Our first (and certainly not last) foray into the work of Peter Greenaway with THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER!
Ooft! This ended up being a long one. Our first (and certainly not last) foray into the work of Peter Greenaway and arguably his most accessible motion picture and contender for the most literal title in cinema history: THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE & HER LOVER. It's got Michael Gambon! It's got Helen Mirren! It's got Cockney up the gills, firing at a pace so fast, you'll be screaming for subtitles (well, Laura did anyway).
We've welcomed back Kat from Uncomfortable Brunch on her first solo mission to aid in dismantling and examining this seminal work. Strap yourself in, this is a long but ultimately definitive coverage of one of the most interesting films in the pantheon of our On the BiTTE series!
Speaker: Glaze.
Ryan: Yeah, it's not a real body.
Speaker: Try the cock, Albert. It's a delicacy. I can't do that accent from Helen Marin.
Ryan: I don't know. We'll see. Yeah.
Speaker: Helen Mirren.
Speaker: Hi, I'm Helen Mirren. Try that cock, Albert.
Ryan: Awful.
Speaker: Well, hello there. Welcome to on the Beat, the podcast that uncovers full frontal male nudity in cinema. my name is Laura, and I am joined by my co host, Ryan.
Ryan: Hello.
Speaker: And we are joined by our special guest, Kat, of Uncomfortable Brunch.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: We have you here because this is an uncomfortable Brunch movie.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I talked to you guys when you were figuring out the schedule. So every film that you have a penis in it, we needed to get involved with.
Ryan: Well, we tried to make them align to some level of degree.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: This will be one of two that we have coming up, so stay tuned for that because you're also going to be covering Doom Generation with Josh pretty soon. That's true.
Speaker: That's at least, one more.
Ryan: Yeah, the excitement is palpable.
Speaker: I am excited about this one because Ryan has a thing about our director today. but maybe we're changing his mind.
Ryan: I think I came into the work of Peter Greenaway with, like, a level of bias when I was younger, which is kind of weird because usually when you're younger and you're studying film, you tend to be, like, pretentious and you like pretentious things, but you grew into your pretentiousness. Well, I always felt that Peter Greenaway was maybe too pretentious, but, I don't know. I think there has to be some level of respect and admiration for some of the things that he does. But I don't know if it's like it's 100% my cup of tea.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Well, that's good because we all gather together today to talk about probably his I don't know, maybe undoubtedly his most popular film.
Ryan: This is his seminal piece, I would say.
Speaker: Yeah. His most narrative.
Ryan: this is the most accessible of.
Speaker: His films, probably, that you really can't find anywhere.
Ryan: That you can't find anywhere. Yeah. It's not immediately available. or at least the version that we are certainly covering today.
Speaker: Yeah. And I was just reading a little bit about because I don't have any history with any of his other films, but what is being said about it online is just that this film is a lot less cerebral than his other ones.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I was hoping maybe, Ryan, you could speak on his past films a little bit, because I don't have knowledge there.
Speaker: he definitely will. I'm just going to interrupt him because I haven't even said the movie we're talking about.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, we should probably do that.
Speaker: Which is the 1989 dark comedy crime drama art film. Question Mark. Well, not really. Question mark.
Ryan: I would say it's incredibly an art film. Yeah.
Speaker: The Cook, the Thief, his wife and her lover.
Ryan: And I'm also kind of like, is there any way that we can abbreviate that so we don't have to say.
Speaker: It every time I say the cook, the thief.
Ryan: Cool. The cook thief.
Speaker: Usually when I've thought about it in my head cool.
Speaker: yeah, I call it cook thief.
Ryan: Yeah. Because I did do an abbreviation of it, and it's Tctthl. And I am not saying that every time.
Speaker: That's true.
Ryan: It's on the counter.
Speaker: I was wondering what? Like Titty Hall?
Ryan: Well, certainly we do have a calendar, and we have, like, a whiteboard calendar that we put things on. And I'm like, I'm not fucking writing the whole title down. That's not going to happen in a million years.
Speaker: The dog has escaped.
Speaker: This film has really quite an amazing ensemble ah. Cast that they've put together. Richard Boringer. Michael Gambin. Helen Mirren. Alan Howard. Tim Roth. Kieran Hines. And I put Paul Russell. He plays Pup, the boy soprano. You have more people that you put on your list, Ryan.
Ryan: I know. Yeah. Well, I recognized a whole bunch of the folk in this movie who have obviously been staples of British TV and cinema for I don't know how many years now, like, 30 years. OD. and I don't know if I want to name all of them, but you've already kind of mentioned, like, Kieran Hines, obviously. Liz Smith, who's of the royal family fame. Gary Olsen? Ewan Stewart roger Ashton Grift, Ian Dewey, diane langton prudence Oliver ron Cook, Emer Gillespie, Janet Henfrey, Willie Ross roger Loud Pack? Who's? Obviously of all the fools and horses. Fame. Like a whole bunch of folk in there. and obviously, I'm not expecting you Americans to understand exactly who I'm referring to there when I refer to the shows that they were also in.
Speaker: well, you got to give us a reference. Only fools and horses. Totally fine.
Ryan: Yes.
Speaker: One of the guys that I kept looking up was the first officer in Titanic. So that was important.
Ryan: Yes.
Speaker: And he's of your heritage.
Ryan: So he's also a Scotsman. Yeah, I mean, that's fine. I mean, I didn't get to finish the list, but I'm not going to. But let's just put it this way. It's a great cast of British film and TV staples.
Speaker: so while we were watching the movie and I was doing a little bit of research, I found something out about the lover played by Alan Howard, who's his name's Michael in the movie. Did you know that he was the voice of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings?
Speaker: No.
Ryan: the Peter Jackson, lord of the Rings. Yes. Okay. No, I did not.
Speaker: It was really cool to me, guys.
Speaker: Because we always bring up things like.
Speaker: Seinfeld and Harry Potter. And of course, Harry Potter will probably come up at some point because at.
Ryan: Least two people he was the voice of Sauron, but was he the mouth of Sauron.
Speaker: No.
Ryan: Like that character from the Return of the King movie.
Speaker: No.
Ryan: So he's the indistinguishable voice of the Ring. Of the ring. Right. So that literally could have been anybody.
Speaker: Yeah, but it wasn't, baby. It was the lover. The lover was the voice of the Ring and the voice of Sauron.
Ryan: I mean, that's how you get those gigs. You know what I mean?
Speaker: He's a prolific stage actor. When I looked him up, I go, what's? He from?
Ryan: Yeah, of course he is.
Speaker: We've seen Sauron's penis so many times. A lot of times.
Ryan: Yeah, a lot of times. Yeah. This is primarily going to be incredibly, dick thick. Let's put it that way. This episode.
Speaker: Yeah, I like that.
Speaker: Dick thick.
Speaker: Well, no, I lost my train of thought.
Speaker: I do want to point out we.
Speaker: Can just move on to something and I'll come up with it later.
Ryan: I think we can I think that's okay. Yeah, that's all right. As long as you're not too, like, crestfallen about that particular thought that you were going to put out there. Was it another Lord of the Rings, like Centric?
Speaker: I have no idea.
Ryan: Like geek shit thing that you always.
Speaker: Kind of pull out it's into the ether.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We got to move on.
Speaker: Cool. Everything I want to say is absolutely.
Ryan: It'S like Siron's Fart non existent. Yeah. Okay, let's carry on.
Speaker: So we've mentioned before that this is a Peter Greenaway film. I'm going to throw the synopsis out there before we get Ryan to dig into Greenaway, because this, I mean, to be honest, is one of very many Peter Greenaway films that we will eventually do because that boy knows what he is doing.
Ryan: Yeah, I guess we've held off on doing Peter Greenaway due to my unfounded bias against his work.
Speaker: I like that you could be honest about it.
Ryan: I suppose so. I guess we'll get more into that, maybe, as I talk about Peter Greenaway. And, this film was spoiled for me when I was eight years.
Speaker: Eight. Oh, right. You were talking about your father's.
Ryan: My father's current wife, which, if anyone doesn't realize that means he's married more than once, at least. and certainly, yes, I remember seeing the back cover of this film on VHS, and the ending of the film is one of the images on the back of the VHS tape.
Speaker: Whoa. Really?
Ryan: Yes, 100%. Now, whether or not this is the version that we watch, which is effectively the uncut, unrated version, which is the version that you should watch, even though it's not actually actively available, you.
Speaker: Know where to get it.
Ryan: You know where to get it.
Speaker: You just go on the Web.
Ryan: There's that there's that dark Web.
Speaker: Not even a Dark Web.
Ryan: Oh. Is it not the Dark Web?
Speaker: Www it's right next to that.
Ryan: Yeah, it's right you can get perfectly legal thermaceuticals online without a doctor.
Speaker: You wouldn't steal a, car.
Speaker: I want to buy it. I'm waiting for to put this out. For crying out loud.
Speaker: He wouldn't download a house.
Speaker: But by golly, if I could if.
Ryan: I could, I fucking would download the house. 3d.
Speaker: Print that shit. What are we talking about?
Speaker: It will take 45 years. But that's about how long it's going to take for people to afford a house.
Ryan: Yeah. It's like peer sharing real estate. Is that how that kind of works now? It's like the lime wire, for, council housing. We all get a piece. Yes. I mean, we would love that piece. But the thing is though, we're millennials. It's our fault. that's why we can't progress in life like our forefathers did.
Speaker: Anyway, the synopsis of this film is a beautiful one line that I pulled from Letterboxd one beautiful sentence that goes, the wife of an abusive criminal finds solace in the arms of a kind regular guest in her husband's restaurant.
Ryan: Perfect. Yeah, perfect.
Speaker: The tagline is great. It is lust murder. Dessert. Bona, petite.
Speaker: Which guys, this is going to go into spoilers. I mean, you know what you're getting into. But this movie got some, I thought it was going to be like halfway through the film, I go, I thought this was going to be more disgusting and more fucked up. And then it got to the end and I was like, fair play.
Ryan: Yes.
Speaker: You lived up to it and I appreciated it a lot.
Speaker: Well, it's got it sectioned off so that you've got the introduction to the characters and you learn what they're about. And then the middle part of the movie is just like clandestine sex. And then the end of it is just like everything coming crashing down. And so it's just like it progresses in a way that you would expect. Yeah, I guess until it doesn't.
Ryan: The film behaves like a three act stage play for the most part. like, I'm going to be making quite a lot of references to Shakespeare and all that sort of stuff, over the course of, this unraveling of, the Peter Greenaway classic.
Ryan: But m do you want me to get into Peter Greenaway?
Speaker: Please do. Yes.
Ryan: So Peter Greenaway, he is, as far as we're concerned, he's a bridge film director, screenwriter, and artist. And he's obviously still active now. And he's still a man in his 80s, still making films to this day. He is still a man in his 80s. so he started as an artist. So very much kind of, I would say, in the vein of a handful of other, British filmmakers, namely like Ridley Scott and stuff, is they did start out in art school and they did start out as artists and then kind of transitioned into filmmaking. I guess from the behind the scenes stuff that we watched and from a handful of the things that we've read about Peter Greenaway was that he just wanted more out of the art form, other than it being what he felt like was he was creating frames, but he wanted to create multiple frames with soundtracks and this idea of blending all these other art forms with sound and things to basically kind of, be a little bit more distinct in terms of his artistic direction and stuff, which is kind of I would liken how I kind of started off in art and doing illustration and painting and sculpture. And then filmmaking kind of ticked all of the rest of the boxes. And I kind of moved more into that, from doing art and things.
Speaker: when you talk about him being an artist, what specifically do you mean?
Ryan: Painter. Okay, he was a painter.
Speaker: so he went to school for.
Ryan: Paint to be an artist. He went to art school to do art, and he came out of it and he did painting.
Speaker: That'S helpful to know, like, the medium.
Speaker: I just want to make sure because he's an artist, I'm like, anyone could be an artist.
Speaker: Do we mean autore?
Ryan: Wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Ryan: Wow. Isn't that a phrase that many of akin to this current gen AI generation that we're now fucking dealing with as artists, where everyone can be an artist? Fucking knob. Eds.
Speaker: go on, keep going. Yeah.
Ryan: He joins a really long line of filmmakers who obviously incorporate, I would liking him to say, like an Akira Kurosawa, who to slightly more kind of extreme. he did storyboards that were primarily all just like single paintings, and he just wanted to recreate those paintings on celluloid. Kira Kurosawa, he did all of his paintings, and the storyboards for ah, ran in, these giant canvases that he did on set and on location. He would just paint them all really fast, and he'd be like, we're going to make it look like this.
Speaker: That's cool.
Ryan: I think that's very cool. but notably, what you see with Peter Greeneway stuff is that his influence is very much staged within art. And that's very much a very kind of similar thing to many great directors out there who have taken literal pieces of art and transposed those frames into the moving image. So he's very much influenced by the Renaissance paintings, baroque paintings, and obviously Flemish paintings. And to anyone aware of that, it's like the Dutch artists. so we see like, Caravaggio Rembrandt, where there are strong depictions of light and dark. And I would pull out an artistic term called Kairos Guru, which is basically the difference between the use of light and dark and how it's kind of less like, say, like an Impressionist painting, which works primarily with you have a white canvas and you're adding light and color to that canvas. You're effectively, in Kairoscuro dealing with something that is effectively quite dark, and you're adding the light to that image. In order to then create the forms and the images and all that sort of thing. And obviously with Caravaggio, who obviously has quite a he has a colorful history as being he, was a criminal. what did he do? He was wanted for murder. He was running around Europe while painting pictures and he was wanted for murder.
Speaker: Did he actually murder somebody?
Ryan: He did, yes. And, There are very strong and vivid depictions of violence and things within his pictures. And I would honestly, one know a few of my favorite paintings of all time come from Caravelgio and obviously from Rembrandt as well.
Speaker: wait, before we move on, describe the murder. How did it happen?
Speaker: Who did he murder?
Speaker: Yeah, who did he murder? Because I feel like you should know these things if you're just going to throw out murder like that.
Speaker: I want to know more about the murder.
Ryan: Tell me about I've not told this story in such a long time, but hold on.
Speaker: Just do it off the top of your head.
Ryan: Well, I can't do it off the top of my head because I only know that that is the case. So I would have to go back into the notes. I would have to then look for the note and then do it that way.
Speaker: Tell us details of murder.
Ryan: That is so like, you want to know about the murder?
Speaker: Tell us about the murder. Murder.
Ryan: His criminal history. So I've got this article here, it's from Biography.com, which notes that Caravaggio went to trial at least eleven times. so he went to trial for at least kind of writing, like libelous poems, throwing, like, a plate of artichokes at a waiter, and assaulting people with swords.
Speaker: Jesus, this sounds like Ezra Miller.
Ryan: Yeah. And this is yeah, but all the people he groomed. Yeah. Well, at least I mean, luckily there wasn't any microwaves back then, otherwise he probably would have put a baby in a microwave. but here's the thing, and this will kind of like seal this up because otherwise I'd be expecting you guys to then look it up yourselves and have a little bit more of the detail. But he did eventually fled Rome to escape punishment for killing a man and died in exile under mysterious circumstances. So my whole understanding of Caravaggio is, that he did a bunch of paintings and then he also did a bunch of crimes.
Speaker: I'm not done.
Speaker: I need to know more about this murder. That's all it says about the murder.
Speaker: Like, how did he murder?
Speaker: How did he kill him? Who was they? Was it like a bar fight?
Speaker: Or you just like, stab him in the neck with his artichoke?
Speaker: That was really choke him with an artichoke down his throat.
Speaker: Artichokes are not sharp.
Speaker: Yeah, but you could choke him out with a bunch of plate of artichokes.
Speaker: Shove it down his throat like book pieces.
Speaker: Like your favorite book on the French Revolution. Write down your gullet.
Ryan: I mean, I'm not going to lie. This thing goes incredibly in depth about all of the fucked up things this man has done over the course of his life. And I am quickly reading it because the last time I read any of this stuff, I was maybe 16. I'm fucking 30. I'm 38.
Speaker: This year, Caravaggio killed Renuccio Tomasoni in Rome. The artist N. Tomasoni began to brawl over a bet on a tennis game. The event was the last in a series of troubles a Caravaggio brought upon himself through his volatile temperament.
Speaker: I mean, there's even a tennis game.
Ryan: Yeah. There's even explanations about his death and that he got syphilis. And then there was an infected sword wound. And then he also got, like, lead poisoning from the paint he was using. That's how he died.
Speaker: A report written by the barber surgeon who examined Tomasoni's dead body indicates that Tomasoni bled to death through the femoral artery in his groin, suggesting that Caravaggio tried to castrate him.
Ryan: He is a fucking dude.
Speaker: What a story.
Ryan: He is the baddest of bad.
Speaker: Wait, and what year did he die?
Ryan: He's like the Sam Peckinpah of the 17th century.
Speaker: Oh, 16th century, was it?
Ryan: The 16th? Right.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: Yeah. So 1592.
Speaker: He fled and yeah, they definitely didn't have a cure for syphilis at that time.
Speaker: No. 16? Six. No, it was probably he killed, the guy.
Speaker: It was probably tertiary at that point that he ended up losing straight to his brain.
Ryan: He sounds a little bit mad, but he's also I honestly say, if you have any sort of interest in art whatsoever, I'd say, yeah, look at his paintings and look at the work of Rembrandt and stuff like that. And I think you'll find that there's transition from modern cinema from that sort of stuff there.
Ryan: So going back to Peter Greenaway, let's just, know there's a really strong sense of watch Peter Greenaway's movies. There's a really strong sense of scene composition, like staging, which I think is an incredibly strong trait for a filmmaker to have because it feels like a lost art. Like the good old sense of staging a scene and developing shots and stuff like that. I feel like it's a lot more about editing and stuff now. But then also there's a sense of illumination and where lights are placed and how that kind of all kind of works in the favor of how these scenes are put together. And obviously, there's a really strong sense of, costume and contrast in that nature and obviously nudity and how humans interact and stuff within his films. And just against a good sense of, design in his films. And certainly, I think with the cook, the thief, his wife and her lover, we're going to see a lot of that stuff in terms of how each film I think I think each frame in this movie can be analyzed and extrapolated quite a lot more. And that the amount of information that it's giving us and how certain things are kind of put together in this film as well.
Ryan: So I think this is a good way to start with, I guess, our greenaway odyssey, I suppose. But, he's a prolific filmmaker. I would also say that his films there's a long catalog of shorts and docs, and he also made a bunch of mockumentaries as well. That is, I don't know, like maybe 100 films deep. and I would say to you to have a little look at that. But I do have his full feature filmography here.
Speaker: How many is.
Ryan: Let's get started. Maybe, 20. It's only like 20 films or something like that. It's only 20. He's only made 20 films. so it starts off in 1980 with The Falls, which is followed up by the draftman's Contract in 1982. And then after that, it's A Zed and Two Knots in 1985, the Belly of an Architect in 1987, drowning by Numbers in 88. And then we're following that up with The Cook, The Thief in 1989, followed by Prosperous Books in 91. Eight and a Half Women in 99. The Tulsi Looper trilogy, which is effectively like a TV series, which was between 2003 to 2004. But what they did do is very similar to those Rob Briden, those shows, those trip to films. They did a truncated, edited version of the Tulsa Looper series. And they called it a life in suitcases. And that came out in 2005, like.
Speaker: The Trip and the Trip to Italy. Yeah, with Steve Coogan.
Ryan: And they're always poor version. They're poor man's versions of, the actual full TV shows. but that followed up with Night Watching in 2007, a movie called Gold Zius and the Pelican Company in 2012. Einstein in Guana Guato. I think that is Guana Watto in, 2015. And then in 2022, he made a film called Walking to Paris. And that's his last film at the moment.
Speaker: A lot of those have penises in them.
Ryan: Yes, we're going to be covering quite a few of them. I don't know how better those films are in compared the Pillow Book, he might have done. But it might not be on the list that I've got here. So it might not have been referred to as a feature film, if that's the case.
Speaker: Well, it definitely is either way, because I looked up his filmography on Letterboxd earlier, and it said I had seen 1% of his films, and one of.
Ryan: Them was The Pillow Book. Yeah. like I say, I took the full list, unless I'm wrong. But when did the pillow book come out?
Speaker: Well, it might also be that he was like, maybe a producer or something.
Ryan: On it, or it could have been any of the multitude of things because he's also worked in TV.
Speaker: He came out in 96. But he did direct it.
Ryan: Okay.
Speaker: But that was the first one that I'd seen of his because Ewan McGregor's in it. And he's naked the entire film.
Ryan: Yeah. not the first time.
Speaker: Not the last.
Ryan: There's a big comparison I make to Greenaway in terms of, like I'd say, if you like Ken Russell, you'll probably like Peter Greenaway. For better or for worse, ken Russell. Yes, I know you do. I know you do.
Speaker: so much I have yet to.
Speaker: Dive into Ken Russell. But it is an odyssey that I will take soon.
Speaker: You're going to love it.
Ryan: It's an interesting dive, of film. The Ken Russell stuff. It's very love or hate. It. That's kind of what I feel about Ken Russell. You're either really into it or you're not.
Speaker: A lot of his really weird stuff is on.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker: To be is, what Josh calls the Wild West of streaming services.
Ryan: Of course. Yeah. He showed us that, Chinese produced, like Trump versus the fucking aliens or the Illuminati. Yeah. And it's like Trump comes back as, like a Chinese clone. He fights the aliens and the fucking Illuminati and shit.
Speaker: Oh, dear.
Ryan: Yeah. There's a whole bunch of trash on there. But also, funnily enough, even to my kind of feelings on the whole thing is like, if you want to watch TV show animes from the late eighty S to the ninety S, to Be is the place to go.
Speaker: Tubi is amazing.
Ryan: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker: I'll deal with the that's a service I would pay for if I didn't have to watch ads.
Speaker: Yeah. This podcast is not sponsored by Tubi.
Speaker: It should be. I will reach out to the people.
Ryan: At Praises every week. Yeah, we ring as fucking praises. We should be getting money from Tubi. They're just like, I'll reach out.
Speaker: I'll reach out. Don't worry.
Ryan: They're like, fuck you. We don't fucking do shit.
Speaker: All right. Do we have any additional insight on Greenaway before we dive into this?
Speaker: I have so much stuff to talk about even before I have stuff about the film.
Speaker: Oh, my god.
Ryan: My only kind of like about the.
Speaker: Story of I feel like you guys are edging me.
Speaker: I'm just going to wait until we get you all glazed up.
Ryan: Yeah. One of us isn't going home tonight.
Speaker: Oh, no.
Speaker: I am starving.
Speaker: So I have a couple of things I just wanted to bring up that I just thought were interesting about the film. so this was Greenaway's first film to be released in the United States since the droughtman's contract in 1982.
Ryan: Oh, god.
Speaker: and he kind of used, this Jacobian play, Tis Pity She's a Whore as the template for the film. That's the name of it. Tis pity. She's a whore. It's a tragedy that was written by Tom Ford, first performed in 1626 and it's an incestuous love story between Giovanni and his sister Annabella that ends in disaster and death.
Ryan: Which is weird because I'd read that, and I was like, I've read that play before.
Speaker: It's, really familiar to me as well.
Ryan: Yeah, it's super familiar. And, it makes sense for how structurally this film is put together.
Speaker: Wow.
Ryan: Definitely.
Speaker: Well, yeah, it definitely has notes of stage theater and the way that it's shot. It feels like the camera moves around versus having quick cuts.
Ryan: There's a weird thing that I felt about, and I don't want to pander to, let's say in inverted commas modern audience, but when I was watching this, I was like, this is like a no holds barred, harder to stomach, stylized, Wes Anderson sort of stylistic kind of idea here. Like the way that the camera moves, the way the lenses are. I feel like a lot of his stylistic traits, love him or hate him, as it were, come from the green away. aesthetic, I would say. or at least that's kind of how I felt. And I'm not someone who really likes Wes Anderson that much, but you can tell from the fisheye lenses and stuff that he was using. but, yeah, he obviously kind of takes a little bit more from green away than I think he would ever hope to admit.
Speaker: thoughts, kat I find it interesting you're noting this, because one of the noted, influences on Wes Anderson, he always goes back to how Ashby, with Harold and Maude and those quick zoom shots and, those types of things like the reactions. so I would say maybe like, in the color palette, I could see that because there's a deliberate colorization, especially with use of gels and things of that sort. but I don't know how far the influence would go there.
Ryan: I would say I think it's a little bit more kind of surface level stuff. I don't think in terms of the level of depth that he employs into his filmmaking, I would say, like, side tracking shots is a big thing, and I think the staging is a big thing.
Speaker: I could see the tracking shots a lot.
Speaker: Oh, my gosh, so much tracking shots, especially. I just watched, Life Aquatic again at the Nzon last week, and it's just the camera moving around, taking you through the ship, because they had that massive set. And it's the same thing with this, is just like, you go from outside to inside, through the kitchen into the restaurant, and then around, not so much into the bathrooms. There's not really tracking shots into there.
Speaker: It cuts away.
Ryan: I mean, I would also kind of point out that in The Life Aquatic, that set, I don't think is used that much in that movie at all. It's literally for that one scene or two scenes or something, it's actually used.
Speaker: More than, I realized watching it before. If you go back, whenever they're just going through the ship, they'll use that set to just show the progression of them moving through it.
Ryan: Yeah, I guess so. I would have to literally force myself to watch, Life Aquatic again, even though we own it in the house.
Speaker: But I don't know. I like that one.
Speaker: It's when yeah, it's good.
Speaker: It starts to taper off a bit.
Ryan: After that for me. Yeah, I'm not his fan. I know Asteroid City and stuff's coming out, but really, he would have to do something. I know Katie likes him, and that's why I kind of brought it up, because I was like, I feel like there's some kind of level of influence here. But, yeah, no, I'm not his biggest fan. He made the Royal Tenembounds, and I think that's a fantastic film.
Speaker: Agreed.
Ryan: Yeah. Film's excellent, but, yeah, let's move on.
Speaker: We were talking about style, and I had some notes, which I'm sure we all knew and could very easily see just from watching the film, is the color and the color palette and the different sets that require different colors. And Greenaway said this movie is about color.
Ryan: Yeah, there's a real distinct, attention to detail in terms of, I guess, the gamut of cinema discipline being kind of involved here, where it's not just a concentration on what you're seeing from the camera perspective. It's like from costume to set design, to, obviously, the way that things are lit and the way things are put together, and the transition between certain scenes and locations that I think is incredibly clever.
Speaker: It is really clever, and I was reading about it before we actually watched the movie, and I didn't realize how specific and detailed that it was, because you have the different sets that have their different colors. So, like, the exterior of the restaurant is blue, and then the kitchen of the restaurant is green, because it all is within the restaurant.
Ryan: Well, for the most part, also, the underbelly of the restaurant as well, is depicted as red when we first because it's like I don't think, what was I going to say? there's no hiding the fact what this film is definitely influenced by in the way that the images are obviously put forth.
Ryan: And certainly, I think that's something we'll obviously talk about, because one of the main things, one of the main kind of thematic concerns is like, certainly it comes from critics as well, is obviously from the time this film was know, it's made, during the height of Margaret Thatcher's rule, her reign in the UK. At the you know, greed was seen as a good thing. I mean, certainly it's the fucking basis of any Tory government that goes into power in the UK. but certainly, there's no hiding the fact that this is a film that's about greed. It's about excess. It's about stomping on the lower classes. It's about how the proletariat is fucking nothing but a piece of shit eating scraps from the table of the bourgeoisie up to the point where the proletariat just decides that they're so hungry, they'll just eat the bourgeoisie instead. So this is very much like what he's putting out there. but then I also kind of put down in my notes, we're talking about this now. They compare it to Thatcherism, and I feel like a lot of it it really kind of comes down to, like, we live in a capitalist society, certainly in the west. It feels very tired at this point, obviously, back then. And certainly it's a little bit fresher, a little bit more kind of socially relatable, I suppose, when the time it comes out. But let's just kind of put it this way. Like, if this film was made in the US. At the same time, it would be compared to Reaganism if it was made now, you'd refer it back to the Trump era, and that kind of level of excess. Or you would look at Boris Johnson's Tory party at the same time. It's something that's incredibly relatable now as much as it was back then. But also, it's like a tragic, reminder of us. Well, we've not really moved forward particularly much. We're kind of still in the same boat even after, like, 30 OD years of something of our society kind of pretty much stomping on the lower classes. And that's kind of really what it is.
Speaker: Or maybe not even in the same boat, but maybe in a little submarine.
Ryan: Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker: Crushed the ocean.
Speaker: And I think we're probably worse off than we were when this was made, because that was the beginning of our because, you know, comparing it to Reagan, reagan kind of destroyed the middle class by the whole trickle down economics. And so we're here because, we haven't eaten the rich yet.
Ryan: No, but here's the thing is eat the rich, I feel like, is a very kind of, it's a kind of trophy mimi sort of term. But then I also have seen more recently, it's just kind of like, we don't need to eat the rich because the rich are doing a very good job of eating themselves.
Speaker: Are they?
Ryan: I think so.
Speaker: They can keep doing it.
Speaker: All of them are doing that. And I feel like no. yeah, I have a lot of thoughts.
Ryan: This is probably a deeper conversation than it is.
Speaker: I want more money. That's what I want. Isn't that what it's all about?
Speaker: I would like to pay less taxes for being like someone who is not even really I'm like middle class wage, maybe, but I am barely getting by. how does that even make sense?
Ryan: Yes, I would agree. I don't think it's a case of wanting to have more money but you want to feel adequately compensated for what you're doing. I think that's all I've ever yearned for. And it's still out with my grasp.
Speaker: Yeah. And minimum wage should be a living wage. End of story.
Speaker: Oh, God. Oh God. Yes, absolutely.
Ryan: Otherwise, we will literally start eating each other. I mean, I don't know if anyone really fully understands that, is that we will start eating each other.
Speaker: The tipping point is nigh.
Ryan: It is coming. It is coming.
Speaker: Do you want to hear more about the colors of this film? Yeah.
Speaker: Wait, could I go through my notes that I have?
Ryan: Yeah, of course you can.
Speaker: So, I wrote down I was like, color palettes, restaurant red, kitchen green, bathroom white. Outside blue. Book Depository is brown, and earth tones, hospital is yellow, beige. Those are the only two that are outside of the restaurant is the Book Depository and the hospital.
Ryan: Yeah. there's some lovely little visual flourishes which have no sort of rhyme or reason, but I like the fact that they're there. I think there's a shot in Blade Runner where okay, so hold on. There's a scene in Blade Runner where Deckard, first meets Rachel and he does the voight comp test and she's coming out from the window and you can see like a shimmering effect that's like, just happening. And they're just like, what's that there for? And it's like, no, it's just nice. We'll just put it there. And the same shimmering effect is when Helen Mirren finds what's his face Michael, after he's been murdered. And there's like this weird, watery shimmering effect that just kind of happens. That does happen for no other reason. And it's not explainable, but it's certainly never out of place. And you're quite happy with the fact that you're like, oh, isn't that nice? Isn't that a lovely thing?
Speaker: I think I kind of looked at you, but I didn't say anything. I was like, oh, that was weird.
Ryan: Well, I think inside my head. And I don't think I wrote it down because I was like, I'm going to remember that. I'm going to be like, I'm going to make a Blade Runner reference.
Speaker: Anytime that you can.
Ryan: Well, it's also the anniversary of that movie by 41 years.
Ryan: Holy shit. The greatest film ever made. Anyway, carry on.
Speaker: The thing about the color palettes that's so interesting as well is that it's not just about the set, but every single time one of the actors moves through one of the rooms, their color of their costume changes, their wardrobe changes, but it's the same exact costume,
Speaker: That took me by surprise because I did not remember that the costume completely changes. And so whenever she goes into the bathroom for the first time and it's completely white, I'm like, wait, did I miss something? Is this a different day? Did we jump timelines? What is happening? And then, oh, yeah, it's just the same outfit, but in white. And then when she goes back out into the restaurant, it's red again. And it might have something to do with moods. different types of moods and colors meaning different things. I mean, that would make sense, too.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. Her cigarettes also change color.
Ryan: They do? Yeah. the papers around the cigarettes change color because when she's in the hallway after she comes out of the bathroom, the skins are red, and in other times they're also green.
Speaker: And then she's in the bathroom, they're white.
Ryan: They're white. Yeah. So there's a really nice attention to detail. And, I mean, none of it ever feels out of place. And I do understand the minute it does happen and you notice it, it does feel slightly jarring, where you're just kind of like, huh? But then you kind of just take it on the chin and you're like, well, everything up to this point has been so fucking mental, it really doesn't matter to me exactly, if this is meant to make too much of a way of sense, I wanted to.
Speaker: Talk about it being fucking mental.
Speaker: Yeah. You know what? And you're absolutely right. I have a lot of interesting notes about just the artistry and, oh, this, this and that.
Speaker: But I want to talk about this chef getting shit, dog shit, shoved in his mouth and all over his body.
Speaker: Was that a chef?
Speaker: We had to watch it a couple times, and I'm pretty sure that they said he was, like, a chef, but he wasn't doing a job or something.
Speaker: Oh, so he's replaced by Borst. Yeah, by the whatever his name richard Borst is the chef.
Speaker: The cook. Am I wrong?
Ryan: I thought that's what I don't there's no kind of proper explanation in the film as to what that is. But he is a cook, and for whatever reason, he's maybe just cooked something wrong. Or not to the Gambinators liking, to the point where Gambin and Tim Roth and the whole fucking litany of folk that he, has under his, spell just humiliate this man within an inch of his fucking moral life. Like he is fucked.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The movie opens with them stripping this man down. And we see our first penis in the film, three minutes in, and then they're smearing dog shit all over his body, into his mouth. And then there's these two trucks of meat that are just sitting outside. And it's not really clear if they're, like, refrigerated trucks. And we find out that they're not.
Speaker: Pretty fresh at the moment.
Ryan: It's such a cool and interesting thing that they revisit much, much later into the film. And then you find out it's like those trucks never leave, but there's never any sort of collect. Like, it's so fucked up. It's so unbelievably fucked. But this is the opening shot of the movie. The movie starts off with a bang. Pretty much it's the initial credit sequence. There's this long jib shot from what I would say is, like, the underbelly of the restaurant, where it's a bunch of dogs, like, eating discarded meat, and then it jibs up from the city underbelly. And then we see the Holland days, which is obviously the restaurant, but it always looks like it's an unfinished front of the restaurant. It's always covered in, scaffold, but then it's also, like, sheets of plastic and stuff that are over the top of it. And obviously there's, like, wind machines because it's all sets and stuff. It's all wind machines. It's all fluttering, it's all making noises, all kind of, like, looking cool and stuff like that. And then these trucks show up, then a car shows up. And then, obviously, the moment happens with this chef that they strip off naked and they immediately cover him in dog shit.
Speaker: Yeah, it's like a really chaotic beginning, and it's hard to adjust. I feel like going into it, you're thrown into the middle of this chaos, and you have to be like, there's a lot of cockney happening. This man is getting stripped down and beat up and smeared with it kind of looks like chocolate, but I'm guessing it's dog shit because there's dogs in the proximity. And it's just like this whole thing. And then just like the aftermath of it is just like this swarm of bees, swarm of thugs. They finish what they're doing and they go inside. And then the rest of the staff, it's like a normal day, they come in, the guy who's completely naked, covered in dog shit, he wanders in, and then they hose him down and help him cleanse himself. But it's just like that's when you get a moment to breathe that cockney.
Speaker: Type accent I cannot do.
Speaker: Oh, my gosh, so much cockney. There were so many things that I missed the first time I watched it because I am not very good at picking up on cockney. And then the second time, I was like, oh, yeah, that's what happened. That was what was happening here. Because some of it is just so chaotic in the beginning, and they talk so fast.
Speaker: There were times where I said in the beginning to Ryan, I wish this had subtitles. And it's not because I don't understand it's because they are speaking so fast and I feel like I need to catch up.
Speaker: Yeah. Because I'm trying to take everything in.
Speaker: Yeah, it's insane. We watched it a few times, started it, because, our dog, as we've talked about before, hates other dogs, other.
Speaker: Dogs on the screen.
Speaker: And especially when the dogs on the screen actually are fighting. There's an actual dog fight happening on.
Ryan: The screen while a man being stripped.
Speaker: Naked by thugs, again covered in poopoo, which was chocolate mousse. You're right. It was chocolate mousse. Yeah, that's what it looked like. But it was poop. It was dog poop. Tim Roth is dressed like a fancy pirate. And then, Michael Gambin gets the dog poop on his hand and slaps Tim Roth in the face. And he gets poop on his face. And then Michael Gambin, the head gangster, pisses on the chef.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, I forgot. Yeah, he pisses.
Speaker: He says he needed a, drink.
Ryan: Neither we drank to wash down his.
Speaker: Albert is the character's name.
Ryan: Yeah, gambon. Yeah. Michael Gambon's. I mean, is this not like his seminal role, really? I mean, this might be his greatest role.
Speaker: It's probably his greatest role. But no one will remember this. It'll always be Harry Potter.
Ryan: The problem is in Harry Potter, he plays the replacement from, he plays.
Speaker: Dumbledore for most of the film because.
Ryan: He replaced Richard Harris after he died. Yeah. Okay. Well, I would rather he's not remembered for that. He would rather be remembered for that. Yeah. Well, I know I don't have a choice.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Until they make this available on streaming platforms for people, that's when people actually watch them and know about them.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker: Because this is all like he's like.
Ryan: A machine gun artist. He never stops talking.
Speaker: No, he doesn't stop talking throughout the.
Ryan: Entire it's like 2 hours of just Gambon just riffing like fuck. Like crazy cockney gangster stuff.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's kind of an endurance test with that because you're just like, okay, there's a lot going on. There's chaos. And this guy is just like being really foul and just talking and fucking with everybody. He's always in people's faces and pouring stuff on his wife's, food.
Speaker: I mean, how many people can say they've slapped Dame Helen Mirren in the.
Ryan: Face with a that when that happened. I was like, holy fuck. Because it even looked like it took her by surprise when it happened. Yeah. Because I was just a hoo.
Speaker: I mean, he punches her in the stomach.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker: He slaps her in the face. Everyone's getting beat up. Like little kids are getting beat up.
Speaker: There's a oh, the belly button.
Ryan: Yeah. No one's safe in this film from the Gambinator.
Speaker: Quite horrible. He might be one of the worst characters I've ever seen.
Ryan: Yeah. He is one of the greatest screen villains of all time.
Speaker: Agreed. he's amazing at it. And it's like I, kind of liked him too. But he is a horrible piece of shit.
Ryan: I mean, I'm going to put myself out there and say he is effectively the main saving grace of this film. Because I don't know who would replace him in this film in order to deliver a better performance.
Speaker: Yeah. I don't know.
Ryan: I don't really know who that person.
Speaker: Would I couldn't imagine someone else carrying this like he did.
Speaker: Well, it's interesting because it was something I wasn't going to bring up. But then I mentioned it to Ryan. He goes, you should talk about this. So the four title characters in the film were named after the actors that Greenaway actually originally intended. So, richard. The cook was for Richard. Boringer. And it was the only original choice that actually was cast.
Ryan: And he's very good.
Speaker: Yeah, he's very good. Albert was named after Albert Finney.
Ryan: Yeah. I also think would have been might have been a really good choice. But I'm also not particularly interested in seeing the Albert Finney version of this character.
Speaker: Georgina was named for Georgina Hale, which was his wife.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker: wait a minute. No, it wasn't georgina wasn't his wife, but it was, for Georgina Hale. Sorry, I got confused with wife. and then Michael was named after Michael Gambin. So Michael Gambin was originally intended to play the lover.
Ryan: Yes.
Speaker: But then ended up playing so yeah.
Ryan: Kind of, I like, I like the fact that Greenaway had the balls to just be like, well, these are exactly who I'm writing these roles for. And then he was expecting to get them. But then they ended up kind of swapping roles and stuff like that.
Speaker: Except for the cook.
Speaker: Except for the cook.
Ryan: But then the Cook's like one of the best character actors in the film in general. And then obviously Gambon just brings a fucking tour de force. And whether or not you love or hate like Helen Mirren, I think Helen Mirren does a very good job.
Speaker: Who Hates Helen Mirren.
Speaker: I was going to ask, I don't think I've ever met anyone who doesn't like.
Speaker: What Ryan said to me. You weren't here, Kat.
Ryan: I don't know if we can repeat that story because I can't say that and put it out there and then I might get in trouble.
Speaker: You're not going to get in trouble.
Ryan: I might get in trouble.
Speaker: Okay.
Ryan: Don't even say it because I'm going to cut it out. I'm going to cut it out. Okay. I'll tell you the story. So I used to work at what the hell?
Speaker: I was like, this is going to give you, like, a very brief glance.
Ryan: Of what he said that's not going to bite you in the ass later.
Speaker: I don't have a problem with Helen mirror.
Ryan: Thank you. Because we are going to cut this out. I can't put this out in the general public. I can't do that.
Speaker: you do realize that the way that I said it was vague. Keep it vague. You definitely didn't need to go that far. you can keep in a little bit because it's funny.
Speaker: No specifics.
Speaker: So there is a love story within this, which is beautiful, sexy, gross, and tragic altogether. And it's obviously we know the wife and the lover. And I really, really like Michael the Lover because he's so basic.
Ryan: Yeah. Alan Howard, who plays a bookkeeper in the movie.
Speaker: Yeah. And, they see each other for the first time in the restaurant. And it's always chaos when Gammon's around. And he's always around.
Ryan: He's always there, always making a scene, always saying something super, super loud. But this chance meeting is incredibly innocuous. And it purely stands out just completely by the fact that Gambon is eating not only just the scenery, but obviously everything within the scenery, and obviously all of the air that everyone is consuming at every single moment in time, in every single scene that he's m in.
Speaker: Well, they also don't really talk to each other. the wife and the lover, I think it's like half an hour into the film or later. Don't they have that conversation together?
Speaker: They don't talk to each other until, Gambin introduces them. He forces Michael to come over and introduces him to Georgina. And then afterwards they have that conversation. They're like, oh, he introduced us. This is the first time he broke our silence.
Ryan: There's also this beautiful little self referential moment where he's talking about a film within the film where he's like, that character did not talk until 30 minutes into the movie, which is, funnily enough, 30 minutes into the two hour cut that we watched, which I like. I like the fact that a film can be that self referential about itself.
Speaker: Which, is about the time that we see his penis, too, because I have it 34 minutes in, we see Michael's penis and a fully nude Marin.
Ryan: Yes. So just obviously, to preface this, the next few times that we do see, penis and stuff, it's usually accompanied by a fully nude Helen Mirren. And I know Laura kind of put out there that if we are going to see any sort of, let's just say, not to be crass, but like bush, we better see some dick, is pretty much what you said.
Speaker: Absolutely. If I am going to see anyone's vagina, I need to see a penis.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker: But obviously there is, way more penis in this movie than there is, yeah, which is beautiful. I'm here for it. Absolutely.
Ryan: As it stands, this film probably sits about second, to say, short bus, I would say, in terms of the level of amount of penis stuff that we see in it, so far, there's definitely more. Yes.
Speaker: Oh, no, there's so much that we have to uncover.
Ryan: There's so much more to explore. but yes, let's just put it this way. The film follows a very simplistic structure. Where it is we're in the restaurant, they're all having a meal. There's a lot of conversing and stuff like that and a lot of the dialogue. I would second Gambin's performance and the level, the quality of the dialogue to what Ben Kingsley is receiving in, Sexy Beast, that Jonathan Glaser movie. The writing in this film is exquisite in terms of just like the way the dialogue is received, the way the dialogue is performed, it's insane.
Speaker: The dialogue is, put forth by Gambin.
Ryan: It's so good, so unbelievably good. And it's just, a lot of it's very kind of throwaway. I mean, there's one moment here where there's a conversation and this line just spoke to me for whatever fucking reason just popped out. And it was something about he threatened someone. He says, I'm going to make you eat your own shit after forcing it out of your dick like toothpaste.
Speaker: Oh, I didn't even hear that line in the film.
Speaker: I didn't either.
Ryan: I wrote it down and I thought it was amazing. But it's just like this man at the height of his pomposity and just pulling this stuff out. And he feels like he can just get away with doing fucking anything. I mean, that's the same point where Tim, Roth is looking a little bit ill because he's eating seafood. And he literally just vomits onto his plate for no reason. He's like, for fuck's sake, you get a little bit decorum at the table. Don't go sitting there fucking vomiting on your plate. I was going to do a Gambon impression the entire episode, but I honestly can't do it. I honestly can't. It's so tiring.
Speaker: Yeah, that sounds exhausting to do. And also to, converse with.
Ryan: There's also a lovely moment. And it's just because we're getting to this, because there's a lot of really kind of weird things that happen in the movie as well. It's like one of the guys let's see the gangsters. He's going on about like, I can't believe it. I haven't had celery this good. And Gambin's like that's not know all this sort of stuff. Which I thought was.
Speaker: I mean, and also, the reason that we're in this restaurant in the first place is because the gangster Gambin bought this restaurant. Because he thinks know, having nice and fancy things means that you're a nice and fancy person.
Ryan: Yes.
Speaker: And so he's just trying to put on all these heirs. But you have Michael, the lover who's been eating at this restaurant every single day for God knows how many. So you know, the reason that he's meeting Helen Mirren in the first place is because, gangster Gambin bought this restaurant. So immediately, like, day one, the first night, I assume that they're eating at this restaurant. The gangsters is when Helen Mirren clocks this bookish dude hanging out in the corner that's been know for years, probably hanging out, eating dinner, and reading his books. Reading his books at dinner alone in.
Speaker: His very brown earth tone suit.
Speaker: Yes. His brown blazer that he never doesn't wear. That's his color palette. Well, it's a suit.
Speaker: It's a suit set.
Speaker: Oh, is it a whole suit?
Speaker: Yeah. His very baggy slacks that he wears with it.
Speaker: Yeah. Very different to the kind of outfits like the well, Tim Roth is the only one that was dressed like a pirate that time. But they all wear outfits that kind of look like that painting that's behind them in the restaurant. Yes, I think it's that was kind of how they designed a lot of the costumes was from that particular painting, which was the Banquet of the Officers of the St. George Militia Company in 1616.
Ryan: Yes.
Speaker: By Franz Halls.
Ryan: Yes. Another. Another Flemish painter. But I guess it's a reflection of the decadence that's going on inside the restaurant as well, which is effectively what that is, because that painting itself is very much an updated version of The Last Supper as well, which is kind of a very similarly kind of themed sort of painting as Sung.
Speaker: Oh. There was a couple of moments where they were all standing around Michael Gambon at the table that looked very much Last Supper.
Ryan: Y yeah.
Speaker: one thing with the color and going back to his brown suit, because his suit matches his surroundings, home and where he stays, which is the depository, the book depository. But everyone else, when they enter into a certain room, usually the color palette.
Speaker: Of whatever they're wearing.
Ryan: Yes.
Speaker A: Which I think is kind of interesting.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Ryan: It also lends to the argument that there's an incredible focus on just the attention to detail and the character.
Ryan: Because Greenaway is very much a proprietor of film as a visual medium, as much as there's a lot of dialogue and there's a lot of very well delivered dialogue in this. And this is maybe the most accessible film of his because it's got quite a relatively simplistic thematic story. And you can apply it to yourself and you can understand it, and it makes all sense and stuff like that. But also, he is very much a visuals filmmaker. He thinks that films should be visual, which is also something I agree with. It is a visual medium. And everything that you see should help to convey the amount of information that you should be seeing, as opposed to in, I guess, like a level of procrastination, um, within the writing of the film. Um, so that's something I definitely agree with. And I admire in his work.
Speaker C: He said that he wouldn't be a filmmaker if paintings could have soundtracks.
Ryan: Yes.
Speaker C: Basically not a direct quote, but roundabout that.
Ryan: Yeah. Um, I like his approach to filmmaking. I think that's kind of the main thing that I do. I think it's a lot of things that people forget nowadays making films. And effectively well, it's more like the argument between do we make films as art or do we make films as content? Um, that's kind of how I'm seeing kind of the modern age of filmmaking.
Speaker C: Now I want to talk about, um, the kitchen, the big bagels on the wall, and the sex scene, uh, which is the second penis scene of this film, because the first time that they get together, um, is in the bathroom. So you're in the white bathroom. They're in the stall together, the lover and the wife.
Speaker A: Oh, yeah. She's going to give him a blow job or something. They don't really get too far.
Speaker C: Yeah. But I think Ryan kept saying while we're watching is not yet, Laura. Not yet. It's not coming out yet. Well, we already saw one, so I wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker A: But no, you see some of the hair around. Uh, there's a bit of little peak of Shaft hair when he's, like, trying to button up whenever. Um, that Albert, by the way, because.
Speaker C: It'S all about these two people trying to have an affair under Michael Gambin's nose. Because she thinks that if she's doing it when he's around and, uh, that he'll never notice.
Speaker A: Yeah. That's, like, in his own world, which it makes sense. Like her explanation of, like, well, if I'm doing it right when he's around, then he's not really going to be paying attention because he's so involved in messing with other people and putting other people down and just being like a general asshole.
Speaker C: It's just so funny that she keeps saying, oh, I'm going to go to the bathroom. And he doesn't like her smoking cigarettes around him because I guess it's not proper, right?
Speaker A: So he just thinks that she's smoking in the bathroom.
Speaker C: She's smoking in the bathroom or she's just shitting all the time. Well, the thing is bringing up about the fact that did you wipe your bum? Do you need help wiping your bum? Did you wipe the toilet seat before you sat down? We don't know where these people have been.
Ryan: Well, there's a lot of yeah, um, there's a lot of fixation on her anus from Gambon's character in this movie. And then we kind of find out later that he's violated her in certain ways regarding that sort of foul play.
Speaker A: And she also hints at his, um, fixation with her asshole. And um, how he might not be attracted to women in that way. And so maybe a lot of his jerkiness and his anger might come from repressed homosexuality. I mean, that's kind of hinted at a little bit.
Ryan: Yeah. He doesn't like any women, regardless of whether or not he likes these wife. He doesn't like any women in this movie. I mean, he stabs a woman in the face for talking back to him at one point. And, uh, he has no time whatsoever. He sees women as like, secondary in the human race. He just does not like women generally.
Speaker C: Well, they're merchandise. And he called Helen Mirren basically his property. He's like, you better not be touching yourself. That's mine.
Ryan: He refers to her as like an asset, not as a person, effectively.
Speaker A: So in the scene, whenever, um, he drags Pup outside. Pup is the boy, the wee singing boy who likes to sing soprano while washing the dishes. Which side note one of my favorite things about this movie that like, remembered from watching it before was like, I want to watch this again because of the little albino boy who's like singing. But anyways, whenever, um, Albert Gambin, who plays Albert, he drags Pup out with, uh, Georgina. And then he beats her up. And then he's trying to get her and Pup to do something sexual really weird. And then it's far away. You can't see the details of what's happening in the car, really. But it seems like he either rapes her or obviously he's abusing her in some way because then she has bruises in the next scene. But I wanted to know if you all thought that was like a rape had happened or what had occurred during that.
Ryan: I hasten to use the word borderline whenever kind of referring to anything that might be distinguished as rape. But for the most part, what you do see is that he beats the living fuck out of her. And she has bruises all over her body in the next scene. But yeah, I mean, what we're dealing with here is he beats her black and blue and he abuses her. He violates her. I mean, he's probably raping her on a nearby daily basis.
Speaker A: Well, she goes into detail about it, like how there's objects, um, that are in their bedroom. And if she wouldn't insert them into herself, then he would do it. And so she was like, well, it doesn't hurt as much when I do it. And so that just shows the kind of world that she's living in. But, um, she also, whenever he introduces Michael to Georgina, she starts pushing the line a little bit by saying, like, oh, I see a gynecologist. And she starts talking about she hints, uh, at the abuse causing miscarriages, I think.
Ryan: Yeah, because he's desperate for them to have children as well. But it's obvious that this kind of cyclical, um, abuse that seems to be going on in their relationship is obviously the primary reason that's preventing them from having children.
Speaker A: She says, I had three miscarriages, and the doctor said that my insides, it's not going to happen.
Ryan: They're broken. Yeah.
Ryan: Um, talking about well, I think we can go into I mean, I guess we kind of skimmed over it. But obviously the last dick scene was them in the bagel room. The big bagel room is what I refer to it as, where they're completely naked.
Speaker C: Right. So, yeah, uh, the lover and Regina are in the kitchen because they're in a couple different rooms in the kitchen that have different kind of backgrounds. This one had big bagels on the wall that I remember specifically. There's another one later on that has uh, uh, pheasants pheasants on the wall.
Speaker A: Oh, yeah. We get a tour of the kitchen via their sex spot.
Speaker C: Because this one really 34 minutes in. Let me just get that out there.
Ryan: I really like this moment in the movie as well, though, because it felt like a genuine kind of lover's moment. And they're completely I mean, I wrote it down here as naked, um, because I thought it was funny. But also because we talk about the staging and stuff. I implore anyone just to watch the movie because I'm not fucking describing every frame of this film whatsoever. But there's a lovely kind of like Nicholas rogue type, um, edited sequence for this film where as they're making love, it's intercut with images of the sous chefs or the prep chefs cutting like vegetables and stuff. And there's a kind of weird sensuality kind of going on with, uh, how it intercuts with, say, um, know, Helen and Alan having quite hard sex with each other to obviously, chef, ah, cutting up a cucumber. Which for whatever reason, I was just like, that fucking works.
Speaker C: Yeah. It's something that you would imagine, like watching people making love or just are kissing or being intimate with each other totally naked in a restaurant. There's lots of food being prepared.
Ryan: Yes.
Speaker C: And seeing yeah, that cut with chopping of a cucumber. You think that would be quite frightening.
Ryan: And I refer to, like, Nicholas, but it wasn't. Yeah, I refer to, like, Nicholas Rogue, because obviously, in Don't Look Now, there's a sex scene between Dollar and Sutherland I can't remember her name. That's intercut with them having sex whilst intercut with them getting dressed and ready for the evening, which I think is very clever. Um, but yeah. Anyway, carry on.
Speaker C: It's always a scary thing when they get together because they'll even time it. I only have four minutes. I only have five minutes because that's how long she can get away with being in the toilet.
Ryan: I think it's really nice, this whole idea where it's just kind of like, we have five minutes that could make or break this relationship or their M lives or his live. And it's just kind of this idea that his attention span or what interests him could be made or broken within five minutes. Because he compares that to how he felt about a, uh, character he saw in a movie where the character didn't speak, but then within five minutes, he completely lost interest. So it was kind of more a case of just like, well, if we don't lose interest within five minutes, we're obviously made for each other.
Speaker C: But Albert is always after her. She's in the toilet. And she wouldn't even be in the toilet for very long. And he is following her. He goes into the bathroom to try and find her. He goes into the kitchen to try and find her. And it seems like everyone's kind of aware that there's something going on, even in the early bits. But no one says anything. Everyone fucking hates him.
Ryan: Um, no one likes him.
Speaker C: So no one's going to be on his side, necessarily.
Speaker A: Well, and then the staff is, like.
Speaker C: Totally on their side. Yeah. They're like, we get it. Facilitating this affair, which is interesting. Never was said. It was never a conversation. But the chef or the cook, um, and all the kitchen staff, they're like, totally fine with it. Oh, here's a little spot they'll even walk through. There was that one moment where didn't they go through to get a pheasant? And then they're, like, totally naked, just enjoying each other's bodies.
Speaker A: Well, and then they had to get even more involved whenever an hour into the movie. So we're halfway through the movie is when, um, one of the thug's girlfriends sees her with her lover.
Ryan: Yeah. This is the poor woman that gets stabbed in the face.
Speaker A: Yeah, she gets stabbed in the face with a fork. But, uh, she tells Albert, oh, your wife's screwing that bookish guy. That's always reading over, like so the staff has to get involved in making sure that they don't get caught together. And this involves the one guy getting in a truck, backing it up, to it's like full of rotting meat, which I'm really not sure why there's a truck of rotting meat.
Ryan: So good.
Speaker A: Yeah, they back up the truck of rotting meat. The cook shoves them into the freezer for a second and then maneuvers them around. And so the whole staff is helping.
Speaker C: Them to escape, uh, this misdirection for Albert. While Albert's running around screaming, I'll kill him. And then I'll eat him, uh, over and over and over again, running through the kitchen, breaking everything.
Ryan: Weird foreshadowing.
Speaker C: Interesting. But yeah, because I didn't know what was going to happen while we were watching it.
Speaker A: Oh, really?
Speaker C: And I kept hearing him say that. And I even wrote it down. I was like, why is he saying I'm going to eat it? That's weird.
Ryan: The thing is yeah, that's, uh, a crazy thing.
Speaker A: It's a very OD threat to me.
Ryan: It's also probably one of the most intimidating threats. M it's maybe less intimidating than, uh, what are you going to do about it?
Speaker C: Well, they do talk about it, uh, earlier in the film, albert is when he's threatening, like, I'm going to make you eat balls. I'm going to make you eat someone's.
Ryan: Eye bollocks and stuff.
Speaker C: And so there's talk even early on about eating.
Speaker A: He makes really strange threats, very weird threats.
Ryan: But it's also kind of like it's this shroud of homosexuality as well. It's like, he's going to eat this dude. He's going to eat your balls. He's going to cut off your dick. He's going to do all this sort of stuff all gets a little bit gay. It all kind of adds to his character as well, from the things that we spoke about.
Speaker A: Well, it plays into his character of wanting to own other people. And so I think the ultimate owning someone else is eating them, consuming them, so then they won't exist anywhere else.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker C: This whole moment know, Albert's running around saying he's going to eat the guy for having sex with his wife is really I know we've already, uh, kind of talked about it, but I just think it's so beautiful because these two people are in this intimate moment. And then they're getting chased around and just trying to survive. And they're naked the whole time. And they're just naked. And it's not even a thought. They're just like the cook is chauffeuring them around this way. Other people are chauffeuring around this way. And they're naked. And he's like, I'll grab your clothes. Don't worry. But they never get their clothes. And you're right. They get put into that disgusting van.
Ryan: Uh, that fucking shot they're covered in just like unbelievably cool.
Speaker C: It's so cool.
Ryan: It's so cool. It looks like a woman hell. Like, it genuinely yeah, it looks fucking horrific.
Speaker A: I think that is by design because it looks so much like a womb. And then it's like a rebirth.
Speaker C: Absolutely.
Speaker A: They're already naked. So they're in their birthday suit. You're getting born out of this womb from hell. And then they get sprayed down just.
Speaker C: Like the first chef.
Ryan: This is also effectively what is, uh, the third penis scene. I don't know if we're counting the last scene as being a penis scene as well.
Speaker C: But this is well, it all kind.
Ryan: Of goes this is a real scene. Yeah.
Speaker C: All kind of goes 18 minutes in hour, 18 hours 19.
Ryan: And they holds them down after coming out of the truck. Um, and I don't know what it is about these trucks, but we are shown the degradation of these trucks over the course of the movie as well, because these trucks never leave, obviously, the front of the restaurant. And there was this weird moment kind of earlier on. And I put this down in inverted commas. It's like surreal imagery. But, uh, there's like a woman sucking on a giant ice cube. And there's like pig's heads and stuff like behind her. So obviously this is the same truck that obviously they get stored away in.
Speaker C: Do you wonder if it's because he's like a new restauranteur? Because he just took over this restaurant and it looks like he's changing the name, right?
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker C: He has a little neon signs. He's going to change the name of the restaurant.
Speaker A: Yeah, he was going to change it to his, uh, name and the cook's name. Right?
Ryan: Yeah, you're right. Yeah.
Speaker C: So I'm wondering if that's just him not knowing how to run a restaurant is where he's like, do I have to order all this drugs?
Ryan: I delivered all this food, but I forgot to put it in the chiller.
Speaker C: Yeah. Like, ah, who orders all the food?
Ryan: Kind of like Tesla?
Speaker C: I don't know.
Speaker C: And, um, we did mention about Pup because the restaurant even after these two escape, the restaurant's feeding them, which is really weird because it's like they're walking all the food over to the bookseller's place, which I don't know how far away it is.
Speaker A: Yeah. They're not very good at covert operations because they have Pup, who is like the most recognizable person, um, delivering this food and walking it. And then he is like, oh, can I borrow a book? And the books have the address of the depository on them, damp in them.
Speaker C: Not a great hide.
Ryan: And I'm going to point this out as well, is that Pup looks like a cyberpunk version of the Milky Boy Kid?
Speaker A: I don't know what that means.
Speaker C: Milky boy. Kid.
Ryan: What is that? The Milky Boy kid. Who's strong and tough. The only one that is good enough. Uh, the creamiest milk. The milk. The Whitest bar. Is this a Scottish Milky Bar Kid? Everyone knows the Milky Bar Kid, right? No. Anyway, do you know of milky bars?
Speaker C: Like a Milky Way?
Ryan: No, milky Bars are like a white they were like a white chocolate. Uh, no, just a plain white chocolate. You must have white chocolate here, right?
Speaker C: Uh, yeah.
Speaker A: We do have white chocolate, but I've.
Ryan: Never heard of it. So the Milky Bar Kid was this let's put the word out there Aryan child who had glasses and was dressed as a cowboy and had blonde hair and like dead white skin. And they called him the Milky Bar Kid.
Speaker A: You're going to have to post a picture of something. Uh, whenever you post this episode, just have a picture of the Milky Bar.
Ryan: We'll do a side by side comparison. And I only just came out with it. But then also I was like, oh, no one's got Milky Bars over here.
Speaker C: He's an albino.
Ryan: Yeah, he's an albino. Let's put it out that way.
Speaker A: Is he a soprano?
Ryan: Or? If it was, yeah, me, myself and Irene, they would call him a Q Tip. Um, but yes, same thing. Oh my God. It's a giant Q Tip.
Speaker C: Yeah. Because they get the most obvious, uh, delivery boy, uh, for their meals. And yes, he took the book mhm. Obviously they're going to find out where he was, which is okay. All of his buttons off of his yeah.
Speaker A: And then he's like, there's no buttons left. I guess we're going to have to get the belly button. And I was like, oh, I thought.
Speaker C: He meant like his dick.
Ryan: No, belly button.
Speaker A: No, he was going to pluck out his belly button.
Speaker C: I thought they were going to castrate that child. No, genuinely like a button dick. Yeah.
Speaker A: No, but I feel like, uh, scooping out someone's belly button is way like what?
Speaker C: Well, scooping out a belly button seems like certain death. Cutting off a penis less so, but also a bigger power.
Speaker A: What happens if someone cuts out your belly button insides?
Ryan: No, but it's just on your belly. It depends on what sort of belly button do you have? Do you have an innny or an outie?
Speaker C: I would assume it's an innie.
Ryan: Mine's an innny because it's inside.
Speaker C: Correct? Yes. Okay. Some people have they could cut out the belly button. That's fine. I genuinely thought they were going to cut his little wiener off.
Ryan: No, they didn't.
Speaker C: Oh no.
Speaker A: They were talking about his belly button.
Speaker C: Okay. He just talked so fast.
Ryan: A belly button is like a weirdly sensitive area on a human's body as well. The idea of them sticking a knife anywhere near that kind of made me feel a little bit gross.
Speaker C: Well, that whole thing is very upsetting. Just this young boy who is so scared.
Ryan: Let's just make sure that you know, it's incredibly upsetting.
Speaker C: It's very upsetting. And then the kid passes out because he's so scared.
Speaker A: Well, and also he is the most innocent, um, thing in this movie. Like he's little angelic boy who doesn't do anything to anyone and he just likes to sing soprano while he's like, cleaning dishes. He doesn't do anything wrong. And then he gets tortured.
Ryan: He's doing something nice.
Speaker C: And then Michael, our lover, knows he's doing something that he shouldn't be doing. He's doing it for love, I assume.
Ryan: M, but here's the thing. There's also this gradual, um, change in attitude towards gambin where even his henchmen realize that he's going further than they would be expecting to.
Speaker A: Except for Tim Roth, who's like, whatever, man.
Ryan: Yeah, Tim Roth is, uh, I'll climb the mountain with you, sir. I'll do whatever I need to do. Um, even though he treats him like he treats him worse than any of the other ones, other than Helen Mirren, obviously treats him like a fucking piece of shit.
Speaker A: Well, it's because it's like his little protege who's going to follow him no matter.
Ryan: I mean, by the time you get to the end of the movie, he only has two, let's say henchmen. Uh, one of them is Tim Roth and the other one is Liz Smith, who's the grandmother from the royal family.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: Oh, uh, one thing that I thought was strange, whenever he's talking about it, he's talking about like the so is bookkeeper like a term in the UK. Not okay? Because I was just like, in the US. Bookkeeper is someone who keeps like an. Yeah.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker A: And so I was just like, is he just using this wording?
Ryan: I mean, I think it's very literal. He just keeps books.
Speaker C: Uh, he sells books well, because his.
Speaker A: Henchman says like, oh, what are we going to do about this? Bookseller is going to be a problem. And he says, bookseller versus bookkeeper. And so I was like, is this another thing that shows how dumb Albert is? Or is that like a term that's used in the UK?
Ryan: I mean, I would use the word accountant kind of more back home. Bookkeeper is also used for someone who's an accountant as well. You keep your books up to date and stuff like that. But he's more like a book seller in this movie.
Speaker A: Yeah. So whenever he's talking about it, he says, like.
Ryan: I tried my best. That was really rough. And I'm not even going to cut that out.
Speaker A: You're not even going to cut that out. So whenever he's talking about the bookkeeper, he, uh, mentions he's like, oh, he's 40, same age as me. And I'm like, what? These people are supposed to be 40. And I looked it up and Helen Mirren was 44.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker C: I also had to look up how old Helen Mirren is now because you made some comments. No, I think Helen Mirren is so beautiful and I think she's so sexy. But she's been older for a long time.
Speaker A: She's kind of like Maggie Smith. Like, it feels like she's been like 80 years old for our entire lives.
Ryan: Which is weird because Liz Smith in the movie is only meant to be 32.
Speaker C: But I mean, I think she looks incredible. She's got a great body. Still does. Um, she does look good in the film. It's Helen Mirren. She's incredible.
Ryan: Yeah. She's a national treasure at this point.
Speaker C: She really is.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker C: Um, but I don't know what the point of that was. She's just great.
Ryan: Yeah. She looks are you saying she looks good for age?
Speaker C: Because they're all, like, 40? I thought that was very funny because, um, Albert was so upset. The fact that she was having an affair with that guy because he's the same age. If it was a younger guy, I'd be less upset.
Speaker A: Yeah. He was saying, like, if it was a younger guy, it would be fine because it would just be sex. But since it's a man who's like, my age, that means that it means something more. And it's not going to just be like a passing fling.
Ryan: Uh, yeah. I always thought it wasn't so much about their age, because I don't think age is so much of the barrier here. It's that she can't stand his character anymore. So that she's migrated to I mean, I guess in Gambin's mind, or his idealization is that he's a smart man. He's like a well dressed man. He's kind of like this. As opposed to obviously his idealized sense of who Gambin is meant to kind of be in the know, um, a lesser kind of individual.
Speaker C: Well, it seems like she's probably done this before as well, because she said that she's left him three times.
Ryan: To be fair. I'm not fucking surprised. I really am not.
Speaker C: Well, yeah. Put like a champagne bottle up her butthole. I probably not want to stick around, but then you're in a really dangerous situation.
Speaker A: Well, in the most dangerous situation, um, whenever you're in a domestic abuse situation, um, like that is usually when you.
Ryan: Fuck I'm there.
Speaker A: The most dangerous part, um, is when you try to leave.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker A: Is when you usually get murdered.
Ryan: Yeah. Is when the emotions run high. Yeah. Uh, it's kind of fucked up. It's horrible. But I mean, is it as horrible.
Speaker C: As, uh, what happens to Michael? The bookseller?
Ryan: Yeah. I was kind of waiting for us.
Speaker A: To kind of just we could go into that.
Speaker C: You know, he's going to die.
Speaker A: Yeah.
Speaker C: He's even without thinking because it just makes sense because he says he's going to kill him. He's going to eat him. He's having sex with his wife. And also, this is a revenge story.
Ryan: It has to end a certain way.
Speaker C: I knew he was going to kill him when you saw kind of the front of the bookshop, where they are where they're having this affair, where they're holding up when she leaves to go see Pup at the hospital. Which was a stupid move. But maybe it was a smart move.
Speaker A: Because well, she would have been dead too.
Speaker C: She would have died as well, probably, or made to watch the whole thing go down. But all of the gangsters go to the bookshop. And you see Michael boarding up the shop. Right. He locks the doors after georgina leaves, he puts a big stick on the inside, like boarding up the doors.
Speaker A: UNGLASS doors.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker C: Glass doors. He is not that smart, because if he was, he would not have stayed there.
Ryan: And I've not realized this until now, but you remember when Gambin and his thugs are eventually kind of they're forced to leave the restaurant when that last person who's got the pie, um, he leaves. The exact same set of doors that he closes behind himself at the restaurant are an almost exact mirror of the doors to the bookkeeping place. And I don't know if that scene is before Michael dies or just after he dies. So there's kind of like a relative kind of association there, which is weird. And again, this is to watch it again, this is so, you know, everything's in symmetry and everything looks balanced, uh, frame wise. So that's why I'm kind of able to make that association. But yeah, they kill them in the worst way possible.
Speaker C: Um uh ah, a death fit for a bookseller. Um gosh, by the time that we see them, it's already so deep into the torture.
Speaker A: Well, and it's like it's, um, being directed and overseen by Albert. But the person who is actually doing, like, shoving these pieces of paper into his mouth with a wooden spoon and just shoving them down his throat is Tim Roth.
Ryan: Did I say that one of Peter Greenaway's traits in his films is painful death?
Speaker A: No, you didn't mention that.
Ryan: I didn't know it's down here.
Speaker C: It's a thing he does.
Ryan: It's right next to sexual pleasure.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: They go hand in hand, as Albert.
Speaker A: Says, sex and death.
Ryan: He's using and I don't know what it is. It looks like one of those, um, letter holder, like those letter stamp things that you would pop, like bits of paper on and stuff like that, that he's using to stuff the pages of this French Revolution book into his mouth.
Speaker A: I thought it was just a wooden spoon.
Speaker C: I also thought it was a wooden spoon. Just your classic kitchen wooden spoon, because.
Ryan: I thought it was something sharp and metallic. So it was like cutting his throat as he was, like, stuffing him full of this book.
Speaker C: I did read when they're talking about this death that he's shoving stuff down his throat with, like, a spike, like a spiky thing. So that's weird that kat, you and I both thought it was a spoon, because I thought it was a spoon.
Ryan: It looked spiky, and it looked like one of those kind of letter, uh, things that you would pop.
Speaker A: I'm glad we're going to see it on the big screen.
Speaker C: Yeah, I am excited about the big screen. I'm also excited about all the costumes on the big screen.
Speaker A: Well, because when you see things on.
Ryan: I'm excited about this staging.
Speaker A: Yeah. When you see things on a large screen, you're able to see a lot more details that. You don't see whenever you're watching it.
Ryan: Yeah. Also, this on television, this film on at least our TV. I don't know what our gamma settings are like, but the film is dark. But I would say that that's deliberately so. Yeah, I would say, like, it is dark for a reason.
Speaker C: But yeah, that death is pretty horrific. Pretty grim.
Ryan: Pretty grim.
Speaker C: Yeah. The French Revolution right down his mouth. It's so weird because while Tim Roth is shoving the fucking paper in his mouth, he's eating the paper himself. Did you see that? He's tearing bits off the book and just also putting it in his mouth and he's actually eating it. Yeah, but I'm thinking that's not a dummy person. That's the guy laying on the floor, from what I could tell. So you've got the actor just laying there on the floor naked, covered in blood makeup, but just getting that stuff shoved in his mouth.
Ryan: But one of the things that stunned me is when obviously Helen Mirren discovers him and she pulls out rolled up bits of paper that are stuck in the cavity of his nose that look incredibly long. And then you can see, obviously pages and stuff that are kind of stuffed into his mouth. And it's obviously fucking Alan, alan Howard, who's lying there and he's just had this stuff like stuffed inside of him.
Speaker C: What an actor.
Ryan: Uh, the scenes that precede that moment, though, I think are incredibly affecting and they're incredibly interesting to watch. And she lies with the dead body and she's fully expecting him to wake up and give him a kiss. Give her a kiss in the morning and she's going to have breakfast. And she's looking at, uh, the brighter side of what her future might have been if this obviously hadn't happened. But then what follows that is this fantastic scene between her and the cook.
Speaker A: Well, before we move on oh, sorry. Yeah. So her going to his corpse and taking the things out of his nose and taking the things out of his mouth. And then her laying down and she's like, I'm going to tell you about some things in the morning and you're going to make me breakfast. And it's this whole disassociation in those first stages of grief, I guess, because she hasn't accepted that he's gone.
Speaker C: No.
Speaker A: And so when she does wake up and he's still dead and she's like, well, I guess I'll have to make myself breakfast. And she tells the corpse about all of the abuses that she suffered over the years and she's able to unburden herself of these things that she's kept inside for years. And then once she's done that, then she's able to go to the cook and plan revenge.
Ryan: So the cook almost acts like he's the put upon funeral director for what is effectively to come.
Speaker A: I m mean, he kind of is.
Ryan: And I love this moment because I like the fact that you're talking about disassociation. And I didn't really kind of realize it until you kind of brought it up. And I'm like he kind of goes back, uh, he's like the comparative to the Shakespearean observer. He starts to recite the things that she starts to doubt in her own mind, uh, about, like, well, was our love real? Was our love true? And he's like, Well, I remember these moments in the story. It was like, I saw you were naked. I saw you put your mouth on his penis.
Speaker A: He was very specific about all the things that he's seen them do together.
Ryan: So, again, like a very extreme and incredibly adult kind of detail, like the Shakespearean narrator, I guess I suppose I would refer to him as. But by the time she's like, I want you to cook him, and I want us to eat him. I want you to cook and prepare my lover the way you would prepare and cook, uh, a meal. And you talk about the disassociation because immediately after he agrees to do it and the camera does that really long sidetrack from the inside of the restaurant to going outside to then seeing the painting that's obviously front and center within the restaurant as well, that's outside. She is beyond consolable for that entire period where she's just moaning in grief of what it is that, I guess, either the realization of what has exactly happened to her and what's happened to this situation.
Speaker A: One thing that's interesting about that conversation she has with the cook is that at first, whenever she's asking him to cook beloved, he keeps saying, no, no, it's not going to make you feel better to eat him.
Speaker C: Yeah. He didn't understand what she was trying to get at. Yeah.
Speaker A: Because he thinks that she wants to eat him so then he can be a part of her. And I guess that makes sense. But she was like, no, I want you to cook him. And we will feed him to Albert, which I think is so funny that the cook is like, no, this won't make you feel better. And she's like, yes, it will.
Speaker C: And then immediately he's like, you know what? Okay. Yeah, we could definitely do that.
Speaker A: Let's do it.
Speaker C: Let's make it really theatrical as well.
Speaker A: And it's super glazed.
Ryan: Super glazed.
Speaker C: Uh, he also says earlier there's the part where Michael Gambin is talking about how chefs are like artists and they can put different ingredients or foods or things together and it'll make a completely new flavor. And then he talks about ham and pineapple and stuff like that, which is what ends up being Michael's body because he's got bits of sliced pineapple on his shoulders.
Ryan: Like, bits of pineapple or, like, slices of lemon and stuff like that that are on his shoulders and things. But the whole sequence starts with, obviously, Gambon and his stragglers and stuff he's brought to this event that's, like, he's the only invite and things. And Helen mirror is like, well, you know, there's friends that are going to come. And as they bring the body in, it's like a funeral parlor. It's that whole, uh, tradition kind of outlaying this whole thing.
Speaker C: He, uh, doesn't get it either. They're carrying this body, which you can tell is a body on a large board, it looks like, covered in someone sleeping under a sheet.
Speaker A: It has a sheet on top of the body.
Speaker C: See the feet and the head, but like, covered in the sheet. And they're carrying it in. And he's still excited. He's like, you're here. We're back together. This is going to be great. What is this beautiful gift you're going.
Ryan: To I'm also going to point out as well, like, how crazy Gambon's makeup got from the minute he realized that his wife was having an affair and then how deeply his fucking eyes started to into his head. By this time, he's like, smiling. And he's manic. Absolutely fucking manic.
Speaker A: Well, and Georgina, uh, Helen Mirren. Her outfits throughout this entire film are fantastic. Yes, lots of quartz sits and amazing. Her boobs look fantastic and everything. But like this final scene, she has this huge feather, um, collar happening. And then there's this black netting that goes all over her body. But then there's like this massive train behind her that the people are just.
Speaker C: Carrying around behind her. Could you waitress tell if the dress that she was wearing was see through or not?
Speaker A: I could not.
Speaker C: It looked like it was see through, but I wasn't totally sure because he on our TV.
Ryan: I'm not too sure. But I'm pretty sure the actress who was the waitress in the movie who was then carrying that train is like, Alex something. She was also a staple in fucking Er at one point.
Speaker C: Oh, okay.
Ryan: And she's a British actress.
Speaker C: Well, Albert mentions earlier in the movie know, when she's having the affair. And they're in all these different rooms. And he, uh, pulls up her dress at one point and comments on the fact that she's not wearing any underwear. Which, uh, of course, makes him really mad. But I'm wondering if that was just something that she'd brought back. It's hard to know just through the darkness, if she was wearing maybe we'll.
Speaker A: See it on the big screen. I'm so excited.
Ryan: And that woman was Alex Kingston, by the way.
Speaker C: Okay.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker C: Um, so I'm calling it the last penis scene. But this is obviously it's not real. Not real. But it's a very end of the film. An hour, 56 minutes and 40 seconds. But this is when you kind of get that big reveal of what we've been leading to this whole time with I'll kill him and I'll eat him. And, uh, this kind of thing that they've all put that the wife and the cook have put together is cooking the lover to feed the thief. And really one of the.
Ryan: It'S so delicious in how it's put together, because you think about good revenge films and that sometimes you don't get the payoff that you're looking for. And I think about really good kind of climaxes to those sorts of things. And I think Seven is very good at it. I think old Boy is very good at it, where the tables are turned into such a degree. And it's just like she just fucking points a guy at the gun center, she says, yeah, eat it. Eat it up.
Speaker C: And he eats you'd eat him now. Eat him.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker C: And then she says, okay, you ready?
Ryan: Uh, I need to hear this.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: Try the cock, Albert. It's a delicacy and you know where it's been.
Speaker A: And he eats it.
Speaker C: Well, he doesn't eat the dick.
Speaker A: Well, he does. He does eat some of Michael. And then she shoots him in the head and says, Cannibal, cannibal m boom boom.
Ryan: It's played so, like, when he puts that fork in and his hands are shaking, and he's like, it's like the worst thing that he could probably do. And he's been gorging himself up to this point as well. He'll eat anything. And it's such a delicious moment that I'm glad that when we do see it on the big screen, I'll be able to appreciate the grandeur of that moment without having to feel like I've got analytical eyes on it. It's so special, so unbelievably special.
Speaker C: Yeah, that's really lovely.
Ryan: Which is why it's like, I would hate to see this film in one of the shorter formats because I feel like it comes to such a crescendo at the end that, um, I'm like, if this film's half an hour shorter, I'm like, well, is it as effective?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: The pacing, I think, would be really messed with at that.
Speaker C: We all I don't know. I'm going to say we all, but I have a problem with the MPAA. I think that there's something wrong there that needs to be addressed. Um, the original running time of this film is 124 minutes.
Ryan: Uh, I don't think it's a problem with the MPAA. I know certainly there's an issue with that in terms of, like, it's also the shortest version that you can find, and that's the US version. But obviously the BBFC has an issue with the film as well, because obviously their 18 rated cut is an hour and 44 minutes.
Speaker C: I don't have a lot of, uh, research on that, but the MPAA gave Miramax a choice of either an X rating that we had back in the day, or to go unrated for the theatrical release. And then the Unrated is know that's an adults only type of film. So they were in a kind of a tight spot. They chose the Unrated, uh, instead of the X rating because obviously people think of pornography.
Ryan: Um, there's two versions, the Death Nail for distribution.
Speaker C: If they do that, two versions of the films were released on VHS. In the was the R rated cut, which is 95 minutes weird, and yeah, 95 minutes.
Ryan: Did Miramax put that version out, though? So they completely butchered it. Because if anything we know about Miramax, and we've talked about Miramax before, is that they butchered their films to such a degree that it was to maximize their distribution.
Speaker C: Well, they also and I don't know when exactly this partnership came into being, but I know that when I worked at Hollywood Video, uh, we didn't get Miramax films. We, uh, would get maybe like four or five copies. But Blockbuster had an agreement with Miramax.
Ryan: They did, yeah.
Speaker C: They would get all of those films.
Ryan: Yeah. Blockbuster had, uh, international Atomic. That's, that's just something that they uh, had.
Speaker C: But Blockbuster originally stocked the unrated version of the film, but then had uh, complaints from religious groups thinking that if they stalked the Unrated or NC 17 version of any films, it bring sex and violence into the mainstream. So Blockbuster took it upon themselves to take all of the copies of NC 17 and unrated films off of their shelves yay. And only keep the edited R rated versions that were available.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker C: So, um, Helen Mirren actually went to New York to argue with the MPAA, because she goes, it's different in Europe and it's different in the UK. Like you were saying, you have 18 and over, et cetera. Um, so she said, I told the board they absolutely could not legitimately criticize this film on its artistic merit. It may be pretentious or boring or whatever they want to say about it, but they can't deny where its heart is. But the MPA denied their appeal, obviously, and just know we're going to do whatever we want.
Ryan: It's such an odd kind of conversation to have about this film. And we've covered films in the past that have had multiple versions that have released. I mean, I think obviously our earliest one, obviously, is Color of Night, which had two versions. This is obviously one of the outliers in that, uh, it's just not widely available in any form whatsoever. Um, and it's kind of like if you're not seeing the two hour cut, I don't know if I'm fucking interested in watching the other versions, because I'm really kind of worried about what it is that they've cut out. Because for the most part, the language is relatively quite tame, at least to my standards. And certainly kind of what the film is depicting is not graphic to the extent of, um, some of the things we've mentioned, the abuse, the potential rape and things. But again, you never see that stuff explicitly. So I'm assuming the issues they have with it are with that opening moment, with the shit, and then obviously the ending. But then also I have issues with that because the film has to end that way. There is no way that the story cannot substantiate itself without ever having that ending. The film just dies, in my opinion, if it doesn't have that ending.
Speaker A: And it's the logical ending to the.
Ryan: Story has led to that point. Uh, everything has led to this moment happening. And the amount of impact that film's ending has is the only reason why this film is as regarded as it is.
Speaker C: I'm going to say it's the nudity. I genuinely yeah, it's definitely going to be america has a problem with nudity.
Speaker A: And dicks, especially, and female orgasms and.
Speaker C: Female frontal nudity in terms of anything below the waist.
Ryan: But this is also another moment and I don't anything below the waist we didn't point this out is that the minute they are hosed off and they go into the bookkeeper's house, there is a long tracking shot that's pretty much in amid the entire time where they are chatting and they're going down his hallway and it's covered in books and stuff. Um, I like that location in general. Uh, it looks like that scene in Blade Runner when it's just, uh, that hotel and stuff. Like, I just I don't really like it. And they're completely naked. They're completely naked and you're seeing fucking everything. Everything is there.
Speaker C: It's a gorgeous shot and it's so.
Ryan: Casual and it's the and we never brought it up. Yeah. Because it's immediately after they get hosed off.
Speaker C: It's just nice.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker C: I have to bring up every single moment. But it is a really beautiful I mean, every I mean, every shot in this movie is a beautiful shot. He knows what he's doing. But I think that one is particularly kind of touching in terms of where they're kind of romance and where their affair was heading. Uh, obviously not in a good place.
Speaker A: But this is another movie because last we were on for Short Bus. But, um, this film has resolve at the end of it. And you don't feel as bad about it because she's taking her power back. And so this is one of the few uncomfortable brunch films where you don't feel as bad afterwards. Usually our thing is if we watch a movie and we feel bad worse than when we started it, then that's an uncomfortable brunch movie. But this one, it has so much resolve, but it's iconic and not a lot of people have seen yeah.
Ryan: Yeah. No, it's a fantastic ending because I think the minute Gambon dies, credits roll like that's. It there's no fucking around with it.
Speaker A: You don't need any follow up after that.
Ryan: That's all you need to because you know what the future holds at that point. And it's incredibly positive from there. But it's the greatest insult when it happens to Gambon as well. The Gambinator, as I've decided to dub him. Um, yeah, I don't know. Uh, the more we think about it and extrapolate it, I think this film's fucking brilliant.
Speaker C: Well, this is a wonderful time to go around the table. And we'll do our ratings in terms of visibility and context. And I'll start because I'm already talking and I'm going to oh, this is hard because I wrote four. And I'm like but what makes a five? What really makes a five?
Ryan: Yeah. What makes a five? Because here's the thing. This is when well, here's it if I think about fives that we've done before, um, shame.
Speaker C: Shame.
Ryan: Shame is one. Uh, bad lieutenant is one. And I think also, uh, hunger is another five as well. Um, a couple of Steve Mcqueenners in there.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Ryan: Um, so really, it kind of depends on.
Speaker C: Maybe more time on screen. How about four and a half? Visibility and context? Four and a half.
Ryan: Okay.
Speaker C: That's me. And, um do you want me to do my film?
Ryan: No, we'll do that next.
Speaker C: Okay, you go next. Visibility in context.
Speaker A: I think I agree with the 4.5. Yeah, I would have liked to see more.
Speaker C: Agreed.
Ryan: Yeah. I think contextually, it's all there. It's not particularly clear for most of the time.
Speaker C: Um, it's a dark film, too.
Ryan: It's a dark film. And I like how the film looks. So I don't really have a problem with that. And it's obviously a very stylistic choice. Um, but in terms of I think it contextually should have five. But then when you look at the visibility, it's like closer to maybe like a three. So everything kind of averages out about a four, in my opinion. Um, I like how open the film is because obviously, you're looking at two lovers who are very kind of and if we think about, ah, the fragility of human existence and when we fall in love and things like that the purest moments that we have in our memory is with people when we're lying naked with them and we're kind of like, happy. It's like post quietus or whatever this fucking shit is.
Speaker C: Um, for most of their time, it's pre.
Ryan: Yeah, it's all pre quiet or, uh, post quitus, either way. But yeah, it's like, um yeah, I don't know. I think it's close to probably more a four than a four and a half. But yeah, it doesn't reach the heady heights of a five, I'm afraid.
Speaker C: No. Um, yeah, I think that's usually what we are looking for is more lighting, more time on screen. But I love the balance, uh, that we get in this because it's a long time into the film before we actually see female nudity. And none of the nudity is gratuitous at all. No. Um, but it needs to be there.
Ryan: But it's also like a weird balance because we have that just basically pure violation that happens in the first, like, three minutes, and you're just like, holy fucking Christ. And then the rest of it is relatively innocent. It's pure. It's in the sake of contextually that way.
Speaker C: Well, until the end, as have in the beginning, it's quite a violation as well as the end, in a way.
Ryan: Well, we do know how much Peter Greenaway loves symmetry, so his ending is very much like his.
Speaker C: I in terms of the film. Overall, I had written down a four, and I think that is purely I do believe that this has the opportunity to go higher for me, um, especially when sitting in a cinema with other people. I think this will be quite different. But sitting at home and kind of having to look at it with a critical eye, I think it definitely can go higher. But right now, I'm sitting at a four for an overall rating because I didn't find it slow at all. I found it very engaging, um, and entertaining and sad, but really funny and gross, but not as gross as I thought it was going to be. And also kind of romantic. And, uh, I kind of had all the things that I like cannibalism.
Ryan: Yeah, I wasn't surprised that you like film.
Speaker C: There was one trigger warning that I forgot, um, uh, that I'm pulling out at the very end. That, uh, he does run over a dog in the film. And I like to think that even in 1989, hopefully, that was just a dog actor who got lots of Tritos after for being a good boy and looking like he was hurt.
Ryan: I hope there's plenty of moments where you feel like the dogs aren't treated well.
Speaker C: No, the dogs are running wild and fighting dogs. When he starts backing that car up, I genuinely thought, there's a lot of dogs around, and I don't know if the dogs are paying attention. So, uh, were animals harmed to the making of this film? Maybe. I don't know.
Ryan: Yeah, potentially, anyway.
Speaker C: Go on, CAD.
Speaker C: Let's have your rating.
Speaker A: I'm going to give it a 4.5, um, out of five stars, because, um, I am a fan of Symmetry because of my affinity for Wes Anderson.
Speaker C: You probably know this, but I do.
Speaker A: Love things that are well constructed and, uh, the formality of it. So I appreciated all of the color palettes, um, all of the blocking and structure to this production. And I like that the story was very clear cut and it was easy to follow, even when you couldn't really understand what Albert was saying, because he's just rattling off all the time, which that's kind of the harming of the dogs, uh, makes me a little bit less, um, of not a five. Um, and also Albert constantly rattling off. I feel like I lost a lot of, um, the additional context that I could have had. But it's just because of the cockney. It's so fast. Um, but you always know what's going on generally in the film, which I think is good that it comes across. And, um, everything was choreographed really well, especially in the sex scenes with the lovers. I'm not a person who likes gratuitous sex in film. And I didn't feel overwhelmed by anything that was going on in this the nudity. It was all planned out and choreographed. And it made sense. And it looked good. Yeah, it looked amazing.
Speaker C: They looked great.
Speaker A: Um, everyone looked great naked. Um, except Roy, who was the guy with the dog shit at the beginning.
Speaker C: I don't blame him too much.
Ryan: Poor Roy.
Speaker C: He did get peed on.
Ryan: Yeah, he did get pissed off.
Speaker A: But he got to be there for the guy's murder. So he was in the ending scene.
Speaker C: Yeah, because all the people that he had wronged got to be there.
Speaker A: Yeah. Including pup in the wheelchair. So we know that Pup pulled through. Good old pup.
Speaker C: Um, all right, Ryan.
Ryan: Um uh, so I originally gave the film four stars. And I think a lot of the stuff that you guys are talking about are like the things that I really like I look for in films, which is the staging, the choreography, like how scenes develop, how transitions happen, how you kind of feel, like, absorbed in this world and stuff. Because there's no sense of time, there's no sense of place. There's no sense of distinction in, uh, period or anything like that with this movie. So, um, it's weird in that sense. And it kind of feels almost slightly kind of hellish as you're watching it because it's so enclosed. And it creates a world, uh, that's very much within, like a microcosm and stuff like that, which is something that I quite enjoy from watching stage plays and other kind of filmmakers of the like. So I love a lot about this film, but then I also have these conflicts with it where I'm like, we watch the two hour version of the film and there's shorter versions out there. I'm like, is there like a sweet spot where I get everything? But then at least there's maybe a little bit of the chaff. Maybe one of the tracking shots. Doesn't have to be as long or whatever else.
Speaker C: You just want it to be a little bit shorter.
Ryan: I want it to be a little bit shorter. But it's a film by design that has been structured this particular way. And I don't want to take anything away from it because there's so many things in it that I adore and I love, which is a weird thing for me to say because I had such a kind of weird bias against Greenaway's stuff when I was a lot younger.
Speaker C: Well, when we started this film, you go, all right, let's start this shit.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker C: Look at you now.
Ryan: I was expecting to hate it. Well, the problem is I've just gotten older and I've decided that I, uh, appreciate things a little bit more other than stuff like in the cut. Like in the cut can still go fuck itself. I'm not that fucking intellectualized to fucking deal with that stupid nonsense.
Speaker C: Did you know that Michael Nyman did the music for uh, the Piano.
Ryan: Yes. But that film's still good. And I'm terrified to watch it because Jane Campion stuff's so fucking hit and miss. I'm like I'm so sorry.
Speaker C: Go on to your ratings. Yeah.
Speaker A: Are you?
Ryan: I want to see the film in the cinema and I'll probably end up giving it five. But at the moment it's like a four and a half.
Speaker C: Wonderful.
Ryan: So in a cinema I'd probably give it five because it's like, oh, yeah.
Speaker C: It'S going to go up. Everyone watch my well, I don't know how this titan goes, but Letterboxed, anyone should follow us on Letterboxd. It's fun.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker C: You should shout out to Letterboxd along with Toby. Should be sponsoring this show.
Ryan: They should be. Yeah. Because we tout your platform like Nady's business.
Speaker C: That's true.
Ryan: Yeah.
Speaker C: And we pay for it.
Speaker A: We do pay for it.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker A: I pay for Letterboxd too. I love those stats.
Speaker C: Oh my god, the stats. I'll send you compare stats later.
Ryan: Well, I'll send this clip to the good folks at Letterboxd on Instagram and hopefully they come back and be like, that's really nice. That's it.
Speaker C: I'm very excited we got to do this. And this is quite a long one. So I hope everyone enjoyed it, uh, as I did. And I hope everyone enjoys this film. If you have trouble finding it, uh, come on.
Speaker A: There are ways. There are ways. This is my first solo time with you guys.
Speaker C: Yay. It was wonderful.
Ryan: Yeah, I think it was.
Speaker C: I had a great time. And I can't wait to watch uncomfortable Brunch. It's going to be fun. Yay.
Speaker C: So coming to you, uh, from the toilet at the Hollandaise restaurant.
Ryan: Yay.
Speaker C: Monapetit. Uh, I have been Laura toot.
Ryan: Sweet. That means quickly.
Speaker C: And that's Ryan.
Ryan: Yeah, that's me.
Speaker A: And this is I'm Katie or Kat, or whatever you want to call me.
Speaker C: Probably just one of those two.
Ryan: Probably one of those two. You're opening a door for some level of abuse from the Internet.
Speaker A: If you do that, you can call me Cunt. I don't care.
Speaker C: Yay. Thank you for being here. And we will see you next, uh, time at brunch. Probably.
Ryan: Is that cunt with a K?
Speaker C: It's.