Iceman (2017) — "Pitamei, Pitamos."

Weird way. All right, Finally, hello everyone, and welcome to the Culture Cast. I'm your host, Chris Dashu, and I'm joined by my two good friends all the way from the world of academia. He's your friend of mine, doctor David Pearl Mutter from Texas Tech University. Thank you.

Hello again, it's Chris and all the. Way from the West Coast. He's the coastal elite of your dreams, your friend and mine, the host of Richard Hadam's paranormal Bookshelf Richard had him. Well, here's the part where I usually quote a line from the movie. But I don't know what the hell these people are talking about.

I don't speak ration folk. On this episode of the Culture Cast, we are talking about a film that has no discernible well, it has dialogue, but not dialogue that you would understand because there's no translation for the dialogue. We're talking about twenty seventeen's Iceman. So the film is directed and written by Felix rand Now it stars Jurgen Vogel as the titular Iceman. No, not Richard Kuklinski.

We're talking about Otzi the Mummy, found in the early nineties in the Oatzel Alps, which I believe is in Switzerland or I guess it's the Austria Italy Italian border more specifically. And he is the oldest known European mummy, and this film is the story, the fictionalized story of his life. I don't know how true or real it is, because again they're making suppositions and ideas based off of a corpse and the damage to the corpse that has been found in the years since he was found. So it is a revenge film set against the backdrop of the Neolithic period in Europe. And we follow Oatsy as he well, I guess he's not called Oatsie in the film.

He's key Lab And so he is getting revenge on other Neolithic clans who have come in and taken a religious artifact from his clan, killed his wife and family, and his only surviving part of his clan anymore is a is a young baby, which he has now taken Cub. I guess what is that the Japanese film with Lion and Cub I think is what it's called. I'm probably misquoting it, but it's a wolf and cub excuse me, and it's you know, it's a similar story where we have an older man with a baby on his back looking for for the people that killed his clan, and it's a revenge story across the Alps. I don't know what else to say because there's no dialogue. It's Richard.

I'm gonna ask you first, because doctor Perlmutter picked the film. What did you think of Iceman from twenty seventeen? I keep in my mind, I keep calling it ice wish. It really is a revenge story, you know, Okay, there is a lot to say. I have a lot of feelings, but and I don't I don't want to just vomit out all of it.

I, you know, would like it to be part of an intelligent conversation because David told me he's a professor, and you know, kids are gonna be listening. I don't want to go. I gotta make it look like I got thought in my head. So I'll start slow and say that the conceit of the artistic conceit of the movie is not new. In my day was called Quest for Fire.

But it is interesting. It is a obviously one hundred percent imagined story about an incident that you know, or a series of incidents that may have occurred over five thousand years ago. And part of the gimmick is that this is a story that we will consume visually. Now. I had the displeasure of going to USC film school where an academic gun was placed to my head and I was told to make five short films no sink sound, meaning a story must be told visually.

So that is one of the That is one of the things this movie is hanging it's hat on, if you will. It's its ability or not to tell a compelling story completely visually, which which means we're leaning hard on visual storytelling. Did it do that? Okay? And in what way?

I'm gonna say that I was not blown away by this movie. I was not blown away by its ability to live up to the artistic standard it's set for itself. And I was not blown away by the story I decided to tell. And we can get into details. Later, Doctor Pearl Mutter, I pose the same question to you, sir.

I'm approaching this movie with a couple of questions, and I think it answered them more successfully that I think Richard is describing for him. Partly, I was fascinated by the original story we just quickly, a corpse was found in the Alps, and I think it was finally determined that it was in the border of Austria. And literally this is like the most famous celebrity in the history of Austria. This is sort of cult of Atsei in Austria today because he's considered like the first Austrian. I was born about one hundred and fifty two hundred miles away from where this is.

And we're going to talk a little bit about later about the idea of mountains and verticality in Central European culture. So part of it is the cultural lens watching this, and then the historical lens. So this body was found, and at first the people had found it, and then the police thought, oh, this is like a recently dead climber who was lost or something, or even a crime like they was talking about like this is a true crime case. It is a true crime praise, as we'll talk about at the moment, and it is a fascinating to crime prase. We actually know quite a lot about this person.

In fact, we know more about this person than any human being who ever lived. Until you start getting into you said, mummy, I mean, this was not a purposeful burial. But this is like somebody who was frozen in the ice. I mean, a lot out of a science fiction story. And I guess closing what a natural mummy as opposed.

To yeah, a natural mummy, yeah. Processional mummy. Let me just have a couple of details here because I think it sets the for what the movie had to work with, right, Because first we've got this missed right, Like they discovered he's fifty three hundred years old and incredibly well preserved. His clothing, most of it is well preserved, and I'm going to talk about that a second. His toolkit.

Now, this era is often called sort of a liminal or like between era, because you have the very beginnings in Mesopotamia of like agricultural civilization. You definitely have elsewhere agriculture. The people in this area were sort of in between hunting and gathering in agriculture. And it's really important to know these are not some savages out of a nineteen thirties movie. I just want to give you just this a quick list.

Okay, on him was found a bear skin cap, a hide coat, what was probably a cape, goat leggings, sheep woincloth, calfskin, built pouch tools, a copper axe, shoes. He had a half finished bow, which is an interesting murder true crime clue because he probably had a real another one that he'd lost and he was desperately trying to create a new one. And then he had a deer hide, quiver, lint, dagger, birch bar containers, a backpack frame that's really interesting. You didn't think back people back then had frames for their backpack like modern backpackers today. He had a stone disc which was probably part of the belt.

He had medicinal herbs which have been shown as like they actually help in like reducing pain and things like that. He had tinder in his belt pouch. He had a full like stones and things for like a different other things. The point was that like this guy had like all I think was about sixty separate items, all of which were made at a very high level of crafts personship, right, So you think he was part of a community. He didn't make them all by itself.

So we've got this clues that he was living in a village, he was integrated into a community. This is a community of people who were fantastically skilled at what they do, and he at first they thought, well, he just wandered up there and he died. But the ubo thing like he was constructing on that's interesting. And then an arrowhead, an arrowhead is found in his shoulder that severed an artery that probably he'd probably died of bleeding out. I mean, this is the forensic files, you know, fifty three hundred years BC.

And then now there's been some discussion over the years. One of the early reports said that he had the blood of four other people on him. That's sort of been debated. I don't think that's for certain, but he was murdered. Somebody killed him for some reason.

So I just wanted to set up that this is like the great historical mystery in Central Europe. Like you can stop somebody on the street in Austria and the tyroleum northern part of Italy and Switzerland and like, oh it's see, oh yeah, you know, here's my theory of us. So it is sort of like a famous case in the United States, like you know, John Benet Ramsey or mor Murray or something like that that somebody has done a movie on. It's that level of interest and excitement. And I think, you know, to your point and I think also to Richard's point, I think for me it gets it gets to what makes this story interesting because to concoct a narrative age and again this, I would say, Richard, you probably agree to concoct a narrative around this because this is I mean again, there is a murder at the center of this.

But I don't know any more than anybody else if this is how it happened or to what extent. And I almost feel like, yes, I appreciate the artistic integrity one is holding oneself to by saying we're going to do it in this language. It's going to be based in the reality of the language. We're going to have the quest for fire style, removal of dialogue. So it's just the story being told in very broad strokes, because when you have a story like this without dialogue, that's how you have to tell it.

And that's the only kinds of stories you could really tell. If you are trying to tell a dialogue heavy story without dialogue, you can't. It's well, yes, it hard. This has to be done in broad strokes, and it just has to be well. I wish it had been done in broader strokes.

When first you established they have language, but now, because of the conceit that you've placed upon yourself, it makes no sense to have them use that language, when in fact, if they have language, they would be using it far more than what we saw. There are long stretches of people sitting in silence with each other, which would no more happen with them than it would happen with us. Because they're not going to subtitle it. They don't want to alienate the audience. And suddenly the trick is revealed and the artifice of the conceit is revealed.

If you don't want to have dialogue, that's fine, But I would say, why not strive for displaying a far greater range of human interaction than what we get. How many smiles did you count in this movie? Was their laughter? It implies them that not only were these people basically savages. And you know, if we saw a movie today that followed the exact same storyline, we would go this is the lowest form of what we are as human beings, just murdering for the sake of the last murder, which begets the next murder.

I would have been fascinated to see how they were able to convey and illustrate far more subtle and complex human emotions, which I think you can do and reveal more about an ancient civilization than what we would have justice. I watched this movie and I feel like, yep, they are a bunch of murdering jerks, and I'm not sure beyond the fact that they had religion, I don't know how much more I was getting. I really would have loved to come away from this feeling that I knew a range of characters and was and was also able to discern their characters in opposition to each other in particularly in particularized way, the way you do when you watch a movie, rather than dust, well there is a woman, okay, when she got attacked.

There's a child, and well he got murdered. There's some guys that are killing each other. That seemed to be what I was getting from the movie, and that's that's a perfectly legitimate way to tell a story about a society in the past. Feels like a lost opportunity. And I actually, I you know, that's the thing to doctor Pearlmutter's point, like this is such a big case and such a point of importance, I think, especially for understanding that society and having a better understanding of that world.

And you know, Richard, I know you have your own podcast where you talk about you know, parapsychology and paranormal history and stuff like that. Like these cases are important. These things are important because we don't get the opportunity, like with what doctor pearl Mutter said, to have all these things on one person at once. Most of the time something like this is like we find this thing in the ground, or we find this here, but we're not finding all these things on one person to paint a better broader picture of who they are. And the movie almost rejects all of that, which is unfortunate.

Well, well, what's funny is that is that the background of the case apparently is known to a particular geographical area. And I think a large part of the audience for this movie came in with a lot more information that I came in with, and and may have picked up on things based on a general knowledge of the case and hearing about it in the local media that they were able to They were able to glean a lot more. You know, there were more easter eggs for them that were paying off than there were for me. But but hey, you know, it's twenty seventeen. Everyone's got access to see this movie, and and you're you're telling a story for a broad audience, and if they wanted you know, again, you you're you're setting up the game board yourself.

So if the game board is, here's what we found, and so our story is now based on these items, sort of an Apollo thirteen. You know, here's what's on the table. Let's see if we can put it together into a narrative, which again may be exactly what they're doing, and for a particularized audience, they may be scoring big. But for me, coming to a blind I didn't have any of that, and so I'm just watching what they're giving me. Richard, You've raised a really interesting point which I'd love to have you talk to one of my classes about.

Is that I watch movies for many different reasons, but I certainly enjoy reading and watching cultural content sometimes to take me somewhere where I've never been. I probably am not going to go and learn about the lives of people that I can't experience directly, right, So, like I appreciate watching there's a wonderful Indian television series called Puanchayat which is set in an Indian village, a small village, and it's the politics and the personalities and the loves and you know, the revenge fantasies of these people in this Indian village. And it's fascinating story to me because on the one hand, like they'll they'll speak in I believe it is Hindi, the language there, but they'll have a lot of englishisms and they'll talk about somebody studying for their MBA.

I mean, obviously it's an international context as well as a local context. But I appreciate that they didn't overly translate everything because they were nervous that Americans were watching and had to explain that. They didn't ever stop and say, well, for our American viewers, let me just explain why I'm drinking from a gorge here, you know, in India, you know, I mean, and I know that's not what you're saying, but I guess I'm more willing for it to be to lose some of the understanding in sacrifice to the cultural specific that that makes me see another culture. And I just want to add one other example and then I'll I'll stop being a professor and going off on tangents. But so I did grow up not far from there, and we recently went through the Winter Olympics.

And you may have noticed that besides the us A, that most of the people who do well in the Winter Olympics are winter countries, right like Norway does well. Switzerland. It's I mean, this is this is the big thing for Switzerland every four years, just is to participate and win in the Winter Olympics. There's not a lot the Swiss you know, American football team or soccer team does not typically win the FIFA Cup or something like like that. So the winter sports are the pride of Switzerland.

And like a lot of kids, I was ski taught to ski by by taught the ski by the way meant your parents gave you to a guy who was actually ninety nine percent at the time. It was somebody who had been on the Swiss Olympic team. That's what they did after they retired, right, And this guy had actually been on the Swiss Olympic team, and his method of teaching children to ski was take them to the top of what I thought was a mountain. I mean they thought it was a hill, but I thought it was a mountain, and said, okay, get to the bottom. I will meet you there.

And what's funny is i've met I mean, I still have in contact with Austrian, South German, Swiss, French Alp friends, and they said, that's still the way they teach kids the ski and there is no bunny slope. There's only the slope with the black flag and the skull and cross bones for children there. So but this comes from and Richard, We're going to get all filmed schoolly here. So I'm sorry to to you know if you have any bad memories of that. But like you know, one of the contestinal American things in the world of film is the western right, Like that's when people think of like American film, what is an American film?

Oh, Western and maybe twenties gangster movies, but the western right, well in Europe, for us it was the mountain film. In fact, that's a that's a genre of film, the mountain film. Whereas Americans thought about conquering horizontally, like you know, we will conquer the West and go brave dangers in the West and that proves our manhood. I swear to you that. And again I've talked to people just recently that I have to that's still part of the idea of the mountain must be conquered, because the mountains in your backyard, right, but it's still twenty thousand feet ten thousand feet.

It's dangerous and uh, I mean there's even today for example, you know the Edelweis flower, a beautiful little flower. It only grows at a certain point at the height of the tree line, right, And like it is still a tradition. You want to get married, did you climb together edelvice to give to your beloved to prove you're a man? Right? I trust me.

At this point I've been told, like people at twenty three that this is still a thing. Okay, so the conquest of a mountain was the big deal, right, as in like going west and like making it to California, and the wagon train was for there. So again there is that, and you're absolutely right. Maybe it should have been stated somehow. I personally like this, a word I don't often use, like like or dislike that.

I think I appreciated this film and I felt it was more successful and it could very well be because these twin cultural lenses of the history and then the culture that I was part of when I was a youth, it seemed to resonate more with me, and maybe it didn't succeed and that third part of making that accessible and interesting to people who are outside of that culture. So maybe we're both right. I hope. Well, it is funny, you know, it does bring me back a film school, and there were so many films, and that was probably one of the most ontologically challenging aspects of film school, was was getting out of the notion of film as entertainment because we had to watch movies from other cultures and in other styles where it took a two hour lecture.

It's like, I can't just show you this movie. That'd be like again, that'd be like, you know, taking to the top of the mountain and saying, I'll meet you at the bottom. I'm gonna have to explain to you how the Japanese thought about visual storytelling and what their culture was and what Kasawa was thinking. And we had to pack a bag to go on that journey, and even then we felt stranded half the time, but at least we had it, and I did become very grateful for those lectures preparing me for Rooda was about to see, because then by the end of the semester, I was like wow. And of course that was my experience in college, both in literature and in film, was really learning how to meet that artist more than halfway, and really bringing so much of myself to artistic encounter.

And I'm sure if I had studied art history, it would have been the same with a painting that was forty years ago. And I've spent the last forty years toiling in this other area, which is not being the recipient but rather in America, being being the provider and and the the the the sort of responsibility that I feel about how it is I'm going to engage my audience and the first thing and and and so and and unfortunately, and it's so great that that we're sort of coming out of from these two separate angles, because I'm looking at it going what would my responsibility be if I was making this movie? And I and I and again, I sort of get back to that that point of if I'm going to take you to a culture I know you're very unfamiliar with, then the first thing I want to do is is see in how many different ways I can catch you catching yourself going, oh, my god, they're just like us.

I was expecting to really be at sea, and five minutes in, that's my uncle, that's my grandma, that's my brother, that's my wife. Human beings are human beings, ah, which I think is probably a lot of what gets you through that Indian show, because I think that's always it's like, you go, you see Shakespeare, and the most the most gratifying performances are the ones that make you go, hey, I know I must be smarter than I thought. I get Shakespeare because I got every single minute of that three and a half hour play. But that's because the actors and the director and the props and costume and set design were all designed to make you go. You think you you think you're gonna be bored.

You think this has nothing to do with you, but it does. Shakespeare is We're gonna show you tonight. People are people are people. The people that I saw in this movie, I wanted to engage with more, and I want and I wanted to feel more like, oh fuck, that's me up there, and I would do the same damn thing. And I don't know if I felt that way, and I'm not sure from any character's point of view, because there certainly was not a character going no, no, do not pick up the cudgel against your neighbor.

It's like theodoric of Ror. Wait a second, what if we don't kill each other all the time? Nah? And that, I think for me is the thing that's a little unfair about the movie. Is that to your point, Richard, and well to both of your points, I give myself over to a movie willingly pretty much every time I watch it because I feel like that's what the filmmaker would prefer.

And as I've as I've gotten older, I choose to view things up ahead of time about the movie less and less because I'd like to actually just go into it completely, you know, a la prima just blind, And so I wanted this to be more than just a and I'm again it's not an issue that it's a revenge. It's just I wanted it to be more than that. In a way because to your point, Richard, I do actually have an interest in this time in history, and as someone who enjoys history and cultural culture, and especially like cultural history or anthropological history, I would have preferred to have more of a understanding doesn't need dialogue of the world and see the world kind of work for a minute before all of a sudden we have people being you know, raped and murdered.

I mean it's pretty graphic stuff too, you know, that's the and you know, I appreciate that in a way because I think the director has made the choice to not stray away or look away from the violence. And I mean the violence of people being hit upside the head with rocks on sticks is not pleasant. It's rather grotesque. It just looks painful, and that's part of it. I'm like, oh god, they're outdoors and everything's dirty, eating each other.

To death with rocks, Like you know, his wife just gets like stabbed in the chest with a giant stick, essentially, Like it's it's pretty grotesque stuff. What I would give for a well appointed hotel lobby with a bar right it up? Now, you know, Like that's the thing if if I want to be transported to this world, and again I'm not not aware that this world is not one that if I could, you know, if you could live in any time other than this one, this would not be at the top of my list. This would be this would be like avoid with all avoid, with all choices, anything but this because it's not somewhere that I would have any interest in participating in the daily life of going and pooping in a bucket effectively and covering it up, you know, a dirt bucket and covering it up with my own hands.

Like I don't like camping that much, so I don't want to live in that world permanently. But again, like there there are time and places where I would go back to and live, this is just not one of them. So I kind of wish there was more of that table setting because they kind of just start mashing the action figures together very quickly, and for me, you kind of lose what I was hoping for, which was to better understand the world that Oatsie lives in and understand why these things are happening, because to Richard's point and to your point, Doctor pearl Mutter, this is not a world of savages, but they're really portraying it like one, and I think that kind of takes the piss out of the movie because they're not savages, and they're really not giving them the opportunity to show us that.

They're pretty much cutting them off with the kneecaps immediately. Okay, well, let's let's talk about that for a second, because I want to understand this. Much of the what we're okay, what we're not seeing is a village attack another village and take the women. You know, yeah, take take. Here a second.

Richard. I'm sorry to tuirup to you, but just on the point of Chris may and both of you made yeah, I would rank the unsuccessful part of this film related back to the reason why I brought up this incredible richness of the material goods that were found with Putsi right, like greater than technically than like King tuts Too. You know, this is the King tuts Too of the Neolithic. I mean there have been burials with like a horse and like golden armor and things like that, but the stuff that was found suggested this incredibly civilized, rich material culture. And yeah, absolutely, and this is something I'd love to get to.

The film didn't take its time at the very beginning. If I were the interfering studio head, my notes would be, let's get to know these people, let's understand them a little bit. You can take ten minutes, you can take five minutes and show somebody making an axe and somebody making you know, their cape or something like that. Let's understand that these are not just people wandering around naked and dirty killing each other all day long, because I I feel like there was a missing prelude to the exponential violence, right and the revenge fantasy. And I want to just reference one of my favorite film texts, which I don't know whether it was ever offered in film school.

I certainly recommended to my students, Chuck Jones. Chuck Jones, the master of the Loony Tunes Mary Warner Brothers cartoons, right, was one of the great directors and producers and writers of the artists of those cartoons. I owe. I owe a lot to him. He wrote a beautiful autobiography, artistic autobiography called Chuck a Muck about his creative process and there and he makes this really great point about how, you know, they were so limited, like they had to be exactly six minutes long, and there were seven thousand topics they couldn't cover, but that helped the art, you know, to be so limited.

But he makes this other point, which I've always shared with my students. He said, bugs Bunny is the American hero. He's just sitting there in his hole being minding his own business when somebody comes along, a hunter. Somebody comes along and pokes him or tries to take his home, or tries to kill him, and so bugs Bunny looks at that person and says, of course, you realize this means war. And then bugs Bunny gets revenge.

But he said that was the American story, and they repeated it over and over again. And that was Pearl Harbor, the idea that we were sitting there minding our own business when an enemy comes and provokes us, and okay, we're going to teach you, right, And so I thought it interesting that this Central European movie did use that. But there was one implication of culture there. These people are not portrayed as like warriors preparing for war. They don't sit around, you know, shaking their spears up and down, like some nineteen thirties movie you know about Africa South America.

But there should have been more establishing their culture and learning more about them. And I do feel that that was saying it would have helped somewhat place these people in time and space. Please go ahead, it. It would have. I was gonna say when it was revealed that the object of this massacre was a sacred object or an object of symbolic value.

You know, it wasn't something that we immediately understood as well, of course that's a weapon, or that's money, or that's you know, a skin that can be used because winter is coming. It is a thing used in a religious ceremony. So that that was interesting and that implied a you know, a particular kind of culture. But people can't see this, but Richard just held up the sacred object, the sacred object. Yes, sacred gods before.

Yeah, they peer, they peer into our they peer into our spaces from lower places, but they are the gods amongst they walk amongst us. To me, the uh. Again, the unfortunate thing was was was to not reveal little little bits of recognizable humanity in in in the vast number of characters that we see that go beyond the more basic sort of like you know, I see you, there's a threat? Is there a threat? Is there not?

A threat? Friend? Foe? That that to me would have given would have given everything that happens in the movie more immediate weight. It would have drawn me in as a human being, because again, it would have been that moment of me going oh before walking into the theater, I would have expected.

I was just going to see a lot of monosyllabic savages, you know, going about rather basic functions. We must eat, we must have sex, we must give birth, we must bury our dead. But and then we must get revenge when the important thing is stolen, and and and I and I found that again. I found that disappointing because I was not I was. My prejudices were reaffirmed.

People in the past weren't as human as we are now. There was no humor, there was no complexity of emotion. Uh, there was just you know, Kronk and Donk, almost like in a cartoon strip, holding clubs and bashing each other over the head. And it felt like it did a disservice to me. And the characters in the film.

Confused unga bunga noises being made, I mean, it's you know, it is it is. Doctor Pearlmutter sent me that meme. Uh, you know, confused oga bunga like it's it is. That's it's unfortunate because there's so much more to this than than than that, and there's so much more going on here, and there is a you know, it's almost in a way also like trying to be a Western because and you know, I mean again, it has Franco Niro in it. Who you know, I mean again, When I think of Westerns, especially Westerns have a certain variety from a certain country cough cough Italy cough cough, I think of Franco Nero, And so I know that the Pills are trying to be a Western, and I don't.

I mean, I get that that's the revenge part of it, but I guess this is such a This is such a more interesting, complex story that could have been told here, and I feel like they just wanted it so badly. They forced the story of the Iceman into this as opposed to the other way around. It is. It is filmed in a beautiful setting, but that's not the same thing as visual storytelling. And they have a lot at their disposal, and I've you know, I may not be the brightest bulb, but I had trouble distinguishing characters from each other.

That's casting, that's costume, that's makeup, that's hair. I had trouble even locking in on the main character visually. I think you can watch Kursaw was run with the sound off, and because of composition understand when a scene is one of conflict or not. I think you can watch Raiders Lost Arc with the sound off and have a and be able to follow the story simply because of visual construction. I'm not sure I saw a lot of that.

I saw action being covered, but I'm not sure I saw it being covered in a way where the actual composition within the frame was helping me understand another level of complexity or or just illuminating what was actually happening there. I think they were. They were depending on the beauty of the background to to to bowl us over, and the beauty of the background did bowl me over. But I think there was a way for me as a viewer. And again because we're coming at something that is it's axually a silent movie.

I mean, you can watch mernow and and get more of a story and more emotionally involved. And I I mean again, I don't want to keep comparing it to Death Wish, but it was kind of it was kind of Death Wish when when the dust settles. Yeah, there's two points here. One is both of you have said something that's it's true in the movie, it's not true in history, and it's it is a failure of the movie not to give you the correct impression. If you read a lot of the anthropological literature about tribal existence, you know, pre pre what we call, you know, agricultural urban civilizations, you almost wonder like, why did we give that up?

Right? Like a lot of anthropologists have talked about like the tribal people who you know, living in natural areas. Of course, there's very few areas that are unaffected by like giant civilizations and croaching on them. But they live a pretty good life, you know. They they have their there's I mean there's stress that they fish, they hunt, you know, they gather nuts and berries.

I mean, they actually are pretty healthy. They have no sugars. There's a wonderful book by Jared Diamond, The World Before Yesterday, and he actually makes a list of all these horrible things that our civilization. I'm seeing the cat got. This is the most I've ever seen your cat mess with you on a recording, Richard, in ten years of knowing you.

This is insanity. I'm so sorry. He knows that I'm here, Richard, he knows that I'm here. You should tell tell David, Tell David, I can I can cut around this part. Tell David about what I'm talking about.

When Chris visited our house almost two years ago, he started calling our cat Fang. I'm like, why I call him fang. He's like, look at him, And for the reston I really looked at my cat's face and I could see his like teeth kind of sticking down over his mouth like a sabertooth tiger. I'm like, is that is that? Okay?

We took him to the vet. It was not okay. Oh my gosh. The cat literally the cat had all these teeth that had to be removed, and the and the veterinarian said, this is not your fault. This is a Jeanette.

Certain cats are was born and their teeth are bad. And but she's like, look and she sures and his teeth were like black and she's like, it happened to my cat too, And I'm a veterinarian. It's not your fault. Some cats are just you know, this is how they come out. So we're gonna pull a lot of these teeth so that it doesn't turn into a problem or so anyway, Yeah, so Chris was was essential in saving the life of this cat.

And now this cat is trying to speak to Chris. Talented artist and a great person. You are a savior, like you saved the cat god, I mean, really saves. The cast is buying you a point. I mean monkey is monkey the official name of the cat.

Yeah, okay, Monkey is trying to remind us about ancient Egypt and how we should be talking about cat worshiping. Civilization is the only legitimate civilization. But certainly my cats bring us up at least once a day. But vel be a separate show, right, we can do one on Cleopatra or something like that, bring up cats there, but I'm. In, I'm in.

I'll pause and then just so pause, you'll pause. Pause. Oh god, if we're going to get into purgent and perfect and like a cat cat punge or something, then the show. So, in fact, I was telling Chris I wanted to do that movie flow that I thought was. Which is one with with no I don't know if you've heard of it, Richard, but it's yet another film with no dialogue but that cat.

Yeah yeah, so oh yeah. It won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film a couple of years ago. It's it's like a Lithuanian film. It has a cat. It just follows a cat after some sort of catastrophic apocalyptic event in what might be Atlantis.

Does that get you interested in a cat? Does it have to be? Yeah? No, yeah, all right, yeah, I'm still in. I'm still in.

I feel like one of the Batman supervillain you know, eggs exit. Excellent, let's get to it anyway if I let me get back to on screw train here. So we have a lot of evidence that their lives were not nasty, British and necessarily short. If you got past childhood and giving birth, which were the big killers of people before modern medicine, and thank god for modern medicine, right, but if you got past that, people could live very good lives. And they didn't have they didn't have sugar, they refined sugar.

They didn't have wars. I mean, they had violence that there's actually there is evidence of violence, like let's see, but they weren't savage by any by by the old term which no anthropologist uses today, savage. So the movie didn't didn't get to that, like, they didn't establish that. And and then the other part that both of you said, which it's my personal pet Peeve. And this is something like, I'm an older person and I watched television and they have a there's a movie or a TV show and there's four characters who all look alike, speak alike, you have the same accent, And I'm going like, you know, an old Hollywood producer would go, no, no, there's got to be a large guy and a thin girl and a tall guy.

You can't like the Scooby Johnny Norman David. Yeah, you can't have. You know, everybody's from California and twenty four and all, you know, sounds like with the same haircut. So they did make a mistake here. First of all, these people, these people clean clean themselves.

These people were I don't think they were. They were filthy because I think first of all that was you know, would lead to death. They had medicine. I me again, he was found with a medicinal pouch. I would love to see some of that.

Yeah, yeah, some rambo, you know, some first blood where he's like using the poultice on a wound or something. That'd be amazing. Yeah. I mean, we have so much evidence that these people cared for each other. You know, we find people who they amputated limbs and people lived for years afterwards.

That I mean, okay, that's pretty good with your copper as right, And that means also people in the community cared about you and loved you, and you know, it would help you out there, So that the movie I think missed in that direction. Absolutely, You're both right. And how surprising and interesting would that be? Because the way I'm reacting to what you're saying right now is is would be great to feel during the movie to go, wait, Anton, could they really do that? I mean, people talk about doing amputations during the Civil War and I barely believe it.

And now you're going back five thousand years. But I think that's always the fun part is realizing no, they they had stuff, they knew things, they understood they you know, that's always going to be the most interesting revelation is that they weren't that different. You know, No, they they and and and they had a lot of time and a lot of generations to figure out which plants helped and which ones didn't. End that the you know, they they they were not they were not without uh, you know, resources, and. And a lot of that knowledge is lost now.

I mean, we talk about you know, the Library of Alexandria burning, and you know, like all of the lost knowledge there, but the lost knowledge from being without technology in the terms of the technology we have now to live off of the land or use medicine in its raw herbal or like truly medicinal form is not something that is understood now the way it used to be, and that knowledge is lost because that's not something we rely on. But at the same time, these people relied on it because they didn't have the opportunities that we do now. But that doesn't diminish, like you said, what that was at the time for them comparative to us. That's a technological marvel and breakthrough that other civilizations may not have been able to have at the time, and others weren't.

And I think it's interesting because this movie just I don't think it ignores it per se. I just don't think in a lot of ways, this movie is concerning itself with telling a story about the Iceman, which is fine. I guess I don't really have an issue with it just taking the Oatsy story and turning it into a Western revenge story where we have a guy pursuing another guy across the insert landscape here and what have you. I have no problem with that in theory. It's just the trappings of this this time around.

For me, they're enough to carry it to the end because it's not two hours, though I would say for myself, I almost would have preferred it be two hours, because that would have allowed there to be a little bit more bill of the world that this film needs to build, because you know, I think about other movies like this one, right, the one that comes to mind that came out, oh, you know, only five years later, that I would actually say people would be better off watching if you want to see something that takes the gimmick of this ninety percent of the way there. It doesn't do the shot in the original language kind of conceit, which you know at the time the director thought about doing it and he ended up.

Not The Northman from twenty twenty two, the Robert Eggers film, it's very similar to this movie. It is a revenge film. That film is more psychedelic because it leans into the Norse mythology of it all. This doesn't really lean into that. I think that would have been interesting if this had leaned into a little bit of the kind of what are the cultural trappings of these people and how is that part of this?

And we get the idea that again like, oh, this is religiously kind of the religious icon is why this is happening, So there must be some importance. We just never understand what the importance. The Northman I think does what this movie does better, and because it's allowing there to be dialogue, we get a better understanding of who the characters are as opposed to just these are the broad strokes here. And look, if the gimmick had worked better, I don't think I'd be saying some of these things. But the gimmick doesn't work very well because you kind of you kind of ignore what makes this story so interesting, which is it's not just a bunch of Neanderthals banging one another over the head with a stick.

If that's what this was, I would have no interest in any of this ring. You know, Chris, while you were talking, the sound of your voice provided me some time to think about something else. And what I thought of was because I keep going back to these sort of the revenge moves of the seventies. You know, you go back to any era, but it's like, what's novel about a movie like Death Wish or Dirty Harry, is this notion of you know, you you can't do that in this society. You know, we have laws.

We have evolved to a place where we live in a sophisticated society of laws and human rights. And what you're doing, Charles Bronson, and what you're doing Dirty Harry is is applying a different, more primitive law that we all feel we have moved beyond. And it's disturbing to us because we all feel those impulses still but we don't act on them anymore. But you're acting on them. And that's what is compelling about those movies is that, oh, this is interesting.

You know, there's two different moral codes going here, and one is ancient and one is is that what we think about ourselves as being very sophisticated, and I think and I think it is the inverse argument is what I'm making is that I want the novelty of this movie to be Oh, even back then they had a more sophisticated way that is now surprising to me thinking they had a very remitive way of approaching justice or or you know, morality. But no, it was just as sophisticated and and moral decisions had to be made when these people went about seeking revenge, and not everyone agreed. It felt like in this society, everyone kind of knows what's going down. It's like, yeah, killer be killed. We're gonna you know, we're going to burn down your village, and we can pretty much count on you coming back to burn down my village.

And then the kouda grov. Of course, at the end is is revenge has the final. Word, yeah, and it is a disservice to those societies. Now, we are always at a disadvantage when there's a people that only have material remains and we don't have any writing. And of course that describes most human societies from millions of years ago, our ancestors through today, I mean their entire civilizations where the writing had the Indus River Valley civilization, where they had this magnificent civilization.

We can't read their writing, we can't understand that. We can only infer from like the material culture, which was very very, very sophisticated. We don't know whether they had law codes, right. We do know that when people settle down in agricultural, urban based civilizations, one of the first things they did was create law code. And those law codes like for example, the Ten Commandments or the codes of Hamurabi, you know, number of other ones.

Those seem somewhat bloodthirsty to us through the lens of twenty twenty six, but for the time it was an attempt to limit violent and to say like only the state had control over violence, and like, if you commit violence, the state will step in. It won't be one on one vendetta there. So that in some ways the film is talking about that this is a city a culture that doesn't have these written down, but we don't know whether they might, like we don't know whether they there was an agreement. You know. First of all, the other thing this thing does sort of gets wrong is that in the archaeological evidence, these people were not isolated.

You find these incredible examples of like they were using a metal that was dug up a thousand miles away. There were trade networks all over Europe and the Mediterranean, so people going to Spain, you know, there was today Spain, They were going to what is today Denmark and coming traders were coming back. So in some ways this is like a nineteen forties view of pre urban civilization. You know again with the village and people people just being I think I can't get over what you have said before, because it really struck me more. I was thinking about, especially the second time I saw it, is like they could have been cleaned up, they could have trimmed, they're here and they still would have been authentic.

Right, the idea that like people back then were all dirty, it'll sort of forty his notion not so keeping up with anthropology. So yeah, and and and the one, the one sort of metaphorical object in the film was this this box that for a long time we don't know what's in it. I mean it is it's the Lost Arc, It's the suitcase from pulp fiction. It's like, what, what is so important? But yeah, yeah, this is this is a prequel to Repo.

Man I I'm amazed you're so called film buffs. You don't didn't notice that right away. It's sort of sad, I. Know, it's God, yeah, I think we have now tied it all. Remember how at the end of this movie where Bruce Willis showed up and it turned out it was actually in the universe that Unbreakable took place in.

That was so strange. What What's interesting is that is that once you once you saw what was in the box, it was a it was a reflective surface, it was something it was mirrored that that that could only be seen. I mean when you're watching movies and you know, when your your head's been beaten in by your film. Uh, Professors, it's like, oh, reflection, looking at one's self and considering what you see there? And what and why is this the holy thing?

The thing that shows us an image of ourselfs? And what do we learn when we truly see ourselves? So that was interesting and I'm sure if I had to write a paper, that's that's one direction I would have to run toward. What's interesting is that this holy object was then discarded and maybe like the Lost Arc, it was just like too dangerous to be in in in circulation, you know, it's got to be, and so he discards it. You know, there's a there's the the again it's Theodoric of York.

There there's an there's an opportunity to truly reflect upon oneself. And do you embrace that or do you reject it? And and and what does that lead to? What is the next what is the next significant event? In the film, after self reflection is disregarded.

Violence. Yeah, the cycle of violence continues, right. Which is which to me it feels black. I know, it feels like it's such a bummer for me, Like this's like that's all you wanted to say. It was like, man is terrible, Like you have this opportunity to tell effectively the only story that anyone's ever gonna tell about this character, this real person in any like interesting, bigger budget capacity, and your your takeaway is well, human beings are terrible.

Wah wah, Like come on, see it's like those it's like those uh, it's like those magazines that are the checkout saying like see, they're just like us, like yeah, we know, no kidding, we came from them, unless you don't believe that, but you know which, you know wow? Uh Well the ice, the Iceman, the Iceman. I think for me, as a character who in the movie, he's times the most interesting thing and the least interesting thing, because I don't think they really ever even let us understand who he is as a character, because that's not the point of this movie, and that should have been the point of this movie, is for us to understand who and what and why he is not how he had it? He die. This is a practically an hour long gag, like an hour long punchline.

You get to that and this is how we died. You go back to freshman high school, freshman English, and the first thing they tell you is for a character to be a character in a drama, they change. And I used to think that meant they change one hundred and eighty degrees. They've all got to be Ebenezer Scrooge. They start out mean, they end up nice.

That's what I thought it meant. But what it really means is just the events in the drama have an impact on the players one way or another. And I don't know, I mean, I'm curious. I'm not sure where our guy Iceman. Weird?

What? You know? What? What did he? What did he?

What did he learn? How did he change? What? What? These events which are fictionalized, So this is not a documentary.

So this was a constructed narrative. We have to then go okay, So a writer said I'm going to tell you a tale, and and so the Esop's fable moral of the story is don't be reflective or religion sucks. What well, how did he change. I don't know what do you guys think? Well, he definitely died and frozed and was frozen, that's for sure.

He changed from a guy to a dead iceman. He changed from semi solid to solid more less. Once was man now is ice man? And scene make you very much. I don't know what about you, doctor pearl mutter he of academia, with a much hopefully more serious answer than mine.

No, I I I appreciated very much this dialogue, and I don't disagree with anything. I guess. I like a lot of teachers, I like to give points for what is done well as well as making it a case that this was unsuccessful. Again, I don't like Thanks God. God, I wish you were my teacher.

I know the same wheresh you had taught all my courses. Well, it sounds like you actually had pretty pretty inspirational teachers in many ways. But but, but let's go back to Arasawa, who also happens to be my favorite filmmaker. And indeed, if I could use a professor word that chat CBT has stolen from me along with delving. You know, I think I'm poor, poor J J R.

J R. R. Tolkien. You know he loved the word delve, and now Ai has stolen that. You can't use delve anymore or am dashes.

So I my writing has been full of him. I'm going off now. Sorry, I want to go back. I want to go back to five and three hundred years ago, when a man could use an m dash proudly without having be accused of. He's communting with the gods.

Was a god a filmmaking, and one of his many masterful traits was, Yeah, I think of like his film noir, like High and Low, and you still think of Seven Samurai. It's sort of astonishing by the way that the same person made both movies, right, and yeah, you don't. You could have no subtitles, like oh my gosh, the subtitles are broken, and you would still basically understand a story. But then also what you said, Richard, that the common humanity, right, there's that that the so many beautiful moments in Seven Samurai. It's about samurai in medieval Japan, who all three of us probably have no connection to culturally or spiritually or you know, or in our line, but each of them becomes a finely etched portrait of a human being that we probably have recognized in our life, or maybe we aspire to be or see a little bit of ourselves in them.

And so by the end, when they're facing you know, the final climax of this hurdlingly fantastic plot line, we are cheering them on as if we were one of the villagers there, hoping for their victory and success, right and high and low. I want to just mention high and low in the minute it's a Again. I don't know how many people have seen the movie, but like a rich man's chauffeur's son is kidnapped instead of his son. Okay, I just said the basic plot, and this rich man is set up to be at the beginning of the he's a rich guy. He's living in a big house.

You know, while a lot of this post war Japan, a lot of people are poor. He's going to be a jerk, you know, And that's going to be the storyline that like, he's going to be the jerk and his poor chauffeur's son is stolen, he's not going to care about it. And then he does all these really good, kind hearted things and there's a moment where the police officers are going, Wow, that's a wonderful good man. We are going to work so hard to solve this case, even if we were going to before. But like we are, we care right, and you see this again, this common moment of humanity.

These are Japanese police officers in the nineteen fifties. Again something not connected. You know, I wrote a book about being a police officer in the media, so I have some connection there. But this movie did establish a couple of times. Well, let me mention one scene I think they did which I appreciated was at the very beginning, a woman is giving birth, and we mentioned that one of the reasons you read like, oh yeah, people back then, you know, they didn't live past age thirty.

They did, but the death rate for children and forgiving birth was astronomical. And all you have to do is go to graveyards that go back to like the seventeen hundreds and you can see nine children, you know, under the age of five, or three wives under the age of twenty two because the death rate was so high. And they do show the women coming together to help, and there's some tools they're using, and there's some method and things like that. So I wanted more of that. That common humanity, and so I think you both have diagnosed in the studio notes.

What this film should have tried to do is focused on the common venality a little bit more. And it's a shame that it doesn't, because there's not going to be another movie like this about this particular character case. However you want to view it, there will be something, and there are other things, because you know, I watched one this afternoon after watching the film yesterday about this case, just to understand the actual, real life pieces of information surrounding it, and then the conjecture surrounding how you know, how his death may have come about depending on cultural things at the time. What have you anthropological evidence, which again it felt more informed than this movie, and I did not expect the film to feel informative.

But at the same time, I also didn't expect the film to not honor the fact that it's taking place fifty three hundred years ago. It's like, you can't get ahead of some of that. If all you want to do is tell a story that's essentially lone Wolf and cub but in the oatzel Alps, fine, but then have some dialogue or some or have something more interesting to say. Or do, because even Lone Wolf and Cub does more than this. And it's a shame because there's a lot too like about this movie.

It's well shots, it looks interesting. Again, you don't get to see this kind of conceit done very often. It's still done well enough that it doesn't feel like a complete gimmick and a waste of time, which is also I think a testament to this movie that it doesn't feel completely beyond reproach. It just doesn't get to where it should have gotten. And I think the promise is and the premise were too high and the movie doesn't live up to it.

And that's unfortunate because you know, not everybody is back it up a truck to make this kind of movie, and so when you see a movie like this, you're like, oh man, still better than it could have been. But I think Otzi deserved better. OZI. I'm fascinated, and I'd love to get to professional opinion on the decision to use subtitles or not in other kinds of contexts where the most of the movie might be in English but there's people who are speaking another language at some point. And one of the approaches I take to this is.

I remember some of the World War Two movies of the fifties and sixties, maybe seventies too, where occasionally they would cut away to some German officers, right, and the German officers are looking at the map, and there's no subtitles, but the German officers are looking at the map, and you hear Normandy and the Americ Connor and you know in Vazjung. And so somebody made a decision that like, yeah, we don't need to translate exactly. We don't be to say, look, it seems like the Americans are attacking at Normandy. They just felt it would be overkill and the audience could figure it out. And I sort of like that.

I saw a film which I didn't like at all called Hunter Killer, was about a submarine movie, and they had the thing that always bothers me the most is they had Russians in a Russian submarine and they were I think they spoke Russian for the first ten seconds and then they were translated into English, and I thought, God, have the confidence for Russians to speak Russian? Right, don't don't don't be feeling the American audience desperately needs to hear Russians speaking wildly variations of English. That's so funny you bring that up, because that was the convention used in The Hunt for Red October. Sean Connery's character, the Russian submarine commander was speaking Russian and at a certain point and it's a very I forget exactly when it was or what the emotional intent was, but there's sort of it's like, when we're finally sort of getting to the heart of his character and it's early in the film, he begans speaking English and you almost don't notice that this line now has been crossed.

But it's that same convention. It's it's the it work it then. Yeah, it's like, that's my question to you people all ending with. British accents no matter where they are. Well, okay, so.

Italian characters speak, but the Italian accent. Chernobyl was one of the great television shows of all time in my hum mumble opinion on there, and I heard the Chernobyl podcast and the showmaker of Chernobyl talked about that. They originally thought, okay, well it's said in Russia, we're going to have people with Russia. We can't have it be in Russian with subtitles for an entire television series just wouldn't work for American audiences or any audiences outside of Russia. But instead we're going to have Russian accents.

And they finally it didn't work. It sounded like boris bad enough. It did like people were laughing, and so they switched. But they wanted consistency, so they got mostly English, Irish Scottish actors in a Scars guard, you know, and a Scars guard in a pear tree. Right, that's right, and it worked beautiful, just like it worked like fifty years before in the I Claudius TV series, where okay, you know, we can't have Italian fifty people with Italian accents.

They're all going to be British and the high class Romans will speak upper class British and the low class Romans will speak Cognate. It works, It can work, right, But here's my question to you is would there be a situation in a film you were making where you would feel confident in not translating what somebody was saying in another language? And what would that be? Or maybe you have spaced that situation. I mean, the Mothman didn't speak English, right, it's not multi lingual flies.

I think is that what it was? Well, if we're stepping aside from any sort of you know, commercial studio, because because that's always part of it is. You know, it's like, look, if we're distributing this film and we know where we're exhibiting it, we we it has to be something that people can get without working too hard, So that's okay. But setting that aside, my answer would be if the drama is is distinct enough, then for a a portion of time you can have someone speaking a language the you know, the the predominant audience does not understand, because it won't matter. They'll they'll understand the intent.

You know, if if in The Godfather, during moments of great I would say moments of great violence or great uh romance. Past sexual restaurant scene would have been ruined if they had you know, subtitles, right. I think when when you're dealing with certain emotions that that are that are so so human and shared, which is again acting out in sudden violence or acting on sexual or romantic passion, we get it. And hearing people speak words that back up those feelings can just be really almost a sound effect music. It's like that the you know whatever that sound of saying that word is as someone attacks someone else and that just becomes part of the emotion of the act.

Or the more you know, ruining love sounds we make, that becomes a sound effect. So so those are the situations. But when you're trying to get across, you know, plot, information that may be lost but must be understood for the story to succeed, you have to subtitle it whatever you have to do to get the audience and to keep them on board and enthrall and moving on to the next thing. That's what you do, and what you probably end up doing is solve those problems on the page. You don't.

You don't write scenes that take up where tons of information has to be conveyed because you don't want to do that anyway. So you really have to you know, you have saddled yourself with a challenge. Now meet that challenge or don't saddle yourself with it, because these challenges are self imposed. And that's where I come in with this, Like the choice in this movie to do this this way was a self imposed challenge. It was a self imposed choice, and I don't disagree with it.

I think, you know, you know, Robert Eggers, to go back to my example with The Northman, Robert Eggers almost filmed that film like this one, where it was all in the traditional language and there was no subtitles, and I think that could have worked. And I think it could have worked there because similarly to this movie, it's a very broad film with a lot of broad themes that are about revenge. And you know, I mean, it's pretty much as Hamlet, but you know whatever I mean, you get the idea, like it doesn't necessarily need the dialogue to be understood to get where the filmmaker is going with it. But Edgar's decided to not do that, which as someone who watches and enjoys his films, because he really takes, like we've talked about with other people, a laser like focus to make something that keeps to the gimmick that sells the bit.

You know, if you're gonna you're gonna do the bit, you gotta sell the bit. You got to commit to the bit. And Eggers doesn't with the dialogue in that film. He films it where you like, we're like you just mentioned Richard and doctor Pearl Mutter, we have people speaking in English, accents or doing like, you know, some sort of Norwegian something of the northern countries in Europe, northern European country dialect, like kind of those accents, and it works well enough, but Iceman just doesn't get there. And that's because I just don't think it's not worrying itself really with there being any dialogue, because the story that it wants to tell is just a revenge story.

I think that it's the Iceman character because that's an easy thing for people in Europe to understand, and that's an expectation, like doctor pearl Mutter mentioned, with these mountain movies as opposed to westerns, where we have a mountain movie being made by a German director, Okay, that checks a lot of boxes for certain people in Europe. This is a film not made for an American audience. In a lot of ways, we are three Americans enjoying a film made for European audiences who are expecting a certain kind of film, because, like doctor pearl Mutter said, if you watch a mountain movie made by a European director about a European thing, there might be certain expectations that we do not understand, and maybe we're just not privy to it, but I can't imagine that it's my issues don't stem from that with this movie.

Well, another thing that movie is like this often do and you'd probably want to go back further in human history to a point where the language is extremely primitive and basic, but you can very quickly teach the audience words, and this movie does that a little bit. There are there are certain words that we began to recognize, our words associated with a person who has just died or or you know, and sort of a benediction. Certain words that are used at the beginning that that I thought I recognized coming back, you know, at moments of like okay, you know, I'm sort of putting my hand to your face and then releasing your soul up into the heavens, and you can do that, and they could have made a bigger point of the box.

You know. It's like, you know, we're you know to Tanka to Tonka to Tanka to Tanka. You know, you know, we could have we could have locked in and and there is a way to do that too, and that engages an audience and you know, never a mistake to help the audience feel smart and get involved and go oh, they said that word again, and that's the word that means the thing. Okay, you know they could have done that, and they sort they kind of halfway did that. I was thinking on your list of when to do it.

Another situation and for I mean, I'm trying to think of an example is when the main character is suddenly immersed among people who are speaking a language the main character does not know, then it would be good not to translate to mimic the confusion of the main character. I mean, you're kidnapped by Romanian hitman. You want your main character not to understand what they're saying. It's more threatening, right, So I wonder, you know, time travel going back to fifty three hundred, than you wouldn't translate until they weren't. I guess.

I guess the film that did this, and I actually thought it was reasonably effective was Oh, my gosh, Thirteenth Warrior. Or oh the one with Antonio Benderis. Yeah, yeah, Antendo Benderis is the. Michael Berry the one based on the Michael Crichton book Eaters of the Dead. Yeah, yeah, yeah, where he's he's the poet in the court of Baghdad and he goes and he meets this norseman.

Of course norsemen, right, and he doesn't understand anything they're saying, but he quietly watches them and sees their what words are repeated around the campfire, and then he learns their language and and and actually I think that's done pretty well in a moment of him being an intelligent person who knows words. Yeah, because that becomes part of the drama. That's that is what it's about on the face of it. And and now we're drawn into that challenge that that becomes the conflict of the scene is how do we achieve communication? So that's really interesting.

Uh yeah, I've not seen that movie, but not. Probably like it. You'd like it, Richard. It's it's it's a it's a fun little Michael Crichton. Everything Michael crichd was getting adapted into the nineties, So we're gonna start adapting things that maybe didn't need to be adapted into a film movie.

It's fine. Antonio Bendaris is playing I believe, a Middle Easterner because he can yeah anyway and get away with anything. That guy the Calleia Finn Bagdad, So he's a very sophisticated guy. From a sophisticated civilization, by the way, in that film, and we can leave them on this point, it's interesting they make the same mistake that this film makes is the Norse culture is portrayed as primitive in the sense of having no writing whatsoever. In fact, there's a scene there where one of the Norse king says, hey, you know, show me how you draw.

I think he says, draw words. What do you mean, oh? Writing? Okay, but you know they did have they did have ruins, and they also had like seven eight hundred years of contact with the bordering civilization, so they it's unlikely that somebody would have not known what writing as. I'm sorry, I have to get that historical little footnote in there.

But anyway, thank you gentlemen. I've learned a lot. You both get an A plus on the exam, that's right, so you will be able to graduate and pay off your loans. So I'm very it's all coming back. We have to pay these back, thank god, Thank you, professor.

So on that note, Richard, where can people find you in the things that you were when you're not here with me talking about movies taking place in the Alps. They can find me on my podcast, Richard Adam's Parent and Normal Bookshelf. Come for the book, stay for the over sharing. You can hear it anywhere you listen to podcasts. Check it out.

And as for me, you can find me anywhere you listen to podcasts as well, primarily podcasting over on iTunes and Spotify would be helpful, like rate and review the culture Cast over there and on Patreon patreon dot com slash culture Cast, where you can kick a couple dollars my way to hear Richard and Mike and I talk about James Bond once a month if that's the thing you're into. If not, you don't have to do anything. So just listen to this for free. I mean it's I'm not gonna stop providing this for free. So yeah, Richard, thank you so much for joining me.

Doctor Perlmutter, thank you so much for picking the movie. And you know, I guess I would say unga bunga, but that's probably less what they were saying, so. That's a very offensive term. No oh, I just lost my Geico Caveman audience really quickly, So yeah, come on, come on back for the next episode of Culture Cast. Stom