Existential Zones, Pt. 1 — Solaris (1972)

25:39And to me, I'm sure we're going to get into the 2001 comparison you talk about, in the keynote, Tasha, but I think he's really kind of interested in science fiction insofar as it provides a gateway to the themes that he wants to talk about less than the genre itself. You know, he's making subtext text in some ways. I mean, first of all, just to quickly go back to the accessibility question, I think I'd be remiss if I did not say that Dan Coyce's notorious cultural vegetables essay that caused such a firestorm on Twitter back in the day that that was built around Solaris. So Dan Kois did not find Solaris to be all that accessible.

26:18Just gonna throw that out there. I think you're absolutely right though, Tasha. This premise of yours about Stalker and Solaris may have been the only two films of his you've seen, but they are, I think, feel like companion pieces to me and they feel like very similar experiences. You also, in both films, have this abstract sort of realm that is being contemplated. In Stalker, it's the zone. And here it's Solaris, but specifically this ocean that keeps shifting and seems to be delivering guests to the space station. I mean, all of that, they all feel connected. I mean, I think the difference ends up being that with the zone, you have these travelers, these tourists who are seeking something.

27:05I've heard of the power that this place has. as they can achieve this, their desire, I guess, going to the zone. And here it's almost foisted upon them, or at least foisted upon our hero in Solaris, his wife kind of coming back to him. And certainly in both cases, very much a cursed monkey's paw thing happening with getting what you wish for. Well, when it comes to accessibility, I would like you guys to check my math a little bit on analyzing the symbolism here. Obviously, with a 166-minute movie that is largely symbolic images, we honestly feel like we could spend five hours analyzing this movie.

27:49And I did, you know, do some internet searching on some of the individual images that most baffled me just to see, you know, and of course, a lot has been written about some of these shots and what they mean. This is a very unpackable movie. But for me, I mean, I certainly don't think that as on the whole, he's thinking, even having said what he said about Stanislaw Lallam, that for the most part, when he's putting these images on screen, he's thinking of them as, you know, opaque and not understandable images. So I guess I'm wondering whether any of these things that I mentioned specifically as seemingly opaque were things where you were like, oh, of course, you know, when he zooms into this man's ear and we're looking at his ear hair like that, that is clearly an image talking about like the vulnerability and perhaps like ridiculousness of human bodies or, you know, whatever it is.

28:47How much do you feel the symbolism of this movie is clear, present, and obvious as you're experiencing it? I don't get the ear. I'll just say that. I don't understand. I mean, it's hypnotic and I don't dislike it in any way, but I don't understand what's going on there. But Bruegel, I mean, Bruegel's paintings are all so, you know, if you want to have a contrast between what life is like on Earth or what light, you know, just sort of the busyness of existing on Earth and among other people in a community with lots of activity and nature. I mean, everything in Bruegel's paintings there are an antithesis to what's going on on the space station.

29:33In some ways, it's like everything they've lost. That's one way to read it anyway. I struggle to unpack a lot of this symbolism in this movie. But I think, I guess, maybe this speaks to what we're talking about. Maybe it doesn't. But what kind of stood out for me this time was how much the film has given over to time on Earth before we even get to the space station. It's a good 45 minutes before Chris is finally on the space station. And I think the kinds of images we see during that stretch, the way they kind of rhyme or contrast with things that we see later, I think are really compelling. I mean, I think specifically of those shots of the water, of just these sort of, what is it, seaweed or something drifting in the water.

30:19And then you get these incredible shots of traffic that he sort of lingers on. And that's kind of interesting. But specifically with the nature imagery, I thought the device of the sort of homemade wind rustling effect that they had sort of attached to sort of give them some kind of connection to the life they left behind was so interesting and poignant. And it kind of connected back visually to this organic, more beautiful footage that we see as the film opens. For me, at least, a lot of the water imagery in the movie kind of comes back to the ocean of Solaris. The ocean that is kind of both the landscape of this entire planet and the intelligence that is causing the phenomena that we see.

31:14And, you know, symbolically, there's just there's a lot of ideas there in terms of the ocean, you know, evolutionarily being the source of life of, you know, evoking images of the womb of evoking. Lopate suggests that when Kelvin is like watching the underwater plants wave back and forth, he's contemplating the hair of a drowned woman, effectively. There's just a lot of symbolism associated with water. And when we go from these underwater plants to the pouring rain, which Kelvin just sort of stands in and the water seeping into the teacup and diluting the tea, we go from all of that to like this swirling mass of water on this alien planet.

32:00And then eventually back to the rain, but the rain has become something strange and alien in a setting where, you know, islands have risen up from the sea and the sea is no longer one thing. So I feel like the water imagery in specific is telling a story here. But I don't know what to make of the traffic imagery, which we spend a fair bit away from Kelvin's home and his perspective to follow this other astronaut like driving around in this sort of futuristic, brutalist looking city that kind of reminded me of Goddard's Alphaville in a way. What do you make of all of the traffic sequences? It's Tokyo, actually, where they filmed that.

32:44Really? Yeah. It's funny. Just as the, I guess you would call them cosmonauts aboard Solaris, although the nationality of all this is a little blurry, even though they speak Russian. But just as they lose track of time, I could have sworn that was like a 15-minute sequence the first time I watched it. So when it started this time, I'm like, I'm going to time this to see how deep in the double digits this scene gets. It's four minutes. Wow. But it just has that sort of hypnotic quality where time kind of drifts away, doesn't it? What it means, I don't know. I don't know either, but I think it's so good.

33:22It's more bustling humanity of the kind that our hero is about to leave behind, possibly forever. But it's a stark contrast to everything that he's about to encounter. But other than that, I really don't know what to say about it. Oh, that is fascinating. I don't think I would have thought double digits, but I would have put the over under around maybe eight. And it's fascinating. I think both that we both felt that and that you, you know, you use the scientific method in this film about science and also science's irrationality and uselessness. Thank you, Keith. That was very helpful. Doesn't doing that also make you contemplate your relationship to time and this film's relationship to time as well, Keith?

34:05Sure. Absolutely. It sure does. I often know. How does it pass? Does it become tricky and amorphous and blurry and sequences that are actually four minutes long or feel like they're 20? I mean, you're kind of joking, but it kind of does. I mean, the pace of this film, the fact that there is no single pace to it, it's kind of slow and slower. It's the shot rhythms of this. You know, it does have like sort of disorienting effect. It's just not moving at the speed you expect movies to move at. And it kind of lurches between speeds within its own running time. Yes. Slow and slower is the Fairleigh Brothers' least popular film.

34:45I mean, any movie that stretches past the two and a half hour mark makes me contemplate my relationship with time. Almost any. There are certainly movies like The Odyssey where I just don't feel the time passing. Robert Altman's Shortcuts, I believe, is nosing around four hours. and that movie goes by like a blink as far as I'm concerned. There are movies that don't prompt me to either check my watch or contemplate the infinite, my relationship to it. But this movie, yeah, a little bit of contemplating the infinite and or the clock on my phone. There is slow cinema that I love that I find hypnotic and compelling and this one honestly was not that for me.

35:26It's funny because Stalker is paced very similarly But I found the images there a lot more compelling. And I fell into that movie just full bore in a way I couldn't with this one. Though I am pretty curious how it would play on a rewatch. I really love this one, actually. And in part because of the contrast we've been talking about. Because I do find that the nature imagery of the beginning, which will return in a really strange way at the end, is such a stark contrast to that derelict station. I mean, I think, you know, I'm always kind of a sucker for like cutting edge technology that's fallen into disrepair.

36:04And this station is so haunted, seems so haunted even before you encounter any of the quote unquote guests aboard it. But I find as minimally expressive as Donatant Beniannis' performances here, I find it quite moving. And when he does show expressions, it's kind of like the movie itself. It's like, you know, when something does happen, when there is like sort of a shift, it's all the more jarring for the sort of placidity around it. Well, we're going to you're anticipating a question I have about Kelvin as a character. But before we get into that, I want to get to a question that Scott anticipated about, again, time in this movie and the fact that it takes us 45 minutes to get into space.

36:45I haven't read Stanislaw Lem's novel, but I did read a summary of it, and apparently it starts with the space launch. Whereas here we spend a full 45 minutes with Kelvin on Earth and with his family and his life and his contemplating of the infinite and or the water, hanging out with a dog or not hanging out with the dog, the briefing that he gets, watching the guy who gave the briefing drive away for four minutes, apparently. What do you get most from this 45-minute intro about what matters in this movie? You know, to hear you describe it, it actually reminds me a little bit about the difference between James Cameron's original cut of Aliens and what he ended up releasing theatrically, right?

37:32Because that movie shows you a little bit of what happened on the life among the colonists before Ripley and the team arrive. And in the theatrical cut, which is the superior version in my view, you don't get anything until you actually turn up and see what has happened. And I think that's an effective narrative strategy. I also think, you know, to go back to what Tarkovsky might have been thinking, you know, I think it kind of sets the audience up for a different kind of experience. You know, you're going to have a more contemplative experience when it is structured this way. and when you have so much emphasis placed on this character and how he's feeling and the world in which he is occupying before he gets to the space station, all that stuff, he's given 45 minutes over to that before you get to space.

38:26So that kind of sets you up for what type of film this is going to be, I think. And then once you establish that, you then get the shock of him arriving and really sort of drinking in the level of disarray and chaos that has sort of swallowed up this entire mission. I have read the novel. It's been a long time. It certainly is not a slow-paced novel, as I remember it. It's very dense with ideas. But oddly enough, though, I feel like the opening section is the most straightforwardly science fiction-y as the film gets, because we get the whole history with Burton, the former cosmonaut, astronaut, and his experiences, and the footage of him testifying about them before a very skeptical audience.

39:17And I find that is actually, I think, a really interesting way to get this exposition out there, the background you need to understand what Solaris is and what's been going on there, but also kind of a chilling dramatization of the bureaucracy and the refusal to accept, the refusal of established science to accept things outside their understanding of how the world works to basically ruin this guy's life. I mean, I like those scenes quite a bit. And then we get four minutes of him driving away. I feel like apart from the things we learn about kind of Kelvin's past psychology and what his life on Earth looks like, one of the biggest things I got out of that intro was something that isn't foregrounded, which is just the gap between how the cosmonaut who's testifying looks on the screen versus how he now looks in real life tells us that a lot of time has passed.

40:16Either that or he's prematurely aging from his experience. But when I realized, it took me a little while to realize it was the same person. And when I did, I kind of went, oh, a lot more time has happened since that phenomena. That phenomena is not what's prompting them to send Kelvin. This is a thing in the past that has come up, been debunked, been buried, been ignored, and is now resurfacing because they're trying to explain what it means that other cosmonauts are experiencing similarly hallucinatory phenomena. So that was kind of my big takeaway. But the other thing is maybe just spending enough time with Kelvin to get to understand him better.

40:59And that's something we're definitely going to need as we transition into the part of the story centered on Kelvin's experience on the space station. So we should get into that. But before that, let's take a little break.

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43:17So, yeah, Kellen is a character. What do you make of him? Is, you know, given Tartofsky's statements about the importance of his stories being about the dogged character who perseveres no matter what's going on and makes big moral choices. Do you see Kelvin like that? Do you see him as making a huge moral choice here? Do you like him at all? And if you don't, does it matter to the story? Who is this man? Tosh, I feel like before that, what is the audio equivalent of an ominous title card that says part two as we return from the break we really we really do need that that's an interesting point of the to to stop and then take it up again i thought uh i like i like when this movie shifts into part one and part two though i'm kind of curious as to why that was necessary yeah i do i like him i i find him affecting uh i mean it's not an easy character to like but i think he also has kind of an everyman quality about him.

44:17Here's one point of clarification, and I might be wrong about this, but do we not learn that he's a psychologist until he gets to the station? I remember being kind of like, oh, he's a psychologist when he's introduced as such. I thought that was in the briefing up front, but honestly - It very well may be. I may have just kind of glided past that. I mean, at this point, I've read so many analytical takes and essays and interviews. I don't know where I got any particular bit of information. So I cannot pin that down for you, I'm afraid. Well, I mean, I guess the broader point it's going to make is why a psychologist?

44:52Why is this character a psychologist? And why would they send a psychologist to deal with the issue of the station as it now stands? I mean, I think maybe they're thinking this is a mental health problem or something. Not an issue of there being some supernatural phenomenon that they're having to deal with, but a problem of just being isolated and needing some kind of help or intervention from him. And I think that he seems to approach this assignment with that in mind, of just coming to the table with a little bit of skepticism, even though he's seen pretty persuasive footage that there might be something going on here.

45:35But of course, his skepticism is immediately erased when his ex returns to him. Then he's on the crazy train with the other two. Are you just going to think of her as his ex-wife? That's dark. Wife? No, the ex-wife is a little dark. Okay, fine. His deceased wife. It's just wordy. You could just say wife, I think, actually. She's not alive. The idea is she's not alive, though. So I just want to make that clear. I think maybe Natasha's point was trying to make. It's like, do we want to think of this guest as his wife or as an entity in the form of his wife? No, I was just thinking that I don't normally hear people refer to somebody as an ex-spouse because they've died as opposed to because you've gotten divorced.

46:24Yeah, that's how I say it. His late wife. But you could have made the point. I just suggested it because I think it's a pretty good one. I mean, a lot of interesting points have been made there. I think the one that I kind of seized on, though, was as far as the question of why Kelvin is here, I don't necessarily think that he's there to provide support of any kind, like mental health help for anybody. To me, it just sort of seems like, you know, one man sees something that does not fit within your understanding of the world. You dismiss it as a hallucination and recall him from the ship. when everybody does, then you're dealing with some kind of phenomenon.

47:07But rather than sending more people there to study the phenomenon and possibly fall victim to it, they decide to send somebody to analyze like, are these people having a mental health breakdown or is there something else going on? And they don't really analyze the fact that they're only sending one person, which could kind of come down to, we've already given up on this installation. if I remember the numbers correctly, it staffs 30 and there are only three left, which turns out there are only two left. I think there were 85 at one point. I think at one point there were 85. Oh, yeah. So even bigger than I thought.

47:43I did not write that point down, unfortunately. So, I mean, to me, it sort of smacks of like, we don't want to throw more resources at this, But we will, you know, make a kind of like small, inexpensive, relatively effort to check out what's going on. Could you just go find out whether these people are lunatics? Or, you know, whether you also experience like hallucinatory measures and see four meter tall boys swimming around in the ocean. So that was certainly my take on the psychologist thing. I didn't realize until I saw the credits that our two scientists here have specific disciplines. If I recall, one of them is a pilot and the other one is an astrobiologist.

48:29Snout and Sartorius, to me, kind of blurred together a bit in a way that I suspect repeat watches would clarify. Obviously, they have kind of different responses to him at the beginning. They both want him to go away, but it kind of seems like for different reasons. But at the point where they're having a grand philosophical debate where the conversation is just about whether people need people and whether there's any point in colonizing other worlds, whether humanity has a future, whether science is meaningful, just all of these kind of like big topics that come up that feel very Russian to me, even though the author is Polish.

49:11But the specific kinds of is anything meaningful and does humanity have a place in the stars at all questions feel very Russian to me. And these two men kind of blur together. And I'm curious if that was your perspective or if having seen this movie multiple times, you see them as very distinctive individuals. I mean, I think – I believe it's Snout that has more of a mad scientist quality to him. Or is it Sartorius who has kind of a mad scientist quality? to him. But beyond that, we don't really get beneath the surface of either of those characters all that much, do we? And we really don't get a sense of who their guests are, apart from some kind of chilling peaks here and there.

49:58Yeah, that sequence where one of them is concealing somebody in his room, and they escape, and I did not get a very clear view of that. My impression was that it was a little person rather than a child. It's a little person, yeah. But it's never addressed. And the fact that Kelvin himself doesn't immediately say, who is that? There's not supposed to be anybody else on this space station. What's going on? The fact that he doesn't address it seemingly ever is deeply baffling to me. Does he see it? Yeah, I think so. I was very surprised myself to not never really return to it. Once he arrives, I feel like he almost immediately sinks into the, forget it, man, it's Solaris kind of a mentality, you know?

50:46I mean, weird things are going to happen. Yeah, that's pretty damn weird, though. I mean, it's early, too. It's when he's still a little bit skeptical and nothing has happened to him yet. That's interesting. But I think we had kind of started that question of just what we think of him, our lead character, and whether we connect with him in some way. And I think this is a movie that's often talked about as being a film about grief. And I think it does sort of resonate in that way, even though this is not a character that you warm up to that easily. But I think the situation itself, the way it asserts itself, though, is affecting this woman who keeps being manifested and goes away and then comes back.

51:34and the ways in which she is, you know, versions of this character are sort of jettisoned, all have, you know, I think their own individual meaning and their own individual weight. I mean, the whole sequence where he's, the first manifestation that he puts in the rocket and it tries to set out into space is just an incredible sequence. Very bad, very poor safety work on that whole operation. But it's also, it's kind of like one of the few moments that's kind of funny you do. It's an interesting scene. It's also just wild that the space station has like a full-sized rocket sitting around that they can afford to dispense.

52:17Weird detail. This past weekend participated in a Battlestar Galactica LARP, like tied to the recent remake. And I just think about how that series is about every time somebody causes trouble or there's a political shift, we shove them out the airlock and you shoving somebody out the airlock is very very cheap uh expending an entire rocket on blasting them to wherever he sends uh hari 2.0 is or hari 1.0 is kind of incredible and the fact that he's new to the station and yet he still knows where to go for the disposable rocket ships that you poke your alien intruders into just absolutely wild Very visual, very compelling visually, particularly when he can't escape in time and gets caught on fire by the blast of the rocket.

53:12This is all really wild detail. But I did find myself wondering, wasn't there an easier way? There's kind of a vacuum effect with space from my understanding. And when later one of the others tells him that she's still out there, you can go retrieve her if you want to. Like in space. There's just another one of his wife out there, which is, again, wild, because when the second one kills herself by drinking liquid oxygen, which is horrific, she just revives. Which does that mean the one that he blasted into space is also just eternally alive? Is she going to run out of oxygen and be out there dead?

53:51I think she's still out there. There's a lot about the situation we don't know. And we probably shouldn't focus on the details because we're kind of not meant to know. This is a movie about the emotional impact of this reunion and what it does to this man of science who ends up kind of falling back on love and faith in a way. I think the film kind of endorses this idea that is asserted that she isn't real. Like there's something that she's made of what neutrinos or something. There's not, that she's a manifestation of rather than something that we should really, someone who we should really think about as a person in terms of our, you know, whatever moral response to her might be.

54:38Uh, it's really just about him, him and his feelings and him having to grapple with her return and, and what that, you know, means to him, you know, as somebody who is, who has grieved, you know, his, uh, his ex wife, his late wife. So I feel more of a connection with her, I think, than with him. And part of that is just that the character is allowed to be a lot more emotive, you know a lot more about what's going through her head. And her particular journey is so painful and tragic. Even though she's questionably real, even though she's a manifestation of something unknown and possibly unknowable, what we see on screen is a woman struggling with humanity, with her own reality, with her purpose in life in a very visceral way, and taking really precipitous action that turns out to be very painful physically and emotionally.

55:35I connect to that a lot more easily than I connect to what is, in Kelvin's case, mostly stoicism. And I connect to him most in the moments where he breaks down and shows what he's feeling. It's a really touching performance. I find if you weren't at least a little bit moved by that. I'm not sure the film would work as sort of as alien as this manifestation is, you know, is revealed to be. I'm sorry, I got a little distracted because I was looking up Natalia Bundichuk, who is still alive and has a career as a director, including, a film as recently as 2015, but including a film called Bambi's Childhood, which appears to be an adaptation of Bambi with human actors playing the roles of animals including her well anyway i it's a rabbit hole we can go down or or i guess a a deer den we can go down it sounds like this sounds like this sounds like a reveal piece yeah happening in the near future so it it interests me that we i to me harry's first suicide ends up kind of being the emotional like climax of the film you know we see her come back from it in a physically agonizing, emotionally, you know, traumatic way.

56:54And it seems to be the turning point of Kelvin's feelings for her as well. So much happens around that suicide. But when she kills herself the second time, this time permanently, it all happens on screen. And it's just something he has to contend with, having not been there for it. And, you know, left not even with a body to connect to the way he does with his old friend who also killed himself on the space station and with her death the first time. Why do you think the filmmakers decided to handle her permanent death that way? I don't know how it lines up with the novel itself, but I think this kind of probably connects most closely to what Lem has said he's trying to do with the novel, which was explore the impossibility of communicating with alien life, of any possibility of humans making any kind of connection with alien life.

57:51So I think whatever they did have, it's obviously not working out for Solaris at this point, and she is withdrawn, would be my reading of that. And it's not an upbeat development. How did you two read it? Well, yeah, given the unknowability of the alien, here's the thing. I came away with an impression maybe that I understood the alien intelligence a little better than I understood some of these people. Stout and Sartorius' response to the situation is frankly kind of baffling to me, and it's because we have so few pieces of their individual puzzles. We don't know exactly what caused their companion, Kellen's former friend, to kill himself.

58:37We're told that the manifestations possibly have something to do with guilt. But there's a lot that we don't know here. But what I see kind of as the overall picture, as I said in the keynote, is an alien intelligence trying to reach out and make contact while not necessarily understanding what humanity is, what humans are, or what these particular people want. And then kind of getting burned in the process. I can't imagine anything we could do to aliens crueler than mapping a human being's brain experience onto them. That's just – it's savage. Everything – all of the tortures being done to aliens in Spielberg's Disclosure Day pale in comparison to making a giant alien ocean be human.

59:29but it seems like it does respond by offering them kind of a refuge in a way what do you see as the big picture here like do you do you feel like you understand in the end what this ocean intelligence is or what it's trying to do i i don't i'm surprised i i guess i don't really tend to think of it the way that you do it i maybe as as a as the separate and i feel it of it I think of it so much in relation to these characters and their psyches and their experiences in being something that kind of absorbs and reflects all of those all of those feelings rather than it's something that exists separate from them but so it's kind of hard for me to like think of it in the same in the way that you're thinking of it here it reminded me actually a little bit the movie reminded me a little bit of your film i think it surely influences which is melancholia the uh lars von trier movie and and and how the characters you know how a situation imposes itself on these characters and and transforms them in a way or at least or at least reveals to us how their thinking changes in relate in relation to this immense uh planet that is suddenly uh heading towards earth you know just it feels like that kind of a relationship to me more than Solaris itself being reflective of an alien intelligence or us having to grapple with an alien intelligence.

1:01:02Are you telling me that Melancholia, a film that uses some of the same Bruegel paintings, might have been influenced by Solaris? But I mean, no, I do think, I mean, the novel is explicitly an intelligence. And I think there's enough here to make that conclusion as well. And no, I don't know. And since I feel like that impossibility is neither the humans nor the ocean come away with an understanding of each other. But that said, I find, I don't know what it is exactly, but I find the reveal that the ocean has started to develop islands is a really kind of I don't know, I find it really kind of affecting line and of course the subsequent you know when we see one manifested at the end I don't know whether to see the progress between human and ocean relations or human solaris relations or kind of a perversion of what each is supposed to be I guess I know I'm jumping in the gun on your discussion topics here Tasha but I guess it's whether or not you see his settling into that house that's not quite his house where it rains inside instead of outside.

1:02:19And it's just a small isolated patch in the middle of a dried ocean. Whether you see that as somewhat encouraging or kind of horrific or unreadable, I guess, depends on how you see that revelation of the islands. I mean, for me, at least, the answer is in Kelvin's response. That could be, you know, If he wandered around looking horrified and trapped, we would be in kind of a classic Twilight Zone ending where it turns out and the big twist is blank. It was never earth all along, Charlton Heston. He broke his glasses. Yeah. Yeah. So, but instead he falls on his knees and as he did once before with the manifestation of his wife and presses his head into the midsection of the manifestation of, I believe it's his father.

1:03:11It's his father. Honestly, it was a little hard for me to tell sometimes the difference between his, you know, lanky, aging, recessive hair, like deeply socketed eyes father and the astronaut who, you know, the older cosmonaut who had a lot of the same characteristics. But yeah, it certainly seemed to be his father. And seeking emotional solace in him the way he had previously in her, to me, means he's making some kind of connection. He's expressing something deeply felt. And for me, at least, for that character, it feels like a step forward. But I could very easily see somebody making an argument for this is perverting what humanity is.

1:03:57we were running long and we should move on to other things. I will just say, I'm sure some people were curious what we made of the Steven Soderbergh version of Solaris. We are going to talk about that a bit in the second half of this conversation. But I guess to close out, Keith, you said, you know, of course, we're going to talk more about the 2001 comparison before we're done. I didn't even have that in my questions. It kind of seems to be like something created a little bit more by marketers and an interviewer than anything else. Yeah. But when it comes down to - You might have covered it pretty well already, Tasha.

1:04:31Well, no, I'm very curious for your thoughts, especially when we're talking about the ending. You know, kind of 2001, a famously opaque ending that has been parsed out in terms of the symbolism and what's happening. And of course, 2001, the book having gotten many sequels kind of unpacking that imagery. I'm curious what you make of the comparison between them or if you think there is a comparison to be made. I mean, I think I don't want to be reductive, but I think, you know, 2001 is a story going from from the dawn of man, as they call it, to the next stage of human existence. And I feel like if anything there in Solaris, it's a matter of no matter how far you travel, you carry baggage with you.

1:05:22I mean, you know, the fact that he goes to the far reaches of the galaxy and what's waiting for him there is the wife whose death has haunted him. I mean, in some ways, there's a much grander expression of a moment I really like in the Damien Chazelle movie, First Man, where, I mean, spoiler for what happens, you know, Armstrong lands on the moon. But he also deposits this memento of his daughter he's lost. And I found it so moving that the idea is that you could accomplish something that no one has ever accomplished. One small step for man goes through something that no one has ever done, but you're still carrying the burdens of your life with you.

1:06:04And I think this is kind of that writ large in some ways. Boy, I cannot ask for a better segue because I'm absolutely going to bring all that back up with you in part two when we compare this movie to It Ends. because I think that there's a very strong parallel there. Let's take a moment and think about that and get into feedback. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first.

1:06:47I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:07:26Self-Care September is here, which means it's time to rethink what self-care actually means. Yes, self-care can be a long walk. It can be an everything shower. It can be putting your phone on do not disturb. but sometimes it's actually about sitting with the uncomfortable stuff and understanding your patterns, your boundaries, finally figuring out why you keep doing things that you swore you would never do again. I'm Gemma Spegg, the host of the Psychology of Your 20s podcast, and each week we unpack the psychology behind the experiences that shape your 20s, from relationships and friendships to money, anxiety, confidence, attachment, just becoming more comfortable with who you are.

1:08:02unlike the quarter life crisis which is depicted as the collapse the quarter life reinvention is the expansion and growth of something when we develop the ability to be happy by ourselves nobody else can take that from you so this self-care september don't just take care of yourself get to know yourself as well listen to the psychology of your 20s on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts is there an epidemic against literature more specifically Black literature. Our books are being banned, scanned by AI, and destroyed. I'm Jacquees Peace Thomas, and on this season of the Black Lit Podcast, we're outside asking some of the custodians of our stories, teachers, and our modern-day writers why.

1:08:47They don't want a whole bunch of little elevators, Malcolm X's, and Martin Luther King's running around. They want to build children who have no empathy. That's really the ultimate goal. We want books that don't make white kids feel bad. So is the war on literacy and information or our ability to connect? We want people to know how sexy reading is and how fun it could be and not always associated with education. It could be an escape. It could be entertainment. And that is the beauty of reading. It can be all of those things. And considering this is Black Reading Month, the only real question is.

1:09:23What are you reading next? Listen to Black Lit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, Chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health Institute in New York City. On this show, I'll be talking to top researchers and top clinicians, asking them your burning questions and bringing that information about women's health and midlife directly to you. 100 % of women go through menopause. It can be such a struggle for our quality of life, but even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it?

1:10:03The types of symptoms that people talk about is forgetting everything. I never used to forget things. They're concerned that, one, they have dementia, and the other one is, do I have ADHD? There is unprecedented promise with regard to cannabis and cannabinoids to sleep better, to have less pain, to have better mood, and also to have better day-to-day life. Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening now.

1:10:37Now it's time for feedback, but first, let's dive into what's happening elsewhere in the extended film-spotting cinematic universe. As usual, there's a lot going on. As we record this, Matt Singer and Jordan Hoffman at FilmSpottingSVU just delved into Hulu's Anthony Mackie epic, Desert Warrior, directed by Rupert Wyatt. And they're asking what and who exactly it's targeting. On the Movie Racket, Michael Phillips and Robert Daniels discuss the old Samuel Goldwyn moviemaking adage, if you want to send a message, try Western Union. And at the FilmSpotting Mothership podcast, Adam and Josh just wrapped up their two-part list of top five movie needle drops, a list that would make my brain immediately seize up if I had to contribute because there are so many possibilities and because I've never been the most music-oriented cinephile.

1:11:21But having not listened to those episodes yet, I can say I do have a nominee. The use of Lou Reed's Perfect Day in Trainspotting. When I think about it, maybe my entire top five is from Trainspotting. Do either of you have immediate contenders for best needle drop in a movie? Oh my God. There's just so many. Before we do that, though, can I just say that Matt and Jordan are just, it's a public service what they're doing. Because I didn't know that Rupert Wyatt had a new movie with Anthony Mackie. I mean, you could go, you could just blissfully, you could, I don't know, work talking about movies for a living and not know this thing existed for it not for them.

1:12:05Scott, I thought you have something you want to say about the needle drama. I've got one too. Yeah, I mean, it's any given day on this, but I'd probably have to go with Jumpin' Jack Flash in Mean Streets, which is just a galvanizing cinematic moment when Robert De Niro's Johnny Boy character comes into a bar with a woman under each arm, and you get this look from Harvey Keitel, who's his friend, but also has to deal with his instability and behavior, which puts him in peril. And it's dynamite. It's just one of those great pop moments that Scorsese would repeat many times in his career. So that one comes immediately to mind.

1:12:54There's so many, but I'll tell you the one that comes first to mind for me, which is Chunking Express, which shifts from one story to the next. halfway through. It feels like, you know, it feels like you're reaching the conclusion of the first cop story, first cop played by Takeshi Keneshiro. And you're getting bumped into Fei Wong's character, who will be one of the central characters in the next part. And California Dreamin' kicks in, a song you'll hear again and again and again in the second part. But it's like, oh, it's like the car has shifted gears and turned in another direction. And now we're going over here now.

1:13:31and just because that's what just because that's what Wong Kar-wai wants to do with this movie and the rules do not apply and anything can happen and I love it so much I get sort of anticipatory like chills knowing that it's coming whenever I watch that movie I love it so much. Well you can find out what Adam and Josh picked, you can listen to the other Film Spotting family podcasts and you can catch up on the latest Next Picture Show episodes at filmspotting.net Now it's time for feedback where we address responses. We've gotten to recent episodes. Keith, could you read this one that we recently got about our pairing of the end of Oak Street with Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds?

1:14:08Sure. Jordan writes, I'm listening to your recent episode about War of the Worlds and how it's a representation of 9-11. While I don't doubt that you're right that it was intended that way now that I hear you say it, when I saw it in the theater, we were in the middle of bombing Iraq, and I took the movie as completely the opposite. To my eyes at the time, it was a representation of what it was like for human beings in another country like the Iraqis to be crushed by a super powerful force like us. I shouldn't leave out the Afghans, but that war was a little different. Like, maybe you can see the reality of this if we show it happening to Americans?

1:14:40Iraq was very foremost in American minds when the movie came out, so I couldn't help seeing the movie this way. To me, it was highly powerful for that reason. All I can say is, wow, because until today, I literally never thought of the movie as a terrorist versus us. I absolutely thought of it as super military like ours versus helpless civilians. It resembles that and not nine 11, but I'm probably wrong. At least as far as what the filmmakers intended. I also have very strong feelings about people who are thousands of miles away. As I am sure Spielberg was tell me what a thing they only experienced on screens as if it happened to them.

1:15:11I'll leave it at that. Hmm. This letter, I, first of all, I mean, there's so much nine 11 imagery that it has to be inspired by, but at the same time, like when I've read this, like, you know what? But I think Joshua might be on something here because it really does work as that as well. And it becomes kind of a really different movie if you start thinking of that as sort of the controlling metaphor rather than 9-11. Wow. It's given me something to think about. I mean, my immediate reaction to this letter was that Joshua is just more empathetic than most people because 9-11 kind of set off a wave of America first.

1:15:46Only America's pain matters. anybody we hurt in feeling better about what happens to us. It's their own fault for being in the way. The attacks on Iraq particularly come to mind in that. So seeing this, you know, not as a reflection of kind of 9-11 induced American psychosis, but as like an empathetic response to how it affected other people in the world, I think is a very generous response and a very kind of telling response about who Joshua is, but it's hard for me to see that in American filmmaking of the time period in particular. I did go on just a tiny little hunt in the time I had to see what Spielberg had said, specifically looking for 9-11 in Iraq.

1:16:35And the interviews that I found, I think he was maybe being careful about addressing that question, as filmmakers so often do is like a tiny little sidebar. Boy, it is frustrating to me when you get a, for instance, Alex Garland doing a Civil War or equivalent movie that's just very obviously political and addressing the politics of the moment. And the filmmaker knows full well they can't talk about it. Because if they come out and say, like, no, this is about unpopular issue and trying to make people like see the other side of it, they will immediately turn a bunch of people off and the people that most need to see the film might not see it.

1:17:13So yeah, I mean, it's certainly possible that this is what was going through Spielberg's head, but I have not found any incidences of him talking about it. But you know, intentional fallacy doesn't really matter what was intended. It's what's there on the screen. Death of the author. I mean, you certainly what's going on around you at a given time and where you came from makes a big difference in the kind of art you make and you know how you interpret it is how you interpret it but joshua i think is is talking here more about the intent and how the movie is meant to be read and not just how he read it which is a very different thing yeah i mean i think i mean it's been that this is all making i was not on that episode and so did not get a chance to re-watch uh the world or the worlds with you and uh now i'm intensely curious to see how it would play but i think in terms of Spielberg's politics.

1:18:04I mean, he is willing to go out on a limb. I think Munich is quite a bit more provocative than I think even it was given credit for at the time and is a fascinating one to visit to kind of parse out its politics, which I think were quite daring. And so I don't doubt that Joshua's reading could align with Spielberg's. Oh, one way or the other. Thanks for writing in and thanks for making us think. That's it for this episode of The Next Picture Show. In our next episode, we'll talk about a much shorter, fleeter existential crisis movie, Alexander Olem's feature debut, It Ends, which has four people in their early 20s encountering a different kind of anomaly that seems a lot less personal and even less escapable.

1:18:49Look for that episode next Tuesday on your podcatcher of choice. For ad-free versions of the podcast and extra content, find us on Patreon at patreon.com slash nextpictureshow. You can find us at nextpictureshow.net and on Blue Sky at The Next Picture Show if you want to keep track of when new episodes drop. Until next time, remember that the preservation of simple human truths requires the mysteries of happiness, death, and love. To think about it is to know one's day of death. Wait, what are we doing watching these movies that openly think about these things? Oh, crap!

1:19:29That was a good movie. Yeah, seen here before once.

1:19:58Plus, now I'm working on, like, thinking a moment, reeling it in, thinking before I speak. And Joey King. You know if your, like, mom is yelling at your sibling, and even if you're annoyed with your sibling, you just, like, won't let that slide. It's like, only you can yell at your sibling. I'm like, you can't do that here. That is what I have. You don't want to talk about her like that. Only I talk about her like that. Plus, we've been taking your calls, listening to your voicemails, and giving you advice. Or at least trying to. So, if you've got catching up to do, now's the perfect time. Listen to Hey Jonas on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:20:57Listen to Black Lit from the Black Effect Podcast Network on our iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decoding Women's Health. I'm Dr. Elizabeth Pointer, Chair of Women's Health and Gynecology at the Atria Health Institute in New York City. I'll be talking to top researchers and clinicians and bringing vital information about midlife women's health directly to you. 100 % of women go through menopause. Even if it's natural, why should we suffer through it? Listen to Decoding Women's Health with Dr. Elizabeth Pointer on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:21:34In February of 2024, celebrated illustrator and children's book author Petra Mathers and her husband Michael mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Dear honeys, this is goodbye. By the time you get this letter, both Petra and I will be dead. Next stop, Wonderland. Why did they do it? And what did it do to the people they left behind? Listen to Death of an Artist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.