High-Rise

[00:00:04] Speaker A: This film is lit, the podcast where we finally settle the score on one simple is the book really better than the movie? I'm brian and I have a film degree, so I watch the movie but don't read the book. [00:00:15] Speaker B: And I'm Katie. I have an english degree, so I do things the right way and read the book before we watch the movie. [00:00:22] Speaker A: So prepare to be wowed by our expertise and charm as we dissect all of your favorite film adaptations and decide if the silver screen or the written word did it better. So turn it up, settle in, and get ready for spoilers, because this film is lit for all its inconveniences. Lang was satisfied with life in the high rise. Now that so many of the residents were out of the way, he felt able to relax more in charge of himself, ready to move forward and explore life. How and where, exactly he had not yet decided. It's high rise and this film is lit hello and welcome back to this film is lit, the podcast where we talk about movies that are based on books we know guess who this week, right? [00:01:13] Speaker B: Mm hmm. [00:01:13] Speaker A: Okay. But we have every other one of our segments quite a bit to get into. It's a pretty dense subject matter this week, so we're gonna jump right in with. Let me sum up, let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up. If you have not read or watched high rise anytime recently, here is a brief summary of the film, sourced from Wikipedia in September 1975, doctor Robert Lang lives in a ravaged high rise tower block, killing a dog and spit roasting its leg. Three months earlier. The 40 story tower on the outskirts of London, built by esteemed architect Anthony Royal, is the epitome of chic modern living. Wealthy residents live on the top floors and poor residents live below. With amenities including a pool, gym, spa, supermarket, and primary school. The occupants have little reason to leave the building beyond working hours and become increasingly isolated from the outside world. Lange, who moved on to the 25th floor after his sister dies, begins a sexual relationship with single mother Charlotte Melville and becomes a father figure to her son, Toby. Lange also befriends documentary filmmaker Richard Wilder and his pregnant wife Helen, who live in a low level apartment with their children, while Lange leads a physiology class. In examining a severed head, a student named Monroe faints and is given a precautionary brain scan. The next day, Lange is taken to the 40th story penthouse to meet Royal, who invites him to a party thrown by his snobby wife, Ann. The gathering turns out to be an 18th century costume party where Lange's everyday suit is ridiculed by Anne and the other guests, including Monroe, who also lives in the building. Humiliated, Lang is thrown out of the party and becomes trapped in an elevator during a power outage. Such outages are becoming common, along with water being shut off and the garbage chutes becoming blocked to the annoyance of the residents. Royal tells Lange these are simply growing pains of a new building. Monroe's brain scans come back clean, but a vengeful Lang leads him to believe he has a brain tumor. Another power outage ignites a night of decadent partying throughout the high rise, and a drunken Monroe commits suicide by jumping off the 39th floor. Suspicious that no police arrive to investigate, Wilder becomes intent on exposing the injustices within the high rise. Law and order in the building disintegrate as violence and debauchery become commonplace. Garbage piles up, food becomes scarce, and class warfare erupts between floors. Lang shows signs of mental disturbance, himself savagely beating a man, barricading himself in his apartment, and having sex with Helen. Wilder, having been beaten by upper floor residents, decides to kill Royal, believing him responsible for the chaos. It is implied that royal has bribed authorities to ignore the disorder. Acquiring a gun from the royal's former housekeeper, Wilder learns that Toby is royal's illegitimate child. Breaking into Charlotte's apartment, Wilder tortures and rapes her. For information on royal. A television newsreader named Cosgrove, the only upper floor resident who still leaves for work, is killed by a gang of lower floor residents. Some upper floor residents butcher Ann's horse for meat and ask Lange to lobotomize Wilder as a dangerous agitator. After conducting a psychiatric examination, Lang refuses, stating that Wilder is possibly the sanest man in the building. Lang is nearly thrown off the tower, but royal intervenes. He surmises to Lang that the failure of the high rise may actually be a kind of success, a crucible for change that could lead residents to escape to a new life. Helen gives birth to her overdue baby. Wilder makes his way to the penthouse and, after a confrontation with royal, shoots him dead. Wilder is then stabbed to death by royals women. As Toby looks on through his kaleidoscope. Film end as film ends as it began, in the ravaged high rise, violence has abated somewhat since many residents are dead or have fled. Lang appears to have gone insane, speaking about himself and to others. In the third person, he lies down with Charlotte, reflecting that what has happened will eventually occur in the second tower of the development. The film concludes with Toby listening to a radio broadcast of Margaret Thatcher declaring that where there is state capitalism, there can never be political freedom. And end of the movie. There you go. That's a brief summary. If you didn't know what was going on. I say brief. It's the whole movie, but it is fairly brief. I have quite a few questions. We're gonna get into them in. Was that in the book? [00:05:13] Speaker B: Gaston, may I have my book, please? [00:05:15] Speaker A: How can you read this? There's no pictures. [00:05:18] Speaker B: Well, some people use their imagination. [00:05:20] Speaker A: So the film opens up, as I read in the synopsis, there kind of after everything has gone to hell, Lang is living, surviving on his floor of the high rise, eating dogs, and generally not in the best of mental head spaces. And I wanted to know if the book opens similarly, where we're seeing, after all the events of the events that we will come to see have transpired. And we're watching Lang survive by eating a dog. [00:05:52] Speaker B: Yes, that is exactly how the book opens. Roast dog, sentence one. So you can imagine how I felt starting that book out. In all seriousness, though, I thought that choosing to open in media res and then jump back was maybe one of the most effective things about the book at its opening. The story gives you the impression that it's set in a post apocalyptic wasteland, it's the walking dead or something, only to then pull that rug out from under you when you realize that Lang could literally just leave and there's absolutely no reason for him to be doing it. [00:06:30] Speaker A: It's literally just this building. [00:06:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:32] Speaker A: Yeah. That is a fun kind of twist, because, yeah, it does seem upon the initial opening that, yes, it is. [00:06:40] Speaker B: And it seems like a very normal, nonlinear storytelling trick where you just open up and then you're like, oh, we're gonna jump back and we're gonna see how we got to this place. And we do. But also. Yeah, there's no reason for this with. [00:06:56] Speaker A: The added wrinkle that this is very silly. Yeah. Or say silly, but, yeah, it's very avoidable. We then kind of move on. We're introduced to some more characters. We flashback three weeks before, I think three weeks or three months, I think something like that, before the cold open. And Lang is moving into the building. Robert Lang, played by Tom Hiddleston, moving into the building. He's a doctor, and he kind of gets acquainted with a bunch of his neighbors and the people that live around him. And one of the people's he meets very early is Charlotte, who lives right above him, who's a single mother. And we're also introduced to Richard Wilder in this scene. They kind of are spying on. Not spying, but they see Tom Hiddleston sunbathing on his balcony and kind of talk to him for a minute. And then we see Wilder and Charlotte talking to each other. We're kind of introduced to the fact they're not together or anything. They're just kind of friends. But he's. He seemingly has a crush on Charlotte or whatever. And he has this line that I needed to know if it came from the book, was that he says to her, I should have married someone like you, stoic and perfectly breasted. And I had to know if that line came from the book because it is such a quintessential mid century male Sci-Fi author line. It is something that Philip K. Dick, or apparently JG Ballard, maybe, or any of these guys from this era, exactly how they write about women. And I needed to know if it came from the book because it cracked me up. [00:08:24] Speaker B: I don't recall this line being from the book, and I don't have access to a digital copy to check. But I agree with your assessment. Yeah, it's giving Philip K. Dick. It's giving what's his butt that wrote Fahrenheit 451. It's giving that guy. I can't think of his name right now. [00:08:47] Speaker A: Vonnegut. No, that's not Fahrenheit 451. Ray Bradbury. [00:08:52] Speaker B: Bradbury. Bradbury. Yeah. It's giving all those guys. [00:08:57] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. So I kind of wanted to see, I assume now, based on the fact that the book opens very similarly, that lang is our main character. But I was interested to know if it plays out similarly, where in the film we were kind of in, introduced to the world of this high rise through the eyes of Robert Lang. He is our main. He's our protagonist, kind of, and is, again, the way we're introduced to this world. And I wanted to know if that's similar, if he's this new doctor who's moved into this building, who's getting a fresh start after his sister died. And so we get to get introduced to kind of the setting of our story through him. [00:09:32] Speaker B: So the book jumps between three different characters. It's all told in third person, limited perspective, but we move between these three characters. Robert Lang is one of those characters, and he is the first one whose perspective we're in. So similar to the movie. We are introduced to the world through his eyes. The other two characters that we follow are Wilder and Royal. And the movie does tweak Lang's backstory in the book. He's looking for a fresh start after a divorce, and his sister is still alive and actually lives in the building as well. [00:10:08] Speaker A: Interesting. Okay. I think there's actually a wrinkle in the movie that that may be his story in the movie as well. And he's lying. [00:10:16] Speaker B: Maybe. [00:10:17] Speaker A: Cause I will get to it later. I have a question about it. That he may be lying about the sister thing. And, in fact, it is like a divorce. Maybe that he was. That's my. I have a. Maybe that's what's going on. Again, I have a question about it later. We'll get to it. But I think it's possible that the movie has a similar. Obviously, if that's the case, his sister doesn't live in the building, or at least there's no allusion to that. [00:10:38] Speaker B: No, there's no indication of that in the film. [00:10:40] Speaker A: But I think the fact that it's not his sister that he's upset over, but, in fact, maybe a divorce might be what is actually going on. Maybe, but we'll see. So he then gets invited up to the top floor to meet Royal, who is the architect of the building and who lives in the building, played by Jeremy Irons in the film. And he goes up to the penthouse to meet him on the roof of the building. And it's this big, luscious garden that they have on the roof where royal and his wife live, Anne. And there's this line that cracked me up. That was in the trailer, too, but it cracked me up in the movie where he gets up there, and they're kind of talking about the building and stuff, and a horse walks through the background, like, being led by somebody. And Lang says to Royal, who's not looking at it, is that a horse? And royal says, probably my wife rides. And I wanted to know if that specific line came from the book, because I thought it was funny. Just like, the dismissive, like, probably. I don't know. Who cares? But also, there's this dynamic that is set up between Royal and his wife that he's, like, a modernist. He's very into. Like, at least he so espouses to be a modernist who's very into the. You know, he's, like, designing this building to be, like, the future. Yes, the future of living in the world. You know, he's. Yeah, he's. He's a modernist or a futurist even to some extent. And in juxtaposition to that, his wife seems very enamored with things of the past. Like, she likes riding horses, and her garden is very kind of. There's, like, an old, like, house. [00:12:15] Speaker B: There's like a. Yeah, I have some. [00:12:17] Speaker A: Notes about the garden and obviously the costume party from the 18th century and stuff. And I want to know if that dynamic between. That difference between them came from the book. [00:12:27] Speaker B: So I would not really say that any of this is from the book. There's not a horse. There's no indication that Anne rides horses that I can recall. It is briefly mentioned in the book that Anne comes from old money, so she may be a person. Maybe that could be where the movie is drawing this dynamic between the two of them from. But. But it's not explicitly shown to us in the book like it is in the movie. [00:12:57] Speaker A: Okay, well, jumping right off of that, he then gets, as I mentioned in a synopsis, royal invites him to this party that his wife is throwing, like that night or the next day or whatever, and Robert. But he doesn't. He fails to mention that it's a costume party. And Robert shows up in just his normal suit. Cause this is the seventies and everybody is wearing suits and stuff all the. Or not everybody, but people of means basically are wearing suits and stuff all the time. And I wanted to know, but it turns out the party is like this 18th century costume party. [00:13:27] Speaker B: They're all dressed like everyone is very elaborately costumed. [00:13:30] Speaker A: And I wanted to know if that party and the costume party came from the book and if Robert gets kicked out because he literally does not fit in with this aristocracy. He's a doctor. He's a well to do man, but he's not. [00:13:43] Speaker B: He's middle class. [00:13:44] Speaker A: He's upper middle class. [00:13:45] Speaker B: Upper middle class. He's not a member of the 1% or. Yeah, the 1%. So this costume party is not from the book. I had kind of mixed feelings about it. I thought it was a really fun metaphor. Really fun visual. Also, the string quartet cover of Abba was chef's kiss, which we get twice. Yes. [00:14:04] Speaker A: Plays again later. [00:14:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it plays again later. A slightly different version or a different version. [00:14:08] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. [00:14:12] Speaker B: But I also thought it was, like, a wee bit on the nose. Yeah, like, just a wee bit on the nose. [00:14:20] Speaker A: A little bit. I think it works. And it's definitely pulling from things, I think, like, the likes of, like, which I have not seen eyes wide shut, but I think there's, like, famously, like, costume parties in that, which is like, the rich leads to whatever. And obviously, we're playing in a little bit. This whole movie plays with similar themes and stuff of clockwork orange, which is another movie I haven't seen. And they. They don't dress up, but they have, like, costumes and stuff that they wear. [00:14:45] Speaker B: A clockwork orange is set in, like, a weird, like, pretend future. [00:14:50] Speaker A: Yes. But don't they dress kind of not like this, but they don't. Some people. I've not seen the movie, actually. [00:14:56] Speaker B: It's been, like, 15 years now since I've seen it, but I think we're. [00:15:00] Speaker A: Alluding to all of those things a little bit with. With this kind of, like. Yeah. And then obviously, the very literal, metal. Literal metaphor of them being, like, this very, you know, hoity toity aristocracy. Like, they're, again, the top 1% or whatever. I don't disagree. That's a little on the nose, but it is a great cover of. It's funny because it's cracking me up. I was like. It felt like I was watching an episode of Bridgerton. [00:15:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Right. [00:15:20] Speaker A: I was like, why do I know this song? And then I was like, oh, it's freaking abba. And I thought that was funny. [00:15:26] Speaker B: Yeah. There is, like, a similar ish ish scene from the book where Lange goes up to the rooftop to play squash with Royal, and then when he gets up there, there's a 1% cocktail party in full swing that he didn't know about. [00:15:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:43] Speaker B: And everyone at that party seems to get angry that he's there. And there's, like, this brief moment where he has the feeling that they're gonna, like, grab him and throw him off the building. Like, he gets this vibe from these people. [00:15:56] Speaker A: Right. [00:15:57] Speaker B: And then royal shows up and, like, it's fine. He does have to leave, but he doesn't get, like, thrown out like he does in the movie. [00:16:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So, speaking of squash, one of the next scenes that I wanted to ask a question about is we see, like, sometime after this party, Robert and Royal, I guess, have become friends a lot of this movie, and we'll get into this a little bit. A lot of this movie, we just kind of, like. It's hard to describe to me. My note was that I feel like there's, like, a three and a half hour version of this movie that got cut down to a two hour version of this movie because there's a lot of pieces missing. And I don't think necessarily, a lot of times, I feel like some of the plot points, like, narrative beats, we just kind of, like, jump from beat to beat without really much build up or sort of. [00:16:39] Speaker B: I agree. [00:16:41] Speaker A: Explanation. [00:16:42] Speaker B: Yeah. The movie was choppy. [00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah. And now I think that's a little bit intentional, for sure. I definitely think there's definitely an idea. One I think the movie is respecting the audience in the sense that we don't need to see every little detail of the lead up and build up of their relationship and stuff like that. But also I think some stuff maybe was just cut and whatever. I also think we're playing a little bit with the kind of chaotic way this all disintegrates. I think we're supposed to not really know how long this all takes place. I mean, we do have a time period for stuff. Like, we get some time cuts three weeks later and stuff like that. But I do also think that parts of it are supposed to feel kind of fever dreamy and a little bit like it's not supposed to follow a completely straightforward narrative through. Through time. I think, kind of point being, we jump and we're at the scene where Robert and Royal are playing squash together. They kind of start arguing as they're playing squash about. Or they kind of get into, like a discussion as they're playing squash. And then it comes out and I don't remember exactly what happens, but Robert gets mad at him and kind of, like, bumps him and he, like, hits the wall and, like, starts bleeding. And then he, like, insults Robert and basically, like, taunts him about the fact that he. How Robert is now sleeping with Charlotte and how royal has previously. And like, he's like. I know. You know, he's just being a shithead about how he previously has had sex with Charlotte. And it's. It's very. It felt like it kind of came out of nowhere to me, this dynamic between them. Like, very suddenly it was like they seemed fine and then all of a sudden they have this very. And we'll get into what I think. I mean, ultimately, it's kind of within the. The whole. It's kind of almost like the shining, I think, where this building is like revealing the. A little, actually, now I think about. [00:18:25] Speaker B: It, the building is evil. [00:18:27] Speaker A: Yes, essentially, the building is kind of evil and revealing the worst nature of everybody. And it's kind of what the whole thing ends up being about. So I think that's kind of what we're supposed to get here. The fact that it doesn't really track that. Like, they're at each other's throats so quickly in this scene, I think, is kind of the point that it is the circumstances and this system that they're living in that is like fracturing them, I think, is what's going on there. That being said, it kind of took me out of it a second I was like, why are they okay? But did that scene came from the book where they're, like, playing squash? And then we find out that royal has slept with Charlotte and he's, like, being mean to Robert about, like, does any of that come from the book? [00:19:04] Speaker B: I don't recall this happening in the book. I did just listen to the audiobook for a couple chapters, so it's possible I missed it, but I really, really do not recall a scene like this in the book. And can we bring this up here? Or. I was gonna say that I guess the scene makes more sense knowing that royal fathered Charlotte's son. [00:19:27] Speaker A: Yeah. So we find out eventually, towards the end that Toby is the quote unquote bastard son of Royal and Charlotte. [00:19:38] Speaker B: But I also, like. I felt like the movie meant to or wanted to do something more with that thread that didn't like Pano. [00:19:46] Speaker A: I feel that way about a lot of threads in this movie. I feel like a lot of things kind of just get. It's very much a vibes based movie, I think, more so. And it didn't. Yeah, it felt like there were definitely some plot points that either got lost when the movie got cut down or just they weren't that interested in following up on, like, maybe. Again, I don't think it's the point necessarily to kind of follow through all these threads, but it does end up making for a slightly unsatisfying viewing experience as you. As more and more of those things go on. And it just kind of feels like. I don't necessarily know. I'm not really following everything that's going on here, which not to spoil, but that is ultimately kind of the movie kind of ultimately fell apart for me a little bit and turned into a bit of a mess. As much as I wanted to, like, it got to the end of it and was like, meh. Well, I don't know. I don't know how I feel about that. And we'll talk more a lot about that. [00:20:41] Speaker B: But, yeah, I mean, I think you could make the argument that the movie is attempting to play with, like, fractured narrative and, like, unreliable narrators, I think, for sure, and things like that, but I just don't think it was well done enough to pull it off. [00:20:56] Speaker A: It doesn't fit together in the same way. Like, something, you know, that plays with, like, unreliable narrators and kind of like that. Like a similar maybe idea would be something like Fight Club, I think, that plays on similar illusions or some similar themes about, like, society and class and. And all that kind of stuff. And like the base nature of man and all that sort of stuff. It's like, similar touching on some similar themes, but does so in a way that feels much more narratively cohesive and clever and, like, controlled. [00:21:26] Speaker B: I was also thinking of, like, black Swan. [00:21:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I think a little bit. [00:21:30] Speaker B: Yeah, a little bit like the idea of, like, time, the passage of time being weird and, like, not being sure what was real and what wasn't real. [00:21:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:39] Speaker B: And I just think this movie was trying to do some of those things and didn't quite stick the line. [00:21:45] Speaker A: I would agree with that 100%. I would agree with that 100%. So I wanted to find out if this line specifically is in the book because I thought it was another great line. It's a little on the nose maybe, but it's still funny and it works. When Robert goes out to his day job, he's a doctor who seemingly at like a teaching at a school or something. Or I don't know. Or maybe he does normal doctor stuff, but then also does, like, Ralph stuff in the book. [00:22:07] Speaker B: He's just like a teacher. He teaches at a medical school. [00:22:11] Speaker A: Okay, so then that may be what it is because he also talks. He also does, like we said later, he has, like, a brain scan on somebody. So he seems to be doing some actual doctoring of some sort. [00:22:20] Speaker B: Yeah, but there's. [00:22:22] Speaker A: But it's like a standard, like he's probably doing, like, rounds and stuff. [00:22:25] Speaker B: There's a whole, like, thing in the book where he feels insecure about not wanting to leave his teaching position and, like, feeling like he's not really working in his field because he's just, like, sticking to this teaching position and not going out and getting his own practice. [00:22:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, I think that is a similar idea. [00:22:50] Speaker B: The movie doesn't really get into. [00:22:51] Speaker A: No, not really. With too much going on in the building to spend too much time at work there. But during this scene, or during one of these brief scenes where he's at work, his secretary comes in, who we see a handful of times throughout the movie, and she comes in and she asks him how life is going at the building that he's living in. She says, how's the high life? And his response is prone to bouts of mania, narcissism and power failure, which. A little on the nose, but it's a good line. And I want to know if it came from the book. [00:23:23] Speaker B: I don't believe it does. I don't recall that. And we never see him leave the building. We never go with him outside of the building in the book. So it could not have been in exchange with his secretary at his work. So, yeah, it would have had to happen somewhere else. And if. [00:23:39] Speaker A: Yeah, if we never see him leave the office or leave the building, it would be tough to know where this would. [00:23:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:44] Speaker A: Who would ask a question like this or whatever. So, yeah, it does seem like. But like I said, it's a clever line. It works. It's, you know, a little bit of wordplay with the power failure thing because obviously there are literal, literal power failures, but then also the. The breakdown of, like, the. The hierarchy within the thing and the people at the top are losing power somewhat to some of the lower level. Like, there's a lot of layers to it that I think. Not a lot. There's a couple layers to it that I think work and are fun, but not from the book. So speaking of the medical students, one of them is a guy named Monroe, who I mentioned in the summary, who is kind of, like, full of himself and cocky and, like, is kind of a shithead. And Lange at one point, decides that he needs to put him in his place and make him kind of, you know, give him a come to Jesus moment. So he lies to him and tells him he's dying of brain cancer. Not the greatest version of that you could do. And if you're gonna do that, you gotta undo that immediately. You can't do that, by the way. Horrible thing to do. But, like, if at all, you're gonna do that, like, before he leaves your office, you have to be like, psych. Don't you feel like an idiot? You can't let him sit or mole on it for a whole day or whatever, because he ultimately ends up jumping off the building and killing himself. And I wanted to know if any of that came from the book. [00:25:04] Speaker B: So that character, that Monroe character is not in the book at all. He's a movie fabrication. There is a character who falls. Jumps was pushed off the building, who also lived, I think, in one of the other penthouses or one of the very, very top floors, who was a jeweler, which we don't really interact with him a ton, and he dies fairly early. And we don't know. It's a little bit of a mystery. Like, oh, was he pushed? Did he jump? Was he just drunk and fell? And we never actually find out. [00:25:43] Speaker A: The answer is that the thing that spurs on, does that case similarly spur on Wilder in the same way that this version does in the movie? Okay, that's interesting because there is a pretty big change there in the sense that in the movie, we know he just jumped. [00:26:00] Speaker B: Yes. [00:26:00] Speaker A: Like, we see. Assuming what we seeing is happening, it seems reasonable because again, he just. He thinks he has, like, a terminal brain cancer diagnosis and he gets very drunk. And just seemingly. Again, we watch him jump off the building. But that does, like, no cops show up to investigate or anything like that. And that is what kind of. One of the things that makes Wilder, like, become more and more paranoid and kind of become more and more obsessed with figuring out what's going on and confronting the higher powers in the building. [00:26:31] Speaker B: Yeah. No, it is a pretty big change. And like I mentioned earlier, it's mentioned. I think Lang does go to work one time near the beginning of the book, but we don't go with him. I'm pretty sure we'd never actually leave the building in the book's narrative, which I also think is an interesting change, because in the movie, we do leave the building at least twice with Lang. [00:26:59] Speaker A: I will say from my memory, I don't know, like, we see him walk out to his car and stuff, but I don't recall seeing him, like, driving or seeing the ex. Maybe we see the exterior of the building he works in, like once, but I feel like we only ever see, like, the interior of the office to where. To me, it almost felt like it could have been in the building still. [00:27:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:20] Speaker A: Like, I think he is leaving and going to work. But it is. Yeah, it is interesting. But so, moving on from there, we mentioned earlier in the thing that Toby is the son of Charlotte, who's the woman that Robert starts having an affair with. Not an affair, I guess, but having a relationship with. [00:27:39] Speaker B: Dalliance. [00:27:39] Speaker A: Yeah, a relationship with. And he kind of becomes a little bit of a father figure to Toby briefly. That also kind of gets dropped in the movie eventually, I think intentionally. I think it's part of the thing is that as everything starts to deteriorate and Robert gives into his more base, primal, whatever kind of urges and stuff, part of that is it deteriorates his relationship with Toby, blah, blah, blah. But in one of these earlier scenes where he's talking to Toby, there's this great exchange they have where they're sitting at the table and Toby just says to him point blank in a way that kids are wont to do, he says, why don't you have a wife? And Robert responds by saying, why don't you have a father to this, like, six year old kid? And it's just he's so mean to him and it's so funny. And he immediately apologizes like, he realizes that was out of line. But I thought it was very funny and I wanted to. Of the exchange came from the book. [00:28:39] Speaker B: It does not. Charlotte does have a young son in the book, but we only see him once or twice at the beginning before he basically vanishes from the narrative. He doesn't even have a name in the book, so. [00:28:57] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, I will say so. I was thinking more about this scene, and I was thinking on it, and I do think what this scene is doing because it was so funny and seemed so strange that he was just so mean to this kid. I think part of what we're doing here, similar to the squash scene, where they start going at each other, is that this is another moment before things really deteriorate. To show that. That he's starting to break a little bit and that the building is having an effect on his psyche and he's becoming meaner, he's becoming cruel or whatever. He's becoming more. It is reverting him to this more primal, awful version of himself, which is kind of ultimately what this whole story, I think, ends up being about to some extent, a la lord of the flies or whatever. [00:29:44] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's about a lot of. [00:29:45] Speaker A: It's about a lot of things. [00:29:46] Speaker B: It's about a lot of things at the same time. [00:29:48] Speaker A: It's about a lot of things and not a lot of things, like, without being really about any. Not that it's not really about anything. It's one of the kind of, like, 2001 in a way, where it's like, it's touching on a lot of ideas, but it doesn't really make anything its central. [00:30:02] Speaker B: Yes. [00:30:03] Speaker A: I don't think there's anything that's, like. This is clearly a story about this. [00:30:06] Speaker B: Yeah, same way about the book that it was about a lot of things, but it was not so much about a singular thing that it really, really, really dug into it. [00:30:22] Speaker A: Yes. And that was, I think, one of my issues. Similar to, like, 2001 or. Oh, God, there was something else that just popped into my head that I had a similar feeling about, but, yeah, it's touching on lots of themes, but it's not digging in and picking one to really drive a point home about which I don't think is necessarily an awful thing to do. But it's definitely something that makes me less interested in what the story is doing. [00:30:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:30:47] Speaker A: Where it's just like, if a story just chooses to raise a bunch of questions and kind of, like, examine different facets of humanity and stuff, I think that can be interesting. And it's not like it's. Again, I think it's valuable and interesting. I just don't think it's. I don't find it as satisfying or interesting or compelling of, like, a story to, like, engage with when I. Versus one where I can tell it has, like, either a specific point that it's trying to make or even if it's a specific topic, even if it's not making a point necessarily, if it's exploring a specific thing very deeply. Like, it's going very hard into, like, a very specific thing and kind of raising questions about kind of like, I guess black swan does that a little bit where I don't think black swan has, like, a super overt, like, point, necessarily. [00:31:32] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:31:32] Speaker A: Like, it's not like beating you over the head with, like, a message, necessarily, but it is examining, like, a very specific thing. And, like, whereas this branches into kind of so many different places that it felt like it gets a little muddled. [00:31:45] Speaker B: Right. And, you know, I said that I felt kind of similarly about the book. The book does sink its teeth more into, like, those questions and issues than the movie does, but it also has a similar kind of, like, scattered focus, in my opinion. [00:32:01] Speaker A: Yeah, but one of the themes it does kind of reach into, obviously, and I think the trailer tried to push this more than the movie ultimately up doing, in my opinion, is class. And one of the lines that I wanted to ask about that kind of touches on that is there's this. Things have devolved a little bit. We've kind of had people starting throwing these, like, all night parties and stuff. And we're hanging out with the upper crusty people who are all sitting around like hungover in their penthouse or whatever and they're discussing that they need to have a party, another party, because the lower floors are having parties. And they say we must show the lower floors that we can throw a better party than them, which I thought was funny. And I wanted to know if that line came from the book because I think the thing is interesting here is I get the idea that because this happens so quickly where we kind of devolve into this weird, nonstop party violent cacophony thing. And I like the idea of this weird artificial system, this tower, this high rise kind of being a stand in for, in my opinion, like capitalist society, at least in the movie. That's what the movie's doing very explicitly. So, yeah, I mean, the ending literally with the radio broadcast, like, yeah. Explicitly talks about it, but as a stand in for the capitalist or a capitalism organized. I don't know the way to say that a society organized around capitalism and this high rise tower is a microcosm of that, and it's this artificial system they built that everybody has been kind of put into, and then it quickly devolves everybody into, like, the worst version of themselves. I feel like the movie, in my opinion, doesn't do quite enough work to get to the end point of that. Like, it just feels like there's a little bit of a yada yada in the middle and then, like, I don't know, it just. Yeah, the beat to beats of the. The beat to beat elements of this movie moving through the narrative just didn't necessarily all follow for me in a way that I thought worked perfectly. Anyways, my question was if that line about throwing a better party came. I don't know if that line about throwing a better party came from the book, because I thought that was funny. [00:34:13] Speaker B: I really wish our library had had a digital copy of this. Once more. One more time. I don't recall this specific line. However, I think it is a good sum up of the general idea of one of the main portions of the book, which, similar to the movie, as the building is descending into chaos and everyone is becoming this worst version of themselves, the residents do go through a phase where they're throwing ragers every night and warring with each other over party supplies and wine and charcuterie and things as to how that develops. The whole thing devolves really quickly in the book as well. It's not a long book. It's only, like, 200 pages. [00:35:01] Speaker A: It's not a huge book. [00:35:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not a long book at all. So it does devolve really quickly and it moves at a pretty fast pace. But I think it works a little better in the book, and I think the reason that it does is because we're in specific perspectives. So we're getting, like, you get a. [00:35:22] Speaker A: Little bit more royals perspective. [00:35:24] Speaker B: You get wild. [00:35:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:25] Speaker B: You get different perspectives because we literally. [00:35:27] Speaker A: Have an upper class, middle class and lower class perspective with those three people. [00:35:31] Speaker B: Yeah. And you're kind of viewing it, like, through their eyes and you're getting their interior monologues and their thoughts and things. So some of the where in the movie, it felt like there were kind of weird jumps from point to point that gets smoothed over a little bit in the book. [00:35:47] Speaker A: That can make sense. Yeah, that makes sense. I could see that. So as things devolve even more, Lang is starting to lose it. Now. He decides he needs to paint his entire apartment. The perfect shade of gray for some reason. [00:36:01] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:36:02] Speaker A: Yeah, why not, I guess. And again, I don't feel like the movie explored that enough. It felt a little bit like that kind of came out of nowhere and was like this. Like, I don't. Like there was no build up for that. So all of a sudden, he decides he needs to paint his apartment this certain color. And I was like. I felt like there wasn't anything. [00:36:18] Speaker B: Do you see him at the beginning, like, swatching a couple paint samples? [00:36:23] Speaker A: But I felt like it didn't come back to that. Like, I felt like there should have been another beat in between because we. [00:36:28] Speaker B: Don'T come back to that until he's, like, beating a man to get the bucket of paint. And then, like, Francis himself in the wall all over his already gray apartment. [00:36:38] Speaker A: Which, again, is the point. [00:36:39] Speaker B: Like, yeah, I know it's the point. [00:36:40] Speaker A: But it did feel like it was missing, like, a plot point in there somewhere to kind of get us to that moment where we missed. [00:36:47] Speaker B: I mean, we missed the remind. We set up and we paid off. We didn't remind. [00:36:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I would agree with that. And then. Yeah, and, like, yeah, it is, you know, obviously, there's, like, a commentary on, like, materialism and this, like, kind of, like, obsession with, you know, the facade, basically, of what he's presenting. And, like you said, it's from one shade of gray to a big. Basically the same. Slightly different. [00:37:12] Speaker B: I mean, he's painting concrete. [00:37:14] Speaker A: Exactly. And, like, the futility of all that and that this, like, putting. You know, what's the. There's a saying putting paint on a. I guess lipstick on a horse. It's not the right thing. [00:37:25] Speaker B: I think it's lipstick on a pig. [00:37:26] Speaker A: Pig. But that's not the same thing. But, no, he's basically, you know, like, gilding the lily or whatever, but, like, the opposite of gilding the lily, I guess, would be the idea, like, you know, graying the concrete. But, like. Yeah, like, there's this, like, kind of dramatic irony or like, this deep irony to his obsession with. With painting his walls that are already gray, a different shade of gray, and that this is all futile and pointless and that this all manufactured, like, artificial environment they're in is all. Again, it's. To me, this. This whole story is kind of deeply nihilistic, in a way. Yes, a little bit. I don't say completely, but it's fairly nihilistic. And I think that's part of the reason I didn't super connect with it either, because I'm not a particularly nihilistic person. But anyways, during that, Helen shows up. Who he has not really talked to is Elizabeth Moss's character. We've met a handful of times. [00:38:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Wilder's wife. [00:38:21] Speaker A: Yes. [00:38:21] Speaker B: Very heavily pregnant. [00:38:23] Speaker A: She's very pregnant, and she has been pregnant. She's, like, overdue, but she shows up and they just have sex. [00:38:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:30] Speaker A: Did that happen in the book? [00:38:32] Speaker B: It does not. [00:38:33] Speaker A: Okay. I was trying to figure out, like, what this was about, because, again, this is not a thing that's really set up at all in any particular way. My thought was that maybe this is kind of an idea of, like. Like, maybe the life he could have had because she's pregnant and with kids and, like, she has kids and she is pregnant in this scene. And so, like, maybe there's this idea that in another life, in another version, he could have been happy being, like, part of a family or something. I don't know. [00:38:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:38:59] Speaker A: Trying to figure out, like, what this scene really, like, is there for or, like, you know, like, what it's doing. Because that's the other thing about this movie is, to me, this movie came across as sort of very literary. Like, a lot of the scenes that happen are not really set up or paid off in a way. And it reminded me of reading, like, it reminded me of, like, being in high school and reading, like, a piece of great fiction that you've been told is great fiction. And then you're, like, told what different scenes mean by your teacher or whatever, and you're like. But. But, like, you know, like, I was specifically thinking of the scene of, like, in grapes of wrath. Like the turtle. [00:39:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:39:35] Speaker A: Or something where it's like, you're kind of seeing these things that, like. And it was interesting because normally, I'm actually pretty good at, like, figuring out, like, what these different elements or at least trying to get across thematically. Like, that's a. That's a big part of what we talk about on the show. And so it's something we focus on a lot and kind of try to explore and kind of think about. But in this one, I was having trouble, like, what are these? And it felt. It took me back to the headspace of being in high school, and just, like, I'm sure this means something, but I feel like I'm too dumb to know what. [00:40:04] Speaker B: No, I felt the same way a lot of the time reading the book, which was interesting because I have two english degrees and I've been doing this for a while, and I. And I feel like I've gotten a lot better at it through doing this. [00:40:21] Speaker A: Podcast, I'm way better now than I was five years ago. [00:40:24] Speaker B: And this one, like, there was a lot of stuff. Like, the frustrating part of it to me was that a lot of times, I understood what the symbolism meant, but I did not know what I was supposed to get from it. Yeah, I think was the frustrating thing. [00:40:40] Speaker A: I think there's also elements of that, too. That. Yeah, sometimes it's very clear, like, okay, well, this is clearly this. [00:40:45] Speaker B: Yeah, but, like, what are you telling me? [00:40:47] Speaker A: But, like, what am I supposed to be getting from that? As opposed to just, like, understanding that this is what the symbolism is? You know what I mean? Cause, like, there's definitely some stuff later, and I had a note about it, like, with Toby, I think there's some very specific kind of symbolism and stuff going on with his storyline and elements of what he does later, and we'll get to that before too long here. But at the same time, I was like, but I don't know what I'm supposed to get from that potential metaphor allegory or what. You know what I mean? I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that necessarily. And I don't think that's necessarily. Again, I don't think that's a horrible thing. I think it's fine to kind of leave you with stuff to just kind of ponder on and try to figure out what you think it's supposed to mean or whatever, because sometimes it's. You know, movies can lean too hard the other direction. But it just. I don't know, it didn't. It didn't fall into place for me. Like. Like, I kind of expected it to. I really did expect to, like, really like this movie and. And enjoy, like, the kind of. I was expecting it to be very symbolic, very thematic, very metaphorical, allegorical, whatever. I was actually going in expecting that. And I like movies that do stuff like that a lot, usually. But this one, it just didn't really. The pieces didn't fit together for me entirely. Like, elements did here and there. But I was left with a lot of pieces that didn't fit into my puzzle. Like, I put together, like, half my puzzle, and then I was like, I got all these other pieces that I'm not really sure what to do with, and it just kind of, like, all right, well, I guess I got these pieces now. I don't know. A couple more questions here that I wanted to get to. Things have completely devolved now. Royal's living on in the roof with, like, a harem. I don't even. This is never really explained or explored in the movie, which I thought was interesting, but, like, him and his wife Anne have entered into this very strange kind of polyamorous thing. Maybe. I don't know. Well, the whole thing is like a debaucherous. Like, everybody's just having sex with everybody or whatever. But at one point, there's this scene where royal has sex with the actress Julie, or whatever her name is. Juliet, maybe Julianne, I can't remember, who's like, this famous actress. [00:42:56] Speaker B: Yeah, she's a famous actress in this. [00:42:57] Speaker A: World, up in the penthouse with them as part of this 1%. And there's a scene where him and Anne have. Don't have sex anymore. There's like a recurring thing that they're like, they kind of hate each other, basically, but they still stay together, obviously, for appearances and other. Whatever convenience and that sort of thing, and for the money and blah, blah, blah. But there's, like some pretty good recurring jokes about how they don't. Aren't physically intimate or don't really even like each other anymore, but he has sex with the actress and Anne, like, watches. And I don't know, I was like, I wanted to know if that scene came from the book, because also, this is almost a lost in adaptation. If it's in the book. What did you get? Like, what am I supposed to be getting from the scene? What is it supposed to mean? Anything. [00:43:39] Speaker B: Okay. I was scrolling through my other notes real quick because I had another thing in another section that I realized needed to be by this question. So, to answer your question, first off, this does happen in the book. That is not paced. Okay, hang on. This does happen in the book. It happens as he is building. This is the start of his quote unquote harem, which I have some thoughts about in a minute. I'm not sure that's really what it is. [00:44:13] Speaker A: I also don't know if that's what it is, but it's kind of what it vaguely looked like in the movie because the movie doesn't really explore it. [00:44:19] Speaker B: At all, which I have also some thoughts about. So this does happen, and it's basically, we're in Royal's perspective, and it's basically him testing whether or not he can get away with breaking this social boundary. So he's with the actress lady and Anne is in the other room, but it's kind of open concept ease, so she still could see them. And he starts having sex with the actress and locks eyes with his wife, and then she just lets him do it. And he's like, ha ha ha ha. This is ha ha. And the line that he thinks to himself is a complete deference to the clan leader. And I was like, some of this stuff feels a wee hair too close to authorial fantasy. Yeah, it's interesting. Just like a hair close. But, yeah, that's what happens. [00:45:23] Speaker A: Like, some of this stuff, especially towards the end and some of the, like, the debauchery and the violence and stuff feels a little bit. And I'm not saying it is. And I want to be very clear here because I want to. I think it's very clear that I didn't really completely understand this story, but it's possible that maybe there, maybe I did, and it's not as deep or profound as maybe I'm expecting it to be. But I do think part of this does feel a little bit like an author kind of playing with taboos and, like, exploring social norms and breaking social norms and kind of making the reader slash viewer uncomfortable or whatever without much of, like, an actual goal. Yeah, necessarily, other than to have you think about those things and, like, kind of examine them, which to me isn't super interesting. Maybe it would have been more so 40 years, and I think that's part of it, is maybe, you know, in 1970, it may have been more interesting to kind of read something that's just like, look at the. Look at these people all just having sex randomly, willy nilly with each other. All right. I mean, sure. I don't know. Like, yeah, I just kind of kept coming back to this thing of, like, none of this really is hitting me in a way that it's making me have any deep thoughts, I think was the part of the problem. Like, I wasn't making me go, ooh, that's interesting. Ooh, that's, you know, comparing it to something like, I'm thinking of ending things, which is a very weird, obtuse, obscure movie that is kind of hard to parse what is going on. And I'm sure I didn't understand everything going on in that movie, but it made me feel things and, like, think about, like, life and ambition and, like, how we write our own stories and, like, how we kind of morph our own reality. Like, there's all kinds of interesting questions that that movie made me explored my own head, whereas this one I just kind of like, yeah, I guess people suck. I don't know, man. Like, sure, people suck. I like that. It just didn't really lead me to anything that I found particularly profound or interesting anyways. My last question here is we get to the big climax where Wilder makes it to the roof to confront royal and, you know, because he is man ascending to confront God and hold him accountable for his creation or whatever, essentially is kind of what we're doing here. And I wanted to know if, if Wilder does ultimately shoot and kill Royal and then subsequently is stabbed to death by royals, a coven of Harem, whatever, girl boss team, I don't know what does any of that. Again, my note here is I'm really having trouble following what any of this is supposed to mean at all. I think maybe that's another thing. To be fair, I think a lot of this is fairly, in the movie, at least is fairly biblical in elements of it, and to me is not something I'm super interested in. Like, I don't find that, particularly as an atheist who I've read a lot of the Bible over like decades ago in college, I read almost all of the Bible, I think, but it's not something that I find particularly profound or interesting. It's just not so like kind of the biblical illusions and stuff is just, was never going to be something that was like, wow, this is really deep and cool. And I get what we're doing, but I get that's what we're alluding some of this stuff to. But it also just doesn't do much for me anyways. Does any of this come from the book? [00:48:53] Speaker B: Yes, this also happens in the book, and I have, like, a lot of thoughts on this whole thing. So I struggled overall with sussing out the points that Ballard was making with this book, as I have said. But I think I struggled most with what he's trying to say about women and gender because there's a lot, a lot, a lot about gender in this book. So a lot of the early violence in the text is specifically done by women to the point that I felt like he must be making a point, but I had trouble following the thread of that point. And then by the end of the text, the women of the building have more or less abandoned all of the previous class barriers and markers and formed a cult of some sort. [00:49:49] Speaker A: Which we see in the movie. [00:49:50] Speaker B: Yes, we see in the movie. And there's a little bit more in the book, too. When Wilder gets up to the upper floors, he kind of notices in his, and he's in a crazed, animalistic haze at this point in the book, but he kind of briefly notices that things have been cleaned and the furniture has been reset and the walls have been painted. And it doesn't look like the rest of the building does up here because the women have come together to clean up the mess and take care of things. [00:50:22] Speaker A: I think the movie was trying to get that across a little bit because it feels similar in the movie when he gets up there, but we don't really see much of it. We're more focused on Wilder and Royal, Wang and Royal and them who are. [00:50:35] Speaker B: All up there now, this group of women. I would say that I guess that kind of starts out as Royal's harem, kinda, because we do see him collecting women near the end of the book and the scene where Charlotte serves them dinner. We get a very similar scene in the book, except it's Helen and not Charlotte. But then at the end, I did not at all get the vibe that they murder Wilder because he murdered Royal. [00:51:10] Speaker A: In the book? [00:51:10] Speaker B: In the book, yeah. It does not feel like an act of revenge or like justice even, but possibly just because he was there, because he was in their space, because he's a man. I'm not really sure. And then the interesting thing to more biblical allusions for you. So we're in Wilder's perspective during this part, and shortly before he's killed, he refers in his head to his wife Judith. Not his wife's name, no. But I assume a reference to the biblical Judith, who beheaded Holofernes. Again, I recognize the symbolism. Not 100% sure what exactly I meant. [00:52:03] Speaker A: To take away from who is Holofernes. [00:52:06] Speaker B: So in the book of Judith. Bear with me, Bible people. In the book of Judith, I believe the story is that the Israelites are beset by the Assyrians and vaguely correct, can't defeat them on the field of battle. And Judith is like, you guys are being cowardly, or whatever. So she and her handmaiden go into the assyrian camp to, like, the head general Holofernes, which I hope I'm saying. [00:52:47] Speaker A: Correctly, looks right, sounds right, based on what I'm reading. [00:52:52] Speaker B: And basically, like, get in good with him and promise to feed him information. And then when he gets comfortable around them and falls asleep, they chop his head off. [00:53:03] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. So I definitely think it's an allusion to that. For sure. [00:53:08] Speaker B: For sure. For sure. But I don't understand, really, how it connects to everything else that's going on. [00:53:15] Speaker A: I think definitely we're supposed to get. And I think the movie maybe doesn't do a great job of getting this across, but I definitely think we're supposed to get the vibe more. Less of Royal's harem. And I think you're right. That it's probably not supposed to be that their killing is an act of revenge, but so much as it is an act of cleansing, I would maybe as an argument, because, again, they're all wearing white and they've kind of created their own new Eden here. And I think that's what we're going for. And I think maybe the idea is that it is about, like, kind of the inherent violent nature of man. And specifically, when I'm saying man here, I don't mean humanity. I mean. [00:53:51] Speaker B: I mean man. Yes. And I think that is very clear in the book. [00:53:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:53:56] Speaker B: Which, like. Okay. And it's a very, like, to me, that's just a very, like, second wave feminist, for sure. [00:54:06] Speaker A: It's very gender essentialist. [00:54:08] Speaker B: Gender essentialist. And also, like, coming from a male author, I'm like, I don't need you to put all of womankind on this pedestal, sir. [00:54:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Because I do think that is what's going on. Yeah. Cause I think you can definitely read that thing where they kill, even though it does feel, in the movie more like revenge or justice. I think you could also just. Clint read it as. Because I think you could almost read it as royal as them. They almost, like, let him kill royal, and then they kill him not because. Not as revenger, as justice, but because he's this trespasser slash. Yeah. As a cleansing, I think, more so than anything else to kind of maintain their. Their new Eden that they've created. But it does. I'm a little bit lost then, if that's kind of what we're going for here, is like this sort of essentialist, peaceful, cooperative nature of woman or whatever, and how they would rise from the ashes. You know, it's the Jurassic park thing. [00:55:12] Speaker B: Yeah. Woman inherits the earth. [00:55:15] Speaker A: But I do think if that's the case, it's a little. I don't necessarily follow from there, how we get to the ending where Charlotte, who was part of that. That new enclave of women, is now sleeping with Robert. [00:55:29] Speaker B: Right. No. And that's not what happens in the book. [00:55:31] Speaker A: It doesn't make any sense because that's where I feel like I'm losing maybe, like, what the point was, because Robert doesn't seem to be fit in with this. With this new Eden they've created. He's also kind of violent and weird and awful in his own way. He's not as bad as the other guys are, but he is bad idea. [00:55:54] Speaker B: And Robert represents the docile middle class. [00:55:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:55:59] Speaker B: Who's unwilling to rock the boat. [00:56:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. It's interesting anyways. Yeah. I'm also not sure what necessarily. [00:56:08] Speaker B: And that was the really frustrating thing, is that I can, like. I can taste understanding this. I can see it. I can smell understanding what is going on here, but I can't quite grasp it. [00:56:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:56:28] Speaker B: A couple lines from the book that I really liked, though, from this scene. Again, we're in Wilder's perspective, and he sees the children playing, and at first he's not sure what they're playing with. And then the text reads, the children in the sculpture garden were playing with bones. The circle of women drew closer. [00:56:47] Speaker A: Dude, that is metal as hell. [00:56:49] Speaker B: Right? [00:56:49] Speaker A: That's the most metal line. That's got to be in a song. So it's got to be. [00:56:53] Speaker B: Well. And we did. We did, in the prequel, talk about how all of the rock bands like. Like this book. [00:57:01] Speaker A: What you. Yeah. Specifically, we mentioned. Oh, God. The when to say paw patrol. No. What is because. What is because? Then I was thinking of Snow patrol, but it's not Snow patrol. What is the. [00:57:20] Speaker B: It's the wavy. [00:57:21] Speaker A: Yeah, the wavy. Oh, my God. [00:57:23] Speaker B: We talked about it in a wavy line band. You guys got it. Listen, we both had a long day at work. Our brains are fried right now. [00:57:33] Speaker A: Joy Division, Joy Division, paw patrol, Snow patrol. Joy Division. Felt similar. I know. They're very different bands. I just. For some reason, I kept thinking of snow patrol, and then my brain jumped apart. Paw patrol. And it just. Whatever. Anyways, all right. Those are all my questions for. Was that in the book? I do have a couple things, though, to get into in lost, in adaptation. Just show me the way to get out of here, and I'll be on my way. [00:58:00] Speaker B: I was at last. [00:58:01] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And I want to get unlost as soon as possible. So, Richard, who we've talked about a while, a little. Kind of throughout here. A little bit. He just died on the roof after he killed royal. I want to know if we get any more kind of explanation of his attitude and why he seems so angry all the time, and he seems to have real issues with everyone, and I'm not sure the movie really explores that very much. And I think he's kind of an archetype. I don't think you necessarily need a lot of explanation. He's just a man who feels wronged by the system he exists in. I get that. But it does feel like it escalates in a way, and again, everybody's shit escalates in a way that's kind of out of control. It's kind of the point. But anyways, do we get any more background on. [00:58:49] Speaker B: Not really. I think you kind of hit the nail on the head that he's kind of an archetype. We don't really need the backstory, per se. Yeah, I think it would be fun to have, but, I mean, we do. [00:59:02] Speaker A: Get some of it. There's something related to the idea that he's a filmmaker who's, like, not gotten the break that he wants or thinks that he's his right. He's had trouble getting his project off the planet. [00:59:12] Speaker B: He doesn't have as much money as he wants. He doesn't have the status that he wants, blah, blah, blah, blah. [00:59:18] Speaker A: He's a struggling filmmaker. [00:59:20] Speaker B: But to go back to this idea of archetype, I think Wilder represents the really base, animalistic parts of humanity. And he is consistently described in the book as physically imposing. [00:59:35] Speaker A: And he is in the film, he's played by Luke Evans. [00:59:38] Speaker B: Specifically. Barrel chested is the descriptor that comes up over and over for him. And he also solves all of his problems by being physically imposing, which we also see in the movie. He's portrayed as virile, starting out as a philanderer who's banging women all over the building. And then that builds to his violent assault of Charlotte at the end of the story, when things have completely devolved, he just feels entitled to any woman that he encounters because he's so strong and so masculine, and he's running around, around the building with. With his penis out on display. And we read a lot about his penis, which I hated also. His name is literally Dick Wilder. [01:00:20] Speaker A: That is a good point that I didn't realize. I always forget that dick is a nickname for Richard. I always forget that because it's ridiculous. [01:00:28] Speaker B: We were not going for subtlety. [01:00:30] Speaker A: No, no. [01:00:31] Speaker B: The book pretty much only refers to him as Wilder, except for at one point, like, maybe halfway through when somebody calls him Dick. And I went, wait a fucking minute. This man's name is Dick Wilder? [01:00:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Again, they mostly call him Wilder in the movie as well. But I did know it was Richard. But again, I literally always forget that dick is. [01:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah, because it makes no sense. We also, though, find out in the book that he has big mommy issues and he resents his wife because she won't mother him the way that his mother did. The text does tell us this point blank. And I said, good for you, Helen. Yeah, go forth and do not mother your husband. [01:01:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, and I think the thing that's interesting is there's definitely an element. I think that that archetype of a character is really interesting, and you could do a lot of interesting stuff with it. The movie, he feels, I don't want to say aimless. He feels, I don't know if the movie does a good enough job with that characterization, because the characterization you just described here in this, I think, is really interesting and really compelling and really timeless. And I think there's elements of it that are translated into the movie. And you definitely get get that of him. He has these, you know, he's angry at the world. He's angry at the system. He feels, you know, the line I said earlier about I should have married a woman like you, stoic and perfectly breasted or whatever. Like, he's. He's kind of crude, and he feels. [01:02:05] Speaker B: He feels entitled, and he's angry that he doesn't have the things he feels. [01:02:08] Speaker A: Entitled, which is a timeless and timely character to explore. That is like the archetypal he is. You know, he's fucking Andrew Tate or whatever. Like, that is that character. That is that person. They exist all over the Internet, and they're the fucking worst. And in the real world, obviously. But it is. I don't know if the movie does enough with that to, like, make it a salient. [01:02:36] Speaker B: I agree. [01:02:36] Speaker A: Analysis of that type of person. [01:02:38] Speaker B: I think, you know, to go back to a point that I made earlier, I think we're losing something here by not having the inner monologues. [01:02:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I can see that. For sure. [01:02:50] Speaker B: As unpleasant as it was being in Dick Wilder's head. Yeah, I think we are losing some of that characterization by not being in his head. [01:03:00] Speaker A: Yeah. There's a little moment. I had a question about where, at one point, Charlotte is in Robert's apartment, and he has never unpacked, which is, again, another thing, but he's never unpacked. All his stuff still in boxes everywhere, but he has pinned a picture of what he says is his sister on the wall that has died. And at one point, Charlotte's walking around, and she sees the photo, and she says, like, oh, who's this? Is this your sister? And he kind of answers awkwardly, and she goes, oh, okay, sure. And she pulls it off the wall and just casually tosses it onto the floor. And it's a very strange interaction. And I wanted to know. I was like, wait, what is going on? Why would she just throw it on the floor? And I want to know if that was in the book and if you had any explanation outside of that. [01:03:42] Speaker B: This does not happen in the book. So not sure how much help I can be from that perspective. I read this as kind of a further instance of the idea that all of them are just kind of callous and casually cruel and selfish. [01:03:59] Speaker A: Okay, I could see that. To me, as I thought more about it, this got back to the thing I was mentioned earlier. About how maybe the movie is, in fact, doing the plot line where it's not. Where. Where it is actually an ex. He's divorced or whatever. [01:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Or maybe his wife died or maybe. [01:04:15] Speaker A: His wife died or is divorced or whatever. I would say more divorced. I would lean towards divorced. And he's just telling people he has a sister that's dead to get, like, sympathy or whatever. Because he would rather have that sympathy than to have, like, the pity or rather have. [01:04:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, divorce is still a little taboo at this point, right? [01:04:33] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and, yeah, I think maybe he just. Yeah, yeah, it's taboo. But also I think, like, there's a difference between maybe the divorce thing, the person, like, pities you. There's the taboo nature. But also it's kind of like a pitying thing. Like, oh, this poor guy got divorced or whatever. Or maybe they think he sucks cause he got divorced or. You know what I mean? Whereas a dead sister is like a thing he can tell people where he just gets sympathy. As opposed to any sort of judgment. [01:04:59] Speaker B: Pity or judgment. [01:05:00] Speaker A: Yeah. So I was thinking that. So maybe that is what's going on. And maybe the idea here is that charlotte sees through that and realizes. And, like. Or either she sees through it or she just doesn't believe him and thinks it is. And like, she's like. I think maybe it's the fact that she doesn't actually believe him. And that instead thinks that this is like an old fling or something. And so she. Because she's kind of blinded by jealousy. Because we're at a point where everybody's kind of starting to become worse and worse and worse and devolve more and more into their worst instincts. She doesn't believe him. She's jealous. She's. Whatever. Because they're in a relationship, kind of. And so she doesn't believe him. And she just throws it on the floor. I think maybe that's what's going on. But I also think your idea of just kind of the. [01:05:44] Speaker B: I mean, I feel like that idea that she just doesn't believe him goes hand in hand with what I'm saying. That, you know, because she maybe can't cope with the idea or perceive of the idea of why he would want to be hanging on to this relationship. So she is very flippant about it. I don't know. And I was kind of hesitant to spend too much of my brain energy reading into that moment because the movie does literally nothing with it. [01:06:15] Speaker A: No, I agree. I agree. Yeah. It doesn't never come back to it or mention it again or whatever. It's, it is this little scene. But I think that to be fair to the movie, I think that the movie, some of that's intentional and that you're supposed to kind of sit and think and wonder about this stuff. I think a little bit. Anyways, my last qua or, sorry, I have two more brief questions. Well, one pretty long way and then a brief question first. Is it ever addressed why the people don't just leave? You mentioned this earlier. I obviously have a reading on it. I think it's very clearly that it's all metaphor for capitalism, which you literally cannot leave. [01:06:51] Speaker B: Yes. [01:06:52] Speaker A: Depending on, you know, your situation and stuff. You know, living in the US, we are stuck in a capitalist system. It's artificial, it's man made. But as an individual, you literally cannot unless you have the means to go somewhere else or whatever. [01:07:07] Speaker B: And you can only get those means. [01:07:10] Speaker A: Exactly. So as a system, we're all stuck in for better or worse, until we decide not to be stuck in it as a society. And so I think there's that. I think. But the other element of it is more pessimistically, maybe the idea is that, and this is actually kind of what I lean more towards. And I think it's both to be honest, but more pessimistically, cynically, nihilistically, that secretly this is what all these people actually want to be doing. Like this is because they're not leaving, because it's kind of like secretly what they want, like to be part of, to be able to live out their cruelest, most base fantasies and to not care and to, you know, and so they stay in this thing where they could just leave, but they don't. Because, again, they would rather. They kind of, even though they maybe won't say it out loud, they want to be part of this fucked up society that is this devolved society that is occurring. What do you think? [01:08:04] Speaker B: So the book really harps on the fact that people could leave, but they don't. Or that they could put a stop to all of this by calling the police or otherwise revealing what's going on to the outside world, but they don't. But beyond that, the text kind of leaves us to draw our own conclusions about why that is. And I agree with both of your assessments. I think both of those things are part of it. To kind of further expand on the capitalism idea. There's a lot more, in my opinion, inter class hostility and commentary on that in the book. A lot of the book is focused on the people at the bottom of the building trying to claw their way up higher and the people at the top doing anything that they can occasionally. [01:08:50] Speaker A: Mentioned in the movie. We don't see much of it or anything. [01:08:52] Speaker B: Yeah. And to me, that idea is about this potentially being that no one breaks rank and pieces out because they think they can win. But the book is also pretty firm on the idea that people are enjoying themselves at some level. The violence comes naturally to them and it feels right. Which goes into that more nihilistic, pessimistic thing that you brought up. Honestly, though, the weirder thing to me is that no one seems to notice that the outside of the building and the parking lot look like a literal war zone. [01:09:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:09:25] Speaker B: Like, I spent the entire book questioning this. Like, there's supposed to be people moving into the other high rise that's, like, across the street. How is nobody noticing this? [01:09:36] Speaker A: And I think, again, very literally, that is a problem. I think, again, the point is. [01:09:42] Speaker B: I know. [01:09:43] Speaker A: Yes. This is, uh. Yeah. You still participate. Yeah. You see these problems with society, yet you participated in it. Curious. Like. It is. You know, the idea is that they're. They're kind of blinding themselves to the issues. [01:09:55] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:09:56] Speaker A: Because they. They want to be part of this new cool thing like this, you know? So they're. They're ignoring the issues that are very glaringly obvious, that kind of thing. But, yeah, that bothered me from a. [01:10:07] Speaker B: Very reading throughout the book, though, than the idea that, like, people weren't leaving. Like, that was a gimme I was willing to buy into more for the sake of the story. [01:10:18] Speaker A: Right. [01:10:18] Speaker B: But, like, the people on the outside, I was like, what? Cheer deal? [01:10:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. And then my last one here, which I don't know if you'll be able to expand on at all. It was very simple. Was Toby is Jesus, question mark. Toby is Jesus, period. I think Toby is Jesus. [01:10:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess. [01:10:36] Speaker A: Okay. [01:10:37] Speaker B: I don't know. I'm not really sure what the movie is. [01:10:39] Speaker A: And he did mention he does not really in the book. [01:10:41] Speaker B: No, he's not. [01:10:42] Speaker A: I do think Toby is Jesus. I think this is another thing. Obviously, we find out he's the son of God Royal, who is literally the architect of this universe that we're in. And there's this very pointed, specific scene where kind of throughout. And actually it happens throughout where he watches the events that transpire through his little kaleidoscope from a distance. There's this scene where after something happens, Robert, like, leaves his apartment or whatever, and the camera pans up or tilts up, and Toby is, like, watching through a hole in the ceiling. And it's very clear and obvious symbolism of him kind of watching all of this go down. And then at the end, he is literally sitting in a giant throne. I think it's very clear that Toby is supposed to kind of be Jesus. It doesn't. But that being said, it doesn't really do anything. [01:11:32] Speaker B: Exactly. Well, I mean. And that was my issue with. With the whole thing. I understand your symbolism. I get your metaphor. [01:11:42] Speaker A: This is one of the big examples of it. [01:11:44] Speaker B: Get it? Why? For what purpose? What's the message? [01:11:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, what are we doing here? And it's like. Yeah, and it gets particularly interesting because in this instance, I guess the idea that. The idea here being that Toby is the one, but we don't see him really suffering. He seems fine. [01:12:02] Speaker B: No, he seems pretty fine. [01:12:03] Speaker A: He seems pretty chill. Yeah. But, like. Cause I could see the idea, you know, that, like, when all this is happening, that he is the one who suffers from the depravities of man or whatever, in the same way that Jesus had to, quote unquote, suffered for the sins of humanity and that sort of thing. So I could see the parallels. [01:12:23] Speaker B: Toby should have died and been resurrected or something, cleansed of the building of its sins. [01:12:28] Speaker A: Maybe that's too on the nose, but I don't know. It does feel a little bit like. It's like. I don't understand. Yeah, it just doesn't really feel like it's saying anything specifically interesting. I don't know. Yeah, I agree with you completely that it is one of those things where it's like, I think I get the symbolism you're going for here, but I also don't get why I see it. [01:12:49] Speaker B: But I don't understand why you're doing it. [01:12:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:12:51] Speaker B: And what's the point if I don't understand why you're doing it? [01:12:54] Speaker A: Yeah. And again, maybe somebody else will feel like they understood why they were doing it. I'm very interested, hopefully, that some people watch this, read this and have thoughts, some of our listeners, because I would love to hear some thoughts of somebody who felt like they really got it or something and, like, who really vibed with it. I'd be really interested to hear what you have to say about it. I don't know. I actually. I would actually be a little surprised if we got a lot of people coming to bat and being like, oh, I love it, because, like, oh, I get it. No, it's not. Again, not to do our own homework. We're pretty good at that, usually. And the fact that we feel so, like both of us felt so kind of, like, lost in the sauce on this one makes. Again, I'm not saying it's impossible that other people would have more profound or interesting thoughts on this, but it does. [01:13:44] Speaker B: Well. And that is the thing, though, that makes me feel like it's not just that this was too smart for us. I think that's part of it, yes. It's utilizing things that we are under educated on. [01:14:00] Speaker A: I do think that's part of it. [01:14:02] Speaker B: But it's exploring a lot of themes that we're usually pretty good at breaking down and talking about. So the fact that we're, like, floundering a little bit, I don't think it's just because it's too smart for us. [01:14:17] Speaker A: I would agree with that. I don't think that's the only thing. I also think it's a failing of the film, at least. Again, I didn't read the book, so I think it's also at least somewhat a failing of the film that it just doesn't get its point across or doesn't. Is sloppily kind of put together enough. Is put together sloppily enough that it just doesn't quite land in a way that kind of wraps up and makes sense and holds together. Again, it feels more like a piece. A puzzle where half to three quarters of the pieces kind of fit, and then there's a bunch of pieces left that I'm just kind of like, yeah, no, this looks like a piece that goes in this puzzle. Like, I get it, but, like, I don't know where it doesn't really fit right. [01:14:57] Speaker B: Or like, I'm putting the puzzle pieces together and all of them fit together, but then I don't know what the picture is. [01:15:03] Speaker A: When I'm done with the pistol, I'm. [01:15:05] Speaker B: Like, I finished, and I look at it and I'm like, what is it? [01:15:07] Speaker A: Wait a second. What? Yeah, exactly. All right, those are all of my questions. It's time now to find out what Katie thought was better in the book. [01:15:17] Speaker B: You like to read. Oh, yes, I love to read. What do you like to read? Everything. Oh, so the books has some commentary that I thought got lost in the film. I didn't feel like this was really present in the film, but there was some commentary on the deterioration of community and trying to substitute community with technology. I pulled two quotes from the book. The high rise was a huge machine designed to serve not the collective body of tenants, but the individual resident in isolation. The high rise took over the task of maintaining the social structure that supported them all. [01:16:01] Speaker A: Yeah, it's very obvious that's not subtle language. That's like, allusions to things or metaphors. That's just saying explicitly, like, what it's trying to state thematically. [01:16:13] Speaker B: Yes. [01:16:14] Speaker A: Which, again, I think is an interesting idea to discuss, because it is a problem in society and an ongoing problem in society. The way that we, and as particularly a problem with a certain segment of society that thinks that the solution to all of our problems is just more technology, different technology. Solving what I think are bigger problems with a lack of community, a lack of purpose, a lack of belonging, trying to somehow break those down into math problems that we can solve with inventions. I don't think necessarily, I like tech stuff as much as the next guy, but I don't know if that I'm sympathetic to the idea that that is not the. The, like, optimal way to construct and organize society, because ideally we're social creatures, and you can't just kind of. Yeah. You can't technology your way out of the base needs of humanity. [01:17:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:17:08] Speaker A: Which, again, is what the story is saying, which I think is. Yeah. [01:17:10] Speaker B: You can't really replace community with technology. [01:17:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:14] Speaker B: And the moral here is that it doesn't work. [01:17:17] Speaker A: Yeah. It destroys society, literally. [01:17:22] Speaker B: The book also had. I thought, and this is present in the movie, but I thought the book had more of it and did kind of a better job with it. In general commentary on the presence of children being a source of consternation within the building. Most of the families that have kids live on the lower floors. They're in the lower class. And the people from the higher floors don't want kids around and purposefully try to block them from using resources that are specifically meant for kids, like the school and the rooftop playground. Feels very relevant right now. [01:17:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:59] Speaker B: All of the stuff in the movie with Monroe and the brain tumor I mentioned was not in the book. And I'm counting this as better in the book because I didn't feel like the movie did much with it. [01:18:09] Speaker A: It felt like just kind of an odd way. I think all it ends up doing in the movie is it's another way to show us that Lange is being corrupted by the building and by this system. That he's a part of. And then giving that kind of combining two disparate plot points from the book of the guy who mysteriously falls off the building, combining that with something with Lang, like finding a way to combine that element to Lang's kind of character development and character or development, I guess, or not. [01:18:43] Speaker B: Devolvement. [01:18:44] Speaker A: Devolvement. Whatever. Yeah. I think it doesn't make no sense. But again, you're right in the sense that the movie doesn't really do a lot with it. He just kills himself. [01:18:52] Speaker B: Yeah. It just kind of happens. And we don't really ever go back to it or comment on it. I have felt similarly about the relationship between Lang and Toby, which did disappoint me because I was interested. Like, when the movie first introduced that idea of those two having a relationship and it being kind of a father son kind of thing, I was like, oh, I'm interested to see where the movie goes with this because we know where it ends up. [01:19:21] Speaker A: Right. [01:19:23] Speaker B: And again, I didn't really feel like the movie did much of anything with that. So I'm counting it as better in the book. [01:19:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:19:33] Speaker B: Wilder spends most of the book trying to climb to the top of the building and having to retreat like a crazed. And John McClane. And I was a little surprised that the movie didn't take more advantage of that plot line because it absolutely screams movie to me. [01:19:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Interesting. [01:19:53] Speaker B: There's also a bit in the book where he's trying to get in with the higher floors by offering to let them be in his documentary, which works really well with the people on the lower floors because they're super excited to be on tv in a movie. But then on the upper floors, nobody cares. Somebody specifically says to him, television is for watching, not appearing on. [01:20:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:20:18] Speaker B: And then my last little thing here, at one point, Wilder gets hit by somebody hit on the head with a television award statue, which I had to note because we have a couple television awards statues in our office. [01:20:36] Speaker A: Yes. [01:20:36] Speaker B: And I literally, just like one day last week, I picked one of them up and commented to one of my car co workers about how heavy it was and how we would use them as weapons if somebody broke it. [01:20:49] Speaker A: They're giant hunks of stone and metal. [01:20:51] Speaker B: Yeah. They're super heavy and they're kind of sharp. [01:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah. They're literally giant hunks of stone and metal. Basically. Like, it's. Yeah, absolutely. All right. That was everything that was better in the book. Let's go ahead and find out what Katie thought was better in the movie. My life has taught me one lesson, Hugo, and not the one I thought it would. Happy endings only happen in the movies. [01:21:17] Speaker B: I didn't really enjoy the scene where Lange is dissecting a severed head, just from an ick perspective, but I did think it was an interesting thematic addition. [01:21:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Literally cracking into the skull of humans and seeing what's inside. Yeah. Because the movie is dissecting humanity. Humanity. So, yeah. [01:21:43] Speaker B: We talked about the rooftop garden earlier, and I mentioned that I had another thought on that. I really liked that. I thought it was. It's very literal, if you know what it's a reference to. A reference to french aristocrats who had elaborate pastoral villages built so that they could play pretend at being poor. I didn't know that Marie Antoinette famously had an entire village constructed so that she could go and frolic and pretend she was a pastoral shepherdess and then go home and sleep in a palace. [01:22:21] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. But, yeah. Because I noticed a building. It has. I love that style of architecture. It's. What is that called? [01:22:28] Speaker B: Rococo? [01:22:29] Speaker A: Is that what the. Specifically, is that what that. There's a name for that type of building structure where it's like, the wood slats with the. [01:22:39] Speaker B: Oh, like the cottage kind of, like. [01:22:41] Speaker A: With, like, the white, you know. Yeah, yeah. [01:22:44] Speaker B: There's a name for it. I don't know what it is anyways. [01:22:46] Speaker A: But it's that kind of, like, where it's, like, brown wood boards and then there's, like, white, like, plaster or something between them, and it feels very like. Yeah, like Renaissance era. [01:22:55] Speaker B: Like, I know the name of that style of house. Tudor. [01:23:00] Speaker A: Is it Tudor? [01:23:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, that's Tudor style house. [01:23:03] Speaker A: It's like a Tudor style house up there, which I like that. [01:23:06] Speaker B: I love Tudor style houses. I would love to someday live in one. [01:23:09] Speaker A: One day. If enough of you subscribe on Patreon, we can eventually afford to buy a house. [01:23:17] Speaker B: There's a little line in the movie that I loved when the first time Lang is at the grocery store and he encounters the actress, like, shopping, and she has her dog in the cart, but he doesn't recognize her. And then he goes to talk. He's talking to the checkout girl, and the girl's like, oh, she's a very famous actress. She just got a new role. She's going to play a desperately sad actress who lives alone on an apartment block. [01:23:47] Speaker A: Yes. That was good. Speaking of that lady, that checkout thing, do you have any other notes about her? [01:23:54] Speaker B: No. [01:23:55] Speaker A: I loved the running gag in the book that he's buying that french translation book in the beginning. And he tries to speak French to her and she doesn't speak French. She's like, what are you talking about? [01:24:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:24:06] Speaker A: And then at the end, when they show up, she just speaks fluid French to the. Because she, like, grabbed the book. She took the book. He ended up not buying it. I can't remember, but. Or she got another one, but she ends up just learning French over the course of the movie. I thought that was really interesting and kind of funny. But. [01:24:23] Speaker B: Another line that I really liked was, I forget exactly when this occurs in the movie, but royal talking about his wife, Anne, and he says, we toy with each other, not sexually, of course. [01:24:36] Speaker A: That line, that was one of the lines I was thinking of when I was talking about their relationship earlier. And they're kind of running jabs they have with each other, but that one guy that we toy with each other, not sexually, of course. [01:24:46] Speaker B: It's the. Of course for me. Of course. Another line that I liked that I don't believe was in the book, one of the, I think it's Anne who says this, maybe when she's talking about how she doesn't want to pay her housekeeper. And she says, like all poor people, she's obsessed with money. [01:25:08] Speaker A: Yes. Incredible line. [01:25:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:25:11] Speaker A: I did almost write that down to ask you. And I actually just forgot because. Yeah, that's a fantastic line. [01:25:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Something from the book that I was glad that the movie dropped was that at the end of the story, Lang is living, he's living in his apartment, similar to what we see in the movie, but he's living there with his sister, who I mentioned earlier is alive in the book and also lives in the building and also some other woman. And it's implied that they all have a three. Some sexual relationship. Incest, baby sick. Yeah. [01:25:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:55] Speaker B: And then my last note here, the movie kept the violence against dogs, but. [01:26:01] Speaker A: It does keep it off screen. [01:26:02] Speaker B: It does keep it off screen. And it dropped the violence against cats altogether. Small miracles. [01:26:09] Speaker A: Yeah. I was worried because. Yeah, I knew there, you had said that there are some dogs that get killed. And I was worried over the course of the movie that we were gonna, like, see it more. And I was appreciative that the movie does not everything happens. I mean, it's alluded to. It's. And you see the aftermath sometimes, but not even in a gruesome way. Like, the most gruesome one is the leg on the spit. But it's so comical that it. [01:26:30] Speaker B: Right. And none of it really looks real. [01:26:33] Speaker A: Yeah. That's what I mean, like, the part with the dog's leg on the spit is like. Okay. It's like a comedy beat to where it's like. It doesn't. [01:26:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like a visual gag. [01:26:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Where it doesn't really come across as that. Like, you know, traumatizing or whatever. And, like, there's a moment where somebody attacks a dog and you hear it, like, yelp. But again, it's off camera. Honestly, the worst parts, when royal finds it and it's like, hold. It's like the. And then the dog doesn't seem like. And we know it's alive later. Cause that's the dog. [01:27:01] Speaker B: Right. [01:27:01] Speaker A: It's the dog that Robert eats. Eventually, I believe. But anyways, yeah. It wasn't as bad as I was anticipating, which was nice. All right, we're gonna go ahead and get into a list of things that Katie thought the movie nailed. [01:27:18] Speaker B: As I expected. Practically perfect in every way. All right, a little list of details and things that we have not talked about yet. The orthodontist, the first character that we see Lang interact with at the very beginning of the movie, is also a psychopath that mutilates corpses. [01:27:38] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. He's the guy that. He's, like, messing with the news guy's body or whatever. [01:27:44] Speaker B: The bottle of champagne from a higher up apartment that shatters on Lange's balcony. It doesn't come from Charlotte's apartment in the book, but that is kind of. It's what he thinks of as the inciting incident to everything is the bottle of. [01:27:57] Speaker A: And it kind of is in the movie as well. It's like right at the beginning when she knocks it off. And then that's how they, like, meet. [01:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah. All of the raucous parties. Charlotte has a line when, like, the first time she's hooking up with Lange. She says, I really only want to talk about myself, which is from the book. And Lange likes that because he doesn't really want to have, like, a deep relationship with anyone. Power outages starting on the lower floors. Wilder has affairs with women all over the building. A thing that royal says about his wife, Anne. She feels a constant need to reestablish herself. There is a kids party where the adults are encouraging them to throw things off of the balcony onto the cars. Conflict between families with kids and people without kids. Even more specifically than that. People with dogs, but no kids. [01:28:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:28:55] Speaker B: Somebody drowns a dog in the pool. Probably Wilder. I felt like the movie seemed to confirm that more than the book. [01:29:03] Speaker A: I don't know if I would say confirm. The movie suggests that it was Wilder, but we never see it. We see him floating in the pool and we see the dog in the pool, but they're not near each other. And then we cut later and the dog's dead. [01:29:15] Speaker B: We see there's a quick cutscene of somebody holding the dog underwater. [01:29:20] Speaker A: Oh, is there? Yeah, I missed that completely. I saw somebody push the dog into the floor. [01:29:24] Speaker B: Yeah. We see the dog get pushed into. [01:29:26] Speaker A: The floor and see somebody holding the dog under the. [01:29:27] Speaker B: And I felt like the. Cause there's a scene in the book, like, a little ways after the dog drowns where Wilder is thinking about drowning the dog. But it's not clear. Like, it's very ambiguous if he's, like, thinking about it because he actually did it or if he's fantasizing that he did it. [01:29:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:29:47] Speaker B: And I felt like maybe the movie confirmed that. Like, a wee bit more than that. [01:29:51] Speaker A: I would agree. I think there's also a line later in the movie where Lange says something to him about the dog, and it kind of confirms that he probably did it. But it's never, like, concrete, at least from my memory. It's never, like, super concretely confirmed, but it's very much the implication. [01:30:08] Speaker B: Wilder does start to. He decides to make a documentary about the building. Trash and junk and refuse are piling up everywhere. Some of the residents do attack Royal's dog. The scene where Charlotte comes into her apartment right before Wilder rapes her, specifically when he's in there screaming and grunting into a tape recorder. [01:30:33] Speaker A: That's from the book, literally devolving into the most caveman version of himself. [01:30:39] Speaker B: Absolutely. [01:30:39] Speaker A: And I do think there's an interesting litter, too. We hadn't really talked about the dogs, but obviously violence against the dogs and stuff sucks, but it's. It's also very clearly symbolic. I think it's. It seems very likely that. That JG Ballard sees the dogs as another representation of innocence as, like, the. Maybe not innocence necessarily, but like. Yeah, I guess innocence juxtaposed to humanity's cruelty or whatever. [01:31:06] Speaker B: Right. [01:31:06] Speaker A: Where the dogs are the victims of humanity's cruelty. And, like, because there's a shot in the movie of royal laying in bed and there's like, this is after the dog, his dog gets attacked. I think we see towards the end of the movie, he's laying in bed and there's, like, four dogs, like, laying on. He has a bunch of dogs. And I think it's him trying to surround himself with this innocence, this quote unquote version of spoilers. [01:31:36] Speaker B: I was going to mention this in a minute, but that actually also happens in the book. He collects all of the dogs in the building and the read that I got on it from the book, more so than, like, innocence is, like, loyalty. [01:31:51] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Interesting. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:31:56] Speaker B: The residents do, like, a lot of people start recording stuff, and then they, like, have screenings of their own violent home movies, which we see briefly in the film. We see them, like, watching, like, a whole movie on a projector. [01:32:10] Speaker A: Yeah. It's not violent in that sense. They're just watching somebody have sex, I think, but, yeah, but, yes, they are recording. [01:32:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There's a little moment close to the end when some of the upper floor people are gonna throw lang off the roof of the building, and they say. They call it flying school, and they're, like, putting paper wings on him. That's from the book. Although it does not happen to lang. It's like a random, nameless character. I mentioned royal collecting all of the dogs as well as the women and children. Also collects all of them. [01:32:43] Speaker A: Yeah. All of the innocence. [01:32:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And then the pool is full of corpses. [01:32:50] Speaker A: Yep. At the end. Yeah, yeah. There you go. All right. That was everything Katie thought. Was the movie nailed? We have a handful of odds and ends before we get to the final verdict. [01:33:10] Speaker B: I don't know why, but for some reason, I wasn't expecting the movie to still be set in the seventies. [01:33:15] Speaker A: I wasn't either, until I watched the trailer. [01:33:17] Speaker B: And then I was like, I thought it was gonna be, like, in 2015 for some reason. [01:33:21] Speaker A: Yeah. No, no. But on that note, I thought the set design in the movie was fantastic. Like, I really digged Doug the aesthetic, and I thought they did a really good job, which I think works for the purpose of the movie. Kind of thematically of making the building feel like a place you might kind of want to live, like. [01:33:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:33:39] Speaker A: Particularly because it has that very cool retro. It's not retro in the setting, but, like, for us, as a modern audience watching, it feels like a very, like. [01:33:47] Speaker B: Retro mid century, like, retro futurism that, like, is very common in mid century design. [01:33:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's just. Yeah. Lots of the elements of design are things that people these days, like, with design, their home, aesthetically, to look like. The building kind of looks like that, which I think makes it very inviting and makes it a more. The fact that everybody stays there and, like, is kind of lured into this system because it has this surface level aesthetic appeal, I think is an effective. I think the movie does really effectively. [01:34:21] Speaker B: Sienna Miller at the beginning of this. Not at the very beginning, but. [01:34:25] Speaker A: No, it's when her and Robert are having sex. [01:34:27] Speaker B: Yeah. When they're hooking up. She's wearing a black dress that is just barely keeping this movie pg 13 or whatever. [01:34:37] Speaker A: I've seen her boobs several times. This is an r rated movie. [01:34:40] Speaker B: I know it's an r rated movie. I mean, like that scene specifically. This is just barely. Just barely. [01:34:47] Speaker A: And it's not all the time. There are several moments in that scene where her boobs are just visible. Yes, but, yeah, it's. Yeah, but once she. When her kid shows up in particular. [01:34:58] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I always noticed that because as a person with breasts, it stresses me out. Like, I. It just stresses me out. [01:35:07] Speaker A: Yeah. No, that's fair. So I thought we talked a little bit about the secretary when he goes to his work. And it was, I was like, this lady looks so familiar to me that she's only in like a handful of scenes where she comes in and talks to him. But it's this older lady. And I was like, God, I know her from somewhere. And I was like. And it's so funny because she wasn't in the credits on Wikipedia, because I had the Wikipedia open so that I could kind of follow along in the plot synopsis here and there. But she wasn't in the listed credits on Wikipedia. So I went to IMDb and had to scroll like all the way to the bottom and I found her. And she's the actress who plays Marcia in the tv show spaced. If you've watched spaced, which is the Simon Pegg, Nick Frost Edgar Wright tv show. That is, if you've never watched it. If you like the Cornetto trilogy, Shaun of the Dead, hot fuzz, any of that. Highly recommend. Spaced. You'll see, like, oh, this is. It's the tv show they made before they did all that other stuff. And it's very clear that they were like figuring out their style and everything in that show. Very fun show. I don't remember exactly how well it holds up. Don't hold me to. There may be problematic elements. [01:36:09] Speaker B: We watched that years ago. I barely remember it, but from my. [01:36:13] Speaker A: Memory it's a lot of fun and I think it holds up fairly well. But she plays their landlord. She's like this eccentric middle aged lady who is the landlord of the building that they live in too. But it's that actress. [01:36:25] Speaker B: Anyways, I thought it was really fun that at the kids birthday party, Elizabeth Moss is wearing a rococo style peasant dress. Like she's trying to mimic the upper floor women, but she's still poor. She's doing the peasant version of what they're doing. [01:36:49] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I thought it was very subtle that there is a Shea Guevara poster on Helen and Richard's. [01:36:56] Speaker B: It was subtle. [01:36:58] Speaker A: Closet door. I don't know which of theirs it is. I would imagine it was Richard's poster, if I had to guess, because Helen doesn't seem to have particularly strong political feelings, at least in the movie that we see. She doesn't seem particularly enthusiastic about anything politically, whereas Richard has some pretty strong class grievances, shall we say. And so it would make sense that he would have a shag of a poster. But that cracked me up when I. [01:37:27] Speaker B: Saw that on the wall. It's about as subtle as the name Dick Wilder. [01:37:31] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. [01:37:33] Speaker B: I thought that the slow motion shots of Monroe falling off the building and landing off the car were really cool and interesting. [01:37:39] Speaker A: Yeah, no, it looks really good. It reminded me of some of the super slow mo shots in dread. Remember dread, where they. Where they use the slow mo? Because specifically in that there's a scene where they throw a guy off the roof while they. While he's on slow mo, and he falls in, like, super slow mo. And it was that kind of thing where it's, like, super slow motion. Like, super high speed slow mo. But, yeah, no, I thought it was. It was good, but it worked. And then I thought one is. So we talked, obviously, a lot about, like, thematically, what the movie's doing in the class, like, commentary and stuff like that. I will say one of the things that I think the movie does pretty effectively is show that it's the system that sucks and that everybody within it is miserable. And that it's not like the people on the upper floors are, like, living great, fulfilled lives. They're also miserable. They're just miserable in a different way than the people on the lower floors. Like, the lower floor people think they'd be happier if they lived on the higher floor. They want to move up to the higher floors. Cause they think it's better up there and the higher floor. But we realize very quickly that the higher floor people are just as miserable and living just as vacuous lives. Maybe not just as miserable. They're living just as, like, vacuous, pointless, awful lives as the lower floors, just in a different way. Like, yeah, you have a. You're making a face. [01:39:01] Speaker B: I mean, I agree with your assessment. I just don't really have any sympathy for. [01:39:10] Speaker A: I don't think you have to have sympathy. I think what it is, is understanding that the system is. I think there is a. A good and useful point to be had in understanding that the system makes life miserable for everybody, even if it affect. Even if it makes life more miserable for lower class people. Like, it's not. The system is bad for everyone, and that's why we should get rid of it. Not just because, I mean, obviously, if it was only just bad for some people, that would be bad, too. But it actually does. It does actually not serve anyone. It just does so in different ways that I think are more nuanced. And I think that's a useful thing to keep in mind. That doesn't mean you have to be, like, feel bad for billionaires. I. Like, obviously not. Like. I'm just like. I think it is meaningful in the same way that I think the patriarchy makes. Is bad for men as well. [01:40:08] Speaker B: Right. [01:40:09] Speaker A: Like, obviously the men benefin benefit from the patriarchy and are the reason the patriarchy exists, but it is also bad for men. The patriarchy is. So I think understanding that is part of a complete intersectional understanding of the way these systems affect people and stuff. And so I think it's. Again, that's not to say you should have sympathy for billionaires at all. It's to say that. Recognize that the system sucks for everybody. It's just that for some people, it sucks a lot more. And for other people, it sucks in a very different way that they don't even realize, because, again, the people on the top floor don't realize the system sucks. They think it's great, and they want to keep it that way because they seem like they're have. They feel like they're having a good time, but their life also sucks in as many meaningless and bad. This is different. [01:40:58] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I agree. [01:41:00] Speaker A: Anyways, I mentioned the thing. I think there's a much longer version of this movie that I just. I feel like the studio probably forced them to cut it down, and, I don't know, it just felt like there were a lot of cuts, maybe there weren't, but to me, it felt like there was, like a three to three and a half hour version of this movie that would probably work a little bit better. I don't know if it would work a lot better. [01:41:18] Speaker B: I don't know if it would work. [01:41:20] Speaker A: Yeah, but I think it might work a little bit better. But, yeah, that was one of my. [01:41:24] Speaker B: I mean, definitely there are places where we could, like, flesh out plot threads and provide a little bit more, like. [01:41:30] Speaker A: Connective a little bit more of the. [01:41:31] Speaker B: Connections that I think would help this movie. [01:41:35] Speaker A: I don't know if it would make it great or anything, but it would help. [01:41:38] Speaker B: I agree. [01:41:39] Speaker A: If I were to, like, if gun to my head, give this movie a rating, I'd give it like a five or something. And I think maybe a slightly longer, like, director's cut of this might bring it to like a six or a seven. I'm not saying it would make it like a master. [01:41:52] Speaker B: I think this is like a solid c. Yeah, for me. [01:41:56] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like, I would even maybe go a little lower than that, but yeah, it's like a c, c minus, d, something like that. And I think. [01:42:02] Speaker B: I think there's a lot of interesting things. I think that the set design is great. The look of it is great. There's a lot of interesting, like, performances are all great. Performances are great. There's interesting, like, camera work and things going on. [01:42:13] Speaker A: It's a very technically well done movie. It's just. [01:42:16] Speaker B: But I would be hard pressed to show this movie to pretty much anyone. [01:42:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah. And just to get back on a little bit, I was. We had this joke or talking about this the other day in the prequel, we mentioned, I had mentioned that on, on Google reviews, the movie had almost entirely five star and one star ratings. And then on IMDb, it had a much more normal, like some tens, a few more nines, more eights, more sevens, mostly sixes and then five and then like, like a, like a bell curve, basically. Like with six being the peak or whatever. And I thought it was funny because I was thinking I was going to agree more with the Google reviews and like, be like, oh, this is a five star movie and all the one star people just like, didn't get it. But I completely agree more with the IMDb reviews that, like, yeah, no, this is like a mediocre movie. Like, it's not, it's not like some brilliant masterpiece that most people didn't understand. I don't think. I think it's mostly just kind of a mess. [01:43:22] Speaker B: And the other thing to me, too, about, like, all of the one star reviews is that like, yeah, that's probably a lot of people who didn't get it, but I don't think that's their fault. [01:43:32] Speaker A: No, I agree completely. Whereas that's the thing. It's like, with something, like. Cause another movie I mention a lot, but it made an impact on me. I'm thinking of ending things. That movie has a lot of one star ratings on, like, IMDb. And Google reviews and stuff. But I think that is mostly from. I don't want to say mostly from people who didn't get it, but I would argue that that's probably more so from people who didn't get the movie. Whereas this one feels to me more like it's people. Like, if you didn't get it or didn't get the movie. And I think that's kind of on them. Cause I think the, like with. I think I'm thinking of anything. I think that movie totally, like, works completely. Like, I think it tracks. It makes sense. It's weird and confusing and esoteric, but I think it, like, works and makes sense. Whereas this movie, I don't think does. And I think you're right that it's people who gave it, like, one star because, like, what the fuck? I mean, yeah, that made no sense. [01:44:23] Speaker B: I'm like, yeah, I cannot hold you accountable. [01:44:26] Speaker A: I can't argue with you. Yeah, I can't. I can argue with somebody if they come to me and go, I'm thinking of anything doesn't make any sense. I go, here, let me tell you. Let me take you on this journey of why I think this movie is brilliant. They come to me with this movie and they're like, I think this movie doesn't make sense. I'm like, yeah. Like, you're sure? Yeah, you're not really wrong. All right, before we wrap up, we wanted to remind you you can just giant favor by hanging over to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, goodreads threads, any of those places. Give us a, like a follow, a subscribe, whatever you need to do. So you see our posts. We would love to hear what you have to say about high rise. Maybe we didn't get it. Maybe we're really dumb. Tell us how dumb we are in the, in the comments about how we messed. How we messed it up and missed the point of this movie so, so crazily that it's. You can't. You're just angrily typing already. I want. I want those comments. We'll see. But also, if you want to help us out, you can head over to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever, YouTube, wherever you listen to our show, drop us a little five star rating, write us a nice review. We would appreciate that. And like I said, also you can now follow us and listen to us on YouTube. Make if YouTube is your preferred podcast platform, for whatever reason, we are on there. Every episode gets uploaded, the whole back catalogs on there. And listen to us on YouTube. Just make sure you subscribe. If you're going to do that. Finally, if you want to support us even more, you can support [email protected]. Thisfilmislit. You can get us a few bucks a month, $2. You get access to early access and all that kind of stuff, $5. You get bonus content. Every month we put out a bonus episode. We did two right back to back to get ahead of things. To get ahead. We were behind schedule, and then we got ahead of schedule. So we had two episode bonus episodes within, like, a week of each other other. But we just did. What was the one before the previous one? [01:46:07] Speaker B: Singing in the rain. [01:46:08] Speaker A: Singing in the rain. We did singing in the rain for March, and then we did Alice in Wonderland, 1951, the Disney version for April, which was the runner up in our March madness bracket, if you want to hear our thoughts on that. And finally, at the $15 a month level on Patreon, you get access to priority recommendations. If you have something you'd really like for us to talk about, you support us for $15 a month, you send in that recommendation, and we will do it, even if eventually you have to leave, which is what happened in this instance. [01:46:35] Speaker B: Yeah. This was a request from Jeff Niederhofer, who is a longtime patron, and that's part of the reason that we were willing to go ahead and do this one that he still had on the docket. [01:46:48] Speaker A: Yes, he is patron for a dollar 15. Patron for quite a long time and just dropped off not. Not too long ago, and we wanted to honor that continuum. So. Yeah. All right, Katie, it's time for the final verdict. [01:47:03] Speaker B: Sentence fast. Verdict after. That's stupid. Okay, so obviously, this is a book with a lot to say. I didn't even touch on a fraction of what this book could potentially be saying, with its myriad themes, metaphors, and motifs. And part of the reason for that is that I don't feel entirely confident in my assessment and understanding of those things. Now, you mentioned earlier that you felt like the movie was too smart for you. We talked about that. But for the movie specifically, I don't think that's necessarily the case, or at least not all of it. I think the movie is just kind of a mess. It seems clear to me that either the writers struggled with adapting the source material or the original version got hacked to bits in the edit, or a little of both. [01:47:56] Speaker A: I'm inclined to think both. [01:47:57] Speaker B: Personally, for the book's part, I think it's definitely utilizing concepts that I am under educated on, causing some of the commentary to be lost on me. But I also don't think that's the full picture. This book was published in 1975, during a time of tremendous social change and upheaval, and almost a decade and a half before I was born. I could be better educated about social issues in the seventies, for sure, but I think there's also a nuance to that that I'd probably never be able to fully parse. And I think that blocked me from understanding at least some of what was going on here. As I said, this is obviously a book with a lot to say. I don't know what all of it was, and I don't think the movie did either. I think the movie choked on the sheer volume of what this book had to say. I didn't particularly enjoy the book, and I can promise that I'll never revisit it. But in laying out the book and the movie side by side, it's pretty clear that one of them is better crafted than the other. And for that reason, I'm giving this one to the book. [01:49:06] Speaker A: All right, Katie, what's next? [01:49:10] Speaker B: Up next, we are talking about Big Fish, a novel by Daniel Wallace and the 2003 film. [01:49:20] Speaker A: This is gonna be interesting. This is a movie I've always heard about. I've not seen big Fish, and we'll talk about this more in the prequel. But it's a movie I've always heard about, and people talk about and about how emotionally affecting it is for some people. And so I'm very excited to eventually get to it or to watch it. [01:49:36] Speaker B: I have not seen it since it was, like, in theaters, and I remember liking it, but it also was, like, emotionally affected me for very personal reasons, which I'll talk about in the prequel. [01:49:51] Speaker A: There you go. So that's a fun tease. Come back in one week's time. We're previewing big fish and seeing what you all lovely people had to say about high rise. Until that time, guys, gals on binary panels, and everybody else, keep reading books, keep watching movies, and keep being awesome.