A House of Dynamite is brutally effective at producing nuclear dread. But what responsibility does a film assume once it has frightened us? Jett and Gareth consider catastrophe cinema from Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove onward, asking whether depicting the train coming at us is enough, or whether art can also help us imagine another track.
-
Jett Loe (09:22.955)
Gareth, I have known you for decades. You know, we've done over 300 shows. So with this in mind, apologies for just finding out just the other day that you have a film newsletter. And I now, I just found this out dear listeners, this is terrible. I've known this guy for decades, done over 300 shows. So I now subscribe and normally, dear listener, we never talk about the movies ahead of time.
but I read your thoughts on the film we're gonna talk about today and you are absolutely right. This is the wrong time. Yes, this is the wrong time for this picture. And I can't wait to talk to you about it as well as Soderbergh's Contagion and maybe some alternate other films people can watch instead.
Gareth (09:52.011)
What?
Gareth (09:56.748)
Hmm.
Gareth (10:03.948)
It's interesting. I'm not sure if I think it's the wrong time. I think the film needs to be longer in two very specific ways, but we're going to get into it. And it's a house of dynamite. And hopefully this episode won't be.
Jett Loe (10:14.656)
Yes.
Jett Loe (10:23.415)
I ladies and gentlemen, this is what passes for wit in the year 2025. Let's get right into it. I'm sorry, Gareth. I love your newsletter.
Gareth (10:29.588)
you
Gareth (10:34.615)
Well, okay, hopefully it'll be good dynamite. The dynamite in the house of dynamite is not good dynamite.
Jett Loe (10:37.249)
Okay. All right. We cut that out. We're going to get right into it whenever you're ready, my dear friend.
Gareth (10:42.528)
Yeah. Good.
Welcome to the Film Talk, I'm Gareth Higgins.
Jett Loe (10:49.664)
I'm JetLow.
Gareth (10:51.53)
The conversation as they say never ends. We're going to talk about Catherine Bigelow and Noah Oppenheim's film A House of Dynamite, which I'm sure you've heard about by now. It's a film about... It's funny, people say nuclear war. You know, there may or may not be a war. There's certainly a nuclear missile headed for... headed...
Jett Loe (11:12.151)
Spoilers, the way, spoilers for anybody that has not seen the film. Watch the film, then come back to us.
Gareth (11:18.348)
yeah, there will be spoilers. So there's a nuclear missile headed for Chicago, likely to kill 10 million people. we see the same, know, people are saying it's like a 20 minute section. It's actually more than that. You see the morning routines of many of the characters. And then there's like a concentrated period of about 20 minutes. You see that three times. It outlines what's gonna happen.
people who are agonizing over what to do about it. And I believe we have a clip.
Jett Loe (11:53.634)
clip folks in this clip Captain Olivia Walker played by the always watchable always watchable Rebecca Ferguson and Admiral Mark Miller played by Jason Clarke and I gotta think Jason Clarke I saw he said hey wait a minute didn't that guy play John Connor in a Terminator film once and I kind of think everyone has hasn't Chalamet played Connor I feel like everyone has but any anyway they're in some sort of one of those rooms that you see in the movies where there's a lot of screens usually people are asking for a sit ref it's one of those kind of movies
Gareth (12:03.669)
You
Gareth (12:10.508)
I think you might know.
Gareth (12:23.178)
Yes.
Jett Loe (12:23.415)
And they're a bit alarmed by events because there is a potential nuclear weapon headed towards Chicago. I will say one thing, Gareth and your listener in this clip, please pay close attention to the music. You may think you're watching another more effective film that came out recently. Let's listen in.
Gareth (12:40.341)
You
Jett Loe (12:45.173)
and we'll have the clip and you come in. I was shocked by the score. I couldn't believe it.
Gareth (12:47.36)
Yep. Remind me the name of that composer, Volk or something.
Jett Loe (12:52.343)
I wrote it here.
Gareth (12:56.064)
Vulgar Bertelsmann or...
Jett Loe (12:57.587)
It is, it's Volker Bertelman. We'll talk about that at some point. Yeah, okay. Whenever you're ready. Thank you, sir.
Gareth (13:00.052)
Okay. Okay. Alright. Alright. Alright.
and that is a house of dynamite. the first thing I want to say is, if this film were an episode in a, what do they call them now? Like not miniseries anymore. No, it's like, know, one-off, what are they called? Is it a word for them? No, they're, let's hold on. Hold on, let me look it up. Miniseries.
Jett Loe (13:16.074)
Anthology.
Jett Loe (13:23.179)
Well, they used to be plays. We used to have Playhouse 90 and it's that kind of thing.
Gareth (13:35.049)
Limited series is the word I'm looking for if this was one episode in a limited series or if the three chunks of this film were spread throughout a five or six part limited series that that traced the context of the before and after I think And if the rest of the series was the same level of quality seriousness well acted well framed well shot well edited
Jett Loe (13:36.886)
Yes.
Gareth (14:03.884)
I think you'd have a really substantial contribution to the conversation that needs to take place right now. When I say that this is the wrong film, it's not a bad film, it's just the wrong film. What I mean by that, I guess to a degree when you said earlier, this is not the time for that or this is not the film for this time. I hear what you're saying. It's kind of that. It's more just there isn't enough here to do something with other than to feel
afraid. And perhaps that's the most important thing about it, that there hasn't been a mainstream, serious engagement with the threat of nuclear annihilation in popular culture for a long time that I can think of. And so it's good to be reminded of the need to abolish nuclear weapons. And the film is captivatingly made and the performances. I've read some stuff that kind of
you know, is done on the performances. I don't get that. I think the performances here are uniformly good, especially...
Jett Loe (15:09.867)
They're doing a good job with what they have. I myself found the script too broad. Especially the first third is like, this is too broad, kind of in a NCIS, CSI kind of way. But everyone's doing a good job. But that's just my personal taste. I wanted something a little more serious, and it does get more serious.
Gareth (15:13.908)
I... Right.
Gareth (15:21.376)
Huh, okay.
Gareth (15:27.562)
Well, and it becomes gripping and it's disturbing. And I, you know, I don't obviously I'm not qualified to pronounce upon like the the the factual nuances of how people in the White House situation room and in these other places are supposed to act and what the protocols are within within these urgent moments. But it looked pretty compelling.
To me and we are doing spoilers in this episode. Yes. Yes. Okay, so, you know, honestly that the As is often the case because of the way empathy works The most viscerally horrifying moment in the film for me is when is when the secretary of defense walks off the roof But that it's a genuinely shocking moment and it feels Absolutely plausible to me given what he's going through in his personal life that phone call with his daughter the fact that he mutes
Jett Loe (15:59.884)
Yes, absolutely.
Jett Loe (16:11.201)
Yes. Yes.
Gareth (16:23.616)
the I guess they don't use Zoom, but whatever it is they use for their video calls when they're trying to save the world that he meets that in order to hide the fact that he's trying to privately evacuate her. And then he has this conversation with her in which he he realizes it's it's it's futile, but he has this sense of warmth and calm and reassurance. She's with her boyfriend. She's not going to be alone when she dies. And there are several moments like this in the film that that deepen a sense of plausible character here.
exactly what people would do under these terrifying circumstances. The most on the nose part of it was the fact that Greta Lee is at a Gettysburg reenactment when she gets the phone call. That felt like, that's clunky. But I, and I suspect from things you've said to me earlier in the week when you were texting me when you were watching this film,
Jett Loe (17:06.807)
It's a movie.
Jett Loe (17:22.219)
Yeah.
Gareth (17:22.464)
You and I may not be in the same place about it. For what it is, I think it is important and well put together. Here's the thing that I think matters more than that. I wanted a film about how to prevent nuclear conflict or the attempts that are underway to try to prevent it, not just to warn against it. And once you make a film in which the missile does detonate and
there's clearly some response from the US.
I really think you need to show the aftermath. And in that sense, I think it makes the same mistake that Oppenheimer made. We've talked about this before. I understand Christopher Nolan's choice to not show either archive footage or fictionalized or staged footage of the aftermath of the murderous bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the monumental impact on Japanese.
Jett Loe (18:08.459)
Yes.
Gareth (18:27.647)
people understand the rationale behind the choice and just to show Oppenheimer's reaction when he's watching kind of newsreel footage of that. I just think it was the wrong choice. I think it was the wrong choice. And I think it's the wrong choice in a house of dynamite to not show the aftermath. You might have had a three hour long movie. Fine. would be it would. Yeah, it would be it would have been a more valuable movie if you had shown.
Jett Loe (18:49.983)
It's a Netflix streaming, who cares?
Gareth (18:56.629)
the attempts underway to prevent and reduce nuclear conflict, or if you really feel and you really have evidence that those attempts have disappeared, particularly with the new administration, which they might have, or they might be done being done in a way that's just as frightening as the threat itself. I want you to show that. you know, maybe we'll talk about stories, films, artifacts that do this better.
At the end of the day, I was rattled by this film. I do think it's a valuable film. I think it's a much better film than some of the notices that it's getting. It's just missing two really important, it would diminish them to call them bookends. But you need to talk about what's actually happening and what can be done to transform the threat of nuclear conflict.
into a more mutually independent way of dealing with each other. And if you really want your warning to be heard. I kept thinking about Jason Robards, irradiated, having lost his mind on the on the top of that hill of of refuse at the end of the day after and like an over the top melodramatic film. But you know what? A nuclear detonation would be an over the top melodramatic thing.
And this film, this film actually lacks that.
Jett Loe (20:23.127)
And that film is also, that film was made by Nicholas Meyer. I don't recall who wrote the script, but Nicholas Meyer is, I mean, that's implied. The fact that, he's a meat and potatoes guy that can deliver emotional beats and...
Gareth (20:28.971)
Don't you mean the great Nicolaus Meyer?
Hahaha
Jett Loe (20:47.071)
elements of story that are classical that probably been around since the beginning of time. You know, it's really interesting to me, Gareth, because I literally, now that we're talking about this, I'm on a roller coaster with this movie where when I was watching it, I thought it was terrible. I texted you, this is terrible. Then I came around and then I've gone down on it and I'm back on it. It's going up and down. I have a feeling it's going to twist one more time, at least by the time we get to the end of the show. You bring up a lot of things. I want to respond to a couple of them before I...
Gareth (21:12.235)
By the end of the show, you won't have seen it.
Jett Loe (21:16.755)
It's, you know, I'm just going go ahead and watch Bigelow's Near Dark, you know, great motion picture. What was his name? Adrian Pasdar? Pas, is that the guy? Yeah. Watching that film, I watched it recently. He comes across really as pretty much a jerk. So, you know, it's interesting. We can think of this film. You talk about Oppenheimer and both of us agree that
Gareth (21:20.533)
Yes.
Gareth (21:27.998)
Mm-hmm. Later in POSDAR.
Jett Loe (21:43.554)
mistakes were made there. And as I said in our Oppenheimer show, I didn't feel that Nolan had it in him to really deliver something that could encompass or even begin to grapple with the horrific nature of atomic weaponry. But then I'm also thinking, Gareth, while you're talking, I remember something you said about criticism of killers of the Flower Moon in terms of why aren't they showing the victims? And you pointed out, well, it's not called victims of the Flower Moon, it's called killers of the Flower Moon.
Gareth (22:10.848)
Mm.
Jett Loe (22:12.159)
And this movie is called, and that movie was called Oppenheimer. It's not, it's not called, you know, the victims of his, his work. And it was based on the, on, on the book. But I get what you're saying about the fact that there's no solution or even action points that are presented here in this film. And it's really a movie, think, designed to generate dread, right? It's a movie designed to generate dread. And if you want to put a knock on that, you can sort of think about, you know, here in the U S we have,
Gareth (22:15.315)
Yeah. Sure. Sure.
Gareth (22:33.579)
Mm-hmm.
Jett Loe (22:42.035)
awareness campaigns, like these breast cancer awareness things, like we're raising awareness, gonna raise all this money. And then you find out that the person that's like, you know, the chair, the chair of their campaign is making 500, $600,000 a year. And you go, wait a minute, we're all aware at this point, after decades, we're aware of breast cancer. So what is this raising awareness? Shouldn't this money actually go towards finding a cure rather than awareness that we need to find a cure? And so you can kind of, I imagine, look at this film and
Gareth (23:08.703)
Mm.
Jett Loe (23:11.413)
within that frame. Here's where I'm coming from. Can we just talk about some of my thoughts here on this film? You know, and I want to put in the context to our listeners, I live out here in the desert, right? I live in the mountains, the high desert. And you might think, well, there's an atomic war, I'm safe because I'm out in the middle of nowhere. Well, that's not true because on the other side of the mountains, I live about 7,000 feet up, on the other side of the mountains from me is a place called Kirtland.
Gareth (23:17.931)
police.
Jett Loe (23:38.68)
It's an Air Force base and it's home to the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center. They have nuclear weapons there, meaning that if something does happen, like in House of Dynamite, films like Doctor Strange, Love or Fail Safe, which I imagine we're gonna talk about, day after, as Gareth mentioned, that that's definitely gotta be, you it's one of the top targets. It's one of the centers of all research and includes Sandia National Labs, huge, huge weapons complex, just on the other side of the mountains. Imagine Dune, dear listeners, second Dune reference we've done.
in this show, I guess we're talking about Chalamet. Imagine the shield wall in Dune. I'm on the other side of the mountains. When I look out the window here as I'm recording, I can see a mountain range on the other side of the mountains, about 2,000 feet lower than where I am. It's all this weapons research. So it's going to go up. Will the shield wall protect me? I don't know, but I can't help but think about that when I watch these movies. So in that sense, the film inspired dread in me, Gareth. But here's the thing, and this is what I talked about, so, you know, the wrong time for this movie.
Gareth (24:31.819)
Mm-hmm.
Jett Loe (24:37.023)
You remember Soderbergh's Contagion, which was sort of this realistic, almost semi-documentary style film about a pandemic. It came out years before COVID. And everyone said, it's amazing, once COVID happened, how realistic it was. And it was, except for one thing. No one imagined as good as Contagion was, they never imagined, never occurred to them that the federal government wouldn't really care about its people. Because when COVID hit, in the U.S., you may recall their listeners,
Gareth (24:39.019)
Mm-hmm.
Gareth (24:59.923)
Yeah. Yeah.
Jett Loe (25:05.719)
at least if you live in the US for our US listeners, that Trump openly publicly on the record said he didn't want a cruise ship to dock. This is the beginning of the pandemic because that would inflate the COVID numbers. And as we're recording this show, Trump has just publicly ordered the Pentagon to resume nuclear testing, which is an insane proposition. So for me, when I watched House of Dynamite, it felt like the purest fiction because...
Gareth (25:07.763)
Hmm. Hmm.
Gareth (25:14.453)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gareth (25:23.893)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jett Loe (25:31.788)
It's sad, but you can't help but wonder like, you know, we have played the clip of these competent professionals and there's all these competent professionals. Everyone's very competent professional in this film. You're watching and you go, well, those positions have they been eliminated now? It's probably some podcaster in charge that has the codes. And dude, listen, that's not hyperbole because we literally have podcasters. Podcasters running the FBI now. It's absolute madness. And just yesterday, the New York Times reported
that senior officials of the Trump administration are now living on military bases because they probably because they feel the need to be protected from the populace. So this is out of dystopian fiction. So all this in mind, this competence, however misplaced in House of Dynamite comes across to me as a lament. When you watch a film like Doctor Strange Love or Fail Safe, which came out just around the same time, and God bless Sidney Lumet who made Fail Safe. We talked about this before on the show.
Gareth (26:05.204)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Jett Loe (26:29.015)
I can only imagine, Failsafe is a good motion picture. It's about accidental nuclear mishap and the implications. What's going to happen? Is the US going to go to war with Russia? How do we stop it? know, Soviet Union. Imagine Cindy Lindemann's director going, it's good movie, going to see, this is months before Failsafe comes out, but the picture is probably already done, and he sees Dr. Strangelove in the theater and goes, no. Because Failsafe is great. But Dr. Strangelove, of course, is one of the greatest of films. But here's the thing, Gareth.
Gareth (26:49.756)
I know. Yeah.
Jett Loe (26:59.315)
In Dr. Strangelove and Failsafe, there's analogs for real life people, right? Analogs for Kissinger, there's analogs for nuclear weapons strategists like Walter Matow plays in Failsafe. And when you watch House of Dynamite, there's no more analogs because the people that we see are no longer in charge, competent, cool-headed, empathetic people who feel they have to turn off a Zoom.
Gareth (27:03.444)
Mm-hmm.
Jett Loe (27:27.049)
in order to surreptitiously call and warn somebody. You feel in today's Trump administration, those people would be, they'd bug out. They'd get in a helicopter right away and leave us all to be burned up. So the film is very strange in that way. And what I predicted just a few minutes ago was they'll come true, Gareth, as I'm talking to you. Now, I hated the film, but now I recommend it because it does illuminate the madness that we're in because these people are not in charge, because this is not what would happen.
Gareth (27:27.338)
Mm-hmm.
Gareth (27:50.058)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jett Loe (27:56.066)
This is not what would happen if there was an accidental nuclear attack. Does that make sense?
Gareth (28:03.102)
does and I mean of course we have to say we don't we actually don't know what would happen and you may be right the thing that was probably most plausible to me in watching this film was the way people responded personally let's say outside their professional roles every one of them wanted to reach their family you know the guy in the I guess it's the Air Force
Jett Loe (28:21.729)
Right.
Gareth (28:31.69)
command center calling his mother who it's implied lives in Chicago and tells her what every mother would want to know. I'm doing all right. I'm doing well with my career. And that reminded me of something you said about a film that nobody talks about anymore, but it's still really, really worth watching. And that is Source Code, where when you, you know,
Jett Loe (28:51.908)
yeah.
Gareth (28:55.184)
If you are in a situation where you are being sent back in time to observe what happens over the course of 40 minutes, but you can't prevent it from happening, if you know you cannot prevent the worst from happening, do you want to scare people who don't know that the worst is about to happen to them, or do you want to love them? And so at one point in this kind of, it's science fiction groundhog day.
Jett Loe (28:59.713)
Spoilers.
Gareth (29:18.974)
Jake Gyllenhaal's character realizes there's a funny guy on the train. And so he gets the guy to start doing stand-up comedy so that people are laughing when they're dying. There's a very interesting.
Jett Loe (29:30.519)
Source code. Sorry, just to remind the listeners, remember, watch source code and then stop the film at the end of that scene. Because there's another scene tacked on, which maybe the studio insisted. So after the guy does his comedy in the train, just turn off the television. Turn off your display, your phone, your Zoom, whatever you're watching it.
Gareth (29:38.536)
Yes, that's right. That's right. That's right. That's right.
Okay, okay. There is spiritual wisdom to not, it's not about bypassing reality. There's a really interesting spiritual teacher who says, if, I think she actually says, if the train is coming at you and you can't jump out of the way, I mean, of course you should jump out of the way if you can. And if you can save other people, you should. But if you can't do either of those things.
The purpose of spiritual practice is to be able to look at the train and say, thank you. Well, how can I be of service? Solzhenitsyn said that once he realized he couldn't escape the Gulag, that the purpose of his incarceration and the torment of the Gulag, that he could turn the purpose of that into spiritual growth. And that's a kind of, again, a dramatic, you know, longer, over the long term version of what this guy in the bunker is doing when he calls
his mother. What the Secretary of Defense does when he's calling his daughter and realizes I can't save her, she's got 10-15 minutes to live. Do I want to terrify her for the next 15 minutes or do I want to tell her I'm happy that she's got a boyfriend? And if you could extrapolate this, go ahead.
Jett Loe (30:59.607)
It is, sure, it is a film in which apparently everybody has their whole family is always in Chicago. It's an incredible coincidence. The one place. Kind of say, sorry to interrupt you. I mean, would that again, you know, everyone does a great job, even though it's very broad. So, you you've got Jared Harris. If it was somebody else, if it wasn't Jared Harris, these things would not, you know, would not work because he has, his face is so great at generating empathy.
Gareth (31:05.834)
The...
Gareth (31:28.296)
Yeah, well, and so that this this this part of like, what would we do if we knew? Here's the thing. We all do know we're all going to die. It's going to happen at some point. Most of us, it's not going to happen imminently in the next 15 minutes. But all spiritual wisdom traditions teach that there are life giving properties of death awareness. Take your death seriously and then the meaning of your life will become.
Jett Loe (31:31.425)
showing empathy.
Gareth (31:56.178)
more apparent. I don't mean nihilism and I don't mean a wish for martyrdom. I mean it helps you decide what really matters. And so, you know, a film like this can warn us in that direction. I think we both agree it would have been better if there'd been more context. One piece of context where, know, absolutely this question of speculation about what would happen. One of the first things that the administration did was it abolished
effectively abolished the United States Institute of Peace, which is a which was a independent nonprofit organization. Well, here's the thing. It had been around for I think, 35 years, I have friends who had been fellows of the United States Institute of Peace. It literally was the the site. I don't know if they call it a semi autonomous non governmental organization, what it would you know, its relationship to government, I'm not entirely clear on, but it was certainly funded.
Jett Loe (32:31.265)
Yeah. Sounds weak. Sounds weak.
Gareth (32:54.265)
by government and it has been effectively abolished. Its job was to do exactly this thing, to try to prevent the development of further conflict, to try to reduce conflict that's already underway and to try to transform violent conflict into ways of prosecuting conflict non-violently or at least with what they used to call detente, where neither of us are going to make
the first move. And so you are absolutely right. This particular wave in the domination story in US politics has directly abolished some of the resources that were being put toward peacemaking. And at the same time, there does appear to be a move that they call a move toward making peace, which I'm I
I think I see a whole lot of peace being made so much as people being dominated, you know.
Jett Loe (33:52.504)
It's just a way to get to make some money. That's all it is. It's moving chess piece board, moving pieces around the board in order to increase the grift and get some money. That's all we're talking about here.
Gareth (34:05.255)
Sure. Well, you know, if you want to ask me what people should watch instead of a house of dynamite, they should watch a house of dynamite, but someone should make...
Jett Loe (34:12.983)
Should they watch Con, can we just talk about this? Should they watch Conclave? Because dear listener, not since the heyday of the late great James Horner, has a composer cribbed the vibe of a previous score. I was watching A House of Dynamite, I couldn't believe it, I'm going, is this the literal Conclave score? It's the same score, it's the exact same vibe. It's shocking. Good job, Volker Bertelmann. Nothing against you because, no, no, hold on. Hold on.
Gareth (34:17.626)
Hahaha.
Gareth (34:33.449)
Yeah, Pete... Well, obviously he was hired for a reason. He was hired for a reason. Yes.
Jett Loe (34:40.599)
to do the Conclave score. here's the, mean, Command, you know, Command A, Command C, Command V, boom, done. Or Control if you're using the Windows thing. But no, but here's the thing, watching, I, you know, my daughter loves the Avatar movies. We watched that last Avatar film and she loves it. And I'm watching it, you know, listen, I don't care, you can hate on Avatar all you want. I thought it's pretty good. The only thing was missing was James Horner. It could have been any James Horner score. Put him in Star Trek 2, Coln, The Wrath of Khan, it would have worked. It did miss the Horner. So I'm not dissing Volker Bertelmann.
Gareth (35:09.161)
You ever-
Jett Loe (35:10.123)
but it is kind of astonishing.
Gareth (35:11.849)
Do you know what my favorite James Horner score is?
Jett Loe (35:15.735)
Well, there's only one.
Gareth (35:17.809)
No, no, no, no, no, no, you'll be surprised. You'll be surprised. Actually, I've got two favorite. I mean, I like I like his score. His score for The New World is very distinctive, but Field of Dreams. The score for Field of Dreams is lovely. Absolutely lovely. Absolutely lovely. Anyway, you know, films that people should watch instead.
Jett Loe (35:20.855)
I'm being flippant. He's done at least two scores. Battle Beyond the Stars.
Did he do field of dreams? Okay. Well, as, yes.
Gareth (35:37.766)
One hasn't been made. Somebody needs to make a serious documentary about the history of the United States Institute of Peace. There is also a serial documentary called, I believe, A Force More Powerful, which is about the history of creative nonviolence. And people should read the book Why Civil Resistance Works, which gives the lie to the notion that peacemaking is weak. It's actually a very credible argument that creative nonviolence not only produces
regime change in a less unpleasant way, but leads to much more longer enduring democracies in places where a nonviolent revolution has gotten rid of the oppressive system rather than a violent one.
Jett Loe (36:28.001)
Are you saying there's hope?
Gareth (36:29.993)
I'm saying there's choices. I'm saying there are choices. Yeah, there are choices.
Jett Loe (36:33.983)
Now, there's a lot more I could say, but as you know, I have to go across the shield wall because I got to get an oil change for my petroleum car. So we don't have that much time. Can I just ask you one question? I appreciate your recommendation. You know, what to watch instead. And I would sort of say, well, you know, the classic, here's the reason why I was initially disappointed before I came around on the roller coaster, dear listeners, Ocean Waves, Spoilers for One Battle After Another. was originally disappointed because I do like a good tense.
Gareth (36:48.19)
Yes.
Jett Loe (37:03.863)
nuclear war thriller, right? So if you do want something like that, Fail Safe, of course, Doctor Strangelove is one of the greatest films ever made, the comedy, but if you're not, if you've already seen that, see Watch CineLimits Fail Safe, a fantastic performance by the I Dream of Jeannie Guy and the guy from Once Upon a Time in the West, as well as Walter Matow. Can I ask you one question? Because a lot of people are kind of dissing.
criticizing the structure of the thing. Did the structure work for you? We see the same story told three times. Because I tell you what, it didn't work for me. It didn't feel like the structure was that each time we saw it, it illuminated more. And in fact, and I know a lot of people online are talking about how they love the first third and they hate the last third with the president. For me, if I was watching a conventionally structured motion picture and we opened up with the president having a rough day, being exhausted, talking to his wife, then having to do this random photo op with youngsters, and then we moved in and it gets hustled away.
That I thought was fantastically done. I thought that was beautifully blocked and shot. If the film had been in a linear fashion, gone that way, I think it would have been far more effective. Does that make sense to you?
Gareth (38:04.423)
Mm-hmm.
Gareth (38:11.369)
Yeah, but I mean, it's just it's one way of telling the story and I quite like the way they told it. I like the fact that you don't see President Idris Elba on the Zoom call until, you know, the third telling of the story, President Idris Elba. These are human beings is the thing. these are, and all the people in it are human beings. And I think that the
Jett Loe (38:18.315)
Yeah, so that worked for you. Okay.
Jett Loe (38:24.777)
Is that his actual name in the film? Is he President Idris Elba? It doesn't feel like it's a stretch for him. That's the thing. These are all good actors, but nobody's stretching here.
Gareth (38:39.369)
I really think, I think it may be important to say this. So are the people who make up the current administration that, you you and I have serious critiques of, and I imagine most of our listeners do as well. They are all human beings too. I don't buy the notion that you often hear that everybody's doing the best they can with what they have. I actually think most people don't know what the best they're capable of is, which is why...
you
Jett Loe (39:10.369)
Well, that goes back to Idris Elba's performance. He's not stretching himself. That's the thing. Nobody's stretching. Yeah, but nobody's stretching themselves in this motion picture. But go back to what you're saying because you're...
Gareth (39:12.805)
opening beginning what he do. No, he's good. He's not. No, I, I actually think, you know, that that what I just said, that they are doing the best they can with what they've got because because the
Jett Loe (39:26.971)
Here's, but okay, so the people in the administration are human beings. So how do we deal with human beings who don't regard you as a human being is the question. What is the, this is the thing, right? They don't regard us as human beings.
Gareth (39:34.355)
This absolutely is the thing. And when you were talking earlier about contagion, contagion seems like wishful thinking because it appeared, think one way you could put this is that there are some people who love America more than Americans. And just the same as there are some people, the tradition I come from, who seem to love Christianity more than Christ.
and they will contend on behalf of an ideology at the expense not only of the lives of their fellow humans, but of themselves actually, because clearly the bad decisions that were, the ideologically bad decisions that were taken about COVID clearly contributed to the deaths of some of the people who cared about the people who took those decisions and some of those people themselves. Some of the people who supported those decisions ended up dying. And so you can't, you can't,
do this overnight. is a kind of lot of painstaking work. There clearly are people who are working at intervening with what might be called extremism. But for the most part, for the average person, I think part of what needs to happen is that those of us, those of us who see there is, there's, this is not a game. And those of us who have woken up,
And waking up is not something you do to yourself. It's something that happens to you. Enlightenment is not something you do to yourself. It's something that happens to you. So you can't take credit for it. So those of us who've had some... Long enough. So you can absolutely engage in practices that enhance the experience, but you have to have a bit of enlightenment to tell you to go and sit under the tree in the first place. Those of us who have had the privilege of that experience of realizing that we ascend together, we fall together,
Jett Loe (41:04.279)
Well, if you sit under that tree long enough, like Sid Hirtha, you're gonna get...
Gareth (41:24.808)
that there is no higher form of identity than the human. We have to champion that even in the face of our opponents, even in the face of people who don't believe that we are as good as them. It is a tricky balance between absolutely thoroughgoing, boundary opposition to the institutionalization of the belief that some lives are worth more than others. It's a tricky balance between doing that and also championing the humanity of the...
identifying the humanity of the people who doing that.
Jett Loe (41:57.666)
Gareth, I'm going to do something that we've never done before in over 300 shows. I'm going to say, can we pause this show? I'm going to go ahead and publish the show later today. I have to go across the shield wall to get this oil change. I'm not necessarily by my actions saying that getting an oil change for my 2020 Subaru Outback is more important than your incredibly insightful comments on Epiphany's enlightenment and changing the world. But I got to get this done. Let me now.
Gareth (42:22.236)
Learn.
Jett Loe (42:25.611)
I'm gonna publish the show and let's continue this conversation in the context of talking about Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein in the next couple of days. What do you say?
Gareth (42:26.053)
huh. huh.
Gareth (42:31.516)
Frankenstein, okay. So let's do that and then and let's ask, I'm gonna invite each of us to a commitment. That is when you go to your Jiffy Lube or
Jett Loe (42:42.103)
It's not Jiffy Lube, it's my good friends over at Fiesta Subaru on Lomas in Louisiana.
Gareth (42:46.77)
to your fiesta Subaru that you do your best to champion the humanity of those people. People in service professions often don't have a truly humane experience with their customers. And I will do the same with whoever I encounter today.
Jett Loe (43:01.815)
What are you saying? I'm crap to people that work on service jobs. I'm not what what
Gareth (43:05.05)
No, you're actually, know this is one of the very first things. You know this one of the very, I wasn't saying, one of the very first things I noticed about you in the post office on Bedford Street in Belfast was how animatedly kind you were to the woman serving you behind the counter. And in Belfast, you would always say, hey, how are you doing? And people in Belfast would be freaked out because people don't usually talk to them like that. You are a kind person. You are a kind person to strangers.
Jett Loe (43:12.439)
Yes.
Jett Loe (43:31.543)
I'm an American.
Gareth (43:34.952)
And you don't you don't love them
Jett Loe (43:35.263)
I gotta go. gotta go. Folks, folks, don't forget you can go to our Patreon. If you want more of whatever this show is, I'm not sure what it is now at this point. Don't forget you can go to BeKindOfPeople.com. Go to Patreon.com slash The Film Talk. If you want to get bonus episodes, you could also get bonus episodes by subscribing through Apple Podcasts or on Facebook at Facebook.com slash The Film Talk.
Gareth (43:46.65)
It's be kind to people. It's be kind to people and call out injustice wherever you see it and think about movies.
Jett Loe (44:02.599)
You can always email us info at thefilmtalk.org. All right, I'm crossing the shield wall now, Gareth, we're pausing this conversation for a couple of days. We're gonna head back for.
Gareth (44:09.298)
Godspeed, Godspeed. Play James Horner on the way over.
Jett Loe (44:15.563)
Which one? Doesn't matter. They're all great. I love you folks. Thanks you for listening. I've been JetLow.
Gareth (44:20.968)
I've been Gareth Higgins, we'll keep talking.
Jett Loe (44:24.226)
Just a couple days. Okay.