former lover a woman played by the great German actress Nina Hass, who you may know from Tar and Christian Petsul's Phoenix. I said you were a fan of Little Woods and

a relative fan of those other two films. If I'm not mistaken, you can tell me if I am. I look this up on your website and Josh, I saw the exact same star rating for all three films, three stars.

have still have Little Woods at the top. The performances there are just so good, and the imagery that DaCosta gives us in a familiar Indie narrative, I would say, are incredibly strong. Had yeah, another good one, Another good one from Nia DaCosta. Now you described already the way she scrambles, you know, race, gender, and sexuality. Very interesting, a lot of implications to that. But what I found most compelling about her take on this Adam and I

have not seen a production of this play. Am not that familiar with the source material, so I don't know if this is in there at all, But Tessa Thompson's head to here is almost demon possessed in her depiction, if not downright demonic. Now we know that da Costa has delved in horror with her Candy Man remake, right, so maybe this shouldn't be shocking. But I noticed early on that the soundtrack has these drums that are almost

like sacrificial type drums. There's this hissing or sign that that's very much used in horror films, These insinuating size, I would say, And then how does manipulations here of everyone around her? They're framed like a tempter so much. She's promising sexual favors at one point, another point, she's you know, encouraging someone to drink deeply from bourbon even

though she knows it's going to be disastrous. There is an image, a great DaCosta image of a gun how offers to a character, and we see it in this this close up of their hands, the gun passing hands before a roaring fireplace. So all of this is just you know, adding to this idea of Heda as this almost possessed figure in the way she's manipulating people. Now, Thompson's performance, I'm sure it's going to get a ton of praise, maybe be considered one of the best of

the year. I think she's good here. I think it's pretty focused on the deliciousness of this evil and playing up that part you mentioned Nina Haas. That's the performance in this film for me, as in part of the gender swapping. As you said, this rival professor to head his husband heada former lover man. She arrives at the party at Heada's party like this goddess, and it's part of a musical moment. I'm not going to detail because it might be for our year end rap party where

we do music moments of the year. It might be one of those. For me, but she arrives at the party with this air and then head of chips away at it as the night goes on, And part of the I guess evil deliciousness of this movie is watching

that fight between them, the back and forth. So I'm curious now that I've sat with this had my impressions, to see what others think, especially those more familiar with both the Ibsen play and those who maybe have more nuanced thoughts about the race and sexuality and gender mixing that's going on here, Because yeah, I'm sure there's a lot to dig into there as well, So how do

yeah check it out? I think Tessa Thompson will probably be coming up, maybe not necessarily on my list the best performances of the year, but I bet a good number of other folks will have her.

very much thinking about female boxers on screens. And one of the things we talked about is The Way, And there's a lot that's been written about this, but we've talked about how well that film portends to be a fairly transgressive portrayal of a woman on screen because it's about a female boxer and it puts her at the forefront. But I don't think this is necessarily controversial for anyone

who's seen the movie. You can get into the finer details about how this is the case, and there's a lot to dig into, but it's really the Clint Eastwood characters movie, and that undoes a lot of the potential transgressiveness of.

film is detailing. It's about a character who is dominated by her husband, and not only is Sweeney's performance very forcible, but Ben Foster as Jim is the type of character and he gives that type of performance the subtlety it needs, where the first time he says to her, just in the kitchen of their apartment at this point, before she's really hit the big time and made any money, when he says to her, if you leave me, I'll kill you.

He has enough sense as a performer and Mishad has enough subtlety as a director not to make that this grotesque moment, not to underline it dramatically, because that's just another moment to that character. That's as matter of fact

as him saying I'm gonna go wash the car. And that's how the movie treats it, and it becomes something that's a refrain that you know, it's something he says to her hundreds of times over the course of their lives the next decade or two decades that they spend together, and we do hear him say it a few more times, and it becomes more pointed and more violent, but you understand that even though her character might be wrapped up

in his character. That's the essence of this film, And like Christie herself, the movie's redemption comes in the second half, when the boxer's focus turns to reclaiming her identity rather than winning in the ring.

this real life character, Christy, but Christy. It turns out, as the movie Portrayser was always playing a character. She was playing this character wearing pink. She was playing this hetero normative character that she never was. She was portraying the character that America needed her to be, her husband needed her to be, demanded her to be, that her mother demanded her to be.

movie worthwhile for me. And I'll say about David Nishad, some of us seeing his name attached to it, not that he's a director who I necessarily have seen all of his films and thought he's this tremendous oteur. But I remember quite liking Animal Kingdom, his debut film, and thinking why is he doing this sports biopic movie. This doesn't seem like the kind of movie that he would do.

And then of course, as I am, especially watching the second half of the film, I'm thinking, this is the guy who made Animal Kingdom, This is the guy who made a film about families and family violence and treating family violence as if it's a matter of fact and an everyday occurrence, and also portrayed a mother character, Jackie Weaver in that movie, Yeah, who will do anything she

has to do to protect her family. In this movie, Merrit Weaver plays Christie's mom, and she's a very different character. I don't think she's as interesting a character or giving his interesting a performance necessarily, but in her mind, she's doing everything she has to do to protect her family, the pain that she's inflicting on Christy is protecting her and protecting her as well and her family projecting the

image that she believes she has to project. So for me, there was a very clear through line from Animal Kingdom and some of Mishad's other work through Christy. So ultimately, I do think Christy is worth seeing, especially as well because you know, Sweeney's gonna come up in discussion of best performances of the year, and I understand, I understand why. I don't know that she's going to necessarily make the cut for me, but it is a.

to choose the second best. Just a burning question. Everyone needed to know the answer to what is the second best Robert Zemeckis movie?

haven't voted yet, and if you haven't left a comment yet, you can do that at film spotting dot net. And if you would like to see what upcoming shows we have planned, you can go to film spotting dot net slash episodes.

spotting meetup. I did one back in twenty seventeen and I don't know we probably should never do this, Adam. I don't want to offend any of the meetups we've had over the years. But if I were to make a top five meetups, we've been doing this long enough now London twenty seventeen, London would be on it. That was such a blast, a great got a little crazy. Well, yeah,

I would not repeat it. I would not repeat it at this age because we started at the BFI, you know, very respectable, nice table, everyone around the table talking somehow, I mean, memory is hazy. At this point we ended up at I believe it was a Puerto Rican bar not too far away restaurant slash bar. Continued the conversation there and somehow, somehow, I blame this on listeners, we ended up at disco far into the night on the other side of the city. Irresponsible parents Debbie and I

had the kids back in the airbnb alone. We did not plan to be out that late. Needless to say, it was a lot of fun. So yeah, going back to London, not to recreate that, to be much more responsible, but still to hang out with film spotting listeners. Here's the date I do have that now I can give to everyone. It's going to be Thursday, December eleven. Location is still to be determined. I do know earlier that

day I'll be checking out. We got our tickets the Wes Anderson exhibit at the Design Museum, which I think is just opening here in the UK, So I'm going to be checking that out earlier, and then that night Thursday, December eleven, hanging out with Film Spotting listeners stay tuned for those location details. Will probably send them out via the newsletter to Film Spotting family members will put in the show notes for everyone. And yeah, I'll let you know as soon as that is nailed down.

we announce the winner. You just have to tell us your favorite Kelly Reiker character from any of Kelly Rye movies, your favorite Kelly Reicher character. We've gotten some good responses, Josh so far, like Kurt will Oldham and Old Joy, Lily Gladstone, the Rancher in Certain Women, King Lou, We love King Lou from Yeah Kirst Caw as well. All you gotta do send that email feedback at film spotting dot Net.

with Redford's real life ambivalence about celebrity. Or Redford's willingness to share the spotlight with co stars versus Ferrell and McCullough constantly trying to cut one another out of the scoop. I'm really reaching. This movie is a favorite in our home. Everybody loves Dick like Looney Tunes. Educating me on movies from Hollywood's golden age. Dick is how our teenager understands Watergate.

Thanks for such a fantastic tribute to Redford, and congratulations on twenty years of excellence. Neither of you smell like cabbage writing into Salve Adam's wounded ego. Seriously, these segments give me a lot of joy, and I don't write in more often only because I assume that everyone's saying that already, and I've assumed that the hat's been more full than advertised.

The scene was from nineteen ninety nine. It's hilarious, Dick. The most obvious tie in is it's a parody of all the President's Men, which was discussed endlessly. The Robert Redford Memorial is one of Redford's best movies, not named Three Days of the Condor possible secondary connections stretching here. Redford famously played death in an episode of the original Twilight Zone, and a number of actors from Dick, Terry Gar, Harry Shear, and Dan Hadea appeared in the nineteen eighties

Twilight Zone reboot. Don't remember this. Don't worry. No one else does either. Michael could be making all of this up as far as I know.

did not act. There is this though. In twenty fourteen, Redford and Ferrell collaborated on a humorous video as a fundraiser for the Colorado River Project.

plus year old movie they'd never seen. Likewise, I felt that folks who lived through the Vietnam era probably weren't lining up for what the radio box seems to promise is a teen comedy. It felt like I, a high school journalism teacher who screened all the presidents Men twice a year for my interro students, was the sweet spot

for this movie's demographic. Not only did I catch every nod to all the President's men, they knew I'd go bananas every time another Kids in the Hall or snl alum would show up, not to mention inga from young Frankenstein and Nick Tortully. I can't imagine there are many people who've seen Dick as many times as I have, and the number of people who've seen all the President's Men and Dick as many times as I have got

to be just one. I know the MESCA Theater answer probably twenty five percent of the time, but I usually don't email you. This felt like a requirement to take the time to submit, even if it meant missing the field trip lunch to McDonald's to do it. This is a reference to the movie Dick, a scene which people who've only seen it seven times or so may not remember. Wow.

pretty much blind. We do know there's one, let's just say, key performance to this scene, and because you've been able to watch it, it falls to you to carry the scene. I'm going to do my best in the secondary performance.

The deadline is Monday, November seventeenth. We will select the winner randomly from all the correct entries and announce it in a couple of weeks.

cast in a movie. So I'm assuming they make this worth watching. Is there more to this than something that's centrally focused on the actors.

the film. It is Wishaw, though, who carries the movie in terms of the dialogue and has such an interesting challenge because yes, it was audiotape conversations, but my understanding is that the audio tapes never actually surfaced. What was found were just transcripts of these conversations. So Wishaw and

Sacks are recreating conversations just based on words on a page. So the level of naturalism that Wishaw has to convey is greater than your typical script, and he does it with such casual acuity.

their everyday routine is like. And when they're pitching those podcasts, I or when students are pitching, I always suggest to them that they have to know what their big question is. What's the underlying question that you're asking every guest. Imagine that you're doing this show for the next ten years, You're doing two hundred episodes, whatever it is every guest

you'll ever have on the show. Whether you actually ever verbalize this question or not, it's the inexhaustible question that justifies your podcast.

entries without any introspection. It was like I woke up at six am, had breakfast, went to practice, I had class at eight thirty and so on, and that these athletes had lunch at Chipotle was just never compelling to me as a listener and rosen Krantz wants her subjects to do exactly that, just reflect on, really just chronicle first, chronicle what they did that day and see where it takes them. So right away, as the movie's beginning and I begin to see that, I'm thinking, why, what's the

big question? What's the big question? Rosen Krantz wants to investigate? And by extension, then what is Sax investigating? Will one

or more big questions emerge? And at one point the characters do Josh address it themselves When Hujar acknowledges that he shocked at how much he has talked about just the first few hours of his day since he woke up, he realizes that until he was actually forced to document it, he kind of just assumed that what he did every day was really innocuous and disposable, that nothing really happened. And he says, isn't that interesting? And she says it

really is. He says, because as soon as I started, it's like a whole novel already, and she says, that's why I'm doing it. So it's almost like the aphorism, the unexamined life is not worth living. But what the movie proposes is it's more like life is worthy when examined. Is how I would sort of turn it around. And other interesting insights emerge. He talks about being disappointed with pictures he had taken that day of Alan Ginsberg for

The New York Times. It's an assignment, a photoshoot, when he looked at them, and there's this meta layer because he discusses how that matches what the film is doing right where he talks about how you only see qualities in the photos, positive and negative. When the photo's actually printed and you're studying it, you see things then that you weren't aware of when you actually staged it and

took the shot. And so then I started thinking about Rosenkrantz, and I started thinking about the way she's looking at him, and the way that she adores him, it seems, and the precision almost with which she's listening to him, and she does kind of become an equal to Ujar in terms of the way she fills the space and the way Sas has her fill the space even though she's not filling it with words, and the way sometimes there's a real tenderness between them and they will show affection

for each other and they'll talk sometimes laying on a bed and have real intimacy with each other. And like with his pictures, he says at one point that he thinks women take better pictures than men do. And so then I'm thinking, is she getting better audio from him because she's a woman, or is it because they're already so comfortable with each other, or is it or is it both? So what you realize or what I realized any way watching it is that Peter Hujar's day doesn't ask big questions.

costume will change within a conversation. Not only will they change positions, but her costume will change, her hair might change. The composition will go from something very naturalistic to something that is more artistically framed. The opening and the closing of the film draw attention to the mechanism of filming, like at the beginning, wish if I remember correctly, it's getting into an elevator. I think you see the sticks as if you know that filming on this project has begun.

So it's asking these questions like how do we process and create meaning out of our lives? How do we use art to create meaning? How do we use cameras? How do we use frames? That's the intersection of what Sax is doing and what Hujar was doing and what rosen Krantz was doing. So watching the film, I was left thinking about what I was Also here's the questions, right, I was thinking about what I tell my students, and either they're not Linda Rosenkrantz, or their interviewees aren't Peter Hujar,

or athletes aren't as interesting as artists. Or maybe I'm just wrong and I should let my students engage in the process more often.

film Film Spotting is independently produced and listener supported. You can support the show by joining the film Spotting Family at filmspottingfamily dot com. That way, you can listen early and ad free. You'll also get a weekly newsletter, monthly bonus episodes, and access to the entire show archive. For show t shirts and other merch go to film spotting dot net slash shop.

and Pan's Labyrinth one forty five. Hell Boy two is funny because I had written my entire intro two or three days ago, and then I just saw this document the Sam put together with these notes in it earlier today, and I had to go and rewrite part of my intro because I thought I had five blind spots. I was sure I had five blind spots, and that Hellboy two had not been reviewed on the show. They're only six movies that had been reviewed on the show. And then I did a search of my Google files and

guess what, I've seen hell Boy Too. We reviewed hell Boy too. I liked hell Boy Too. Sometimes you learn new things from your own show.

and Jafar Panahi's It Was Only an Accident. But Die My Love is also on the dockets, so hopefully four more movies to hear us discuss.