In a sci-fi cinematic journey for the ages, our hosts and their guest hostage, multidisciplinary artist A. Mert Erdem, come together to explore the captivating realms of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and the thought-provoking Swedish film Aniara (2018). Through lively discussions and deep analysis, they delve into the intricacies of these visionary works, examining their rich themes, complex narratives, and profound philosophical underpinnings. With a genuine passion for science fiction, the hosts and guest artist take viewers on an enlightening and immersive exploration of the expansive imagination and enduring impact of these seminal sci-fi creations. What? You haven't seen Aniara OR read the epic poem on which it's based?? TLDR: It's Gilligan's Island if the S.S. Minow never hit an island.
In a sci-fi cinematic journey for the ages, our hosts and their guest hostage, multidisciplinary artist A. Mert Erdem, come together to explore the captivating realms of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series and the thought-provoking Swedish film Aniara (2018). Through lively discussions and deep analysis, they delve into the intricacies of these visionary works, examining their rich themes, complex narratives, and profound philosophical underpinnings. With a genuine passion for science fiction, the hosts and guest artist take viewers on an enlightening and immersive exploration of the expansive imagination and enduring impact of these seminal sci-fi creations. What? You haven't seen Aniara OR read the epic poem on which it's based?? TLDR: It's Gilligan's Island if the S.S. Minow never hit an island.
Explore the collected works of A. Mert Erdem at https://www.azmimerterdem.net/ and on Instagram @artamnesis
Read the Nobel-Prize Winning epic poem, Aniara, here: https://gsproject.edublogs.org/gs-texts/texts-used-in-2017/aniara-by-harry-martinson-3/
The Swedish independent film, Aniara (2018), is available to buy, rent, and stream with ads on most major platforms.
Head to Apple TV+ and stream the first season of The Foundation Series before season two drops on July 14th.
Reach the pod at DontEncourage@gmail.com
Discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threads
------Warning: Themes of Suicide, Infanticide, and Nihilism Discussed-------
SPOILERS, RIGHT AHEAD!
Steve: He said one of the best movies I've seen all year that no one's seen is ra. I'm like, huh, that's interesting. Cause he said, you know, I watched so many movies.
She
A. Mert: said at that moment like, oh my God, is one of them going to be bloody? And they cannot wash away the blood.
Jason: Ah. Watching this movie going, oh, why didn't we prepare?
They mentioned it in the podcast. I know we would know what to do.
A. Mert: Welcome to
Jason: the podcast where we talk about the big ideas behind fiction projects of all different kinds. Books, TV shows, movies. Video games. Nothing's off limits. Today we have a special guest, Merck Murr's, a filmmaker. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for inviting me. And we're going to, we're gonna take, uh, a look at the 2018 Swedish film Anyara.
Anybody want to take a stab at that pronunciation? That's a perfect pronunciation. I don't know. Mert looked hesitant. Ra maybe Ra. There we go.
Steve: Ra, probably the Swedish Way. The Swedish
Jason: Way. I love it. Based on a 1956 Swedish epic poem by Swedish Noble laureate, Harry Martinson. Did you guys, uh, do a little research and come across that interesting fact?
Yes, I did. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Huh? I'm curious about the poem. Yeah. Right. Absolutely. So before we talk about that though, anything that's been on your list this week, guys, anything you've been watching or reading or you wanna talk about a
A. Mert: little bit? I think I mentioned this briefly. I started reading the, uh, foundation series by Isaac Ov and I finished the first book and I just started the second book.
And I can just talk about the book throughout this podcast. It's just so mesmerizing. And I also seen the first season, uh, on Apple tv, which I really, really liked.
Jason: Um, yeah. That inspired you to pick up the novels, right? Yeah. So what was it about that season that grabbed you?
A. Mert: Oh gosh. I mean, I just really liked that whole political intrigue of the series.
You know, there's this empire and that controls this entire galaxy. It's very different than the book cuz you're, you know, seeing not only this Harry Sing character, which drives the novels or at least the beginning of the first one in the show, you're witnessing the. Emperors that are reincarnated and re cloned, and that's how they keep the empire going.
Hmm. And I thought that concept was so interesting. I haven't came across that in the first book. I wonder if it's going to be explored later on. Anyway, so that's one of the ideas that I loved, and I just really like the overall, the way it was done, the acting, the whole production, and the imperial political explorations of the genre.
I mean, science fiction in general. The, the one part of the science fiction genre that I love is that politics, how that is represented and dealt with, uh, in these books.
Jason: Yeah, it's a fascinating series. Uh, I read the books long before the series came out, and I got about halfway through the first episode and it was so different that I was like, okay, this just seems like a completely different style and project in so many ways, but I'm trying to remember.
It's been a long time, but I think what really grabbed me about the books was this idea that, if I remember correctly, you can predict human behavior and like on a very large scale. Mm-hmm. Using math. Wasn't that basically the idea? Yes. Okay. It was like a new field of study that somebody had developed and then they'd figured out that, what was his name?
Harry? Is it Harry's? Harry Seldon. Yeah, right. Seldon. Thank you. And he, uh, predicted the fall of a massive galactic empire, like their massive galactic empire. And he, did he form a group to start working on preserving what aspects of civilization that they could before Interstellar, interplanetary transportation broke down and all the, uh, surviving members of this previous empire would start developing independently.
Mm-hmm. And potentially lose access to the wealth of culture and history and science and everything that had been developed. I think it's a really neat idea. It's a great way to start a massive story. It seems like it got away from him a couple times in terms of scope. You know, the following books sort of drift back and forth to aspects of that that I think the author found interesting.
But it's really, really sweeping. A lot of politics, if that's your thing. Yeah. I have a good memory
A. Mert: by the way. I'm impressed that you can
Steve: remember that. I was just thinking that. How do you remember that? Yeah,
Jason: it was good. Yeah. It's a famously good series. It won the famously good award every year for like 10 years I think.
No, it was, it was. It's great.
A. Mert: I will be spoiling it, but that idea of like creating this encyclopedia to pass this knowledge to the next generations to avoid the length of the dark ages to make it shorter, I mean, it becomes as a just a, actually a ruse. So that was their excuse to do that so that they can secret themselves from the right, the main planets and go to the edge of the galaxy, as they say, and then start this new project to rebuild a second foundation.
That's right. A second empire.
Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I fell for the ruse. Yeah,
A. Mert: and I was like, this is an amazing idea. And I was like, oh my God, this was fake. There was like a whole deeper project and that's where I got hooked on even
Jason: more. It's good stuff. The novel series is amazing. It reminded me a lot of dune.
One of the things I really loved about the book series Dune. That I felt like was missing a little bit from the films was how rich the history was before or outside of the scope of the story that you see. Like the recent film adaptation really didn't reference a lot of the history that made the plot points make sense, like why the characters did what they did.
And I think for people who hadn't read those books or wasn't familiar with that background, it's fine. Right? It's a Dune is a great movie, it's really enjoyable, it's visually stunning, A lot of cool ideas in it. But for me, I kept waiting for them to introduce some of that great back history that the author had created and that put in the novels.
Do
Steve: you think something like Lord of the Rings did a much better job of that, of like kind of introducing the backstory, but not Yes. Yeah. Overwhelming you with it either.
Jason: Yes. That's a great example. But I think at
A. Mert: the Lord of the Rings, there was like a whole exposition, flashback series or like at the, or at the very
Steve: beginning.
Beginning, right. Yeah. Where they kind of explained soran. That was brilliantly done, I thought. And how they explained that whole backstory. And those books are huge, right? That whole series of books is like so gigantic that it's kind of amazing that we weren't even able to adapt it into those films, even though those films are really long.
Jason: Yeah, that's an interesting point. They did that mini movie at the, uh, start, I think they did it in, uh, black Panther as well, really? Well, it could be highly stylized. You don't actually have to shoot all the major scenes with huge cast and crew, but I think that's a great way to do it. I'm, I'm a little disappointed they didn't do it in the Dune movie now.
Really? Seems like,
Steve: seems like that would've helped though, right? I mean, I haven't read the, it
Jason: would've helped me, but it would've helped me. They
Steve: did that in the Watchmen, the movie. I know that movie bombed. I remember the intro. I thought it was incredibly well done and so visually stunning. And kind of set the tone for the whole movie.
I actually enjoyed that movie, but I never read the graphic novel. I never compared the graphic novel to the movie. But yeah, I remember they did that and I was like very impressed with how they like created the whole backstory of the watchmen.
Jason: Yeah, absolutely. That's a great example. Mart seems like you had a negative reaction to the idea.
Yes. I wanted to
A. Mert: argue against that idea. Let's, let's spice things up. Okay, so I do of course, like, like being given the rules of this world, like the history of it. So you like immediately hooked onto the narrative so you can just relate easily, like know your place and the time whatnot. But I think that's like the easy way out.
I think time to time, I'm not saying it's. Always. Of course I like loaded the rinks too, like I don't wanna get, you
Steve: know,
Jason: ease.
A. Mert: But in terms of Dune, like I don't remember the, I mean I read the first book very long time ago, but I think challenging part of the dune, the first novel of course, was like you didn't know where you were exactly.
It was revealed eventually by those kind of like journal or book reference entries at the beginning of each chapter. And then you were like basically piecing together all this puzzle even though the like, you're not immediately aware of what's going on, who you are, what this empire or whatever is. I think it's the challenging part to still keep the story moving and keep the audiences reading and watching while you're like revealing these things bit by bit.
Steve: That's a really interesting point. So typically with books or movies, is that kind of your take on what makes a, a really good book or a really good movie, like the kind of figuring out the puzzle as you go along without having a lot of that background or keeping things more open
A. Mert: ended? Yes and no. I don't wanna generalize anything by saying, oh, the good books are like the puzzle ones and they don't give away everything from the beginning.
No, I'm not gonna say that. I mean, it makes it challenging to read cuz they're also books that are just like that, which I totally didn't like. I would say only specifically for Dune, that, that it's both the movie and the book, its successes was written and the way it was represented on the screen, which I also reminded me a little bit of the movie that we watched, uh, AARA.
Yeah. It's the very beginning without were words or telling like, oh, this is the year. Like whatever, and then we are going to Mars, and this is the reason. But instead of that, it gave us clues by showing all those catastrophe scenes, like ecological devastation, like these very short, fast clips that look like news clips, but it didn't necessarily tell you where, why, how.
And then you're all of a sudden in space like traveling. This elevator like thing to this ship that will transport you to the Mars.
Jason: I think it works pretty well for something like this, because it's picking up from a logical point, this idea that humanity is headed there is something that a lot of people have already accepted or encountered.
So it's easy to kind of crib and just say that's where they are. So the story starts Earth is fucked, you know? And I guess we're gonna talk about this movie, so we should probably just say, we're officially talking about this film now. Yes. So the premise just briefly is that earth psychology has been ruined.
They haven't really specifically said, unless I missed it, how that happened. I guess it was just sort of cumulative effect of humans. And I think we're catching one of the last, if not the last group of humans that are going from Earth to Mars to permanently settle. Is that what everybody is? Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah, because somehow Mars is nicer than Earth now. The Earth itself seems to be kind of breaking apart. You know, it's like unsafe to live there. And there were several people on the ship who are on the, um, space elevators who looked like they had burns and scars and things from trying to survive on earth.
So the idea, I guess, earth is uninhabitable and everybody's taking this, uh, big cruise ship. It's like a mall in space or a hotel mall in space over to Mars for a three week trip. They run into some space debris, causes some damage. They're forced to jettison their fuel, which means they can't change course, and they're headed out of the solar system and they have no real idea of how to get back to Mars.
Right. Does that sound about right, anybody? Okay, great. So anyway, you were saying that you thought, starting at that point where things have already gone bad and everybody's going, getting on board the ship, you thought that sort of felt like it was starting the middle of something interesting. Is that how you would put that?
And you like that the audience doesn't necessarily feel completely oriented. There wasn't like a voiceover at the beginning.
A. Mert: I think what I was trying to say, because we were talking about those other novels and films was that the movie tells you what is going on like, but it doesn't dictate humans destroy the earth and now we have to vacate and it's all humans faults and year is 2050 or something.
That's right. Yeah. Like it's not that didactic. It's just like ecological catastrophes. I mean, you fill in the blank. Why do you think that is happening? And then we don't know exactly what the time limit, what the year is, but it is in the future because like, you know, you see this technological advancement that kind of gives you the clues that it's in the future and people are already moving to Mars.
There are already these shuttle service between Mars and Earth. But also it doesn't tell you if Mars is so much better than Earth or not. Also, except there was one point where the woman who was trying to like soothe that. I think Spanish speaking guy who was having a panic attack saying like, oh, do you think Mars is so much better?
It's so cold. Gold
Steve: one tulip. I think she said something about there's only one tulip or something that that's there, or it's
A. Mert: frostbitten or something like that. So it sounds like there Mars isn't that necessarily great either, but that only option. It
Steve: was a really interesting concept from the get go. I thought the way the camera was so tight in on the characters, it created this kind of sense of chaos, like the chaos that they'd be feeling and everything was just kind of handheld.
So you could tell like even though it was done on a pretty low budget from what I read, and it only made $40,000 in global box office or something, Wow. So it didn't really make very much money. It seems like how they use those resources was really efficient and really well done for that budget because I kept thinking to myself like, why aren't they showing more of their environment?
But then I thought, you know, it's really not necessary cuz it's delving so deep into, you know, what the characters are feeling at that moment. Like that sense of kind of panic. And then when they reach the ship, now it's time to soothe the panicked passengers, make everything seem fine, but then very quickly things go awry, which I really liked.
Jason: So what jumped out to you guys about this film? Because it's felt kind of long. It's pretty bleak. It's uh, complicated in some ways and simple in other ways. I think different people watching this film could grab hold of different things that they liked or didn't like. So what stood out to you guys, other than what you've mentioned so far?
Anything in particular?
A. Mert: There were so many ideas. For instance, the ones that I thought was going to play a major role, that artificial intelligence,
Jason: Mina. Yeah. Mina. Yeah. That stood out to me. Yeah. Yeah. The machine.
A. Mert: I mean, you can talk more about
Jason: that. I'm just curious what it was. Did you guys pick up on that?
Did you, so on my,
Steve: my list of a hundred questions I have for myself here, I took more notes on this movie than any of the other movies we've actually talked about, which is probably
Jason: more than The Lost City. Oh, maybe not. Lost City. Okay. All right. Other than that obvious exception. Right. So what was Mina? I think it was, um,
Steve: part biological organism, in part ai.
And I guess my big question there was how was it even programmed? It almost seemed like before you go on this ship, your consciousness is uploaded into some sort of AI that gets integrated into this MENA computer or biological computer. It seemed kind of organic to me, especially after it blew up. It kind of looked like there were plants that were dead.
Mm-hmm. And kind of like burnt out. So that's what kind of what led me to believe that it was part organic organism and the other part kind of an AI that was just programmed with whoever was on that ship's consciousness so they could tap into it.
A. Mert: Oh, interesting. I didn't pick up on any mention of the consciousness being uploaded unless you're like just in there and somehow it can see your vision or dreams and whatnot and or your memories, I guess that that's how they were.
Saying like, oh, we can see your memories and but it recreates through your memories, this dreamlike world. Cause I wasn't sure if what people were experiencing were just their past. The closest thing we have right now is a vr. You know, like you put on the goggles and you imagine that you're in there, even though you know that you're not there, your brain kind of tricks you, let's say you're standing on the edge of a cliff.
It gives you that weird survivalist instinct that you're about to fall. So you're like having. I dunno, vertigo or something. I thought it was something like that. But even more immersive because people just go in it and they completely lose sense of their, I think that she was mentioning that you don't have much control over your bodies.
I think that's why everybody lies down these face pillows. Just
Jason: for people who haven't seen this film, which is probably gonna be most people, I should probably explain that the main character that we start following her job on this cruise ship, I'm gonna call it, is to, uh, run a machine or a device called Mina, which exists in a room.
It's uh, basically their version of a holodeck where people can come in. If you tilt your head down, then you seemingly lose control of your body kind of slumped down, and then you begin to imagine yourself existing in like a peaceful nature scene. So it's an escape from the reality of the world they're in.
And initially the passengers aren't particularly interested, but then as they find out that they're trapped in space, Or lost in space or whatever. They come, you know, more and more often and this device or mechanism becomes a critical part of their coping. It isn't really explained, I don't think, unless I miss something trying to read the translations.
But the impression I got is that it's like a psychic ai. It has the ability to scan consciousness or memories of people. I think that's the better way to put it. And then it sifts through that and somehow creates an image or a place in the person's mind that seems to be different every time we get a couple glimpses into it.
And they're similar places for the main character, right? I think it's sort of like a waterfall and looks like Sweden and uh, it's a little bit different part of that area. So maybe it's just one big area. Uh, or maybe it changes a little bit each time, but there does seem to be an intelligence driving it, deciding what you see, or somehow managing that.
Whether or not it's a biological intelligence or partially biological intelligence is unclear. I actually did also notice that there seemed to be some like gross parts. It wasn't all just transistors and chips, but I think it's meant to be a living thing in large part because they're dependent on it and because later on in the story it takes on like an elevated status as almost like a religious
Steve: figure.
Why do you think things went awry with it at that, that one part where that one guy starts having flashbacks of the fire that he's trying to escape, et cetera? Mm-hmm. That's the part I was kind of really curious about or what you guys thought, because if it's supposed to only show you positive images and all those people seem to escape some really.
Traumatizing experiences from Earth. Why all of a sudden would it kind of start malfunctioning? That's part I didn't really get. It was almost as if it was thinking that, you know, the people had to get back into reality or something like this is what actually occurred or was done with kind of showing them this idealized.
Vision of Earth.
A. Mert: My creek interpretation for that was, and that's why I thought maybe they weren't, this AI machine wasn't necessarily showing them their real memories. But these idealized versions, similar to what you said, that are akin to dreams because like that guy's nightmare looked like he was escaping from like bomb shelter or something like that.
Like there were bombs and like he was running through the woods, uh, woods. And I thought because it was, the machine had to sift through people's memories or desires or dreams and find like, Focus on the positive ones because everybody was, after realizing that they were stuck in this ship first for two years, they thought, I think they were despair, started to take in and the machine started to not properly function and couldn't find the good ones or something like that.
And it's just like the machine became nihilist and then self-destructed. I think
Jason: it was like a metaphor for humanity, right? Like it was absorbing their negativity and then that's all it could project and mm-hmm. Spoiler alert, at the end of the film, the. Main character had been absorbing everybody's negativity and projecting positivity, and then eventually she cracks, and then that's it.
They're sort of on a parallel journey there. I don't know that she spectacularly self-destructed in the same way, but she did seem to remember the whole bit about the corners of the mouth, like you always look like you're smiling, and she became Mina basically for her partner and for some of the other people, even literally projecting.
I'm just referencing a part of the story. For those of you who aren't going to watch this, so as they, Amina is destroyed, so the, uh, crew members or the, uh, people on the floating hotel, they lose access to this uplifting imagery and, and illusion that they can exist in and feel better. And then very much later, like what, 20 something years, 30 years down the line, the character who was responsible for managing Mina steps up and tries to be the like, uh, morale officer for the ship by offering them a glimpses of or earth when it was, you know, beautiful.
And she uses the technology left over from Mina to create this image outside of the ship. And unfortunately, it isn't enough to prevent people from giving into despair and ultimately including herself, just like the device. Does that track for you guys at all? Does that seem like Yeah.
A. Mert: Yes, but I think her real reason for despair was her lovers.
Suicide. I thought. True. But of course, at the end
Jason: of it, it is despair. Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, they all do give into despair, I guess. I mean, who knows? We don't see everybody, but I guess the reasons are different. That actually brings up a good point about Mina. What was Mina babbling about before?
Self-destruction. I felt like I should know what that was. Did you guys get a handle on that? No, no, no. I couldn't figure that out. The burning rocks and stones, that despair or whatever that was, no. It
seems
Steve: like it was taken directly from the original. 1950 something poem.
Jason: Yeah. That really makes me wanna read it.
Right.
Steve: This movie is so fascinating in, in so many ways to me, just that they recreated humanity and each person within that ship has their own moral drive to just continue. Like, what is hope for each person. It was just really interesting to see like the captain and how he just kind of, kind of gets absorbed in his own power.
Mm-hmm. And then how he starts wielding that power over time. Mm-hmm. And how he kind of gives accolades here and there, just keep everyone kind of subservient to him. Even though he knows that from the beginning, it seems like he knows that there's no way out of this situation, even when they find that probe and they pull it back in and how he ends up killing that woman.
But then no one really resists it either. It's almost like the whole morale of the ship just falls apart. I thought at one point that they were gonna rebel against him. But then it was, the movie just took in a different way where it's like, okay, now if you're under this type of stress in this situation for long enough, do you just let whoever is around, just kind of take the lead?
And it kind of seemed that that's what was happening with the cults, with Mina. So everyone's looking to someone and then when there was no one that they could look to. On that ship, the whole thing fell apart.
A. Mert: That was the, the leadership of that captain and how he turns into this totalitarian figure and no one resists that.
Mm-hmm. Even though they could have easily, they seen that he killed that woman who was also, interestingly, she was like the nihilist on the ship from the get go. My partner and I were watched the movie together. I remember were talking about this like, why didn't these people resist or revolt against this person?
Is it because he is the captain? He knows it all and they're stuck in one place, so they're all like literally on the same board ship or whatever. Even if they were to revolt, overthrow him or something, like what would happen? No one can't control the ship. It's not going anywhere. What would the new management even accomplish then?
Is
Steve: everything meaningless? Kind of Is this whole movie about meaninglessness of taking any sort of action? Because it seems like every character tries to take action in their own way, but it all ends up meaningless in the end. Like with the, the captain, with the suicide, them never being able to find the planet that they can whip around and use the gravity to, to get back on course.
It's almost like a theme is hope and, and if there's no hope, it's just everything is just meaningless. But it seems like it was just a little by little hope just kept diminishing throughout the movie.
A. Mert: This is the overall question of the movie and life itself, I guess, but I think it might be too early to try to answer this question because there are so many other elements in the movie.
But if I was to, you know, take a stab at it, I would try to say that yes, it is meaningless. Like everything is meaningless, you should say. But then people create their own meaning. Thus, everybody have their own ways of dealing with hope and despair. For one person, the hope is a child, and for the other person, this child is a source of despair.
So I think it's about what you make with what you have. I didn't think everything was meaningless and hopeless, and I don't think the movie says that too, because the very ending of the movie, the last shot we see is this beautiful new habitable world that is all green and blue and whatnot that looks like earth.
The ship, 50,000 years later, this ship comes across
Jason: 6 million. Million million, 6 million. Yeah,
Steve: that was, I had a question about that. Would a ship last that long in space, isn't it getting bombarded by radiation constantly and debris.
Jason: There. It just be torn apart. I think there was a sign at the beginning that said This ship can last 6 million in one years, or at least to the end of the movie.
Oh, really?
A. Mert: Completely
Jason: missed that. That's cuz I just inserted it. Yeah. Um, I don't know what kind of technology would be in place, but if it was entering through or going through solar systems or asteroid belts, which presumably would need to be there in order to protect a planet like that and allow it to develop, then I would imagine so it must have functioning technology or it's the luckiest ship with the un luckiest crew statistically ever.
That's a tag. That's a tagline. I'm glad you brought that up. Because that la, not the bit about the ship's technology. I think there's a little bit of hand waviness around that. But the idea that that last shot is hopeful, it was almost like a slap to the face. Mm. You know, it's bad enough that our main character ultimately appears to lose hope and society just collapses.
But on top of that, if they could have just pulled it together for 6 million years or whatever it is, right, they would've been fine. Is that hopeful? You know, I don't know. Right. That seems a little bit not super hopeful. I think it's
A. Mert: open to interpretation. It's not maybe hopeful for the humanity or this group of humans because there are already people living on Mars.
And what I don't also get is this the, okay, so like this is the downside of the, the contradiction part of the movie. Is this the ownership that exists? That can be. Used to navigate. Clearly there were multiple ships that must have been taking this journey because this was like a routine journey between Earth and Mars, right?
So there are already people living on Mars. I'm sure there are other spaceships. Why didn't anybody get on a spaceship? I mean,
Jason: try to access, I assume they're all dead. They must have all died on Mars.
A. Mert: There is life on
Jason: Mars. No, but I'm saying, or like colonies or whatever. The rest of humanity must have died as well, would fit the theme of this film.
Otherwise, why no rescue ship? Mention anything about
Steve: a rescue ship? Maybe
Jason: I missed it. So just to, for those of you who are not gonna watch this film, everyone should watch this film. Sure. At least once after this podcast. So later on in the film, after the crew or the passengers have been floating through space for, what is it?
Like, 24 years? 24 years? Something? Yeah, something like that. They detect a clearly manmade object or artificial object that's basically shaped like a missile, and they believe that it must have fuel rods in it. So they activate their anti-gravity drive to slow the spear down or the missile down, and they pull it on board.
And then they start examining it. And for reasons that I really didn't understand, it seems to serve no purpose in the story after that, other than to initially present them with hope and then take it away. The one explanation I got was that it's random. Remember that one character said it's unrelated.
It's just something that happened, and, and that's it. It has nothing to do with us or saving us. Kind of like, uh, that was the a
Steve: the astronaut said that, right? Mm-hmm. The astronaut said that to the guy when she saw the cross
Jason: on his neck, right? It's just a random occurrence. It's a coincidence. So why put that in?
And what is it? Is it like a metaphor for something? Was
A. Mert: it explained? It has to be. I kind of like that moment because of, she sees that everybody or humans are so obsessed with themselves and they say they think that everything is about them and everything is about the survival humanity. And I'm not trying to like put a finger towards you or whatever that term is, but uh, to say, bring it, this probe was, you said it's manmade.
I would say actually it wasn't manmade. We don't know what the source is. It kind of also like reminded me of space out. I see that like random monolith block. Mm-hmm. People don't know what this is, like who made it, where it comes from. I thought pro was like that. Yeah.
Jason: No, I, I agree. It's definitely artificial, but we don't know what made it, or would you say it was
A. Mert: natural?
Well, I don't know. I think we we're not supposed to know either. Like it could be aliens made it. There may be other life source out there that is not human. And perhaps, again, connecting back to the ending of the movie where we see this habitable planet, by the way, it looks at least from the outside, like who knows?
Maybe there are alien species living there that is like 6 million years away from Earth. You know, we don't know. And maybe they made it, but I do like the fact that it wasn't made to rescue
Jason: them. I think it's interesting, but it introduces. A confusing element, right? To me, I will say to the credit of the film, I wasn't distracted by that as much as I would've been in most other movies.
So you introduce something like that, that suggests a much larger universe, and then you go back to just focusing on this little intimate space with your characters. And my brain would have normally grabbed hold of that and just been like, well, what is it? But what does that mean? Are there other clues?
Where's this gonna go? And then if it isn't resolved at the end, I would've been annoyed. But this film, I didn't feel that way at all. It sort of fit with the tone of the film that it is meaningless or not to say meaningless, but it doesn't have meaning beyond how it affects the characters. That we see.
So I was okay with that. I actually, to their credit, I think that was done fairly smoothly
Steve: on the, uh, the topic of the rescue ship in general. I don't remember having heard them talk about having tried to get in contact with a rescue ship or Mars. This idea, if you mentioned it earlier, that maybe everyone died on Mars.
That's kind of interesting. If they're the last ones to leave Earth and everyone's under the impression that everything's fine in Mars, it would've been nice if they would've explained that a little, maybe they haven't been able to get in contact with Mars for whatever reason, or the debris knocked out their communication system.
Something like that would've made a lot of sense. As to why there was no rescue ship coming, nothing
Jason: before them. Nothing. I didn't see any technological limitations. I mean, obviously if SHIP is designed to transport large numbers of people from Earth to Mars, it's not an interstellar vessel. But if it can do it in three weeks, then it implies to me, and that's shaky ground, that they have the technology to do something
Steve: right.
Or there'd be constant communication between that ship and the Mars base, right? Like a cruise ship would. And if some, an emergency like this happened, you would think, yeah, hey look, there's something can we'll stop the ship where we are at these coordinates, right? You guys come to Rendezvous. But they didn't really get into that.
And I think that's, I don't know, I think it's a bit of a flaw in the logic of the movie to just kind of ignore that fact and kind of move on. Like, okay, we're knocked off course, we're just heading off into space. And basically all the solutions that we're trying to find were how do we get another fuel source?
The fact that there was no other planet that they were heading towards was a huge issue, but the rescue ship part, I think should have been dealt with. I
Jason: think it, the point is to focus on the people that are on the ship and that's it and everything else. It's almost like doesn't exist once the journey starts and they get hit by that giant space bolt or whatever that was from then on.
Nothing matters that isn't on the ship. Whether it's theoretical or talked about directly or anything like that, I think if you can get on board with that or you can go on this journey of the exploration of humanity, but I don't know. I can't think of any logical reasons why they would be completely stuck the way they are and no one would try to help them.
I think it just is what it is. Yeah. It's kinda like
A. Mert: a Noah's
Jason: Ark situation. Gotta drag religion back into it, huh? And
A. Mert: then get it destroyed, I guess. Yeah. Well, actually, speaking of religion, I think we should talk about that briefly too, because after the artificial intelligence that was giving people like physically the sensation of paradise based on their own dreams and desires and subconscious or whatever you wanna call it, when it dies, what is there that people hold onto to and it becomes religion.
Not any religion. It's like this a newish religion where people like create their own chants about like the light coming to them. Like they're looking out into space and praying for the light to come and they build a shrine where Mina is or was. Then it turns into this weird cults where they have fertility orgies and whatnot and mm-hmm.
I al almost felt like they were creating this religion so that they can have orgies in this space. Like let's get rid of all these like hetero or homo narrative relationship types in this. Just have an orgy.
Steve: That's an interesting point. The fact that it seems like that cult just kind of fulfills everyone's needs and wants and it kind of justifies it for them, almost like they need justifications for whatever their longing is, since they don't have traditional, or they're not following any type of traditional religion and the one guy that does seem to be following traditional religion is yelled at.
That's when that woman goes nuts on 'em that there is no hope. So that was interesting the way they did that. They created that cult. So it was like just kind of mimicking early humans in a
Jason: way it seemed like at times. That it was an argument in favor of religion, like societies that had a fairly structured religion and that offered rules to live by, seemed to have had an advantage in development over the thousands of years, up till now, and relatively recent history, humans have been moving away from that and relying instead on other things to provide structure and guidance for how to behave.
But then you take a group of humans and you put them in space, you isolate them. Entirely. That's all it is. You just isolate them then. But you could make the argument that this film is saying that they need that structure of traditional religion, you know, more than ever. Because that one conflict we have around traditional, what is it, Catholicism, whatever that cross was meant to represent Christianity, the man who had the cross wasn't really the problem, from what I could tell.
Like representing the breakdown of humanity or oppression of others. Like you mentioned the captain earlier, and I thought perhaps he would be supplanted by a religious theocracy, but he wasn't. Mm-hmm. Right, right. And so hypothetically, classic Christianity or really any, you know, long lasting religious set of beliefs might have sustained these people longer.
It might have held society together or maintained hope. Yeah. But it seemed like the film at times was trying to say, well, if you devolve into this kind of hedonistic, uh, paganism, you know, and you just start making up religion as you go and you have big orgies and everybody's kind of nuts, then society falls apart and everybody dies.
Rejection of traditional religious beliefs is a contributor to the end of humanity. Again, I don't think that was the intention, but it's a read, it's a read of the story. I like
A. Mert: that read actually. Because the summary of that reading, I would say, or the flip side of the reading is that like what Karl Marx said, religion is the opiate of the masses and you need that opioid at that moment because people are having panic attacks and people are dying or committing suicide and mass and people need something to hold onto.
And maybe it's not as structured and strict maybe as Christianity, even though we never actually seen anything represented beyond the cross on that guy's neck. But like we don't know how much religion is in fact operates throughout this human group, stuck on this ship. But what happens with this cult is that it does erode that Christian morality or more of, I think Catholic morality of mm-hmm.
You know, man and a woman and marriage and all of that. The only relationship that we are witnessing is. Through, of course, because we're following the, the main character, the woman, it's never even defined if she's bi or gay or whatnot, but you know, she hooks up with a guy and then she is in a romantic long-term relationship with a woman and they have a baby.
And we don't ever see anybody complaining about that or like challenging them on that. And it's like this already, uh, utopic world or queer
Jason: people. So many good points in there. Yeah. The rules of society are partially absent on this vessel, and actually we're calling it a vessel, but I really liked that the captain early on, I think he was the one who said it, said This is our own planet now.
Mm-hmm. Right. And in some ways it is indistinguishable from a planet, obviously, in many ways, probably most ways it's completely different. But in terms of a group of humans living in a limited space, that's what a planet is. You know, so they essentially live on this planet and they could have made a go of it, or at least we're not given any reasons.
And I think the final shot suggests that technology would not be the limit. So we're not given any reasons why they can't make a go of it and live on this planet, just like humans lived on Earth or theoretically Mars. Right? But then things like religion, you know, or the absence of religion or the introduction of more pagan religion or whatever we wanna call that less structured, maybe less moral, less of a set of rules to live by, that did seem to contribute to the breakdown in an extinction of all of the people on the entire population of this planet, which is a, a weird Yeah.
Weird kind of takeaway for a modern film, but maybe not a 1956 epic poem.
A. Mert: The cult did survive, though, before we jumped to 6 million years ahead. The last thing we saw, I forgot how many years they like, maybe 25 years later or something. Like we were in mena, there was a group of people sitting in the dark and there was one woman citing a poem.
Again, that sounded like what Mina was saying also earlier. Mm-hmm. Or there was some correlation with between those two. The last survivors of the ship became to, uh, came together and they were still following this or trying to cling onto this hopeful connection to the universe. There was no mention of a like mm-hmm.
Like God or anything, but just this light that they were referring to, I
Steve: think, was there any type of connection between the religious aspects of what we're talking about and the captain and the, those white sheets on the dead, remember whether were, the white sheets were thrown on the dead, and he said, we need those sheets.
And then they made a point of showing them getting washed in like a laundry room. Mm. I was wondering if there was some kind of symbolism to that. Was that to show that humanity had been devalued to the point where now, like you couldn't have the respect to cover them, that it didn't even matter that we, they were now you utilitarian, everything from that point on was completely utilitarian, so now we need to reuse these sheets for what they're made for.
Cause I found it really strange that they would've focused on that in that way and even showed them being washed to be used in presumably the traditional way.
Jason: Right? Mm-hmm. That's a good question. It could represent stripping away more of the customs and rituals that represent. How we value people in life.
You know, it was like a transitional point for them, maybe significantly in that they kind of wipe that away and keep trying to start fresh. I mean, that was sort of the captain's attitude so often was just keep starting fresh. Just grab hold of what's working and continue to lean into that. So he's very practical, very pragmatic, and stayed in charge for as, as long as anyone could, as far as we can tell.
Anyway. I think if this had been like a, maybe an American movie, he would've been a more extreme character. He would've been more polarizing. He certainly had an important part in quite a lot of the story, but everybody didn't react against him or to support him. He just didn't have that, like an Ahab kind of character or something like that.
Right. He didn't ever seem to really reach those extremes, at least not in as obvious and dramatic a way as, as we're used to seeing in American films. So the subtle signs and when he finally starts to crack at the end, you know, like that was, I think meant to be a big deal. There was really very little follow up.
To that. So I think if this was remade as an American film, it would be a famous actor and a lot of the story would be rewritten around that character in some type of revolt. Some type of possibly, yeah. Or he's a hero, or he is the villain. Right. Either way. And then the
A. Mert: ending would be, Ending would be like the woman falls in love with some other guy and then they rescue this baby and move on to earth and have a happy family.
That's the Hollywood ending.
Jason: Or they figure out what that spear, you know, like the most hopeless moment. It like opens up, you know, and it like starts broadcasting and then, yeah, or they put it in the front of the ship and it just pulls them to like a nice planet. Wait a minute,
Steve: wait a minute. There's a keypad.
And then they try to figure out the code through the rest of the movie and they get the mathematician in there. It was
A. Mert: at the tip. They just did a look
Jason: there. See,
this
Steve: is, this is how these conversations devolve into our next pitch pitch session. What would you do with the IP
Jason: of this film? Well,
Steve: the captain is now played by Tommy Lee Jones.
Oh man. Yeah, I think it's that whole idea of that sheet taken off of those people. I think it's part of the whole devolution of society and how like the rituals, like you said, they're not as important anymore. That's just one of the things that just kind of devolves and people just end up falling apart cuz of the religious aspect.
Cuz all of those burial beliefs, right? They come from paganism and then they were brought into mm-hmm
Jason: More western religions. They're religious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Religious.
Steve: And once you take that away, is there humanity just
Jason: lost? So an interesting statement. I mean, I think we're creating this possibly out of moderately thin air.
Oh. But there is
Steve: something, remember when the, uh, the astronomer, I think they called her the astronomer or the astronaut. Yeah, right. When she's killed, they have a burial ritual for her where she's wrapped up in these sheets and they're very focused on that and showing you that. Mm-hmm. As juxtaposed to the captain's take on it.
Mm-hmm. So maybe there is some more of a connection there cuz they were following a burial ritual while he was not at all clearly just kind of he saw it, that they were going
Jason: into that. Oh, so it's more of a commentary on his pragmatism? I think so, than it is on, you know, a message to the viewer about religion.
Steve: Theoretically. Yeah. I mean, and he seems to be, in a way just all knowing from the beginning in terms of what's gonna end up happening. Mm-hmm. But he's just trying to instill hope in, maybe hope for power. That's what he's using it for. Mm-hmm. He wants to have his power as the captain, but if he keeps the hope alive for the ship, it's gonna be much easier.
So I think anything that got in the way of that he was against. Yeah, I
Jason: think you're making him a villain. It's ambiguous enough that that's a reasonable read, but I also think that it's ambiguous enough that the read could be he's just doing his job. You know, they talked about like pilots being emotionless or whatever that was what's her name?
IGEL or, I don't know. It's No, is Ale. Is Ale is ale. Thank you. They hide their emotions or she hid her emotions. Mm-hmm. So it's not unreasonable to say the captain does the same, like that's the top deck crew is supposed to like contain their emotions. And so he represents in some ways that kind of emotionless person who's like, we all have a job.
This is my job. I am going to do that job as practically and effectively as I can all the way up until I can't contain my emotions anymore. And that's why his wrist was wrapped from a very sloppy, apparent attempt at suicide. And so maybe he had just been containing it all that time. And so your interpretation of his use of the sheets wasn't necessarily about religion, losing religion being a mistake, but more just he's that practical maybe.
Or, or maybe you could make the argument that having leadership that isn't spiritual or religious, that's too pragmatic is gonna lead to doom. I don't know. I mean, I hate the way I'm going with this, but it does seem like there's enough evidence to construct that meaning. Like that was a, a mistake. Like he should have left the cloths on, they should have had funeral services.
They should have honored the dead, especially at that time. They should have created a set of rights for burial that reflected the culture. They should have adopted a spiritual leadership and had rules and a belief in an afterlife in order to maintain hope. Again, I don't like that this is a read, but I can't think of anything that, I mean, they even had, like that spear could be interpreted or the space missile could be interpreted or they could have chosen to interpret it space as like a mystical source, a sign from, not necessarily a specific God, but sign from the divine and they could have worshiped it and they could have organized their culture around it and maybe survived long enough to arrive at this new planet.
But then by the way, how would they land on that new planet? Because it's not like they brought the space elevators with them. Right. But anyway, continue. So I don't know, that's a read.
A. Mert: I kind of like that read. I thought about that scene too, because we were so focused on these sheets getting washed. Mm.
And like they're all like pristine and white. Both Michael and I actually said at that moment, like, oh my God, is one of them going to be bloody? And they cannot wash away the blood.
Jason: But it wasn't,
A. Mert: they were all very clean.
Steve: Mm-hmm. What if they were just saying that they just kept doing this process over and over and over again?
Like they had a limited number of those sheets to cover the dead and he was just assuming that more and more people were gonna die, so they're gonna need 'em for the next round of, right. Maybe of people that die.
A. Mert: Maybe it was, or like you were saying, like as people are decreasing in number, these traditions are no longer necessary.
Like it doesn't hold that much importance anymore. So we're like, okay, let's just do the practical thing. Let's send them out. They're gonna go out in the space anyway. Mm-hmm. And who cares?
Jason: But didn't everybody have their own sheets that I also
A. Mert: thought about?
Steve: Don't they have enough sensitivity? And why?
Weren't there any craft, like a escape craft on this gigantic flying city?
Jason: It was just supposed to be a three hour tour, right? So you probably don't, why? Why would you have a
Steve: lifeboat, an escape vessel of any kind? You're
Jason: just gonna fly out some space. Just a quick trip to Mars. Believe me, this is waste of money.
Steve: With these types of movies, things get kind of iffy when certain basic plot points are kind of just ignored, like the rescue, these escape pods, or there's probably a lot more that we haven't really even discussed.
Jason: But no, I think we got it all. Okay.
Steve: Well, I mean
A. Mert: in that case, part of the suspension of disbelief also, if we're believing that like this is what's going on.
And the interesting thing also, we could ask ourselves like, why do we believe that this is a legitimate concept? Like the fact that earth is destroyed and there's somewhat of a mediocre life on Mars and there's these super technological ships and devices elevates us like from earth to this ship and whatever.
And we can believe these things, but we don't believe that there's a rescue, there's not a rescue pod in this ship.
Jason: Gonna, maybe it's cause we're so answer that. Okay.
A. Mert: My interpretation is like, we're so used to these science fiction things and we are so logically think like, oh, of course there's going to be a rescue ship.
Like every ship has one, like, or whatever, you know? Mm-hmm. But, or shouldn't they? I mean, of course these, I thought about these same things too, but then I was like, oh, why am I assuming these? Are there. I
Jason: do wanna point out briefly that some science fiction movies, they open the door for that kind of analysis and criticism by talking about the science and introducing it a lot and, and making it like, make the plot revolve around it.
And this one only does that a little and other movies do a good job. They're almost more like fantasies in a sci-fi setting. And they do a good job of not opening the door too much for that. But I did notice that this director uses closeups a lot, and I think the frequent use of fairly extreme closeups helped shift my attention back to the characters in the story and away from questions like, you know, we're asking about how would they even land on that planet?
Or where is the rest of humanity? It's like, no, that's not what this is. This is about these characters right here, right in front of you, and they're relatively small world or the intimacy. They kept reestablishing the intimacy and I think. That was really significant for me because normally I am plagued by those kinds of questions.
If the director had used a lot of wide shots of the ship and space and you know, really spent a lot of time focusing on the, the missile or the whatever that thing is, and other technology pieces, I think my brain would've been flooded with those questions, and I probably would've been frustrated when I turned it off.
But as it was, there was a real intimacy and focus that was maintained perhaps partially by the closeups. I agree with
A. Mert: that. And it also contributes to the claustrophobic myth of this whole situation. True. You're not only stuck in the ship in the middle of space with no way to escape, but you're also like stuck in your own body and your own mind with other people.
Jason: Well, and presumably the sets weren't that they were using like shopping malls or hotels or whatever it was. You couldn't do a lot of wide shots. You know, they may not have had the budget for that. Like if you go wide, then you get like a frozen yogurt place or something, you know, kids on their cell phones.
So that might have been out of necessity too. A lot of
Steve: these questions came after I watched the movie. To your point, I wasn't really thinking about escape pods or really the rescue all that much. Mm-hmm. And they did do a fantastic job of leading me away from that altogether. Mm-hmm. You know, it was only after, and really while we're having this conversation that you just start thinking back at these specific plot points from maybe flaws in the plot, but during it you're really focused in on those characters.
And the camel work has a lot to do with that. So
A. Mert: I have a question if I may. Please. What did you guys think about the whole politics and economy on the ship? So meaning and also race. You're mostly seeing major language being spoken throughout. The thing is, I think Swedish, I think everybody, almost everybody is white, if not white presenting and then, Everybody seemed to be, my mind was like, okay, is this like a free shuttle between these two planets?
Or like, people have to be able to buy a ticket, like to afford to get on this ship and to get travel. Oh, good question. And if that's the case, like are all these people, like upper class people who were able to afford this thing and they can also like, and that we all saw that it was a mall, like this fancy cruise ship with a mall in it that people like are shopping.
So is there some sort of a currency you noticed later on there? There's not a currency, but credits like Oh, mm-hmm. Oh, because that guy, this older guy tries to bribe. Mm-hmm. The main character to use mema. I wonder also what that word means. But anyway, he says, oh, I will give you more credits if you let me stay there longer.
So there's this credit thing, but what does the credit do? What does, what does it buy? Like do you actually, is there some sort of a currency or is it like completely no luxury communist. States. That was one of
Steve: my first big questions when I saw, especially when I saw that scene. I think there was someone putting something in a window, some type of space suit for Mars in the window.
Mm. I don't know if you noticed that. It was a really quick, really, really quick scene, and I was thinking to myself, wait a minute, this is in US dollars here. How are these exchanges of good? Are these governments that are paying for this ship? Why would you need to pay for this to go to Mars? So I kind of got the, uh, impression that these were all really wealthy people who had paid for tickets and everything on that ship was just how much money you had.
But then, yeah, you know, it begs the question, is food included in this, like a cruise ship, right? Mm-hmm. Is food included? Is it all you can drink and eat? How are things rationed? But then I stopped thinking about it when the accident happened. And
Jason: they had to rush food. Right. I think it's, the implication is it's prepaid.
It was when they found out after the ship ran into trouble, the captain, they said, oh, have this evening snack on the captain. And everybody was like eating sandwiches. So, right. A compliment to the captain. Yeah, exactly. So somehow they must have prepaid, I think it was a credit system, like an arcade, you know, where you go in there and you exchange real money for credits and then they're only good on the, in the arcade because they kept showing arcades.
So I feel like that was sort of the implication there. And as for how they got on the ship, I just assumed that humanity decided that the Swedish middle class would go last to evacuate Earth.
A. Mert: I didn't think that was the case, but
Steve: they wait until the last possible minute. Yeah, let's
Jason: The nuclear explosion.
Yeah. Yeah. Everyone voted and they were like, Hmm, Swedes go last.
Steve: Yeah, they've got it good over there already, so.
Jason: Yeah, I don't know. Uh, that's a great question. I, I thought of it as just reflecting the population that was available. I. To the, uh, filmmakers and I don't know a lot about Sweden. My impression I get is that if they need a ton of extras, it's probably hard to get a particularly diverse appearing group on $40,000.
So probably friends and family of, you know, the people involved. But, uh, I don't know, maybe there was some sort of message there intended or not intended. I mean, I'm
A. Mert: curious if it was like a commentary on the Swedish culture in general. Yeah. And politics. We're gonna have, there must be. I, I don't think it was a coincidence or just dependent on the budget.
I did
Jason: notice that some of the computer readouts had English, they had Swedish and English, and I was curious if that reflected something that your average Swed deals with. Like when they use technology, there's often their English words mixed in that they would presumably have to learn in order to use the technology.
And so that made sense to them that in this movie, like some of the deck names were Swedish and some were English and on the bridge some of the, what is it like, um, colossal failure or something like that, or engine failure was in English and I was like, really? That? I would think they'd probably prefer that in Swedish.
Right? Sure. But yeah, maybe there's probably some Swedish cultural elements there, but I don't know how to pick them out. I mean
A. Mert: there was that Spanish guy who had the panic attack and he was only speaking in Spanish and there was a
Jason: translator. Yeah. That was an interesting choice to make a few, like one or two people speak another language.
Steve: Was that just kind of implying that it wasn't international? Voyage
Jason: maybe. Yeah.
A. Mert: Yeah. Maybe it was just the Swedish ship going to
Steve: Mars. When they showed Earth, it looked like, wasn't it all like just tornadoes everywhere covered in like clouds? Like there was like an ecological disaster. Yeah. And drought.
A. Mert: Yeah. There were, there were no green surfaces left
Jason: Anyara, or however you pronounce that correctly, is actually a made up word. Really? Yeah. I assumed it would meant something specific and I think it does, but not in Swedish. So the only interpretation I could find was it's the name for the space in which Adam's move.
Hmm. So remember that scene where the, the astronomer, I think she was. Mm-hmm. She was holding up her glass and she was showing the bubble in the glass and trying to explain that it's moving infinitely slowly. And I think she was trying to partially make the point of scale or like contrast meaning against the infinite nature of space and say this bubble, it's moving through the space between atoms or the space between an outer space.
I guess being sort of an analogous here and it only has the meaning from its own perspective, or it only has meaning from its own perspective, I guess was sort of the point. Did you guys get more out of that speech? It seems to tie to the title of the film. I'm
A. Mert: trying to remember the scene before that or after that.
That was, I think in relation to, it looks like there's just that bubble stuck in the glass. It looks stuck, but it actually does move. So I think even though, and she was the nihilist woman who was saying this, you know? Mm-hmm. Which was kind of interesting. She was because. It wasn't like, oh, we are stuck.
We're all doomed. You think we are doomed, but we are actually still moving? Or was it just saying like, life goes on with you or without you, it doesn't matter. I dunno. Mm-hmm. Where she was coming from. Exactly. In that
Jason: case, yeah. It seemed important but unclear.
A. Mert: I forgot where, when that happened though.
When that conversation happened. Cause it was actually hopeful. That was my reading was, I was like, oh actually she's being nice about that. Hopeful
Steve: about it. Like even though we don't think we're moving, we actually are moving towards something. Right. When I first saw it, I thought because she was such a nihilist is that it was, even though you feel like you're moving through space, you're actually not, in the grand scheme of things, space is just too vast.
And I thought that she was trying to reference the fact that there was no planet that they were going towards, that they'd be able to lock onto their gravity and spin back around towards Mars. But I could be wrong cause I might've just conflated where those scenes were.
Jason: I don't know. Yeah, it's almost like that character represents acceptance in some ways.
And the movie sort of suggests that acceptance is the answer to survival. It's an ingredient, you know? And so she was trying to facilitate the main characters acceptance of the situation by saying these things are not really different, whether it's this bubble or the ship, it's just moving through what can feel like an infinite space, and it just is what it is.
And just accept that, don't despair, or the probe for
Steve: that matter. And she was the only one that could really sleep. Remember in the beginning when she said there is no planet. And she's like, what do you mean? She's like, there is one, but we'll never reach it. Right. And, and then, and then she just goes to sleep.
And then the other woman, MEMA leader or whatever. Robe.
Jason: Mema. Robe. Robe. Yeah. She, um, couldn't sleep. Wasn't that her title at all? That was her title, right? Yeah. MEMA Robe. I bet it's like mem she panic attack after that.
Steve: Yeah. And that other woman, she just like, and because I think she just accepts that she becomes basically an alcoholic, right?
Like that's what they're kind of implying. She just, yeah. Might as well live your life. There's nothing we can do about it. Right. But
Jason: she responds to discovery of the spear, the missile or whatever the, the object, let's call it. Yeah. She responds by cleaning herself right up. She's back in her uniform. It's just like the first scene where she's giving the, like video tour.
And then when they realize that it, they can't use it. They don't know what it is or it doesn't have purpose. She just goes right back to being, being negative. Yeah. And then she gets killed cause she's dragging others down. So I don't know. Yeah, I guess. In a way cuz she would've drank herself to death. I was gonna say like maybe she was in a better place, but it seemed like she was headed to an early grave before they discovered that object.
She was laying there drinking. Yeah. You know, and at the
Steve: bar had to like, she
Jason: had to drag her out of that bar. That's right. Yeah. And then that guy looks back at her rear end. I was like, what is that? Yeah,
Steve: seriously.
A. Mert: But the interesting thing is, for instance, she doesn't join the cult. You don't see her at the orgy.
Like, okay, she does like, maybe like you can say alcoholism as like a hedonistic drive that will eventually kill her. But she doesn't
Jason: actually think it was self-destruction. She was numbing herself. Mm-hmm. Right. And escaping
Steve: through books, remember in the beginning. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm.
A. Mert: So how she deals with her own thing is like the world is empty and meaningless and we're gonna eventually die.
I might as well do something that I enjoy, but it's not dependent on other people. Her destruction is. Towards herself. Mm-hmm. Or she accepts it and doesn't care about religion or any other thing. But she also doesn't like try to hurt the other people. I'll do my own thing. I wanna be alone. Whereas the other people, like they resist it or they form a cult or something.
Again, back to your question earlier about, oh, is everything meaningless? Yes. And then that, what do you do with it and how do you continue living? Like a little bubble stuck in glass is up to you. Interesting. What that says about agency
Jason: per se. But this movie seems to avoid those kinds of conclusions.
It's not preachy. I think they just want to present ideas or questions and then you can sort of think about what your take is. I walked away from it a little depressed. I felt like this was revenge, making my partner watch Pulse. I,
A. Mert: I haven't seen it, so I.
Jason: Pulse is a, uh, Japanese film that we reviewed. It's pretty famous and it's very, very bleak and dark and it was my suggestion, but I think my co-host there was trying to get revenge by picking this one.
Cause I walked away kind of down, you know, like it was, I love felt a little moody. I looked
Steve: up, uh, most depressing Swedish sci-fi films in the past 30 years. Revenge topics right
Jason: at the top of the list.
A. Mert: Topics. Topics, yeah. I was actually wondering, how did you find this? I'm really glad I
Steve: watched it.
There's um, actually this guy that reviews movies on a YouTube, he's really funny. His name's Elvis the Alien. He has all kinds of reviews. Like he has one of, I think I sent it to you about Morbius. Morbius is the greatest movie of all time. And I clicked it and it's just hilarious and so sarcastic. And I thought, and he had a, um, it was just a, a little blurb at the end of one of these funny reviews that he does.
And I think it was just one of these like, uh, terrified, like one of these like really cheesy horror movies that are actually not that good. He said. Mm-hmm. One of the best movies I've seen all year that no one's seen is Anyara. I was like, huh, that's interesting. Cause he said, you know, I watched so many movies and 99% of the time they're so bad.
And then I found this one cuz I thought it might be really bad. And he loved it. Mm-hmm. And he recommends it to everyone. So I was like, huh. That seems like an interesting concept, especially for a podcast cuz there's so many themes floating around in this movie. Yeah. That's where I found it. But check that guy out.
He's, he's really
Jason: funny. The, uh, original epic poem has inspired a lot of, uh, interpretations. It's actually pretty famous, and I don't know if you guys saw this, but in December, 2019, a planet, an extra solar planet that was discovered was named after Isle, the pilot from this film and the star for that planet was named ra.
Oh, so talk about a far reaching impact. Right. Seriously. Literally. And it could be ironic or a coincidence when a bunch of humans end up floating towards that star towards us. Full, full circle. That's right. Watching this movie going, oh, why didn't we prepare? Mm-hmm. They mentioned it in the podcast. I know.
We would know what
Steve: to do. Skip ships. We need to know what to do
Jason: once we're on that ship. That's right. Religion. Okay. We need a religion,
Steve: quick religion, skate pods and uh, a radio to call the other, the other ships in case something goes wrong. That's wrong.
Jason: Exactly.
A. Mert: Going back to the Foundation Books, religion becomes the first operating and controlling mechanism in the first book.
And then after religion, it's the commerce. We only saw the religion part in the, in this book. I mean, um, film, but
Jason: not the Yeah, if only they had the foundation series. Yeah, they could have just used
A. Mert: that actually. It was kind of written around the same time. Yeah. I think Foundation was written in the 50 51 or something.
Do we know anything
Steve: about the author? Was he religious? Was there anything I. Yeah, no, the, uh, Harry Martinson, the poet Harry, Harry Martinson. I wonder if he was staunchly religious, and maybe this was his, uh, his poem about going away from religion and going more towards technology.
Jason: He died, uh, 1978, born 1904 poet in former Sailor Warded, a joint Nobel Prize in literature in 1974 with another Swedish author for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos, quote unquote.
It was controversial because both he and the other winner were members of the academy. Oh, interesting. No, and sadly, I don't know enough about Swedish culture in that time. I e I know nothing to have any sense of how prevalent religion was in their lives. Presumably not absent. I don't see an answer to your question with a quick skim.
What did you
Steve: guys think of the, uh, the DJ. When she got the award. That was so hilarious. That really, that was
Jason: really funny. Yeah. I was disoriented. I was like, yeah. Is that the incidental music or is that guy playing that on some sort of device? Are they trying to say that? Like, this is the depressed, they're all depressed now, so this is the kind of music they like, or these are the only survivors on the entire ship.
Like that whole scene was, was and
Steve: that it was called Jubilee. Mm-hmm. Was was, and they were just clapping that slow clap. Yeah. This movie's, uh, real pick me up. But I, I really enjoyed it though. It made me think a lot about a lot of different
A. Mert: themes. By the way, I just give his Wikipedia page. He committed suicide guys.
Really? Yes. It says that's surprising. I don't know who wrote this, but it says The sensitive Maran found it hard to cope with the criticism following his 1974 Nobel Prize Award in literature and committed suicide on February 11th, 1978 at the University Hospital in Stockholm. Don't
Jason: read how he did
A. Mert: it.
Yes. I'm not gonna read that out loud.
Jason: That's something people should Google, but trigger warning, it's unpleasant, not pleasant. Well, that fits the tone of the film. Seems like he was interested in grief and loss of hope. Again, you know, we're spoiling the heck outta this movie, but the kid, their child like that was.
Gut wrenchingly tragic. Yeah. I knew it was coming too. They set it up earlier in the film. Yeah. And I was like, oh, this is too dark. This is too dark for me. But I guess they felt like they needed to include it. It was really,
Steve: really depressing. I was hoping that that wouldn't have happened, that she walked in.
At least there was some kind of glimmer
Jason: of hope there. But yeah, you really can't get unfor to unfor this ending without that. Like once you introduce the child, that's really the only way, I mean, I guess the kid could die accidentally, but you can't have something survive the main character, I guess, without resolving it, without leaving the perspective of the main character to resolve it eventually.
Right. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm also very
A. Mert: curious if that didn't happen and because it happened right when she built that holographic, whatever. Like a copy of A copy of the projection. Yeah. Projection. Mm-hmm. Which, you know, everybody knew it was fake. It wasn't the same virtual reality experience. Mm-hmm.
That was so immersive, but it still diverted the attention from the darkness, the void outside of the windows of the spaceship. And you saw this like resemblance of earth and peacefulness and that the death happened right there, which is interesting. Like why was it right at that moment, what was the commentary on that
Jason: isle or isle or whatever, didn't know that it was coming.
Right? Like she addressed it so she knew it was coming and chose that moment to do that.
A. Mert: I guess I'm asking, in the sense, I'm not asking why Isle did it at that moment, but why did the filmmakers or the script writers wrote that right at
Jason: at that moment? Yeah. Yeah. No, I, that's what I'm saying. I think it was like maximum heartbreak.
That was my point, is that if her significant other didn't know that this was coming, Then you walk away as the observer or the viewer thinking, oh, if only she'd held on for another five minutes. But they take that away. It's like, it doesn't matter. Like this whole projection hope, the effort by the main character to keep people moving forward and surviving, like is irrelevant.
And then the response to the projection or the people on board's response is the same. They're like, yeah, it's nice. Thanks. Just like the dj. Slow clap. Yeah, exactly. And they give her the medal or the captain gives her the medal and then she drops it and it just doesn't matter. Exactly. Nothing. You do.
It's ultimate depression, you know, just giving into depression, which is really encouraging and bright.
Steve: Yep. Who chose this movie again?
Jason: We need an intervention. All right, I'm coming. Coming to help. So next week, the um, Bernstein Bear movies. I guess. We'll, that sounds good. Yeah. Or
Steve: Paddington. Paddington.
Jason: Paddington's. Good. Paddington Sequel. Yeah. Anything else? Anything we didn't get to that stood out to you guys about this idea, this project? I am sure,
A. Mert: but I think we did cover most of essential points, I guess
Jason: for good. Yeah. I mean, I think we gave it a reasonable beating. So big question. Feel free not to answer.
Looking for volunteers only if you inherited the rights to this, what would you do with this intellectual property, like the poem, the movie, it all just falls into your lap and you have the option to do whatever you want. You can bury it. You can destroy all known copies or you can develop it. You could make a Saturday morning cartoon series.
Pitch something to Nickelodeon. Does anyone have any ideas of something you could do with this? You can remake it, you can sequel, prequel. Any thoughts?
A. Mert: I would totally make it. I would make remake it, not in the Hollywood sense, but I would definitely develop political economy, the system, how it works, and focus on that.
If there, in fact, there's no money, I would love to explore and see how that would operate. Because we see like the glimpses of people working now, the kids are being like put in the, in the labor force and they're working on the algae farms and whatnot. Mm-hmm. So that was also interesting, but I would want to focus more on that.
And also I would definitely make sure that there's no rescue pods or the communications are down, so like no one can reach them so that there are no
Jason: questions left. So you plug some of those holes. Yeah. And shift focus politics a little bit more. The politics and the economy. Not
A. Mert: shift focus per se, but develop that side too.
So we are, we are seeing this structure more. And also by the way, that opened the door for a lot. So Steve, when I was watching this movie, I also thought about Triangle of Sadness, that cruise ship, because they're also stuck in a cruise ship and it is like humanity destroys, but it's so much focused on the politics and economy.
Yeah. And I think that had its own problems too. But anyway, so I was thinking of that interesting. Something like middle ground would be cool.
Jason: Anyone else have any ideas of what to do with this ip? It's strange
Steve: cuz typically I would say, yeah, make some type of movie or series out of it. But there's so many themes in this movie that are so self-contained to this particular world and the way this plot developed that I don't think I would do it justice taking that ip, I'd end up rewriting it so much.
Mm. That I don't think it would be the same movie. Mm-hmm. You know, because my tendency would be, even if I took, get that ending, what happens now? Let's say that ship lands on that new planet, you know, are there people there, et cetera. So I would take it in a completely different direction. So this would only be a device.
To get me from point A to point B, but it would be such a small piece of what I would do that I don't think I would even wanna take that same world and apply it into a series or another movie. Cause I don't know where I would take it. You know, a lot of the themes that the movie deals with, I feel like they really came full circle and they kind of.
That story was told. Mm-hmm. Maybe not perfectly, but I think it's run and it's ending and I think it just, that's it. And I just don't think I could do it. I wouldn't know where to take it. The political idea is probably the best one, because that's really part of that movie's
Jason: world in such a, yeah, I think that opens up a lot to explore that.
I would be interested in maybe more as an intellectual exercise or an exercise in creativity or an exercise in, in intellectually exploring the themes of this film and doing like a, a treatment for a short film around the people on Mars. And their awareness of this and their reactions, because I think there's some more darkness that could be explored there.
They're aware of a, of a significant segment of humanity that is in a precarious position. And how do they react to that? Is there apathy? Is there self-centeredness? Are there attempts that are, you know, heroic Or even like a selfishly motivated, like heroism, like, you know, kind of like rescue fantasies.
There's this element that's completely unexplained of a, the object that appears artificial and the technology exceeds theirs. They can't analyze it. So, you know, the question becomes, if I wrote some sort of short treatment, would I want to incorporate that? Would there be a second object that arrives at Mars or in Mars orbit?
And are they equally, are the humans there equally unable to decipher its meaning and purpose? And does that also impact their focus on a rescue attempt or even their own existence on Mars? And I think adding little elements of what existence on Mars is like appropriately bleak way, I think could kind of fit with this movie without really betraying it or biting off more than you can chew, especially if it's a shorter film.
Yeah.
Steve: Would you, would you add any element of something really important being on that ship that they need in order
Jason: to live on Mars? Oh, interesting. For sure. Yeah. Just to muddy the waters or something. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Or there are only so many people and genetic diversity is an issue, or you could do that and that muddies the waters even more on this idea of a rescue attempt.
Maybe they tried to rescue you. Yeah. Maybe. Maybe there were multiple attempts at a cost which resulted in them all dying, which would fit this story. Wow. Or or maybe at the end they're on that planet. Right. They discovered Mars sucks. So they figured out how to newer holes. Right. And we'll send them the technology so they can open a wormhole too in this nice little tube.
All they gotta do is open it up and they can join us on that planet. We'll be there, be great. We just gotta get 'em that
Steve: password and the whole thing just opens up. It's, it's just like a parchment rolled up. Yeah. It's really long.
Jason: Or it teaches you how to move away from that technology that they were doubling down on with the kids. You know, the anti-gravity tech. It's like that was the wrong direction. This is the right direction on this little silver parchment that unrolls. Like, go the other way with technology and you can get there in no time.
Yeah. I don't know. I just, I think it's an interesting enough concept and I think it would be purely as intellectual exercise. Interesting to kind of bat around, you know, like you have the little foam basketball in your hand and you're leaning back in your chair and you're throwing it up against the wall and talking out how to go dark, but not too dark and how to interface with this and without it being too depressing.
Right. Or make it too hopeful. There's something there. I think you could dig around a little bit. If nothing else, it might open up some ideas about. More sophisticated, more mature science fiction. I don't wanna say there's not any of it, but I think the population, like moviegoers now in general are leaning towards things that are a little less mature.
I think they like things to be a little more black and white and a little bit simpler and general. Right. And so escape pods. Yeah, exactly. So writing something or working on writing something that deals with complex issues that humans wrestle with, you know, could be fun and interesting. It's not gonna make any money.
Yeah. Probably
Steve: 40 grand maybe.
A. Mert: Well, everything everywhere, all at once was pretty good speaking. Haven't seen that. I
Jason: saw it's
Steve: a
Jason: wild movie. Is it heavy like this? Does it deal with complex
A. Mert: ideas? Oh yeah, but heavy wise, it's very much open to debate. With similar concepts. Special effects are amazing. Everything was, I think, yeah, everything everywhere was amazing.
It's a
Jason: great title for it too. So that's the movie people should watch for sure. Right after this movie, immediately they get you out the slump. Yeah. Yeah.
Steve: The Ani slump. It's actually a term.
Jason: Maybe that's what it means, right? Depression. It's the weight of the universe. Very good. All right. Anything else before we wrap up today?
No. Well thank you guys very much for your input. Thank you, Murt, for joining us as a guest. Hope we can have you on again some time. If anybody wants to reach out to us, we will try to put together some form of communication. How's that going? Do we have that? Is that set up? No, we have, we have that probe we're
Steve: building.
Okay. With Rescue Ponds.
Jason: Yeah. And next week Dead Heat, right? You Joe Piscopo. That's right in Treat Williams. See you then.