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The questions asked if movies have women in them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands, or do they have individualism?

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Cast.

Hey, Jamie, want to come over and meet my tentacle?

Boyfriend who lives in my bed.

Yeah, as long as it's questionably not real and created from all of the trauma you've accumulated from throughout your life.

Well duh, okay, good, that's most I mean, that's most movie monsters.

Right.

You're just getting fucked to death by your own trauma.

That's the experience of life.

So why not have the guy who made ET create the monster that fucks you to death?

Oh yeah, I didn't realize it was the same person.

Oh, a legend, Carlo Rambaldi.

He also, I believe he wasn't in charge of it because hr Geiger Gieger.

Someone help.

I think it's Geiger, hr Geiger.

But he's like an hr Geiger guy Ger.

And he also so made the xenomorph an alien.

Yeah, yeah, so he's Carla Embaldi's all about a wet, little trauma monster, which is how I describe ET kind of.

I would love to get fucked by my own trauma because then at least you know you're getting something out of it.

Anyways, Welcome to the Bechdel Cast.

Well that was a great introduction.

We nailed it.

This is the Bechdel Cast, our show where we examine movies through an intersectional feminist lens.

I'm Caitlyn Deronte.

I don't think I introduced myself.

Oh, I'm Jamie Loftus.

I'm the one that wanted to get fucked by the monster.

I can't speak for you, Caitlyn.

I can only speak for myself.

You know.

Let me get back to you on that.

Okay.

I went to the Academy Museum recently and I saw the fish from the Shape of Water again and I was like, that's not a trauma monster.

That's that's a fantasy monster.

Fu.

Oh you also want to be fucked by?

Yeah, and it really is pulled into sharp focus when you see that he built to scale scale.

But that wasn't what I was trying to do.

Wow.

But you know what I mean.

You know what I mean.

I love it when you get punny.

I know, I never see it coming.

I think it's whenever I'm running on very little sleep.

Yeah.

Well, in any case, it's the Possession episode.

Guys.

We're so excited the time has come to cover the movie Possession nineteen eighty one and we have an incredible guest in the house.

Oh wait, we should say what the show is.

Yeah, I mean intersectional feminist film analysis where we use the Bechdel test simply as a jumping off point.

But what's that, I wonder.

Well, it actually is relevant to today's discussion, so we'll tell you.

The Bechtel test is a media metric creative by our dear friend, friend of the show, Alison Bechdel, originally as a joke in her comic that went from the eighties into the two thousands called Mikes to Watch Out For about how there is very little queer representation in movies, specifically with women, but has since become a more mainstream metric.

Lots of versions of this test.

The one we use requires that there are two characters of a marginalized gender with names who speak to each other about something other than a man.

This, I mean, I guess that a lot of you know this is just a jumping off point for discussion, But I was actually thinking about the test, which is rare these days on the show, we're mostly thinking about other things.

But I was like, we don't know how the trauma octopus identifies, you know, And is that not a meaningful interaction?

I certainly think.

So, I would say very meaningful.

Now, Anna does refer to her tentacle lover using him pronouns.

Oh, but well, okay, unless we're thinking that this, we're okay, already overthinking it.

Two minutes in us we're thinking that Anna's misgendering her own trauma monster, which I certainly hope she wouldn't.

I think so highly of her.

She's an icon, she's a legend, she's an icon, she's the moment.

She've got her milk all over the place.

I okay, let's okay, we have an incredible guest.

That's what the Bechdel test is, whether you think it passes or not, sort of hinges on how you gender this tentacle monster, because otherwise it's a pretty solitary movie with a lot of men.

Exactly.

But yes, let's get our guest in here.

She is a writer, illustrator, and editor specializing in horror film inspired imagery.

She's the creator of the Zene resident eesel It's Alicia Burbank.

Hello and welcome.

Hi.

Thank you so much for having me on.

I love this show.

Oh my gosh, we love your work.

We really do.

Thank you, and we're so excited that you brought us.

You brought us a little juicy bit of gristle to talk about today.

Yeah, what is your history with Possession?

Oh, I was.

I think a lot of us might come to Possession all at the same time in our lives when we're having like a rough time, when we're talking about, you know, film with you know, someone we look up to, or you know, like someone who's really deep into the arts or whatever.

This was circa twenty fifteen, twenty, you know, just hinging on twenty sixteen when I was just like, Oh, I'm so bored with everything I'm doing.

I want to get back into watching horror movies.

What do you recommend?

And someone I just kind of peripherally knew was like, well, there are all these new films that are coming out that are just like newly available to American audiences.

Have you ever seen Possession?

I was like no, And he gave me a YouTube link, just like go check it out.

And this was yeah around that time when I was just like glued to my YouTube like watching this repeatedly, and it really changed my life, this movie like Wow.

And then after that I went on to really study a lot more horror films.

I was a part of, very very briefly.

I was a part of a horror film podcast with two other dudes and then left that one for probably obvious reasons during twenty sixteen.

Yeah, so it was like, I have a past with this film.

It really helped me find my voice, so to speak.

Yeah, Jamie, how about you?

What's your relationship with it?

Also very particular.

I saw this movie for the first time a couple of years ago when I was going through a terrible breakup with a guy that sort of looks like a young Sam Neil if you tilt your head.

So it was very cathartic.

I think I had heard of this movie before because I think that the subway scene is something that it's like one of those clips that goes viral every six months, and so I had seen that scene before and I'm like, I like this, but I never followed up on like what it is.

And then Yeah, it was when I was seeking a cathartic breakup movie to watch a couple of years ago that I was like, Oh, it's it's time.

It's time to watch Possession.

And I mean, I don't wish a horrible breakup on anyone, but if you've got to go through one, this movie is it's And I've seen this opinion repeated because it is such a brutal movie.

But I found it so comforting at the time that I saw it, because it's just like, especially if you're watching this movie in a way that is just washing over you, which is not how we analyze movies here, but I it was.

It just felt awesome to see like such intense and irrational pain, just like fully committed in the performances and all of the creative choices.

I don't know, it felt weirdly validating for how out of my mind I felt while having to you know, like you have to continue to act like a person, and these people are not acting like people at all.

I just I found it to be a very very cathartic breakup movie.

So I think, I mean it was during a difficult time, which is like, bik, how a lot of people come to this movie, like you're saying, But I found it very soothing, and so I think I watched it like I think I watched it twice during like the height of that breakup, and then I've returned to it twice since in the years that came after, And so this was my first time watching it critically and also like learning more about the filmmaking process, and I mean you can tell like where this movie takes place.

It takes place in Berlin in the early eighties, so it's like I didn't know anything about the director at all, but specifically how political this movie is, because I was so distracted by the Tentacle Porn, but not this time.

This time I was ready for the Tentacle porn and ready to think about the cold and feminism and.

A director's who abuse power.

So there's so much to talk about, but just yeah, strictly on my first watch.

It also was like the exact right time the movie found me when I needed it.

Caitlyn, what's your history with this movie?

I had never seen it until prepping for this episode, nor was it really on my radar.

As I've said in the past, I'm like not the biggest horror person.

It's sort of the genre that I am least acquainted with.

Over the years, I've seen more and more so I've seen like a decent handful of the classics at this point, but this one just like wasn't even on my radar.

It's still pretty culty.

I think, yeah, that must be.

It had no idea that Sam Neil was in it, doctor Alan Grant himself.

Yeah, and I will have to say I don't like the character of doctor Alan Grant.

I just like so it never occurred to me to think of Sam Neil as attractive.

But I mean, obviously his character is terrible, but he is hot in this movie to me.

And I was like surprised because I just found I hate I think I hate the character of doctor Alan Grant.

That's like, because why is your define You're defining characteristic as you hate children and at the end of the movie you kind of don't.

I hate that arc.

I hate that arc.

But what about Mark who hates his kid the whole time?

I mean, but but also kind of likes him more at the end.

I don't think so, I see, I I have a I have some hot takes on on these parents.

They're bad they I mean, they're bad parents.

Wow, I guess that's not a hot take.

They're bad parents here first they are?

Yeah, this is like I also like watching it this time.

I was like, damn, if this is what divorce feels like, I'm getting unengaged, not worth it.

Uh.

Yeah, it was such a wild watch.

I had no idea.

I thought it would be more demonic possession based on the title alone, and there's definitely some supernatural stuff happening.

There's a creature.

There's sort of a suggestion that it's kind of religious maybe, but not really not in the way that like the Exorcist, store movies like that deal with demonic possession.

Yeah, it's like completely all over the place.

And I'm like, I was relieved when I was like doing research for this that it doesn't seem like there is any definitive read of this movie because it's just like it's just throwing shit out there and like you sort of latch on to it's.

Throwing tentacles at the wall and seeing what sticks.

And I just don't quite know.

I was like, am I not like I'm not getting the metaphor.

Really, I don't think you're supposed to, that's the thing.

It's like, yeah, okay, okay, good.

Yeah.

Because as I was watching it this time, I'm like, I don't know if this movie is like necessarily quote unquote good by ordinary metrics, but I know how it makes me feel, and it makes me feel like punching a wall.

You know.

Yeah.

I think a lot of people do kind of correlate his work with Lynch or you know, someone where you are looking more at symbols and how things make you feel and you know, like metaphysical properties, and I don't know, meditate on it a bit and maybe you'll get something that contributes to your life, you know.

And I even feel like maybe that's what Zulaski was thinking when he was making it, yeah.

Right, and making it like post divorce, and he was like really distraught about a divorce he had gone through.

And he was like sort of an expatriate, like he was like a strange from it from Poland.

And I just I didn't realize like that.

I knew that this was a divorce movie, because I mean, it stands to reason, but yeah, I didn't realize how we'll talk about that in the discussion.

But like how he had been basically like booted from the Polish film industry because of his politics.

Scary, probably a sign of things to come.

Instructive filmmakers take note, Yeah, you can still make possession even when you get kicked out of your country.

Well, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back for the recap.

Yeah, all right, So here's the recap.

We'll place a content warning for intimate partner abuse and suicide and goo.

If you're disturbed by a lot of goo, because there's a lot of that in the movie.

You could probably still watch the first half.

If you're not into goo, you get surprisingly far into the movie without goo.

Yeah, so don't be totally put off.

Okay, So we are in West Berlin in the early eighties.

A man named Mark played by Sam Neil reunites with his wife Anna played by Isabelle A Johnny and their young son Bob.

And it's really weird to me to see a little boy, like a five year old boy named Bob.

I was, yeah, already, I was like, these parrots are weird to name your I was like, was that a thing in the eighties?

I don't think so.

I feel like it would have been Bobby, Yeah.

Right right, I don't know.

Yeah, it's like meeting a baby named Linda.

You're just like, what, this is a grown up name.

This isn't for babies.

Yeah.

Anyway, So Mark returns home.

He's an international spy.

He was away doing like Cold war espionage stuff.

Yeah, what did every I sort of like, because it's so easy to forget that he's a spy because not only does he quit his job immediately, he's he's doing quote unquote spy work when he's stalking his own wife.

But he's so bad at it and every time I like, it's one of like the dream like things.

I'm assuming is intended, but who knows.

Uh.

It's like every time someone from his work comes up to him, they're like, you're the best buy in the world, and it's like, but we're watching him do such shoddy work that you're like, no, he's not.

Yeah.

Is that what it's like to be a man where you're just being told you're amazing all the time, and meanwhile you have no fucking clue what you're doing.

I don't know exactly, I think so a full disclosure.

I did read a little book on this called Possession by Alison Taylor.

It's like a part of this Devil's Advocate series.

It's almost like thirty three and a third but for horror aficionados.

Oh that's so cool.

I know.

I didn't.

I just discovered it, but yeah, they're out of England.

You can find them online.

But in those books, she did a little bit of research and found that it was more like this whole espionage thing is supposed to be a joke.

It's supposed to be making fun of what you see in movies and like kind of getting meta about it, like does this man where you know pink socks.

It's like, it's supposed to be ridiculous.

It's supposed to be silly and a little bit of like like Charlie Chaplin esque when the spies are like trying to Yeah, he's poking fun at this whole idea that we're like spying on each other.

And yeah, okay that makes sense.

Yeah wait, sorry, what was the name of that book again?

It's just Possession, but it's called, like the whole series is called Devil's Advocates.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, so they all have this like black background with the and then it's still from the film and they're tiny.

They're like, like I said, like the thirty three and a third series that rocks.

Very cool.

We'll link those in the description of the episode.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's Mark.

He's a bad spy and he and Anna are having marital troubles.

She wants to split up, but she can't really say why.

She doesn't really know why she's feeling the way she is, though, she insists that she has not been cheating on Mark, and.

Mark immediately proves that this is a good decision she's made because he responds emotionally and physically abusive instantly, and so you're like, well, if there is any doubt about whether this is a good person to be with, there it is.

And yeah, right.

Then Mark goes to a meeting with his bosses and he quits his job, citing family as the reason.

I guess he's trying to repair his marriage and leave being a spy behind.

But Anna isn't there when he returns home to their apartment, but she does call and confirm his suspicions that she is seeing someone else, a man named Heinrich, and that he gives her more sexual pleasure than Mark ever did.

And he's like, oh okay.

And then you meet Heinrich and you're like, damn, I would I would lose it as well if you're like, this is the guy, no, no, no, I If I'm Mark, I'm like, this is the guy?

You know?

Yeah, exactly for sure.

So then Anna and Mark meet up at a cafe to discuss their separation.

Anna wants to keep their apartment Mark does not want to see their little son Bob for fear of like fucking him up emotionally.

This is where I feel I wonder like if this is where the audience is supposed to lose any potential, Like I mean, ideally, when he is physically abusive to his wife, that is the moment where you are like, fuck this guy forever.

But I, you know, made by a man in the eighties, I'm not so sure.

I feel like the moment where you are supposed to lose him, even in the early eighties, is when he's like so quick to be like, well, I don't want to see my son anymore to like prove a point, which again is like something that kind of just goes away eventually.

But I thought it was very whatever telling that he yeah, he's very he's a bad parent.

He was so quick to be like, okay, well if it proves my point, fuck my small son that we named Bob, Like, yeah, he's already having a hard enough time.

His name's Bob.

He's seven.

If that I've thought he was like four or five little, but yeah, he is ready to abandon his son forever.

And Anna is appalled at this, and things become violent and he chases after her.

Cut to Mark on a bender.

He's drinking heavily, he's filthy, he's mentally and physically unwell.

It's been three weeks.

Then he kind of gets his act together, not really but enough to like return turned to the apartment and little Bob is there, all messy and sticky because Anna has left him there alone.

Not sure for how long, maybe a few hours, but Mark gets him cleaned up, and Anna eventually does return, and Mark, who is being extremely obsessive and possessive, maybe he feels possession over Anna.

He's like, I can't live without you.

We need to be together as a family.

You have to call Heinrich and tell him it's over.

God.

Mark is just like ooh ooh, I hate him so much.

It's so satisfying, Like the the sam Neil performance, I feel like it's all so good.

I didn't realize that I like learned this in the research process that they're they're doing a very specific style of polish acting.

That is like turning everything up to a fifteen.

That was at the request of the director, which is why you don't really see any other Sam Neil performances remotely like this, but like they're pulling from a very specific playbook.

But just how like he quits his job and then refuse it, Like, at no point is this man ever going to reflect.

It's just like an act of yeah, like aggression toward getting what he wants.

And yeah, he deserves to die.

Does she know she did nothing wrong?

Maybe?

And Bob, you know he spoiler alert he survives to the end, but he's fucked for sure.

Oh yeah, it's just there's no coming back from that.

No.

I usually don't read the Wikipedia synopsis because I'm like, I did a great job at this.

I don't need confirmation.

But because I didn't really understand a lot of what happens in this movie, I was like, maybe I'll read it and just like check my work.

Oh is he supposed to die?

It says on Wikipedia at least that he goes into the bathtub to drown himself.

Yes, Bob, so my I don't know.

I upon reading, like and pon watching it this time around.

Yeah, when I first saw this, I was like, oh my god, that's really dark at the end.

I hate, like, sorry that we're jumping to the end.

But I do think part of it is what we're talking about right now, where the instance where Mark comes back and is cleaning him up and he's going like, oh, he's like hit a new world record with deep sea diving in the bathtub because he's holding his breath, he's like playing.

I feel at the end he has become so avoidant that the game he is playing becomes reality that he jumps into the tub to play and inadvertently dies.

Okay, Like, I don't want to see this.

I don't want to see this.

I want to go into my fantasy world, which is in the tub, which is safe and comforting.

But then, yeah, I think that's to me, that's what happens that track.

That makes sense to me.

I mean yeah, I was like, I don't think that's necessarily clear.

But also so much of this movie isn't that does?

That does make sense?

And wow, way to add something horrifically tragic in literally the last thirty seconds of the movie.

I know, I know, Jesus, it's either that or the apocalypse.

So I suppose maybe a bathtub is better than the apocalypse.

Who knows.

Seems like everyone was gonna die anyway.

Yeah, bleak okay.

Ex nineteen eighty one in Germany baby.

So anyway, Mark is begging Anna to end things with Heinrich, and she seems like maybe she'll comply with his request, but she leaves again to go stay with Heinrich, and Mark is trying to figure out where Heinrich is using his spy skills, I guess, but he's like, again, not doing a good job because he just calls Anna's friend Margie all the time to be like where is Anna?

And it's like, aren't you a spy?

What do you doing?

Right?

Anyway?

And Margie, we don't.

I don't know what the hell is going on with Margie.

She is.

It's almost like this guy cannot It's like I will write one woman character, but certainly not truly, because Margie is sort of just slipping and sliding around.

She says a couple of things, but mostly she's just falling down.

Yeah, so much so that she broke her foot at some point off camera we don't see, right, she comes in.

Just hobbling around on.

The broken foot, like I thought you meant the actor.

I was like, oh Jesus Christ.

All we know about her is that she's like accident prone and you know, yeah, flirtatious and she gets.

One of those casts that has like a high heel kind of built.

Into it, which I'm kind of into that.

Also, we're told, and again I'm assuming this is intentional, but I also don't understand why, which is not the last time we'll be saying that.

But we're told that she is Anna's best friend, but I don't think we ever see them talk.

And if she is Anna's best friend, she's a terrible friend.

She's always just trying to fuck her abusive husband.

Yeah, so it's I don't know, I'm really bizarre.

And this is like Zelawski.

I will talk about his personal life and his approach to working with actors as well, but like, this is the kind of movie you watch and you're like, well, this guy doesn't understand women at all, And then you look at his personal life section on Wikipedia and you're like, and he never figured it out and he never did.

But yeah, Margie, I can't account for Margie.

Nah, no one can.

Yeah.

Anyway, So Mark is trying to locate this heinrich guy.

Meanwhile, he's a single dad now kind of, and so he has to drop off his son Bob at school, and he mistakes the school teacher Helen for Anna in a wig, but she is is played by the same actor as Anna Isabella Johnny.

So he's not wrong, Like this person is some strange doppelganger of Anna.

Right, who does all of the things that he thinks is wrong with his actual wife, where she's very nurturing.

She's like quick to reassure him, like yeah, you know, she's very like she's yeah, he's cooking there, but again I don't quite get shrug.

Yeah.

Then Mark goes to Heinrich's house and so we meet Heinrich.

He's played by Heinz Bennett.

But Anna isn't there, and Heinrich is.

He's making some choices.

He's very touchy feely.

He's like, relax, we don't have to be enemies.

He's a real he's a real piece of work.

He's like he's a shit.

Yeah.

And there are all of these because he also has said that he's like ditched his family.

He's like a fuck machine.

But he with his mom and like doesn't there's just so many bizarro elements of Heinrich.

Yeah, he wears spirituality like a costume just to seem fuckable, to seem more emotionally in tune.

With women, and I really think that Zulawski was probably burned by a guy just like this, and that's why this guy is so ridiculous.

Yeah, there do feel like certain elements of the divorce.

If you're just focusing on the divorce narrative and like stay away from the doppelgegers of the tentacle port and all the other stuff going on, it does feel like this guy is too specific to not be referencing someone he actually knew exactly.

He also, Heinrich also has a lot of books, and it seems like he was maybe trying to like enlighten Anna through all of his knowledge from books and so, not that that's a bad thing necessarily, but in this context, it's like you're it's like disingenuous, silly, simple woman who doesn't understand the world, So let me educate.

You, right, which is like such a I don't know.

Unfortunately, who among us hasn't gone from one abuse of relationship to a different kind of bad relationship indeed exactly.

So anyway, Mark is there confronting Heinrich, and he's furious, so they end up arguing and brawling, although mostly it's Heinrich kicking Mark's ass and so Mark returns home.

Anna is back.

Like ninety percent of this movie is just like people returning home, and sometimes the one spouse is there, sometimes they aren't.

It's just a lot of coming and going.

But for now Anna is back and she's expressing how conflicted she feels about different things, though she declares once again that she does want to leave Mark for good.

And they're screaming at each other and it becomes very physically abusive and Anna runs out.

Mark chases after her.

Either he bumps into Anna's friend Margie or maybe he has like asked her to come over.

And then she says one of my favorite lines in the movie, which is something akin to like I love to see you in pain.

Yeah, because they hate each other.

They do, yeah, but it's like a little but it turns her on how much she hates him, right, which is like okay, maybe sure, like sure it's happened, right, but it's just her character is so weird, so such a such a weird lady.

Yeah.

But she comes over to help with Bob because Mark is just not doing a good job as a parent.

And then Mark hires a private detective to follow Anna to see what she's up to despite the fact that Mark is a spy and you'd think he could do this.

Not that I'm like advocating for a man to stalk his wife, but I'm like, why aren't you using your skills anyway?

Right, he hires someone else.

It's funny, like yeah, and also just like another such a clear indicator that he does not actually care about Anna at all, because she's clearly having an episode of some sort.

And what is going to exacerbate an episode, but actual surveillance like that is going to heighten any feeling of paranoid that she's clearly already experiencing.

It's just like you really want to push him off the top of a building for that.

One, you certainly do.

So Anna once again returns home.

Mark is desperate for her to communicate with him and to understand what's going on, but she's like kind of too busy slicing up some meat with an electric meat carver.

And that's definitely not a like metaphor for whatever, right, it's just making raw meat really tiny.

And then she uses this electric meat carver to cut her neck a little bit.

It seems like she might be attempting suicide, but Mark stops her and treats her wound, and things have calmed down a.

Bit, and he also like attempts to injure himself too, Yes, yeah, which I feel like is again another like yeah, he's trying to do something there, like I don't know, but but Mark.

Mark's attempts to empathize with Anna are so half hearted and misguided that he's like, oh, I want to feel the physical pain that you're feeling, because that is like more comfortable than me actually giving a fuck off like what you're feeling or going through.

Yeah.

I also felt like he was just acting like a complete child for most of this too.

He's just like, you know, like, oh, you did it, I'm going to do it too, And I don't know she and she doesn't help him, like she sees him cutting himself and she's like I'm out and he's like it doesn't hurt.

She's like, no, it doesn't hurt.

And that was that was one moment where I was like whoa, Like you're both acknowledging that this torture that you're putting each other through actually is like, oh, I don't feel anything at all for you for this.

Like yeah, yeah, it's wild.

Yeah, that was like I feel like it's one of the reads of it is that, like they're whatever, all the physical pain they're experiencing is our divorce feelings, and that's like part of the reason that they're heightening their actions so much is because it's like so hard to feel anything for each other, which is that's that's dark divorce heads sound off in the chat.

It seems bad.

Yeah, so you'll never believe this.

But Anna leaves again.

She's always coming.

And going, that's kind of her thing.

Yeah, And that detective who Mark had hired follows her and discovers that she's been renting an apartment in this like derelict building.

So he knocks on the door, pretend to be like from the building manager's office, and he looks around and he finds something very disturbing unclear at this point exactly what we're seeing, but it's some creature that's bloody and gooey.

Then Anna kills the detective with a broken wine bottle.

So things have taken a turn that I certainly was not expecting.

You never forget your first time seeing the big guy guy or murdered.

Right, yeah, right exactly.

Meanwhile, at home, Bob's teacher, Helen aka the Anna doppelganger, shows up, and Mark is like, here finished giving my son a bath.

Because Heinrich also shows up.

He's acting very weird.

He's flopping all over the place.

I'm not sure if he's supposed to be drunk or something.

But he's I think he's always like some manner of fucked up.

Yeah.

He takes a lot of drugs too, right, Yeah, And.

He went to know where Anna is and Mark is basically like, get out of here, bitch, I'm not afraid of you anymore.

Then Mark and Helen chat a little bit first about Bob, and then Mark says something where he's like women are evil and Helen's like I'm right here.

Right well.

And it's also like implied and this is where I was like, oh god, where where is my high school history education?

Like where did it go?

Where she implies that she is from East Germany and is now in West Germany, and there is like this whole political aspect to her identity that I genuinely don't think I know enough about to say exactly what he's getting at, but that she it's implying basically that she has seen horror so much worse than what she's She's sort of like, shut the fuck up, like I've seen people die, which I kind of appreciate.

Yeah, but then she still is That's really the only moment that she really pushes back on Mark in any significant way.

So I found her again.

I like whatever that is.

I like it, but it felt like it was like dipping its toe into doing something.

But then she becomes very docile and kind of submissive to what he wants after that, So it's weird that that only happens once.

I don't know.

Yeah, she also says something to the effect of like, Okay, she says, the only thing in common with women is like menstruation, which okay, but then yeah, exactly.

But then she says something to the effect of like, you're kind of only getting angry because you don't understand freedom, and it's sort of like you are the problem here, buddy, Like you're getting mad at her for being a free person, yeah, like for for having agency and sort of I saw again there where he was being a child and the teachers stepping in and being like no, no, no, you're actually the asshole in this situation.

Yeah, And then it's just like so bizarre that that is sort of dropped to the bitter end of the movie.

She's sort of just like doing whatever the plot needs her to do.

It seems, yeah, it's.

Weird, including immediately after this, they get naked together and lie down next to each other, and it's unclear if they end up having sex, but she's I.

Don't think they.

I've read some theories about like Mark in general, about like how Mark feels about sex and about women in general, where there are reads of this movie where Mark is thought to be closeted and instead of and this is like not a read that I have necessarily, but it wasn't something that occurred to me before I was going through this viewing.

Is that Mark, I mean, part of it seems like Anna's issue with the marriage is that, like she's not satisfied sexually.

There are a series of times where Mark doesn't have Well.

The real sort of thing that this hinges on is there are three shots.

I didn't notice it until this viewing.

There's three sort of very similar shots in the movie that happened with each member of the family where it's like it's first with Mark holding Bob when he's not wearing a shirt.

It's not a sexual thing at all, but he's just like looking at his son.

And then there's later an identical shot where he looks at Anna in the exact same way, in the exact same shot, which I think is meant to imply that he doesn't view her sexually, he just but also you could view that as like she he views her as his quote unquote property, the way he views his son as his property.

And so like, there's all of these I did see reads of this that thought that Bob was closeted.

I don't really think that, but I do think that he he has no idea how he feels about anything, which is true for a lot of people, and reacts with violence instead.

But this was the first time that I really noticed that.

And then there's a shot where, oh my gosh, what is the last version of that shot?

I think it's towards the end, Anna looking at Anna looking at Mark with the same sort of like I don't know, like I don't even know how to describe that look.

Yeah, the read I had on it this time was that the first shot of Mark looking at Bob and holding him that way is like you are my creation.

You know, like you're my son.

And then him looking at Anna is a similar way of like Adam and Eve like you are part of me, like from my rib type thing.

And I'm going totally biblical on this just because I grew up in an awful like evangelical like that's my upbringing, so I can't like unsee some of these things.

But then when she's looking at him and she takes off his shirt and she looks him and she's like, I am God is in me, It's like, oh fuck, like I am the creator.

We don't really know this about her just yet when she says that, but it's almost like I'm in control now.

That's how I read it totally.

Yeah, this movie's attitude towards sex, I guess is just really uh twisted and bizarre.

All that to say, I'm pretty sure he does not have sex with Helen because because she says, you don't have to make love to me, and he seems sort of like few.

He's like, I wasn't trying.

I know.

Yeah, He's like, we're this is just this is just a divorce, naked time whatever.

I don't know right, So that happens the next day another detective who works with the first detective and is his romantic partner, is concerned that the first detective hasn't shown up.

So the second detective I think his name might be Zimmerman.

He goes to Anna's new apartment and finds the same bloody, gooey creature lying in the bed.

Now we can see that it has tentacles.

There's also some light emanating from its abdomen.

It's oozing all sorts of like blood and white and green goo.

And Anna is like, oh him, he's tired.

He made love to me all night.

Oh haha.

By the way, he's still unfinished, implying that she's like working on the creature or that it's going to turn into something else, right, and then she attacks and shoots and kills the detective.

Meanwhile, Mark receives a package.

It's footage of someone filming a ballet class where Anna is the teacher, and we see her be very cruel to one of her young students, and then she's talking to the camera, ranting and raving about sisters and faith and chance and other things that don't make much sense.

I always forget that that scene is in the movie, right, because I what does everyone think's going on?

There can someone I I have theories, but I yeah, Alicia, what's happening.

Well, this most recent time that I was reading it or watching it, sorry, I was thinking about Well, first the whole scene with the ballerina and her like she's being super cool to her student and whatnot.

This is all filmed by Heinrich, and I think that Heinrich sent these videos to Mark to be like, see I'm the superior man.

But like the whole Mark gets something different out of this.

As Anna's talking, she says, this is why I'm with you, Heinrich, because you say I for me.

And what she is saying and then instance this is in the past, you know, with during their relationship, you say aye for me.

When I hear that, I think you speak for me.

You take my agency, you like make it easier to you know, not be responsible, like to just like go about this affair, and you know, you speak for me.

But then in the next section, she's sort of having a breakdown and she is starting to think about the sister's faith and chance and there's like the duality there.

A very small detail that we caught at the beginning was that she was briefly with Mark.

They had a child and he went away pretty quickly after.

Yeah, so I feel like she was really taking a chance with Mark, taking a chance on being a mother, taking a chance on having this relationship with Mark and being his wife and all of that.

But somewhere along the way, her faith in them gets ripped apart.

So now she's trying to rebuild her faith, which could be taken as the creature, So that's one interpretation.

She also talks about having to be everything to everybody else, Yeah, and so losing losing any sort of like possession of the self.

That's fascinating.

Okay, I I had not connected the dots in that way, so thank you for them.

That's just my reading though, That's just what I'm bringing to it.

That's I mean, this movie is Lucy goosey baby.

There's no wrong answers, But that makes a lot of sense.

Gooey tooey gooey.

Yeah.

My I always forget that scene is there, and then I like rewatched it a couple of times just to be like, huh, okay, okay, I wasn't clear.

I mean they say that she stopped working about a year ago, which to me also already indicates like perhaps an impending crisis, which is certainly true for Mark who leaves his job and immediately spirals into crisis.

So when I was seeing the ballet tapes, I was like, Okay, maybe that was her job that she stepped away from, because we don't really get a lot of information about or otherwise, And it felt like, I mean, and again, maybe it's like this is where I'm projecting stuff where in an environment like that it can be not always.

Obviously there's plenty of dance instructors that are amazing, but you're in a room full of people you perceive as your younger self.

And I do think that there are teacher student dynamics where if you are singled out as like a sight of pain and abuse, it's often because the teacher is like, I see my younger self in you, and I should have experienced that pain and then I would have been x y Z.

Where I feel like that comes up in athletics a lot, or like whatever, black swant, whiplash, you name it, like the pursuit of being the right way is not to require suffering, and so it's like it's weirdly, I'm like ititon ya you know, we could keep going of just like the forceful coach who abuses the young student to quoteunqut push them to greatness, but it's also because they hate something in themselves.

And again I'm like, I don't know exactly where that would fit into this movie specifically, but I don't know.

Yeah, my read of it in this viewing was like that there is a part of Anna that does experience this like extreme self hatred or the idea that like, I mean, this is definitely clear that she is not fitting into the roles she's supposed to fit into correctly, and that she's and so much of why I love even though it's she's not great, you know, but like, uh, I love those moments of her extreme anger, even though, oh my god, this movie could be hard on the ears.

There's so much screaming, so much just so much scream and the sound mixing is like it seems like it was pretty much done on the fly because there's a lot of echoes, there's a lot of tunnel echoes whatever.

But when she's angry, it's just I don't know, Like I again, this is like me directing probably, but it's like, god, I've done everything I was supposed to do and it didn't work, and I'm like so much worse off than I started.

And that's like I don't know, Like I just feel that in her so much, and to me, that's what the monster is, is like I did everything I was supposed to it and I'm absolutely fucked and like, I don't know, I don't know, but yeah, that taped this time, I was like, how does this fit into her story?

And her story is vague enough that you can kind of go a lot of ways with it.

Yeah, truly, Yeah, and I'm still I'm trying to figure this Anna out to.

This day, this diva who knows, who knows what's going on with nose rip?

I mean those shoes, the sunglasses, Oh my god, wow, pause for the for the fashion, It's like so fucking truly.

I also like that there's like this cartoon character quality to their clothes where we know that this movie takes place at least over about a month or so, because at one point there's just three lost weeks that has never referenced again and Bob.

We're led to believe that Bob was surviving on jam or something horrible, but this movie takes place over like more than a day.

And yet no, everyone's outfit is the same.

It's like they're spongebobbing it very blue.

Yes, yeah, I didn't even notice that, but yeah, yeah, like.

The Sam Neil.

And then and then even when we're seeing the flashback of the miscarriage scene, she's wearing the same dress.

So it's like, this is just this is just where it is.

Yes, and we're about to get there because you'll you'll never guess what happens next.

But Anna returns home again and drag her.

Mark of course does not yet know anything about the tentacle man in her new apartment, but he does see her being very erratic and unstable, and he's trying to understand what's going on.

And then she recounts a memory and we see this flashback where she's at a church for a brief moment, looking at like Jesus on the cross, and then she's in this like metro underground hallway kind of thing.

She's flinging groceries around.

She might be possessed or something.

There's there's red and white and green goo seeping out of her various orifices.

This she picked up a bunch of goo at the grocery store and he goes.

Everywhere seeping out.

And I didn't connect these dots upon my first watch, but this is her having a miscarriage.

I believe, yes, yeah.

And so she tells this to Mark and I don't even know how he reacts.

I feel like he doesn't really have much of a reaction, but he does call Heinrich to be like, hey, this is Anna's new address in case you want to go over there.

So Heinrich goes to this place and he and Anna are like kissing and stuff, but he's also saying some very rapey things.

Then he finds the tentacle creature as well as some human heads and other body parts in her refrigerator, and he's like, oh my god, yeah, and then she stabs him a little bit and he escapes and calls Mark.

So Mark goes to the apartment and the creature is gone now, but Mark does see the heads in the refrigerator and he freaks out and he goes to meet up with Heinrich at a bar and they discuss what they might do to help Anna, although Mark is like mocking Heinrich and acting like he doesn't really believe him.

And then he kills Heinrich and blows up Anna's apartment I guess to hide the evidence of her recent murders.

Yeah, Mark, Mark kind of goes joker mode towards the end, where I'm like, I don't even know why he's doing what he's doing, and he clearly doesn't die either, Like he's just like, all right, how could we heighten?

Okay, I just killed the guy.

It also like the meanest way possible and okay there, which I mean, it's it's fun to watch where he's like you can see the little cogs in his like weak brain turning.

He's like, okay, frigda, I'm gonna get on the toilet and in it.

Like he's just such a little fucking weasel.

Yeah, yeah, he's I don't like, I guess he does.

He blow up the apartment to like protect her, to cover her tracks.

Like it does seem like there is towards the end this like not that they're stuck together.

Clearly these clearly these two aren't gonna it's not going to work out between them.

Yeah, but there is still this like and I do feel like that is having divorced parents.

I feel like that is divorce vibes of like, even though there's a part of me that like really hates this person and resents them and we've been through all this awful stuff, I still feel this like compulsion to protect them to some extent.

I'm not saying that it's like he's actually an amazing guy, but like that is an extreme act that you're sort of led to believe no one else would take for Anna, because why would you?

He does say, and I never caught this before, but and I think it's just after they've after he's like they've I don't remember what part it is.

There's so much coming and going, as you said, but there's one part in their apartment where she's about to leave and he says, you are all I have.

And I think that that's why, because he is so hell bent.

I mean, all the men are so hell bent on trying to possess her and trying to like make.

Her see them.

You know that she just keeps slipping away from him, and all all he can do is just try and protect her in the in the event that maybe she will allow herself to be possessed by him.

Yeah, that's all I can think of.

Yeah, that's that was my read as well.

Also, it's just like it's just I like seeing sam Neil scoot around in that little bomber jacket.

I like it when he gets on his little Viking, he zooms zooms away.

I'm like, it's it's just so wild.

He's he's never been hot to me, but when he's like blowing stuff up and he's in his little jacket, yeah, you're like, I love it.

Right, And then he comes back home to find Margie badly wounded.

It seems like Anna had stabbed her.

Their best friends, so guys their best their best friends.

They do anything for each other.

There's a reference to Margie saw it or saw something.

I guess she saw the tentacle creature and that's why Anna killed her.

Anna helps Mark get cleaned up, and then they have sex, and now they're like, okay, we have to cover up Margie's death and get the hell out of here.

So Mark puts Margie's body in the trunk of his car.

But when he comes back inside, he discovers Anna having loud, passionate sex with the tentacle creature, and he's just sort of like, okay, again.

His reactions to things are really bizarre and hard to understand, and he leaves again and pays a visit to Heinrich's mother, who realizes that Heinrich is dead and she dies by suicide and You're.

Like, what what I mean?

That's okay?

So there I was like, Okay, so this is this because there's always just a chance for this movie that this is just something that happens, because why not, because it could happen, so why not make it happen.

But it also felt like, well, is that the movie's attempt to make some sort of statement on both faith and motherhood of like is this what was he saying with that?

I don't know.

I really don't know.

Something I've been reflecting on recently after having gone to film school twice.

Not that I would ever mention that, but especially in my undergrad where I took a lot of film production classes, and then I took at least one in my grad program, and like people who weren't writers, but people who were aspiring directors, and like, we're more focused on kind of the production side of things versus the development and writing side of things.

They'd be on set shooting something and they would be like, Okay, in this scene, this random thing is going to happen, and then character is gonna do this wacky thing, and I'd be like, but why, and they would say, because it looks cool, yeah, And I'm like, but it.

And I think a lot of filmmakers just kind of make weird choices that don't necessarily make logical narrative sense because they're like they're like, I could do that because I can because it looks cool.

And this is the kind of vibes driven movie where that would happen.

It's just like, again, there's I guess similar to Bob Dying, which I've now seen this movie three times, didn't know, didn't know Bob died, but that you're like this, yeah, like this could be a very intentional choice that is just like kind of unclear or like you're saying, Caitlin, it might just be like, let's let's make sure every woman's dead before, right, Yeah, we got to make sure every woman we've met it is dead, right.

Yeah.

What I got out of it was, again, he's just trying to make fun of Heinrich as like a mama's boy type of thing and have this this seems like this woman's only reason for living was her son, Like she had to live.

Just like the real tragedy, right, and so.

This is a little bit cute, see, but like she dies and the window opens, like her soul's gone.

Like I don't know, it's just like it's such a weird uh.

I guess it's this one more of those like religious.

Scenes for this film.

Yeah, they're kind of just scattered throughout.

Yeah, I didn't make too much of it.

Okay, it could be a throwaway scene, but it could also be that I don't know, if.

We don't know, it's so weird because everything happens.

I mean, it's part of why I really like it.

Everything happens with the same amount of intensity.

But like it could be either very meaningful or just be like, well, I don't know whatever likes right, Just like the long take between like Anna looking at Jesus, You're like you could either see like that is the cryptex to understanding the movie, or it might just be like.

We shot it and we decided to put it in the movie.

She says faith and then she looks at a crucifix.

Later thoughts like right.

Yeah, right, right, right, who does Okay, so where are we The next day, Mark's former spy bosses slash colleagues approach him and there's a shootout on the street.

So it becomes kind of an entirely different movie for a few minutes, where now it's like a spy thriller.

And Mark escapes and heads into a building all bloody and injured, and Anna shows up and she's like, let me introduce you to my friend, and it's a doppelganger of Mark, also played by Sam Neil, except he has a different eye color, similar to how Anna's doppelganger has a sim has a different eye color, and so I guess this is the tentacle creature, this doppelganger of Mark that has been slowly transforming and evolving into the doppelganger.

And Mark is just sort of like again weird reaction.

He's just sort of like, oh okay.

And then the spy dudes catch back up with Mark and shoot him, and Anna the doppelganger escapes.

Cut back to Little Bob and his teacher Helen is there as his new guardian question Mark, and Mark Stoppelganger shows up at the door and he's kind of banging on the.

Door like yeah, he's climbing up the door, and then and Bob is afraid and he goes in the bathtub and presumably dies there.

And then and then a bunch of bombs start raining down outside as if like.

Which is like it's almost like this movie takes place next to the Berlin Wall.

Yeah, and that's the end of the movie.

So everyone gets it right.

Makes sense to I mean, like the Doppelgangers are the last one standing.

So that feels like a clear something.

Or an unclear or something.

I don't know.

I don't know the last week, last thing before we got a break.

I guess I forgot there.

There's like I think my favorite I mean, well it's it's the tunnel scene is like the most elevated, Like that performance is like unmatching, but like a smaller moment that I really loved on this viewing in particular is like you really don't feel Sam Neil give up on the relationship until he sees an octopus fucking his wife, like you can see.

Uh, there's like there's just like, Okay, I get it, this relationship will not move forward, and even though he's like his character is a piece of shit, right, but like I I've in that moment I could relate with that character where it like it takes something so extreme for you to accept like, okay, so this is a got it, got it, But it takes it takes a cryptid uh fucking your wife in front of you to be like, so she's actually not interested in me?

Got it?

I just love that moment.

Yeah, it's pretty great.

All right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back to discuss.

And we're back, Well, what should we talk about, Alicia?

We're going to kick it to you.

Where would you like to start the discussion?

Is there anything jumping out to you on this viewing?

Oh man, Well, we did talk a little bit about like here and there the two sisters.

Well, okay, there's a part where she's like, yeah, I miscarried Chance, Like the miscarriage scene.

It implies that Chance is gone.

But Faith is the tentacle creature that she's also having sex with that she maybe gave birth to.

So yes, we don't know.

I'll be honest.

There the thing when things get that like it's why I can't I mean whatever, it's why I can't do Like the Bible where it's like but things get that like bonk you over the head, like symbolic.

My brain just kind of switches off.

Yes, and like.

She Okay, so we're witnessing the miscarriage of an idea.

Chance is goo?

We don't, Yeah, but yeah.

What was your take on that discussion of like the sisters and those metaphors.

Yeah, and I think I think she was kind of talking about her and her relationships and responsibilities and things like that.

I do feel like the creature is her shot at creating something that she she thinks like, nothing has satisfied me in the past, I must create it.

But then and behold, what she creates is the exact thing she already has, but in a more divine sense, because when we look at the way that there are subtle nods to the fact that the creature could be God or a devil disguising as God, because Emmanuel is the first the name of the first detective that comes into the room, and Emmanuel means God with us, and you know, every single one of those dudes who sees the creature goes my God.

And Heinrich also becomes temporarily blind, So there is some sort of divine He's a divine entity that will go on to destroy the world in a very misogynistic biblical reading.

You could say she's the horror of Babylon giving birth to you know, I don't think.

I don't think that that's not true.

I haven't thought about the horror of Babylon in a long time since shout out to her.

Yes, yeah, right, But I don't think that what's happening here.

I think it's more just feminine agency and the feminine feminine ability to create, because a lot of people when they see the monster, they think that all the white stuff is sperm, and I think it's milk.

I think she Yeah, I give out in this milk.

Yeah right.

It's it feels like she is giving her all to this, including her own bodily fluids and her orgasms and like every bit of herself her responsibility, and it's sort of incestuous, which is also kind of weird, right, Yeah.

Which my understanding is that Zulowski uh does not mind throwing in some incest into his work.

It seems like a consistent theme from what I've gathered.

Yeah, I agree.

I mean, I think what's so tricky in the way, and I'm sure that we're going to encounter this over and over, is that like so often it really In what I was reading about this, it's presented as like, you know that Mark and and are sort of two sides of the same coin in some way, and I feel like the plot bears that out to some extent, where they both create doppelgangers that are idealized versions of the other.

If we're if we're to think that Helen is like not quite real or like there's so much projection going on from March's side.

But what I do, yeah, yeah, But what I find tricky about like the way that I've seen this movie written about and I have it right, I want to read the book you have had.

I didn't encounter it, but that like you know, it's it's it's hard because it's like we're presented with this dynamic that I don't even know if Zolowski understands, because he's clearly sorting through some very personal shit and would continue to.

I saw that much later in his life.

Towards the end of his life.

Subsequent romantic partner sued him for oversharing about their sex life and about her life in a work of fiction quote unquote, and he lost that case because she was right.

So we know that a lot of this is coming from a personal place.

But I can't tell on the Zulawski side, if he like he knows that they are both deeply flawed and they are both obsessed with control.

I don't know that he fully sees Mark as abusive as he really is.

That's why it's like, I find some of the writing around it tricky, although I don't really have a solution for it other than to constantly kind of qualify, like, yes, Anna is a deeply flawed person.

She is a negligent parent.

She is like she is a very very deeply flawed person.

But she is also clearly subject to horrific abuse and control by her husband from moment one.

Yes, and the violence I mean, correct me, if I'm right, All of the violence we see from Anna towards Mark is reactionary.

It's not She is not the aggressor, and it's like Mark is.

And I do think, I guess, to this movie's credit that we do see, while we do see a lot of physical abuse coming from Mark, particularly in the first half of the movie, I feel like, I don't you don't I mean, you see this unfortunately a lot in movies, because it happens a lot in life.

But.

I do feel like it appropriately and maybe this is the Sam Neil performance.

He seems like a coward when he is attacking her, And I don't know like how to exactly, but like you can feel that this abuse comes from a place of cowardice and self hatred, as so much abuse does, in a way that doesn't justify it or excuse it.

I guess I'm more kind of inclined to give that to sam Neil because it's so like it's awful to watch, because it feels in a movie where everything feels unreal, that element to me felt very real.

Yeah, I was gonna say.

The thing I didn't know about it until I read this book by Alison Taylor is that the slapping was insisted upon by a Johnny and by Zulawski, and he did not want to do it.

He sam Neil, and both him and Isabelle and Johnny were like abused by Zulowski during the course of filming this almost like in a Kubrickian Shelley Duvall way.

Yes, there's I wanted to share it because, Yeah, Johnny has talked about it more, which I guess makes sense because I'm presumably she was subject to more of it.

Yeah, because yeah, we kend in spite of the fact that I really like this movie, Zulawski as a person is I mean, he's a scumbag.

He's an interesting scumbag who was subject to a lot of political violet and we can talk about that side of his life too, because like it wasn't like he wasn't wronged by the state time and time again.

But in terms of the way he approached it feels like a very seventies eighties male o tour thing that we fortunately.

Have talked about so much on this show, like Kubrick is a big example, but this is another one where it feels like, weirdly, David Lynch is the outlier in this group of directors because actors really like working with him and will work with him time and time again.

Where Isabella Johnny points out, have you ever seen an actress that's worked with him twice?

Because I haven't.

Yeah, I wanted to share some of the quotes she's given for this, mostly in the last five years or so, because she's still with us and working, as is Sam Neil, who by all accounts seems like a seems like a mench I kind of want to read his memoir, right.

The most significant thing I think that comes up, or came up prior to Johnny giving these interviews about five years ago, is that Zulowski would almost like wear as a badge of honor that Isabella Johnny was in such a bad mental state after this movie that she attempted suicide.

This is something that is I guess mentioned in the commentary track on a release of Possession, where I mean, I have not heard him say this, but you can feel it.

So here's he said when she saw the film after she committed suicide because she never wanted to see the dailies, so she really didn't know.

How do we look at her?

And she committed suicide.

But being Isabelle A Johnny, you must understand in Europe, isabel A Johnny.

Is a diva.

She's a big thing.

She went to the bathroom and she cut her wrists with a G two machine raiser, which cuts you half a millimeter of skin and not much deeper.

So he's both bragging that he drove which I do think a lot of directors of this ilk where is a badge of honor of like this?

And I think we see this, I think the most recent movie where you really, I mean Jared Letto tried to but it did work.

But like Heath Ledger's performance is brought up a lot of like a performance that brought you to the brink of your own sanity, when that is like not something to be happy about and just indicates that the production is not what it needs to do to protect their performers.

Right.

But not only is like Zulowski bragging that this movie he created a film so toxic that it was an active threat to his lead actor, he also in the same breath dismisses it as like, well, she's difficult to work with and she's a drama queen and she actually it wasn't actually an attempt on her life.

It basically he's saying, like she's just trying to get attention because she's a diva, which is just like you know, in a paragraph, that's who this guy is, right, Like, this is a guy who is like, you know, making this very you could argue petty movie about his own divorce about a working actress who was still working at the time, and not that he's not entitled.

You know, everyone's entitled to their divorce movie right, like the Brude the brute marriage story whatever.

Everyone, Yeah, like you can make your divorce movie regardless of gender, whatever.

But like, I don't know, there is this meanness that you feel in this movie.

And at least I guess all I can say is that he doesn't spare Mark in that appraisal.

It isn't like, oh no, poor Mark, Anna was so mean, Like they're both awful.

But anyways, Isabella Johnny responds to this because Zelawski died ten years ago or so, she said in various interviews.

His movies are very special, but they totally focus on women as if they are Lili's.

It was quite an amazing film to do, but I got bruised inside out.

It was exciting to do.

It was no bones broken, but it was like how or why did I do that.

I don't think any other actress ever did to films with him, She said, I consider myself a survivor for a lot of reasons.

What's beautiful is to make a place within yourself for a character without that character turning into a negative entity.

But sometimes your life gets blown apart like that.

Great actresses have been devoured from the inside.

It's kind of a self cannibalism.

It's not a job that facilitates a happy frame of mind, quite the opposite.

That's why it's important to be surrounded by friends who can be angels but also conscientious objectors.

Otherwise you can lose yourself.

And then the last thing I wanted to share is I made it meaning possession so I wouldn't have to work all the time.

And I was criticized for it.

They said, why don't she make more films?

It was because my parents were ill and needed me, and my children needed me.

I even forgot that I was an actress at certain times, but that too isn't forgiven.

Basically, there's no way out.

So we see these references that she makes to the fact that this was clearly an ego trip male filmmaker that unfortunately, this is a narrative we're familiar with and also something that we weirdly talked about recently with Kathleen Turner, where it's a prominent actor, she's more prominent in Europe than here, but like a prominent actress who is made out to be a diva when the real she is either setting a boundary with an abusive filmmaker or she has things going on in her life that are not being made space for or accounted for, which just seems to very much be the case.

And I think it seems to me that, like all things considered, she's still pretty generous with how she talks about this experience, because it sounds like, I mean, she has never pushed back on the fact that she did attempt to take her life after seeing this movie, Like that is not something that seems to be made up, and it seems to be something that Sam Neil has confirmed as well.

So I just I don't know people like oh, mellowtuurs, Like obviously we've talked about this for ten years on the show, but there are so many There are not so many, but there are examples of men working through stuff in movies that is safe, and I feel like David Lynch is actually a really good example of that, as is John Water.

And you know, people with very specific narrative voices you can do that.

You can make a very personal movie and protect the people who are realizing that vision, and you should.

But Zulaski certainly did not.

So with all of this in mind, I kept kind of toiling over how sympathetic are we supposed to be to the Mark character, because true, the movie does not shy away from showing his violence and obsessiveness and abuse toward Anna.

But I can't shake the feeling that we're still supposed to be on his side kind of and oh, you know, sure, he's flying off the deep end sometimes, but it's only because his wife is so hysterical.

What else is he supposed to do?

Because it's not as though he doesn't try to understand her.

He asks her a lot of questions and there are many scenes where he's like, what can I do to help?

What do you need?

What is going on?

Please communicate with me, which in theory is nice.

Obviously his tone in the way he's handling it isn't good.

But I think more the problem is that Anna is written to be a character who is just so like hysterical that we are meant to be like, oh what even the Because I watched this movie on Shutter and the short synopsis of the movie on the platform basically blames everything on her because it says something like, this stunning nightmare of a marriage unraveling is an experience unlike any other professional spy.

Mark returns to his West Berlin home to find his wife insistent on a divorce.

As Anna's frenzied behavior becomes ever more alarming, Mark discovers a truth far more sinister than his wildest suspicions.

So I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt and say, I think that's AI.

Like, that sounds like a very AI coded right.

But I also I think a lot of people would watch this movie and agree with that assessment and be like, sure, he yelled and he struck her.

But she's she like drove him to it kind of, yeah, exactly.

So it's interesting.

I don't really see that.

I mean, I see him, as I've said it, kind of this whole time where he is a simpleton.

He's kind of a childlike person totally, and I only sympathize with him in that because it's like, oh, buddy, you don't get it.

And I think that's maybe a part of the reclaiming that a lot of people, especially women, have had in the in the last decade toward this movie is like it's almost an accidental it's like an accidental feminist horror film.

Yeah, I definitely I.

See that reading, And of course, like, obviously I don't agree with oh, like she drove him to this horrible right behavior.

But I think there would be people out there who would, Yeah, particularly men who would read it that way.

Yeah, I agree that that's definitely like, that's the bad faith reading that a certain kind of person is going to take, particularly have a certain generation like, But totally I think, yeah, at least I agree.

I don't.

I don't know.

I think that even when Mark is and again I don't, I can't pretend to know what's going through Zelewski's head because he is not above abusing his own cast.

So right, I think that any takeaway from this that is empowering is like you you bring in your own baggage to it.

But I'm okay with that, and that is I guess the thing with like a Lucy Goosey movie like this is like there's enough sort of blank space that you can project yourself onto it.

But I do think that even it's I don't think we're supposed to think that when Mark is asking her what she's thinking, that he actually means it because the way that he does it, in the way that the performance is because also, like so much of this movie is the performances.

He's so fucking pathetic.

Like and to me, it's like he doesn't actually mean what he's saying.

He's saying the thing he thinks he needs to say, because it's like he only reacts to I think it's like a really good point Lesha that he doesn't really have any original ideas.

He just sort of does what his wife just did in an attempt to understand why she's doing it.

But I don't think that he's trying to understand why she's feeling because he actually cares.

I think he's just trying to understand her to the extent that he can own her again.

And so in different scenes, he is reacting in the way that he thinks will either trick her into being closer to him or frighten her into staying.

And like, that's right, classic abuser tactics, where he just sort of seems to randomly choose the tactic he thinks will be more successful.

And this is I don't know, like I it's again it's so so elevated, but like having been in an abusive relationship is like sometimes an abuser will just be like okay, am I going to like yell and shove and throw my weight around to freak you out into staying or am I gonna fling myself on the floor and be like, oh my god, I'm so pathetic.

I would do anything for you, but no one does that because they mean it.

You know, like it's just like two different kinds of control tactics.

And again, like speaking to your point, Kaitlin, I don't know exactly how aware this director is of abuse tactics, given that he weaponized them to make the movie.

And you know, watching this movie, you're like, well, I hope his ex wife is doing well because and it seems like she is.

She was in a long term relationship after this.

Oh gosh, I'm going to butcher this Polish name, but it is based on his marriage with Malgorza Bronick.

She went on to have a you know, forty year relationship that seemed very happy but that you know, down to They had a son, another Polish Damicut pronounce Zowery Zilowski.

I don't know who at the time of this movie would have been nine years old when it came out.

So it's like, I also think that there's I don't know if I'm an autobiographical filmmaker, you know, to some extent, your past relationships are going to be fair game.

It's gonna come up.

But like when you're he killed his own son, I'm pretty sure, Like and if you're happy, yeah, I mean, I'm hoping that his nine year old was not allowed to see this movie when it came out.

But it's like you grow up and see that and you're like, oh, what there.

I don't know, I don't know where I'm getting to.

I think that Mark.

My rate of it is that I think we are supposed to view Mark as pathetic, but I guess it is up to the viewer of how much how much rope they're gonna throw him to be like, well, he's only pathetic because and not just what I think we all agree on, which is that there is an inherent patheticness to him because of how he's been socially conditioned.

Right.

I also think it would have been helpful if Anna had been characterized a bit more so that we understood where she was coming from.

Perhaps and we can again like speculate and insert our own experiences and kind of project those on to her in a way that does make her more empathetic and sympathetic.

But the movie doesn't do all that much, so you're just like the and then she has a tentacle boyfriend who she's making and we're.

Like, and that is what again, I am supportive of that, but there, yeah, I mean, I guess that my I'm not trying to play a devil's advocate too much.

I just I don't think that we really know that much about either of them, because it's like even Mark's backstory of like he's a spy is kind of just like played as a joke and it seems like I mean, and this is where I feel like there are political undertones to this movie that I just kind of don't understand.

Unfortunately, Like I don't have the like the history background to fully understand Germany in the early eighties, other than like obviously we know the Berlin Wall isn't going to be there much longer, but the whole it anytime I say this, I think, I'm like, it's like I Frankenstein, but go on, when you're in this big city but there's no people you know, like, and there is this feeling of like this large abandoned space where people are just navigating this psychological horror.

But I also think that that is a statement on West Berlin at this time too, where it's like there are people, but where are they?

Am?

I don't know?

Yeah, I honestly like if there are listeners that like understand the political undertones of this, I would love to hear from you, because I know that it's there and I just like was not able to quite get there in time to record this.

But you know, suffice it to say, we've like referenced this throughout the episode, but that because of his previous films and ostentibly his like openness to leftism, Zilowski was all but thrown out of Polish cinema more than once, where kind of his whole career was bouncing back and forth to the point where this movie was a like, I believe, a three country production where it was like a Polish director and then a German French co production, because that was at the time the only way that he could make movies because previously, I think it was prior to Possession, he had worked on a movie for two years in Poland that the government ended up being like, you cannot release this.

We're not gonna let you release this due to your politics.

Burned the print, burned, the costume, basically like you know, nuked it so he couldn't finish it.

So there is like not that it justifies his personal life, but this movie is so fraught with like anger and frustration and like impotence.

And I mean I knew going in that this was related to his relationship, but also knowing that it also feels related to like creative impotence of like working on something for two years and it doesn't mean anything.

There's just like so much going on here.

And then this film was kept from the public for so long because it was caught up in the video Nasties scandal.

What a great wait, can you speak to that a little bit because I've just learned about it, And what a great name for a scandal.

Oh yeah, I mean we've had equivalent like moral panics in the States, But it was essentially this thing of the censors being like, oh no, you can't show Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

You can't show any of these types of films, and so we're just going to confiscate all of them until we have rulings on each of these films to decide whether or not they're obscene.

And so they were banned in the UK for a really long time until they were able to evaluate it, and like a Johnny and Sam Neil had to like write separate letters just talking about like why a quote unquote octopus fucking was not obscene?

Like they were seriously talking about is this beast reality?

Like what?

Yeah?

So they were getting really like worse than we are today, Like it really deep in on.

This and it's like when we get to the point where like actors are having to do homework, I'm like, that's never that's never gonna vote well no.

But so like eventually they're like, Okay, it's not that obscene, and they're like, but for us audiences, you're just gonna have to make several cuts and rearrange the field and make it linear, which what this film cannot survive that.

So some you know people in the US were able to see it and they're like, what the fuck is this?

This as horrible.

So it was trash for a really long time until it got a proper release date I believe in like around two thousand and nine, and that's when we start to see it like on YouTube and appearing at you know, midnight film forums and things like that.

Yeah, the version that was initially released in the US was an edited eighty one minute version of the movie, so about forty minutes were cut out, and it basically just turned the movie into like a creature feature rather than any story about like the breakdown of this marriage and all of this sort of like psychological horror components of the movie.

It was just like, and look at this gooey monster.

Isn't it scary?

And it's like, well, that's not what the movie's about.

No, but yeah, this is a very befuddling movie that I still don't know what to make of.

One last thing I kind of wanted to mention was Kila Janniee's take on this from House of Psychotic Women.

You guys have yes, yes, so she says, And I totally identify with this, she says, I can relate intensely to Anna's disturbing fits.

In my house growing up, it was my voice that was a problem.

I was told not to talk, and as Anna struggles to talk, her whispers become growl, screams and hyperventilating.

There's a freedom in this kind of self obliteration, the collapse of propriety.

We all need that place, that window of time.

To go crazy.

So that's how whenever I watched this film, I'm like, I feel like it is about a woman finally like figuring out how to possess herself and let loose and everything that comes out of her.

It's sort of like, I don't fucking care anymore.

I'm gonna find my voice.

I'm gonna use it and fuck everybody else.

Totally so.

And I think that maybe a lot of people have like kind of come around to that reading.

I don't know.

Also, how's a psychotic woman in such an al teimer?

It's so good, so good, it's really really good.

I would more align with I mean, I see that interpretation for sure and again, and as a host of the Bechdel cast, my interpretation of this movie, or like my attachment to it would be aligned with that.

But I'm having a hard time getting there.

I think because Mark is framed as the protagonist and the main point of view character, we are with him for most of the time.

When we do cut to Anna, it's because she's with Mark, and we just don't I feel, don't hone in enough on her as a character and what is fully going on with her.

I feel like we're seeing her through Mark's eyes versus seeing her more objectively, I feel free to disagree, but as I'm watching this, I wish she was the point of view character.

Oh yeah, no, I agree, but it's I also like, wouldn't want to see her as the point of view character from this writer's perspectives.

Like, I don't really know.

The thing is, I don't think that it's really possible that that's why there's there was.

I don't know if it's still happening.

I hope that it's not.

But like there was a proposed remake of this movie starring Robert Pattinson and the director of Smile.

So again we're like, which is like, no, please, don't, please don't.

Yeah, lived write an original story, for the love of God.

But but I see what you're saying.

I just like I wouldn't.

I don't want to know what Zilowski's like feelings from a female perspective would be.

And and this is like kind of rare, and I guess sort of like pushes against what our show is really about.

But like for this movie, particularly because it came it took so long for it to come out in its like intended form, I don't really care what the director's intention is because it's not clear.

Like it's not clear, and I I guess I am.

I really like the cathartic nature of this movie where I would like to know more about Anna.

I would like it confirmed that like she was.

I mean, it would make a lot of sense to me if she was a dance teacher that stepped away from dance.

So not only is she in this unhappy marriage and like not happy being a mother and not fitting these roles that she's quote unquote supposed to fill, but she's also been removed from her art, and like that is really really compelling.

I wish that, like, and I do think that there's space for that, because there's so much YadA YadA in this movie that yeah, I would be interested to see that version of it.

But even as it is, I just like, I really like her.

I like and she's and we'll get to like they are both really bad parents, which I do think is interesting in the context of like, Yeah, I will say that I think Mark is made out to be the better parent and the less negligent parent, or at least a parent who pretends to care, which does feel like uh Zilowski patting himself on the back.

Meanwhile, he's killing his own child in his movie uh and amusing as actors.

So fuck that, like that whole I think that that's the real angle that, Like I'm like, he's being overly generous with himself by just saying that like because his wife left him, she's a piece of shit parent, which is like, you know, something that's been weaponized against women for millennia, right, But like, but what I really like about Anna is her I don't give a fuck miss, Like that's so cathartic of like anytime he is I don't know, yeah, because it's again like you're putting yourself for the situation of like, uh, someone being like please, like do you want to be with me too?

And she's like no, and he he's like what if I laid down and like kissed your feet and said love you so much?

She's like whatever, I don't care.

Like he cuts himself and she's like bye, Like something about that.

It does feel like if you are in the quote unquote more feminine submissive role in a relationship, seeing the person who's expected to be that way just say exactly what's on their mind at all times and when they're upset, they scream, and when they're angry they act like, yes, I really connect with that, and I really like that.

And Yeah, to me, it's like, I doubt that uh Zethowski was like, I'm making this movie for for people who who have felt like you know, who relate with Anna.

I think he is probably making it for the people who relate with Mark.

I just don't care totally.

Yeah, agreed.

I will also say I that those two shots of the videotape of her actually talking to the camera, he could have just not put those in the film.

But I do think we get at least a glimpse of exactly what you're saying Jamie about her feeling over the past year, because it is like from Heinrich's point of view and from their year together away from Mark, she is talking about this like weight that's on her and she's not even really being that articulate because she hasn't figured it out yet.

She's also she's just trying to find the right words to say.

She's speaking very poetically because it's all she can really think of, and it's almost from the perspective of someone panicked, like I've got myself into this really shitty position and it's still not enough like you, it's like kind of coded, but it's like you Heinrich are not exactly what I was looking for.

So what is it?

What have?

How do I rebuild my faith in myself in like my life?

Like what can I possibly do next?

Like that whole scene could have been omitted, but it's at least a glimpse into that that weight of being the expected mother, the like domestic subservient person that she just doesn't want to fucking do anymore.

Yeah, I also wish.

I feel like there's a I do wish.

I think that like if the movie had ended less tragically for her, although it's like with the Doppelgangers, it's sort of the door is open to like how you can perceive that.

I do feel like you know, as is so like she gets undue punishment because it's like if we're looking at it from like she's looking for someone or something to make her feel whole or if not, like to make her feel free but not alone, which is like whatever the eternal struggle, and it's like motherhood hasn't done it, This marriage hasn't done it.

Even you know, Heinrich hasn't done it, so she makes something to fill that void and it destroys her, and like that, I do feel like that is kind of misogynistic inherently to be like, you can't have it all and if you try to, you're gonna die, which you know, who knows that that's what he's trying to say.

I just I don't know like it is, And it ends up kind of being a tragedy for the two of them in a way that feels I mean, at the end of the day, mainly unfair to Bob.

Let's not forget Bob, Bob innocent Bob child, Yeah, but also feels unfair to Anna because it feels like, I mean, she never has someone that she can fully be herself with, like we see her struggle with like that, unable to feel like fully possessed of herself.

She's just possessed by other people or things.

And then you know, like never sort of reaches that point where she could be herself.

She dies before she ever gets there.

And coming from this director in particular, that feels mean.

But I also think that there's ways to view it that can be I don't know.

The second act of this movie I find very cathartic, and then the end I don't love honestly, Like I.

Really lose the thread at the end.

I think the end is like political in a way that I don't quite understand too, where it's like, you know, it seems like it's an attack from East Germany possibly like you know, so there is this like political tone to the end that I feel like if you're not in full understanding of what that is, it might it felt confusing to me.

I also don't think Bob needed to die, Like why did it need to be so fully tragic?

I don't know why doesn't Bob get a doppelganger?

Riddle me that?

Where's Bob?

Too?

I mean, what about Bob?

Is the sequel?

Now?

I'm just kidding exactly.

Yeah, does anyone else have anything they'd like to talk about?

Yeah?

I mean the end is so the end can go either way.

He could be that she created the devil or that she created God and God is so to sturt, like God hates the world so much that he just wants to fucking destroy it.

So it could be that she created God like it, there are many different interpretations there.

Right, Like that's the read where her doing a staring contest with a crucifix is actually very significant and not just something that happens, which is how I view it.

That makes sense, I know, I said I was in my brain, I'm like, is this her losing face faith?

Or is she like having an immaculate conception?

Like right, because she is like she's like ah, like she's like wh what is that?

Yeah?

Yeah, like I see your Jesus and I raise you a dopple Ganger tentacle god man.

Like Beel's a bug?

Yeah, octopus?

Or is something?

Yeah?

I mean Ultimately, the takeaway for this movie is a shrug, and it depends on who you are and what you're bringing to the table.

But it doesn't.

But in the same way, it doesn't feel like underthought.

If anything, it feels overthought and there's like too much.

It's not like, oh, the plot's too thin.

It's like no, there's just there's too much going on.

Who knows yep.

Indeed it doesn't pass the Bechdel test and no, yeah, I mean Anna is very isolated.

She has one friend, Margie, who she doesn't actually interact with except to stab her off screen, right.

And who also even if she has a friend, is not a good friend to her, we.

Know, right, And then there's Helen, who we don't really know what's going on there either.

Is that just kind of like a weird predicable Also, when Isabella Johnny is the Helen character, she looks so much like Dakota Johnson to me that I was getting very distracted the bangs, the bangs.

Yeah, and that she has like kind of the same just like long auburnish hair.

All of a sudden, it's materialists, right.

But anyway, Helen, I don't know what to make of that character exactly.

All this to say does not pass the Bechdel test.

But what about our nipple scale, in which we rate the movie on a scale of zero to five nipples, examining it through an intersectional feminist lens.

Oh god, and we're just not really sure, are we?

I?

Yeah, No, this is tough.

I'm gonna go like one like because I feel like our scale is where intention needs to be considered.

Yeah.

Yes, And I think that he isn't not thinking about how Anna feels.

But most of what I got out of the Anna character I didn't view as intended by the director.

Yeah, intention is very important here, and I don't think the intention of Zelaski was to be like, yeah, definitely empathize with this woman who's behaving awesomely.

I do think that he's he I don't know.

The furthest I can get is like he's thinking about this woman.

He's thinking about her.

It seems like he wants to understand her, but also kind of gives up at some point.

And I feel like that's where the Ed Johnny performance really does like, and the Sam Neil performance, I feel like they're doing so much heavy lifting where it's like, if they're not fully committed, this movie sucks.

Yeah.

Yeah, So with all that in mind, I'll give the movie one nipple and I'll give it to the tentacles.

Or do I give the movie one tentacle?

I know, you know, is the tentacle scale this episode.

On one of eight one of eight tentacles, I'd still give it one.

I think one tentacle.

I think right, well, the the creature has I think three tentacles, one for each arm and then one large one where its legs.

Would be hm hmm.

So maybe out of out of three tentacles, I don't, you know, hard to say, I'm going to give it one nipple.

I am going to give it to one tentacle and shout out to Tentacles, the octopus from Legend of Titanic, the animated film they stole the plot of James Cameron's Titanic.

And also an American tale and also Anastasia.

Yes, who can say why, we don't know.

I'm going to give it one nipple as well, and I'm going to give it to Isabella A Johnny.

Just an iconic performance that she should not have had to suffer the way she did to make possible.

Yeah, right on, it's the same for me one because we're talking about intent.

So yeah, and I would definitely give it to is Bella Johnny.

She's iconic and yeah.

What a film.

Thank you so much for being here, Alicia truly, Yeah, no, thank.

You for having me.

This is so awesome to talk about.

Oh my gosh, what a treat.

Where can people follow your work and your social media, etc.

So I'm under the another pun.

I'm under the handle at Benny and the Jesuits, so a play on June's Priestesses spelled like the Benny Jesuit Priestesses.

And my website is Benny and the Jesuits and my latest thing is that I just put out my most recent issue of Resident Easel, which is Western horror done entirely in like black and white and toned tan goodness.

And I cover the films Nope, Brimstone, Tremors, The Burrowers, Prey, and Rabbinus, that sexy sexy movie.

Who Hell yeah.

You can follow us on Instagram.

You can subscribe to our Patreon aka Matreon, where you get two bonus episodes every single month, as well as access to our back catalog.

With that, let's all go lay down in a bed full of goo.

Hell yeah, let's all get fucked by our worst fearst tonight, Okay in a fun and sexy way.

In a really passionate hot way.

Yeah, while Sam Neil just has to stand there.

Sounds great, Bye Bye bye.

The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted and produced by Me, Jamie Loftus and Me Durrante.

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