Casey on Beau Travail

so I just you got to tell people that these days. Yeah, it's it's really important. And I'm I'm glad you texted man because I really missed doing these, so I'm I'm happy to be back. Yeah. And we had a nice little exchange via text, and then you said, hey, let's do a let's do how would you pronounce this in real French? Oh? Well, I could just say bo boau travi or good work, although it's pretty much known by the fringe title, even though the it's a pretty straightforward

English translation. Um, usually the French title is what gets used. Well, let me give a brief set up, because this is a movie that undoubtedly has uh not been seen by a lot of the listeners I view are true cinephile, you probably know about this movie named consistently as one of the best movies of the nineteen nineties, even there at the tail end in nine when it was released.

And it is a film about it's not a movie, Casey can't be calling this a movie, right, No, it's a film about some French were in legionnaires who are doing a lot of training and things. Well, that's even into the weeds. It is about a man, a sergeant in the Foreign Legion who uh and we'll talk about what what all is going on here, but ends up having an issue with one of his subordinates. And that's kind of the plot line. Yeah, the plot is is

pretty pretty threadbare. I would say this is the script. Yeah, oh yeah, the this is this is diving right into the weeds. But um Claire Denny often works with this co writer Jean Paul Fourgeau and um In. In the case of this film, they were adapting a Herman Melville novel that that was finished posthumously, like he wasn't done with it when he died. Billy Bud that's right, And he had left apparently extensive notes and and different revisions

that he kind of wanted to work on. Um, but it was kind of left to like his widow and then various scholars and biographers and so on to kind of like sort it all out. Um. But it's it's pretty well acknowledged now. It's like one of his best works. That's kind of the literary consensus from what I understand. Um. And yeah, so they're adapting this this Herman Melville uh work. Um. But the the form that the adaptation took um with

her co writer. Her co writer basically just wrote the diaries that we see being written in the film, and those worked as what what Clara Den he calls a sort of libretto. It's like it's the voiceover that that sits over the top of everything. But he wasn't necessarily writing, like interior day this thing happens, so it leaves a lot of space for the vehicles kind of float on top of the images and and things to kind of

proceed in this kind of dreamy way. Yeah. I mean that voiceover is the only thing that really gives you any insight into what actually is going on in the movie. Um, it's it's a damn near silent film. I mean would say of this movie is dialogue free, beautifully shot. I know Claire Den he worked with. It's an interesting look at masculinity in the male just the I guess, just masculinity, that's the easiest way to say it. But it was made by a female filmmaker and a female editor and

a female cinematographer, which is really interesting. And also at a time in a year where movies like Fight Club and American Beauty came out that all sort of looked at a similar thing through really vastly different lenses. That's

a really interesting parallel. Yeah, I mean you think about the way that Fight Club goes kind of in the same direction, although a completely different way, but in terms of like the body to body contact that happens there when they're fighting, and the way that the fighting is almost a pretext for this kind of male intimacy that

they're missing. Um yeah, the sense of belonging to a family. Um, the sense of like claiming or reclaiming their masculinity because they feel very emasculated by modernity and like just like their corporate you know, uh, office jobs and so on um and the same thing that we see in this film too, when they're doing those various kind of sort of military exercises, sort of choreographed dances, but especially the one where they're where they're bare chested and there and

they're they're lunging into each other and grappling each other and hugging and so yeah, it's a it's a hug, it's an embrace, but at the same time, there's like an aggressive pretext to it as well. But it really is like this this um, this really really interesting mix of of all these different layers happening at one time. It. Uh that sort of reminds me of this uh one of the great did you ever watch Doctor Cats? Oh? Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen like every episode, but I definitely have

seen Dr Cats. One of the funny great jokes of Doctor Cats was when someone was talking about the um when men hug each other, when straight men hug each other, and they the big slap on the back, and he's like, because I'm hugging, hugging you, but I'm also hitting you, that's right. Yeah, Like you've got to make a little bit of aggression in there. Yeah, it is interesting because you know, my gay male friends. When we hug, there's

no slapping. It is a embrace, a loving embrace, And I had to not get used to it in a sense that it weirded me out anyway, because I certainly didn't care, but it was just I was raised to be like, you hug another guy and you give him a firm pat on the back, and I'm like, no, not not your gay friends. They just give you a nice snuggle. Yeah, I mean, and sometimes you hug kind of hard. It's like shaking somebody's hand and you grip

it really tight. You know, if you have like a loose script that's sort of you know, not with your gay friends, but loving tender hug. That's kind of wonderful. That's really interesting. Yeah, yeah, that's very very true, and that that's sort of um, I guess you could say homeorotic subtext is is definitely part of the book as well. Um, it's definitely part of the movie. Yeah, it's very much part of the movie. Um, maybe even more part of the book, just because the book maybe has even more

of an internal view of um. What in In the book, his name is high Art. In the film, he's uh Galu uh that's the Denny Denny levant character, the sort of master at arms. Um. His his sort of the blend that he feels of like jealousy and envy and desire and and he's threatened and all all these things.

You know that he's sort of it feels like he's um, you know, maybe in a bit of denial about how he actually feels about Santan the the young kind of subordinate Yeah, who you know, just physically, Um, they're contrasted in that Galu is as a pockmarked face and he looks very rough, uh for the wear. It looks like he's you know, fought in a dozen wars, which he probably hasn't even uh. And who was the younger character, what's his name? Uh, Santan Santennten, which is greguar Colen

as the actor. Yeah, just impossibly smooth of skin and young and perfect and has sort of this really handsome sweet face. And it's a movie that is It's funny because it is so clear by the end of this thing that Galu is in the closet and has repressed homosexual urges, without the movie doing much of anything to explicitly say that either. Yeah, she leaves it very very subtle, you know, never explicit. Um, there's never any even a shot of him looking at him like sweating and glistening

in the sun, like not even that. Yeah, yeah, No, it's it's um. It's all left as as subtext, and it is very much there if you look for it, and in a way, I mean, it's all over the film, but it's it's just never directly referenced or pointed to in any way. And I mean I think the film. It allows the film to have just a multitude of meanings beyond just that one reading of it. Um, And and it just it leaves a richness because there's nothing didactic or ideological about it. Um. It's it's one kind

of floating meaning among many. Yeah. And it's also a movie where if you know nothing about it, which I didn't, I didn't even look up anything going in uh, it very much leaves you tense because you you get the

sense that something bad is happening. They show at the beginning there in this uh there stationed in Africa's French foreign legionnaires and sort of a rundown area of Africa, and there are these women around and they sometimes are the clubs dancing with these women, and there's even one line about how these women are sold and you don't you don't know what the movie is about if you haven't looked it up, so you're thinking this is part of the plot where it really isn't, or then it

alludes to like an event, something bad happens, and it's sort of building to what you think because you're conditioned to watching regular movies some really big climax, and it doesn't even do that. There is an event, but it's it's also pretty you know, low key. Yeah, it's pretty.

It's pretty low key when it arises, although the whole film is kind of building to it because in the v Oh, he's he's clearly talking about the past from this present point where he's no longer in the French Foreign Legion and he's been kind of cast out, you know, and he's angry. He talks about his rage. What's the one line he has, I mean, you know, you go back. I went back and watched the first ten minutes again and and and that kind of bears Uh. I think

it's something you should do. And it actually an entire second viewing I think would be even more of a rich experience. But going back and watching that first ten minutes there, it's all right there in the dialogue. You just if you hadn't seen it before, you don't really

know what's going on. It's way more explicit than um then it feels the first time around for sure, like it's definitely he's telling you a lot in that v O. But his delivery of it and the way it's just kind of mixed with these floaty visuals and the music and and the long passages that are kind of wordless. Um, some of it can kind of like drift by you. But if you if you do concentrate on it, um, he is telling you quite a lot. He even says, you know, I'm kind of ashamed of like this closed

minded legionnaire that I was at the time. Um. And that um, what's the one line that he has, you know, perhaps freedom begins with remorse repeated at the end. I mean that's kind of the story right there is Uh, yeah, that that's sort of it, and that's why it's said twice and he it but it is this sort of Um,

he's kind of cast out of like paradise. You know, he has this kind of almost like Garden of Eden where it's it's all these men and young men and he's there as their superior, and the there's a cab driver that's that's talking to the the higher superior um Bruno Forestier played by Michelle subor Um. He says, you know, you're like a surrogate father to all these guys, and he just kind of laughs it off, but it really is true, like they have created their own little bubble

that's like separate from society, separate from the foreign legion even. Yeah, they're just like at the end of you know, they're they're on the far east side of Africa there on the coast, there in the middle of absolutely nowhere in the desert, and they just have this like closed little bubble and until Santan comes along, it's sort of, you know, a perfect thing for for Galou and then sent in

just like completely throws the balance off when he arrives. Yeah, there's also a bit of a Terrence Malick vibe I think released the same years Thin Red Line, which is interesting to his word effort. But you know who's influencing who here? I don't know the timeline, uh, for all I know, Terrence Malick is influenced Flight by Claire DENI I mean, I think they're they're I'm sure they're both

familiar with each other's work big time. And and we should say Claire Denis had a long career and film as an assistant director and uh casting director as well before she makes her first film at age forty two, So she had a whole career where she worked with Jim Jarmish on down By Law for casting or Interesting. She also worked with Vim Vendors on Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire as a d as well, and with

Andrey Tarkovsky as a casting director on The Sacrifice. So she worked with like some amazing people before she ever started making films. And I think it's so interesting that she was already in her forties when she started making films. Um, it's like she had this whole other life of experiences before she started kind of making cinema about because a lot of it draws from her own personal experience. She

has UM and she grew up in Africa. She was born in Paris but raised in Africa, the child of an African French diplomat, and so they moved around kind of colonial French parts of Africa and um believe she spent some time in in Gbut where this film is set um when she was young, but also like Cameroon, Briki, Na Faso and a few other places. So she she

she definitely has an amazing pedigree when it comes to cinema. Well, there is something about it being the French Foreign Legion as well, especially as a as an American audience, because there's such a mysterious thing to Americans. It's I mean, out of a thousand Americans probably note zero about the French Foreign Legion other than they wear those funny looking hats and it's um, I think that mystery for an

American audience really is. I think it was very specific that it was French Foreign Legion and not just army, even French Army, because you also get these you know, French Foreign Legion has people from all over the world. It's not just French soldiers. It's also an organization, no for sort of the end of the line for a lot of people. If enlisting in the army in the US is sort of a last resort and for some guys it's like that. For most men in the French

Foreign legion. Yeah, there's there's an a sense that everyone here's an outsider, is an outcast from something has UM. It's made explicit with with Santane that Um, he has no awareness of his parents, that he was found in a staircase somewhere UM and uh and yeah, and that this is this this kind of surrogate family and the the the kind of genesis of this project was UM

as happened often in the nineties. It was commissioned by European Television, initially with the idea that they wanted Claar to need to make a film on the idea of being a foreigner, of you know, being a stranger or something, and so as a joke she thought, okay, foreign or

foreign legion UM. But the more she thought about it, she was like, well, you know what, there's maybe actually something here, because it's a way in UM to show these people that are they have their in group dynamic and their outgroup dynamic, and they are this kind of

foreign occupying force colonial force. UM. Jubut at this point has has its independence from France for about twenty something years when this film was made UM, but obviously the colonial kind of era lingers and we actually don't know where in time exactly we are. So yeah, that's a good point. I mean it could it could kind of be at any point in the last like thirty something years probably. Well, the only thing that really dates it is this is the rhythm of the Yes, yes, yes,

that's that's true. The music that that you hear in the disco that is actually in the movie. So you know, it's at least that's kind of Yeah, that's locking it down to a certain the nineties for sure. But it also like if you've ever you know, been to places like that and gone into a place that plays music like they could be playing it could have been two years ago when they're playing that song the latest. Yeah,

there's just still Staples. And I let you know, whenever I hear that song out somewhere, I always think of this movie. It's impossible not to now Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those uses of music that just like completely owns that song, now, you know. Yeah, And you know we'll get to that part because the last uh see scene is really very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. The photography what what was the film stock? This is shot on film? Right, Oh,

this is definitely shot on film. It's thirty five. I'm pretty sure some parts look sixteen, but it does not look like a movie shot even. Yeah, no, it has um. The it's very like saturated, very high contrast um. It has like a real boldness to it, and yet at the same time it's saturated, but it's also muted. You

get a lot of these muted tones. And of course the desert is is very desaturated, kind of drained of a lot of color um, but in certain places the colors really pop, Like the clothing that the African women are wearing, Uh, these really really saturated reds and so on. Um water and the scale against all of that too, because the rich tones of the skin um against this

kind of like um yeah, desaturated backdrop. And like you said, the really blue sky where a lot of times they'll frame shots where it's just the body against the blue sky and this kind of really abstract interesting thing. Uh, there's that there's that sequence where they're walking or they're they're kind of climbing across the other wires against the sky and and you you just you have no sense of like how far off the ground they are or anything.

It's just you know, these bodies moving through space and this really kind of beautiful, abstract way. Um. I think that's that's obviously that when I first saw the film, I think the cinematography more than anything else, was what drew me in and kept me coming back for going on twenty years now. Um. Yeah, as Godard has no relation to Jean Luc Godard other than they're both great

than they work in film. But uh, she has been the kind of recurring cinematographer collaborator with Claire Denny after her first film. She was not the cinematographer on the first film, but I think she might have actually been assistant camera or something, and then they really hit it off on that film, and she continued to work with her afterwards and has for the most part, with one

or two exceptions, since then. Um, but they have a she she's she kind of works in the European um tradition, obviously being fresh, where she's not only the cinematographer, she's also typically the camera operator as well, which is so important on a film like this where a lot of it is unheld and the framing is so specific, and the way that the camera just like lingers over the

bodies and the way it captures movement thing. Um, it would be very, very difficult as a cinematographer to really control the look in the movie if you were not also operating the camera on your shoulder and and really seeing it through the eyepiece and kind of doing it

like a dance really with with the actors themselves. Um. But at the same time, the film also has a lot of these beautiful locked off tableau shots where you get a sense of the scale of of the location, like when they go to that second place to quote unquote work on the road or whatever, but he's really

just trying to isolate Santana. They're and they're by these three volcanoes and you know, the the ocean, and um, you know, they just it just looks like they're just like, you know, hammering into rocks all day, like just real, real make work kind of stuff. Um. So the film has a great balance of on the one hand, the kind of um constantly moving, restless camera and at the same time these locked off lingering shots, wider shots that

show the landscape and so on. I love also the opening sequence of the film, when you're she's kind of revealing the African landscape for the first time, and it's through the windows of this train, and it's not really like a perfect shot in the sense that obviously they could have put a camera just on a dolly, They could have put it outside the train and got an

unobscured view. But I love that they left the camera inside looking out through the windows, so that we get the same perspective as the people that are on that train as they're looking at that landscape, and it's it's more like it's their daily experience of that landscape as opposed to like a postcard idealized kind of view of it. There are a couple of shots that, I mean, every shot stands out because it's just so beautiful, but a

couple that really stand out to me. One was UM and I think probably because not only are they beautiful, but they're kind of frought with symbolism. But one it shows from a distance, the all the guys in the platoon or whatever it's called, their squadron, uh, not a squadron, I don't have no idea what the terms are, UM kind of romping in the ocean and having a good time. And then the big boss, uh not the sergeant, but his commander, standing at a far distance with that chain

link fence. Yes, through the fence clearly is just like you know, you're you're separated from them, and in many ways by youth and an old age, by experience, by vitality, by you're you're not allowed to go out there and stripped your speedo and have a good time. You have to be the boss. Like it's there's so much going on there and it's very simple. Just so up that chain link fence and it's like boom, instant symbolism. Yeah,

he's he's he's this authority. So on the one hand, he has power over them and and obviously his rank is far advanced from for you on where they are. But you get the sense that he wishes he were on the other side of that fence, and that he is almost imprisoned by this this position that he has come to, even though he has advanced to that position, you know, so he would be viewed as a success. But it's like now I'm locked away. I can I can look, but I can't actually go out and be

part of this anymore. Yeah, but without the strings swelling and the tear running down the face, like Hollywood would have just fucked this up in like ten different ways. Um,

it's also so subtle. Um. The other great shot is when the guys are stretching on the beach towards the end, and the cameras just sort of meandering around from slightly above until they're all sort of doing that quad stretch where you put one leg behind you and lean all the way back, and it's it's you know, they look like they've been massacred from battle, just laying there, and it was just like, man, it's just such a great shot. And at the same time, it's like it's like a

modern dance piece or ballet or something like. The beauty of those movements and and the way that the lack of that yeah, and then the stillness afterwards so cool. And the way they are arranged in this kind of circular kind of thing where the camera goes all the way around and then you know, settles on one end and then kind of goes back around the other way. Yeah,

really really beautiful stuff. I mean Clari clar Ton he worked with a choreographer on this film, and and and not not like the script was done and then they decided to tack this stuff on. But from the very conception um as the script was being written as they were in pre production and just figuring out what what

the film is going to be. They were rehearsing in Paris with this choreographer, and I believe some of the soldiers in the film are like dancers, you know, they're they're people that come from that world, instrument and so on. Denny Lavant has that has that kind of background as well as well as acting in other films. But um, well is that gal Yes, that's yeah, well clearly there's some dances. But um, that brings up an important point about the script. What is how do you write a

script like this? Like what does the script even look like? Because so little dialogue? But I would love to see it because you know, do you type out soldiers walk through frame hence and sweat cut to soldiers do push ups and sweat cut two soldiers, you know, the shadow of soldiers on the ground for a few seconds. Like it feels very much like a Malik esque thing where you you just go out and shoot a bunch of stuff that you know, well you can edit, you know,

get in the edit. Yeah, I mean I know that definitely, this this it was constructed somewhat that way where there was a lot of shooting. Um, the images could be arranged obviously in any number of ways. UM. I don't know what the what the form of the screenplay was, but as I the formal you know, the formal kind of document was just those diaries, and then I'm sure there was some kind of working document that was like, here's all the of sequences and situations and things we

need to capture. But I'm sure that left a lot of room for, like you said, just you know, filming them doing doing different things like ironing that that great shot where they all lined up with the ironing boards and then their shorts and so on in the desert. Um, and and kind of like surveying, you know, being like okay,

good job, you know. Um yeah, this this film, um, among all their films up to this point, is kind of the most free form and uh and open to kind of editorial um interpretation and and flexibility that way.

And I am I would love to know really, um, if there was just a huge amount of freedom in the shooting, if they were working with a little bit more of a of a rigid structure, how that all came together, because like you said, the Malick thing, it could just kind of be you could be out there shooting forever and then just kind of finding this in the editing room. Yeah, And it's amazing that this is the form that the film takes because it seems so intentional.

You would think a movie like this like that's a it's a it's a very bad idea if you're a novice filmmaker and you want to go out and make something, to do anything like this, because you're just setting yourself up for a big mess. Like when you're a young filmmaker, I think the more specific you can be and the better like storyboarded into the innth degree. But this all still feels very intentional and not like a film built

in the edit. And I feel like the film even even kind of in in an interesting way, announces itself that it's going to be like that near the beginning, where there's a couple of shots that are just like waves in water rolling with the sunshine reflecting often in these really bright, circular specular reflections, and there's like a dissolve between that and between a shot of his handwriting

in the journals and really nice shot. And I love that this combination of like the flowing bling water and the and the you know, the hand, the pen flowing on the paper as he as he's writing these journals. To me, that that kind of sets the tone for like, this is gonna be this kind of undulating thing. It's gonna ebb and flow. Um, and it's got this kind of there's a sense in which we're like we're drifting and we're floating and um. The you know, obviously the

flashback structure. Um. In terms of those flashbacks or the flash forwards, we could say, because the whole film is a flashback in that sense, even though it feels like it's kind of happening in the present. You know, there's no like gauzy dissolve or anything like that. It feels like it's happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Um. But those but

those jumps forward to the present. Those were filmed, I believe a few months after they wrapped photography in Africa, and so it's it's an interesting thing because Denny Lavant, the actor, he was there in Africa with everybody else, with the whole cast and crew and everything, and then when it came yeah, and then and then came back to do these these flash forwards, the present day stuff

and Marseille. Um, he's completely alone and and he's actually thinking back, like a few months ago what they did together in the desert and that now he's separate from all that. So it sets a really great tone, you know. It just as almost like a method sort of thing um for him to really be able to tap into that sense of isolation and having been kind of cast

out from from you know, this this Dnik kind of place. Yeah, and especially when he just as an actor on a film set, no doubt had a camaraderie with these guys. You have that big family feeling which is exactly mirrors what he feels in the French Born Legion. And then yeah, then he's uh, he's he's cast out of the garden and uh you know where wearing all black usually uh.

Like the contrast of his appearance, like what they didn't do, which I'm kind of glad is like grow his hair out beard beard or something like you can still he still like very much taking care of himself in way, and that's how he stays. That's how he stays exactly, that's how he stays connected to it um even though he says an invoice over pretty early on, like my

my muscles are out of shape. My body feels like it's consumed by acid, you know, like I'm I'm sort of I'm not keeping that physical regimen like like I like I did every day right right right. He climbs the tree at that one point to kind of hack

some some limbs down. Um. But he's, yeah, he's he's having to deal with like idleness and and not having that that immediate obvious sense of purpose every day, like every day you wake up, you you just take care of your your subordinates, your soldiers, and you command them and so on. And now he's like he's just done Marseille and he's wandering the city and he doesn't really

he doesn't really have a purpose anymore. He he says early on, you know, unfit for civilian life, unfit for life period, Like he just feels completely adrift and um, like he'll never he'll never feel like he belongs anywhere again. Well what's interesting though, like you you just said that he uh has lost this purpose that he had in

the legion. But what I thought was really interesting was they didn't seem like they had much of a purpose what they were doing, Like they were never assigned anything that looked like it was important. They were seemingly only always training or when they finally, you know, go to the far outpost, which was that all literally a setup

to get them out there? I think so, yeah, I think I think it was he wanted to get Somentown and the rest of the soldiers to a remote a place as possible and away from Forestier, although for eventually comes to visit, you know, because that was after the helicopter crash, which, by the way, if you're listening you haven't seen this movie, don't expect some exciting scene, very

very done. Well, it's really cool how it's done, though, because the first thing you see is underwater, just this you know, kind of Jaws esque, like gallons and gallons of blood being spilled in the ocean. Then you come above the water and you see like the floating some shrapnel of a door that's on fire, and then you're like, you know, something clearly has happened, and then you see, uh, Santa is that it's yeah, like saving this guy, and that seems to be the weird last straw in that

he saves this dude. He does a brave thing. He's already well liked, which is the first thing that bothers Galu. And then he saves this guy and gets praise from the big boss, who Galu is so desperate to, you know, get attention from. That's right, yeah he um yeah. It basically it really establishes him in the mind of Forestier as like, oh, this is like a guy I could see one day making captain or or whatever rank it would be, you know, like he's heroic. He he just

does what's called for. He has kind of a natural leadership ability. People like him. But Galue, I mean it's got to be homosexuality, I think, because otherwise a sergeant should like his subordinate rising to the occasion, being brave, Like that's the kind of guy you want to promote. And he's just consumed with jealousy almost like it's this new baby being brought into the house of a of

a big brother. Yeah. In theory, these are this is what you're trying to create through all this discipline and rigor and and so on. Is like I'm trying to mold you into that, and this guy has that. Um yeah, it's a really interesting thing. I won one quick note. Galu in French rhymes with the word Jalu, which is jealous. So they're having a little bit of fun. They're calling

him Galu. Um. The the reason I think when when when Stan first arrives on the scene, um already, Uh, you can tell that uh Galu is very, very suspicious of him. He says, you know, his name is Santan at least that's the game the name he gave when

he signed up. And he's reason to be here, Yeah, no reason to be here in the sense that this guy doesn't feel like an outsider in the way that you know, this guy could have could have gone into normal civilian life and probably succeeded in business or been a model. Yeah, exactly, like like there were there were so many other places this guy could have found himself.

Why is he here with the rest of us outcasts and rejects, And you know, of course everybody loves him and and and is drawn to him and his charisma and his his charming nous and which. Yeah, but um, I I think I think it's just that um Galu likes being kind of the big fish and the little pond, and that ecosystem has now been upset by this new arrival.

And of course there's there's this whole submerged subtext of his attraction to him, and and the attraction and the repulsion and the feeling of being threatened, maybe because the soldiers look too um Santen as much or more as they look to Galu for leadership in some cases. And of course the way Galue behaves and the things that he does as the story continues only only push that dynamic even further and alienate him more and more from

his soldiers. The way he treats people. Um So, so he's kind of his own worst enemy in that way too, and that he's worried that the soldiers are going to lose their respect for him, and so then he does all these things that necessitate them losing that respect. Yeah,

I mean, it's funny thinking more about American beauty. I mean, one of the big plot points of that movie is his former military man who is repressed homosexuality, and he ends up killing spoiler alert truly seen this movie, but here he goes he ends up killing uh Kevin Spacey.

Um very much mirrors this movie in some ways, but the way this one is done, I mean, they're both kind of subtle because it doesn't Uh, well, I guess American Beauty is a little more on the nose, but it's pretty over it because he thinks he sees like some sexual thing happenings his son and Kevin Space, although it's a misunderstanding. And then there's that scene where you like, he actually I think he kisses Kevin Space, right, he does ken And then yeah, um, but this movie it's

almost like Thardin. He was so deaf and stubtle, subtle with it that it's almost like it's homo eroticism by default, because you're left going, what else could it be? Yeah, Like, why else would this guy have such a bone to pick with this dude? Because there's never anything over I mean, he just comes after this guy. There's no there's really no reason, no other reason. It's like a structuring absence. You would say, like it's it's there, but it's there

because it's not there. Like I don't think they speak to each other directly once, barely at all. Do they have an exchange of dialogue between the two of them hard, I mean I don't remember, just a word or two. Um, there's there's an exchange where it's it's a little bit later where um Uh Santan and another soldier are sort of like keeping night watch and that one the one soldier puts his gun down and goes and then you know,

gal comes along and says, where's the other guy? He abandoned time and he says, like, no, he just went to Pete. He goes here his post um. Yeah, that's that's basically the only interaction I can recall that they have. But that I mean that leads to the big moment because it is the next day when that soldier who abandoned as supposed to pee is forced to dig the hole and Uh Santine santin Uh offers him water and gets in a fight. And again, if you haven't seen this,

don't expect some big fight scene because that doesn't even happen. Yeah,

it's interesting. In the in Billy Bud the Melville Uh story, what what ends up happening is is that the Galoup character Claggart basically falsely accuses Billy Budd the Galoup character, or no, the the Santan character, of wanting to foment a mutiny and it's a bogus charge, but he but he levels it because he wants to get him out of there, and so Billy Bud becomes angry and enraged, and there's a detail to his character where he kind

of stutters and he can't really fully articulate what he's feeling,

and so this this kind of excess of emotion. He can't channel it out verbally, and so he punches Claggett and he happens to punch him so hard that he kills him right then and there and then so then he is basically the the other superior, Bruno Forestier in this film, uh some other name, and Billy Bud, the superior who really likes Billy Bud nonetheless has to basically um court marshal court marshal him and hang him essentially, and so like they all have to be party to

this hanging, even though they really love the guy and they understand why he did what he did and everything. But it's just the structure of the system happens a little differently here where um they they strike each other, you know, Galloup strikes sent Down first, and then sent In punches Galloop and knocks him out, but he doesn't kill him, but also shot in a very very avant guard odd way. Yeah, they drop out all the sounds,

so you don't hear the punch landing or anything. And it's slow motion, and it's it's very fragmented the way it's shot. It's not like a wide shot. It's this kind of close up thing where the fist travels across the frame and strikes him, and then it just kind of cuts to the next sequence. It's like, Okay, you can't strike a superior officer, even if he's being a

real jerk at that moment um. And leading up to that too, there's there's a moment where the guy has been digging the hole already, like all night, and now he's down in whole. His hands are bloody, um from this kind of wooden shovel that he's been using, the splinters and whatever. And uh, there's another soldier. Uh you

know they're they're both black. Uh, these two soldiers and the one soldiers looking down at the other, and uh, Galu comes along and he tells the soldier who's standing outside, um, hey, you're you're not African anymore. You're French, Like get back to work or whatever. So there's there's there's definitely some some kind of racism, nationalism, colonialism, um all all being

blended there too. But again it's it's very very subtle. Um, it's not it's not overt, but a little remark like that in that context among those soldiers, they would all know what that really means. And um, And so he's he's deliberately obviously he's trying to provoke this reaction from Santan.

Um that Santan is not gonna stand by idly Why while he does that and so um, Yeah, it's just it's interesting how how he pushes that confrontation uh to happen so that he can undermine Santan, at least in the in the kind of um uh, in the framework of the military where you can't do that kind of thing. Yeah, you know, it's I also think it's interesting that there was It's almost like a movie that feels like it's

building toward a climax that never really comes. Maybe because that fight scene is so uh oddly filmed, you don't get that release that you normally would in a movie. There's that one great sequence or shot where the two are circling each other out in the desert and getting closer and closer, staring at each other, closer and closer until they're face to face, and the impossible smoothness and youngness of of the one compared to the ruffian hartmark

face to the other is at its most striking. But and there and they which just like the blue sky in the ocean. Yeah, it's like it's such an elemental, minimalist kind of thing. It's like, good, nothing happens there either, yeah, yeah, no, the and and of course we we haven't talked about the music yet, but the music is by an opera which was also adapted from Billy Budd by Benjamin Britten and I M. Forster and uh and so like it's pretty minimalist and at times you're like is there even

a score? Right, and then it pipes in with this big operatic thing. Yeah, and in certain moments it really really comes on strong and um and so yeah, like you said that, it's all building to this what we think is going to be this cathartic conflict, you know, and like you said, it doesn't really happen. When when it does happen, she drains out the sound, she slows the film down. Um, the cathartic moment does not give

any catharsis. And it's kind of yeah, it's it's it's drained of a lot of what could be dramatic power, like it could be a really kind of um energetic scene or something, but instead she goes the complete opposite way and and pulls all of that out of it, so that we are left field kind of like they never got you know, they never had that moment where they like went mono a mono kind of thing. Yeah.

I feel like Claire deny Um, and not in a way, not in a manipulative way, but I feel like she in this film and maybe her other work, very much wants to challenge the audience by not letting everything out there, by forcing the audience to draw their own conclusions, but like in a way that it's not like, oh, the ending was a little ambiguous, Like throughout the movie, it abandons the the three X structure that we're also familiar

with and comfortable with. It doesn't have those I mean sort of roughly has some plot points at the thirty and sixty minute mark, but not in a way that you're used to. So it really is incumbent on the on the viewer to put it all together and uh, decided how you feel about it and decide what's even

going on in the end. Yeah, she she leaves a tremendous amount of space for the viewer to have their own thoughts and feelings and interpretations of things without getting into like sort of you know, a David Lynche and thing of like it's not it's not surreal. I mean, it's anchored in a reality, but very much. But but so much of um, the motivations and so on are left kind of obscure and we don't have access to them other than through the v O. But the vo

is very sparse as well. So a lot of it is just the way the expression in somebody's face, the

way that they move. Um. And she's so good at creating just a mood and a vibe in an atmosphere that's wordless and that feels like it couldn't be written, you know, it couldn't be expressed any other way than than through the medium of cinema of of you know, moving pictures and sound combined together and over time edited and so on to create these kind of almost hypnotic states that we enter into as a as an audience.

And um, that's why I mean I think her films are you know, although you could you could imagine this comes from a literary source, but it would be hard to make this specific film into any other medium. It's it's very very untranslatable, unadaptable in that way because it has to be a film. You know, it couldn't be It couldn't work as a play, for instance, because you wouldn't you would never get that sense of the closeness with the actors and and all the things that are

unspoken and so on. It really does have to be cinema. And I think that she is I mean, she's she's very very comfortable with ambiguity and with and and and just all the all the richness that can come from that. That cinema really excels that. I think. Yeah, not to the detriment of the film, um at all that ambiguity. Another movie from that it's just now occurring to me that deals some with masculinity and is eyes wide shut. Oh yeah, yeah, there were what was going on back then?

Was the dawn of the millennium or something, I guess. So, yeah, that that is really interesting. How many how many films

from that era? Um? Like I said, I mean I think it's I think it's sort of um there were some big shifts happening in the nineteen nineties, and you could say, I don't know, you could you could maybe say this is it's like another wave of um feminism starting to arrive as well, and men and men looking to kind of navigate these new roles that are being that are changing and and certainly you know, to go

back to fight club or American beauty, I mean American beauty. Um. Lester Burnham is is definitely a character that like feels very much emasculated by his life and powerless and so on, and and his kind of like one of the ways that he reclaims that as to like start lifting weights and smoking weed, you know, yeah, yeah, listening to classic rock and whatever and just kind of having the midlife

crisis thing. But it is definitely about masculinity and and and and reclaiming some kind of assertiveness that he feels like has been taken from him. Um. Yeah that I don't know. I don't know what was going on in the late nineties, but yeah, it's hard. It's also I feel like this movie, like I wouldn't change anything about this movie, but this is a story that I could see the right Hollywood director making very well. Um, it would be a very different movie about you know, some

grizzled sergeant army for life. This young, kind of brash, almost civilian minded new recruit comes in who everyone loves who this guy sees as a threat to the way of um and you know, movies have sort of danced around this kind of thing in different ways. I think Platoon did a little bit Bullmetal Jacket in a certain way, even though Private Pile wasn't a threat in that way. He was a threat in a different way to to

the Marine Corps. But I could see a movie like this being made and it being a quality film under the Hollywood lens if it was made by a filmmaker with some skill. But it would be I mean, it could live, you know, a junk to this one, I think, you know, not necessarily a remake, and we should we should say. There have been other other filmmak adaptations of Billy bud Um, not of Boau Travi, but of Billy. But there's a nineteen sixty two British production directed by

Peter ustinov Um which I have not seen. Um that sticks I think much more closely to the original Melville text. So it's the British Navy. Um okay, and and and you know it's uh, like I said, a much more I think, straightforward adaptation telling of that story, if I had to guess, probably a little bit less of the homorotic subtext and so on, and that one that's just it, yeah, or at least buried a little more deeply than than in this film. But yeah, I mean, I see what

you mean. Like the Hollywood version would obviously be a lot more on the nose and explicit, I think with with some of the stuff. It's a film that obviously could get made now, um and and and like you said, by the right team, the right filmmaker and so on, could even be done pretty well. It just it wouldn't be this. It would be it would be sort of like the annotated version that kind of like you know, the underlines everything and like makes it a lot more explicit.

It wouldn't be a ballet, you know, an almost dialogue free ballet, homo erotic ballet. There probably wouldn't be a choreographer, you know, as part of the crew. Would probably be like a fight you know, uh what sword we'll fight choreographer, but a little different so you know, the movie kind of bimax is in its own way with that fight.

And then uh, then Galue has the excuse to punish to punish him and does so in a way that essentially is is I mean, I think he's trying to kill him by dropping him off in the middle of the desert. And I read afterwards that he he um fucked with his compass he gave him, because they must have missed that. There's a close up of the compass and the wheel. The arrow just keeps spinning and spinning.

It settles in one place and then it goes completely opposite. So, um, yeah, he gave him, He gave him a bad compass, and where he was dropping him that is basically tant him out to a death sentence because you have no way to to orient himself and get back and and that

kind of just flat open desert. Yeah, but he had to know, I mean for someone who I mean, I guess he says he's consumed by rage, but he doesn't show that in a very outward way, like for someone who was so dedicated to his job and so foreign legion for life to do this knowing. And I think the superior even says, you knew that this was going to happen. He says, you knew what you were getting yourself into, Like, yeah, this is that's the road you schoosed to go down. Nobody forced you to do this,

you know. Um, it's really weird. Like like I was saying, like his his life used to just be like his purpose in life was the kind of maintenance of this French foreign legion, his platoon or whatever you call it. But he drifted from that goal so far that like he thought the only way he could keep what he had was to was to go completely against that that kind of ethos, that that oath or whatever it is

that he took. Well, yeah, I think I answered my own question though, because it is the repressed homosexuality again. I think because I was just thinking. He could have put him on shovel duty for two weeks until his hands were falling apart, but he would still be there and he would still see him and still feel attracted to him. He had to get him away. He had to. He was trying to remove, I think, remove this urge from his life. Yeah, that's that's true. It's not just

enough to punish. He had to kind of eliminate him completely. Um, even though he may not have been able to articulate to himself why that drive was so strong like that in him, that that repulsion, that death was the only acceptable outcome. It wouldn't be enough to just drum him out of the military or you know, demote him to the point where maybe he would quit or something. Um, And he's still surrounded by good looking shirtless guy. Yeah,

like all those guys are handsome. He just had to to completely eradicate him because there was just something about him that that was too much. Yeah, very interesting. I think the reveal that he was still alive really caught me off guard. I thought for sure he was dead laying out there on the salt flats, which was just another just amazing, amazing shot in sequence that just white crystalline little spikes, stalagmites almost um, really striking on somehow,

even more minimalists than the rest. You know, just when you can't think, when you think it can't get even more, Yeah, it goes there and they find that there's that beautiful shot where it's just all water, and then you realize gradually the camera's panning and you don't really even have us since what the scale is, and then it finally finds kind of like the shore and him walking along it and the waves and everything. Have you seen this on the big screen? I have not. Unfortunately let me know,

I'll go with you. Well you know it. We actually the just this past year, um they did like the big four K restoration and uh and the Criterion Blue ray came out and everything, because for a very long time, this was a hard film to get hold of. Um there was a DVD in the United States, but it was out of print, and it was also quite poor quality. The transfer and everything was not very good. There was like a UK DVD that looked a lot better, but you had to have like a region free player and

all that. So that's going to rule out most people. That's the copy I had, and then but it wasn't available to like stream anywhere as far as I know. UM, it had this reputation, but for for most like interested viewers, it was just really really hard to come by. And so finally Criterion, who has worked um on on other Dinny film releases as well, UM, they finally like did

the restoration for this film. But but by the time like it was coming out, it was already the pandemic, and so uh, they only had like a virtual cinema release, so maybe maybe like a handful of fest wols might have shown it before everything down Midtown at some point.

I gosh, I really really hope. So I mean, yeah, when when things open back up again, I hope they still like, we'll book it, you know, and and let it play on some screens, because I've seen this movie probably ten fifteen times, but I've seen it on a big screen. And interesting, you know, most of the times I've seen it have been off that DVD. Only like the last maybe a couple of viewings that I've seen this um h D version, which looks amazing too. Yeah,

it looked really good. Um, what is your take on? You know, towards the end of the film, there is a sequence where he has made his bed so perfectly. This is Galu. Of course we already know that, Um, although we don't see what happens to uh Santa. Yeah, we do see him get get rescued and he's alive, but that's kind of where it ends. Yeah, Um, but you know, there's the shot of him laying on the bed with his gun, and in any other movie, he

would have blown his head off, but he doesn't. But I just sort of took that as like that is on the table for him kind of at any moment, he's definitely thinking about it, I think, um, if I remember correctly, clear Denis said that originally that was kind of the end of the film, was that it was either gonna be actual overt suicide or at least heavily suggested like the last shot would be him holding that gun on the bed and then just cut to black or something. And but she decided, you know, I I

don't want to end that way. I want to end on something else, like I want let's go and talk about it. Yeah, and so um, amazing, amazing one of a kind you know, ending in in all of film, I think, Um, it cuts back to if you know, you may not pick up on this if it's your first viewing. But it's the same disco that the rest

of the film has been shot in. It's got that criss cross pattern on the on the mirror in the club, which mirrors the criss cross pattern of the chain lengk fence when UH four c A is looking at the

soldiers in the ocean. Um, but this time it's just him alone, there's nobody else in there, and he's listening to the Rhythm of the Night by Corona and you know, for a while he's just kind of smoking listening, he's moving a little bit, and then like the course hits and he just explodes into this amazing, you know release, and it's it's such a beautiful thing because he's been so tightly wound and so so immobile in a way and so interior and so just like uptight the whole film,

and now suddenly he's just like bursting with this energy in this kind of joy of life and and everything. And um, there's something just very cathartic and transcendent about it, I find. Well, there's a couple of readings of it for sure. Yeah, yeah, obviously, I think probably because if you think about it chronologically, like it's ending with him and he's back in Jibouti, he's back in Africa, you know,

because he's in that club again. So obviously, so honestly, this can't this can't be like that night he went out dancing or something, you know, but this is post Martin where when he was in France and then he comes back. Well, the thing is this is this going back? Is this him remembering a time or did this ever even happen? Is this just sort of like an internal like in his mind, he's still there, He's in that disco, he's dancing like, this is what it might be like

for me to accept my sexuality. Yeah. Maybe maybe it's just his day dream or dream even or yeah, it's it's it's maybe it's a it's a sort of metaphorical thing like he's accepting who he really is inside and he's letting that flourishing come out, and it's it's a complete opposite of what he has been up to that point. Maybe, Um, But obviously the other the other kind of reading is that he's lying on that bed, he's got the gun on his chest. He says, serve the good cause and die.

That's the last thing he says. It's also what's tattooed on his arm there. Um, And and that's that amazing shot of his arm pulsing, the vein pulsing in his arm. Yeah, that was a nice little crazy let's shoot that. Yeah, and um, and so then you know, if if you follow that reading, then it's kind of like, okay, off off screen, he shoots himself. He'sad and then this is like his spirit leaving his body or he's in heaven or something like that, you know, something some some reading

along those lines. It's hard to say like about that, you know, just the whole movie is him bursting out of his shell and so it's a new beginning for him. We don't know. So the question is, uh, it shows towards the end as well, he's got this girlfriend that is she had been set up. Um I'm not again, not in any overt way, but you see her in those scenes in the clubs in Africa and she says that, you know, that's my boyfriend, and like we get along really good, and that's kind of all she says. But

where is that? Where are they? Then? Are they in Africa? Yeah, they're in Africa. So presumably when he got kicked come back then? Or is this before he leaves? This before he leaves, I think all him remembering that relationship. But I think I think when he leaves, they're done and he doesn't see her anymore, you know. I think I think that's part of it, is, is his memory of her. It's a little hard to track because usually again in

a conventional film. They give him a beard or some clear physical descriptor to say like, this is this timeline, This is that timeline. Yeah, it's it's him, I think, romanticizing and just like looking back fondly on that time that we had with her. Which is interesting too because we're we are saying that it's this film about repressed homosexuality and so on. But the men do go with women in this film. Um, but you know, to what

extent they're really engaged in those relationships. It's hard to say, because the women that are in this disco, it's pretty much implied there like sex workers. You know, they may feel some genuine connection sometimes to these soldiers, but they are also there of like financial necessity and they're working, and this is one of the few ways that um, these young women know of to like support you know, whatever family they have, just just make a make a

life for themselves. And so the way that women are are kind of showing in the film is really really interesting. They there's certainly not I mean, the his girlfriend is the closest thing to like a female character, but she says almost nothing. She's she's she's seen but not heard. Um. And yet within the film itself. Um, I mean, it's obviously that the women are like kind of u uh

an afterthought for the men. But in terms of the film itself, we are given these sequences where, uh, you know, the the African women are kind of looking at the soldiers and sometimes they're talking among themselves, they're kind of laughing. Um. There doesn't show any mistreatment of them. It doesn't show exchange of money, and not to say that wasn't happening, but it very much looks like people having a good

time at a club. Yeah. Yeah, And I mean I think I think it's in in in in certain places like it's it's such a deep part of the culture. This is this kind of monetary thing mixed with the romantic thing that it really blurs the lines a little bit. Um. It's it's it's just expected that maybe if you're from

that town, this is what you do. You reach a certain age, you go to the disco, you meet a soldier kind of thing contrasted with like a full metal jacket right right, and where it's much more, which is very explicit and very overt that these uh, that these soldiers are very much taking advantage of these women and think nothing of them. Yeah, both sides are very clear.

This is this is completely transactional. There's no emotion here whatsoever, Um, Whereas in this it is it is much more like confused that he like she does call him her boyfriend, you know, and they do some seem to have some

real genuine affection for each other show it. But yeah, but it's well, there's there's there's that one UM sequence where it's Gal who sitting by himself and this young boy comes up to him with with a box of stuff for sale and he kind of he kind of bugs him for a second and he just like kind of tries to wave him off, and then he sticks around.

He says, all right, I'll buy this thing. And yeah, he buys a little gift for her, and then she's asleep on the bed and he very tenderly kind of puts put her hand and kind of strokes her hair for a minute. Like there's you know, it seems like there's some some actual genuine affection there, but it is, it's it's only briefly touched upon. And like I said, it's just one of those things like I think, Um, when he left, that was it. You know, they didn't

keep in touch after that. Yeah, Casey, I think my favorite part of this conversation was like five minutes ago when you sounded like an eighty year old man and said, you know, the men go with women, right, You've never sounded more like an old man. It's funny they go with other men. But uh, what else you got on your list? Let's see what we should say that There's there's a little bit of another filmic reference happening in

this movie. The character UM Bruno Forestier, who is the highest superior officer UM is a character drawn by a Jean Or drawn from a Jean Lagodard film Petite Le Petit soldat the Little Soldier, which was his second completed film. He made it right right after making Breathless Um, and

it talked about Um the Algerian War. There's a character in that film, Bruno Forestier, played by michelsee Bors so the same actors in this film, and basically he's somebody that deserted the French military during the Algerian War and he goes to to Switzerland and he's kind of working for the government in this kind of shadowy double agent capacity, and so basically clear Denny had the idea that that character in that film could have run away from that

situation and joined the French Foreign Legion and just kind of like hidden himself there, and so he kind of in a way, this film is sort of like an unofficial sequel in a way to that film, although it doesn't you know, it doesn't have to be thought of that way certainly, and it doesn't require you to have seen that film. But it's just an interesting kind of

like inter film connection there. And it's really it's interesting for for a film that is so um sensory based, that is so kind of like it's all about mood and intuition and wordlessness and so on, there's also such a rich kind of intellectual um variety of things happening, you know, in terms of like it's referencing this Herman Melville book, it's also referencing the opera based on it. Uh,

it's also referencing this Jean Ecodard film, it's incorporating modern dance. Um. There's all these things that that that flow into it, and yet it never feels like like an intellectual exercise or something. You know, it's a very easy watch, actually, I mean, if you're listening and you think, like, oh boy, this weird arts forts in French movie without much dialogue. It's you know, it doesn't drag at all. It's not long, um, it's a slow burn, but it was. It was a

really pleasant watch. I think oddly it's not super challenge. No, it has this like hypnotic quality, and and it's the kind of film where if you're just willing to pay close attention and and rack to it as if you would react to a real life situation, where you read body language and you look into people's eyes and you

you know, you try to understand it. In that way, all all the story will be there, you know, you don't have to have the background on, like the French occupation and you know, post colonial theory and all that. I think it bears a close viewing, but it's not at all the kind of movie that's vexing in a way where you're like, I don't even know what the funk is going on? Like what am I watching here? Right? Right? Right?

It's it's weird. I mean, it's a bit of a miracle in that way too, to be this avant garde, and and it's still something that you can enjoy like I enjoyed watching it. I watched it this morning at like seven am, and and really and I can't wait to see it again. Yeah, you and me both, we

both watched it this morning. Um, and I even even as we've been doing this, uh, this this recording, like I've had it on the TV just on the side here, so I in my periphery I can just kind of catch because like, as soon as I start thinking about it, I do want to start immediately talking about all the sort of stuff that's in a way external to the film. You know. Yeah, it looks like that Janet Jackson video, right, remember the one in the desert with the dancers. Totally yeah,

I bet you anything. They were influenced by this, I'm sure. Um. But but yet the film itself is there, and it is this kind of closed object that that doesn't need all this kind of you know, extra textual support to to understand it or to appreciate it. So I think that's that's very interesting about it. Can you see this outside of the Criterion channel? Can you just like get

this on iTunes or whatever? I don't know, I think it may actually yeah, let's see if it's because it's a movie I would like people to see, and I've been beating the Criterion Channel drum for a while, but I know it's you know, it's a big gass to say, sign up for this subscription thing just to watch if you're not like a true cent file like, because that's really what's out there. Um. I mean, of course there is.

There is like a physical release if if you happen be somewhere that actually their physical rentals to be had. Um that that's a potential avenue as well. Let me see here. It does not look like it, so so it's just on Criterion Channel. I mean, it doesn't pop up on I'm like iTunes or anything like that. So although yeah, you can get the DVD. O looks got a four and a half star rating on the Amazon

not bad. It's so funny when a movie like you see the Rotten Tomatoes score come up, and it's like, I don't e want to say the word rotten tomatoes in the same sentence as a film like this, you know, it's just like, don't even tell me what the rotten tomato. I hate rotten tomatoes anyway, so don't that that reminds me? Um?

One of her more recent films. I guess her last film to get released, High Life, UM, was distributed by and the slip cover for that has the Tomato rating on it, and that just really bugged me when I saw that. The right man, Oh it was it was fresh. It was certified fresh. But I don't remember if it was like in the eighties or nineties or was. It's just like, Okay, I still haven't seen High Life, dude, I gotta check that out. I have to say, like, you know, High Life, UM, I've only seen it once.

I did see that one in the theater. I liked it. It didn't really like bowl me over the way other of her films have. UM, but it is interesting. I mean, it's her first film in English. Uh, it's her first film kind of made with like within like the more American system. UM, it's sci fi, which she hasn't really done before. Yeah, I'll have to check it out for me. Just based on one viewing, it didn't really have the draw of some of the other films that UM that

I that I hold in really high regard. You know, if if if, if you are somebody who's seen this film and you're interested in other clear Deny Films. I would really really recommend checking out UM. The Intruder Long po Um was she made maybe five or six years after of this one, and it stars Michelle Subor, who is the highest ranking official in this film as kind of a shady guy you don't really know much about

his past. UM, but he needs a heart transplant and he gets one kind of on the black market, and it it it pushes, it's the furthest she has pushed into complete abstraction. UM. And so it's sort of it's sort of you know, it bears some formal similarities to this film, but it pushes way further into not knowing if something is a dream or a kind of metaphorical

expression of something. UM. And it was. It was adapted from a literally like a philosophical text UM that was written by this philosopher, Jean Luke Nancy, who had a heart transplant and his body rejected the transplant and so and so he he did end up surviving that. I don't know if he got like a second transplant or what,

but he ended up surviving. And UM, and he wrote this text about the idea of the intruder, this thing that comes from outside and comes to inside and in the case of his body, it was this second heart that he got that his body rejected. But he also puts that in terms of like immigration and people coming from outside of country and into a country and integrating or not integrating. Um, and the idea of borders, and

it's it's I mean, it's a fascinating, fascinating film. UM. And it pushes like the what what can be expressed without dialogue just in terms of the music and the images and so on, um, just about to the breaking point. Like after that, she kind of she kind of pulled it back, and her films have been a little more narrative since then. Well, I mean that's another Malik staple too, you know, and in criticism at times. UM. Not to

go down another side road. But the other day I was on scrolling through Criterion and did see and watch Uh we need to talk about Kevin right, Yeah, that was under their twenty one Century Cinema thing and I hadn't seen that one yet either. The Lynn Ramsey movie, which I thought of you when I saw it for some sason, because I figured you had seen it, well you would, I think you had just watched it when you when you texted me that that wine that you had just watched it. You had I believe you said

you would just come from watching it. I think that's right. Yeah, of course I was thinking about you. Yeah, and that that film. Um, I have to say, like, like Lynn Ramsey, for me, like her best films are her first to Rat Catcher and Morvin Caller, and then there was a really long stretch of time between Morvin Caller, which came out in two thousand two, and we need to talk about Kevin, which came out so like almost a decade passed,

and then the Joaquin Phoenix movie. That's right, by the way, I didn't get black out drunk it Now it's all coming back to me. I just forgot we talked about that. Yeah, And it almost feels like she she kind of became a slightly different filmmaker and those nine years in between, which I mean, that's that's normal, that's life. But um, her first two films for me, have just a lot more thematic richness to them, whereas I feel like in these last two she's you know, the the use of

image and sound is is really really strong. It's very visceral, and that's great, But at the same time, the ideas and the kind of subtext below it is a little more threadbare. And um, particularly the Joaquin Phoenix one, you were never really here. Um, that's a really I mean, it's a really interesting movie. It's very interesting. It came out I would say, maybe like a year before all

the Epstein stuff like really started popping out. And there's there's a very similar situation in that film where there's like this mansion in Manhattan where there are basically sex slaves and and all this kind of stuff and you know, very very similar to what sounds like what was happening in real life. Um, I don't know, I don't know why why I got on that threat. Also, you know we talked about Eyes White Shot before that story broken.

There's a very similar kind of suggestions there. Um. But yeah, with with Lynn Ramsey, I would say, check out, checkout Rat Catcher and Morvin Caller. Those are amazing, amazing films. And um, I I think she's Um, she's a good a good kind of companion filmmaker too, clar Deny. They both worked what made me think of it a little bit. It's like intuitive way that um uh, like you said, it's it's hard to picture what a screenplay would look like.

It's something that has to be felt. It's something that just, you know what, when you see it and it feels right, not because it was written a certain way, but just because the attention to the moment and the rhythm and so on is so is so focused that, um, that's what seems to define the logic of the cutting and so on. Is just this like mood that that they're able to dial into and really like focus on. Well,

I'm glad you picked this movie. It's um to me, it's just such a such a pure expression of what I love about film, and that I don't want all movies to be like this, but I love that there are movies like this, and I feel better for having seen it. I can't wait to see it again. And like it's a movie you want to proselytize about a little bit. Yeah, especially to people that are like real film lovers and and can get into something that's a little avant garde. I'm like, you need to see say

the name in French Boau Travia. There you go. But yeah, this is this is since since we've been doing um, you know, having these conversations on Movie Cruch, like this was one on the shortlist from the very very beginning. Yeah, you've been talking about it, and for a long time it was kind of like, well, I can't pick that one because literally, like you're asking somebody to like pay forty bucks for like an out of print you know,

DVD copy on on Amazon marketplace whatever. Like It's just it was impossible to get hold of for a while. And now thankfully it has had this re release and so UM, and I think also it's stature has has grown um in recent years, we've we've obviously been seeing a very positive shift to highlighting the work of more women filmmakers in general, and Claire Deny certainly gets included in that, in that kind of new pantheon of great

contemporary women filmmakers. UM. And so thankfully, I think you know, in in like university film studies, pro rams and so on, like, this is a film that gets talked about a lot and um, and we'll have um, certainly more of an audience going forward than it has in the first twenty years of its existence. I'm trying to uh, I'm trying to get Tamra Jenkins on the show emailed her agent the other day and because Emily and I just saw

her third movie, Um, Private Life. Yeah, I meant to see that's with Paul and it's really really good but Savages and Sums of Beverly completely different kind of filmmaker but just brilliant. And uh, I was reading an interview with her and they said, like, you took such a long break after Sums of Beverly Hills, and like why did you do that? And she's like, because I'm a woman trying to get movies made. How wasn't I didn't just say like, hey, let me take off the fourteen

years or whatever. Yeah, but she's just one of my favorites and her her husband, Jim Taylor, is a great writer, Alexander Paine's writing partner. So uh, fingers crossed. I mean, you know, I just threw it out there. I'm sure I'll get it either no response or or no, but you never know. I'd love to you never know. Yeah, that's that'd be awesome with that. I got to try. Yeah, well, dude,

thanks for this. This is a great movie. I think we we can both speaking for you, we can both say if you have eight bucks or whatever, how much is Criterion Channel. Is it eight or ten dollars? It might be Uh, I do the annual subscription, so you get you get a little better. What say you get a little bit of a break. Yeah, it's it's eleven dollars a month or or a hundred a year, so you save a little bit if you can do the annual. Yeah, I mean if you can spare eleven bucks a month.

I know, paying for streaming services as a a lot of people have a bone to pick because there's just paramounts coming out with one now and now it's it's it's just yeah, I don't know how that's gonna shake out when there's like twelve different subscription services and you're you're expected to pay for all of them. It's crazy. But if you are a film lover, if you're a cinephile, and if you have and if you can swing eleven

bucks a month, highly recommend you get Criterion Channel. It is chock full of not only great movies and documentaries, but commentary pieces, short films, um interviews with filmmakers about stuff. It's just got a lot of stuff like normally what you would watch in Criterion DVD extras like all that ship is on there too. Yeah, they will do this thing where they basically put the film and all of the associated extras that you would get on the physical copy.

They'll put that alongside the movie as well. Not for everything, but but for certain titles, they'll do that. And they're really doing about Criterion Channel is that it's always rotating, so every month some stuff goes away, a lot of new stuff comes in that can be frustrating to that can that can be frustrating to then I'm like, you

gotta get on it. You know, that's true. But at the same time, I mean, it's it's cool that there's so much new content being added all the time, and they organize it a lot of times into these kind of thematic sections where there's like eight or eight or ten films that all speak to a certain theme or a filmmaker, like the works Importing and and speaking of which, I mean there's a lot more Clardini films that are available on Criterion Channel. It's not everything she's done. Intruders not,

I don't think so. Intruder is another one that has um that really needs a restoration and really needs a rerelease, And I hope that will happen as well. It wasn't quite as like critically loved as as Bau Travi, but um, certainly I think I think absolutely equally worthwhile. UM. I will say, in terms of what is on Criterion Channel, check out thirty five Shots of Rum. That's an amazing film. UM,

in a completely different register to this one. That would maybe even be another good one to do for the show because it's a father and daughter story. It has a lot of heart. UM. Similarly kind of minimalistic and a lot of things unspoken and so on, but it's just a really really beautiful coming of age story. UM probably make you cry, um and set in contemporary Paris and and just um yeah, I'm super super fond of that movie. So UM definitely give that a a watch

too if you're interested in clear Tony awesome. Well, thanks dude, Uh, it's good seeing again. This is a great talk as always, and thanks to everyone for listening. We'll see you soon. Where are we? Movie Crash is produced and written by Charles Bryant and Meel Brown, edited and engineered by Seth Nicholas Johnson, and scored by Noel Brown here in our home studio at Pontsty Market, Atlanta, Georgia for i heart Radio.

For more podcasts For my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.