Episode 138
Ivan's Childhood (1962) with Revolutionary Left Radio and Amanda
Join Breht, Amanda, and Evan as they delve into Andrei Tarkovsky's first feature film, Ivan's Childhood (1962). The episode starts with a lighthearted discussion about dream dinner guests, then moves into a detailed analysis of themes like innocence lost, war trauma, and symbolic elements such as trees and cobwebs. The hosts draw parallels between the film's depiction of war and ongoing humanitarian crises like those in Palestine. Part of their Tarkovsky series, this episode also touches on broader issues like moral responsibility toward children and insights from the guests' personal work.
Amanda Joy Moon:
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RevLeft:
https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/
https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/guerrilla-history
https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/#/redmenace/
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Transcript
Evan Intro: Hello and welcome to Left of the Projector. I am your host Evan,
Speaker:Evan Intro: back again with another film discussion from the left.
Speaker:Evan Intro: If you would be so kind as to rate the show on your platform of choice,
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Speaker:Evan Intro: You can also support the show if you go to Patreon slash Left of the Projector pod.
Speaker:Evan Intro: You can also follow on all social media at Left of the Projector pod on Instagram and threads.
Speaker:Evan Intro: This week on the show, we continue our series with Brett of RevLeft Radio and
Speaker:Evan Intro: Amanda on the films of Andrei Tarkovsky.
Speaker:Evan Intro: You may know by now that we've covered Stalker and Solaris, and we bring you
Speaker:Evan Intro: the first feature film directed by Tarkovsky, and that is Ivan's Childhood. It was released in 1962.
Speaker:Evan Intro: Ivan's Childhood delves into World War II from the perspective of a young child
Speaker:Evan Intro: who has lost his entire family and is now spying for the Soviet partisans and Red Army.
Speaker:Evan Intro: Brett and Amanda have been incredible partners in this ongoing series,
Speaker:Evan Intro: helping me parse out, honestly, films that scholars have spent decades talking about.
Speaker:Evan Intro: I've grown a deeper understanding of film and these sorts of films from the
Speaker:Evan Intro: Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, and other areas.
Speaker:Evan Intro: It's really been a joy to have these ongoing conversations with Amanda and Brett.
Speaker:Evan Intro: I hope you enjoyed this week's conversation on Ivan's childhood.
Speaker:Evan: All right, well, Brett and And Amanda, thank you for coming back on the show
Speaker:Evan: to talk about yet another Tarkovsky film.
Speaker:amanda: Always a pleasure.
Speaker:Brett: Yeah, absolutely. I'm happy to be back.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah. And as everyone heard in the opening there, we're talking about Ivan's
Speaker:Evan: Childhood, which is Andrei Tarkovsky's first full-length feature film, which came out in 1962.
Speaker:Evan: And I think before we get into sort of the general talk about the film itself,
Speaker:Evan: talk about some of the components that I think are pretty important,
Speaker:Evan: I thought we kind of just start I'll start off with something a little lighter,
Speaker:Evan: as you know, Tarkovsky films can be a little heavy, a lot of themes,
Speaker:Evan: and this one is about the themes of World War II in the Soviet era.
Speaker:Evan: So I thought I'd start off by just saying, if you could have dinner with an
Speaker:Evan: actor living dead, it could be a director. Curious who you would pick, and...
Speaker:Evan: Guess briefly why you would uh you'd choose them and it could be andre tarkovsky.
Speaker:Brett: Okay i could take a shot of this first um i have
Speaker:Brett: maybe one one director is pretty obvious um you know
Speaker:Brett: stanley kubrick is one of my faves um love everything that that he's pretty
Speaker:Brett: much put out 2001 a space odyssey one of my favorite films of all time um so
Speaker:Brett: you know of course i'd be interested in talking to him but as an actor one of
Speaker:Brett: my favorite actors that jumps to mind And as somebody I'm trying to work through the entire sort of, um,
Speaker:Brett: you know, all the, the entire catalog of their work is, is Daniel Day-Lewis.
Speaker:Brett: Um, only very recently started getting into him, um, on a couple of flights
Speaker:Brett: I had in the last year or two.
Speaker:Brett: I, I watched the entirety of, of his portrayal of Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker:Brett: And then also finally watched There Will Be Blood.
Speaker:Brett: Um, and I'm just, you know, one of those actors that is fascinating and captivating.
Speaker:Brett: I'm not sure what there'd be to talk about. I mean, you know,
Speaker:Brett: some of these people, you get them in a room and, you know, they're great artists
Speaker:Brett: or they're a great actor, but they might not have a lot of the same shared interests.
Speaker:Brett: But, you know, that jumps to mind. And then, of course, Nicolas Cage is another
Speaker:Brett: interesting figure that I would like to sit down and chat with.
Speaker:Evan: I think he would have something to say, Nicolas Cage, for sure.
Speaker:Brett: Absolutely.
Speaker:Evan: What about you, Amanda?
Speaker:amanda: The first director that comes to mind is Inge M. Berman.
Speaker:amanda: He's a Swedish director. he did The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries, a bunch of stuff.
Speaker:amanda: I speak Swedish. I learned Swedish in college.
Speaker:amanda: And so a lot of his films helped me learn. And it's kind of interesting that
Speaker:amanda: this film in particular really reminds me a lot of The Seventh Seal.
Speaker:amanda: If you haven't got an opportunity to see it, I'd highly recommend it.
Speaker:amanda: And then as far as actors, this is a hard one because it's hard to decide.
Speaker:amanda: I want to know what kind of person they are. I think,
Speaker:amanda: Kind of an offhand one would be like Richard Gere, mostly because of his experience
Speaker:amanda: going to Palestine and just kind of have a sit down conversation with him.
Speaker:amanda: Because as you know, like actors are used oftentimes to push state propaganda.
Speaker:amanda: And, you know, it's really propaganda in this case. And it kind of backfired.
Speaker:amanda: So I really would like to have a conversation with him to kind of see where
Speaker:amanda: that switch was, you know. And obviously, Nicolas Cage, I'm trying to piggyback off of you.
Speaker:amanda: That guy, so I live in Portland, and he filmed a movie here called Pig.
Speaker:amanda: Great movie. And we were kind of looking for him, hoping that we'd run into him.
Speaker:amanda: Because we heard that he's notoriously bad with money. Maybe he would hook us
Speaker:amanda: up because he thought we were cool or something.
Speaker:amanda: Yeah we actually ate at the food carts yesterday that um a lot of the scenes
Speaker:amanda: are filmed at or yeah the food carts and uh yeah just a centric guy you know very centric guy.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah he's uh definitely a legend i was just talking about it with someone earlier
Speaker:Evan: from the his new movie long legs but for for my pick since i kind of have to
Speaker:Evan: think about this lot i think i would pick for the actor i I think I would go with Jane Fonda,
Speaker:Evan: just because I've seen a lot of her early work.
Speaker:Evan: And I know that just from a movie I watched, and I'm blanking on it at the moment,
Speaker:Evan: she was supposed to be cast in a film, but was unmarried.
Speaker:Evan: Chosen was not chosen because of her views on
Speaker:Evan: uh palestine as being pro-palestinian and
Speaker:Evan: so she was left out of the uh the she wasn't
Speaker:Evan: called back for the for the movie and so you
Speaker:Evan: know she's since the beginning of her career has gone out and
Speaker:Evan: spoken been pretty outspoken about not just palestinian rights but
Speaker:Evan: lots of other you know the various vietnam war
Speaker:Evan: and things like that so be curious to see how those have influenced
Speaker:Evan: her career and then from a director if i'm going to pick one of
Speaker:Evan: each i'd probably go with paul verhoeven i'm a
Speaker:Evan: huge fan of his you know more uh i guess american films you can think of starship
Speaker:Evan: troopers and he's always been a favorite of mine so he would be probably one
Speaker:Evan: of one of those in another in another episode i said stanley kubrick so i don't
Speaker:Evan: want to repeat but that would be another i would love to these are all i mean
Speaker:Evan: it can't really go wrong i suppose but um.
Speaker:Brett: I don't know this is probably for for the uh exclusively for the terminally
Speaker:Brett: online line, but did you recently see the Zionist online,
Speaker:Brett: the Brianna Wu, her take on Starship Troopers, that it's not a mockery of fascism,
Speaker:Brett: but it's actually a sincere portrayal of nationalism? Did you see that?
Speaker:Evan: I did see that. I remember when there was this whole, I think,
Speaker:Evan: I guess it was on Twitter and some other people were talking all about Starship Troopers.
Speaker:Evan: And I did, one of my very first episodes of this podcast, maybe the 15th episode,
Speaker:Evan: was on Starship Troopers, and I re-released it around the time that all of that
Speaker:Evan: kind of discourse course is going on.
Speaker:Evan: I'm like, I don't know anyone could watch that movie and not get it.
Speaker:Evan: You have to be just obtuse to not... I don't know. It's...
Speaker:Brett: Absolutely.
Speaker:Evan: It's kind of crazy. I think there's a lot of movies I've done.
Speaker:Evan: A lot of Verhoeven movies, like Robocop, I think people even,
Speaker:Evan: don't realize is this uh.
Speaker:Brett: What honorable one just jumped in my mind um humphrey
Speaker:Brett: bogart oh i would love to to sit down and chat with him he's uh i don't know
Speaker:Brett: i just love the old you know film noirs and just like a certain feeling you
Speaker:Brett: get when you watch those old films and i just have always been captivated by
Speaker:Brett: any movie that that he's in and just his acting and stuff is hypnotizing so
Speaker:Brett: he's he's high on my list as.
Speaker:Evan: Far as uh tarkovsky is concerned we've kind of stuck with some of the The original
Speaker:Evan: two episodes we've done, we've done Solaris and Stalker, some of the later films in his career.
Speaker:Evan: And now this, we're going back to 1962, which is Andrei Tarkovsky's very first feature film.
Speaker:Evan: And there's kind of an interesting story that I'll kind of briefly mention,
Speaker:Evan: just how he ended up directing the movie.
Speaker:Evan: Apparently, it was an entire other group of people, a different director was
Speaker:Evan: starting on the film, had written the screenplay, had, I think,
Speaker:Evan: filmed some of the movie and they didn't like it.
Speaker:Evan: They thought it was terrible. I guess these are most films or other people behind
Speaker:Evan: the scenes. And so they fired him.
Speaker:Evan: And someone that was one of Andrej Tarkovsky's mentors had told him about they're
Speaker:Evan: looking for a new director for this movie.
Speaker:Evan: And he literally applied, you know, through some kind of application process,
Speaker:Evan: won the chance to direct it, rewrote most of the film.
Speaker:Evan: And then when he submitted it to the Soviet Union to have it be reviewed,
Speaker:Evan: he actually left out all of the dream sequences and also the love,
Speaker:Evan: kind of the love interest scene from the script. So they didn't even know those
Speaker:Evan: were going to be in the movie. He filmed them anyway.
Speaker:Evan: They came, it came out and kind of the rest is history if you, if you will.
Speaker:Evan: But I'm curious, being that this is a very different kind of movie than the
Speaker:Evan: other two we've watched. And those are kind of longer, lots of single shots.
Speaker:Evan: This is more, more or less traditional and kind of a, put that in quotation marks.
Speaker:Evan: I don't think anything Andre Tarkovsky does is traditional, but in a traditional
Speaker:Evan: sense of just kind of how more films at that time were done.
Speaker:Evan: I'm curious, kind of your first impressions when you watched it before we get into it.
Speaker:amanda: I think one of my first impressions is that I guess you don't really see a whole
Speaker:amanda: lot of war films that aren't glorifying war.
Speaker:amanda: And also are from a Soviet perspective. One thing that I could see throughout
Speaker:amanda: it, even in like the character's eyes, was like trauma, you know?
Speaker:amanda: The trauma of the war and even one of the soldiers is like, oh,
Speaker:amanda: when the war is over, go see a doctor about those nerves, you know?
Speaker:amanda: But I think, I'm really glad that we did this out of order just because this
Speaker:amanda: is such a different film that it's not a complete representation of Tarkovsky
Speaker:amanda: and his capabilities, But it is kind of sort of a creation story at the same time.
Speaker:amanda: I mean, the Soviet identity dramatically changed after World War Two,
Speaker:amanda: as you know, any traumatizing event would.
Speaker:amanda: But yeah, that's my first impression.
Speaker:Brett: Yeah, I agree that watching them out of order was interesting because you got
Speaker:Brett: to sort of already know where his sort of cinematography and his art in general is going.
Speaker:Brett: And then you can go back and visit his first ever film.
Speaker:Brett: And one of the things that I noticed is the beautiful cinematography is absolutely there.
Speaker:Brett: There this this very unique Tarkovsky esque way of, you know,
Speaker:Brett: moving the camera of every image being a painting of, you know,
Speaker:Brett: beautiful, beautiful camera work where, you know, this film could could have been a silent film.
Speaker:Brett: Right. There could have been no dialogue and not a lot would have been stripped away.
Speaker:Brett: Way like you could have made this this film without dialogue and
Speaker:Brett: that's a testament to how you know just talented tarkovsky is
Speaker:Brett: and how much emotion that he can evoke with very little dialogue just by using
Speaker:Brett: the visual poetry of cinematography and then the other thing i noticed that
Speaker:Brett: really struck me as is the the basic plot like if you you know from our previous
Speaker:Brett: discussions on solaris and
Speaker:Brett: stalker there is much more um ethereality
Speaker:Brett: um much more surreality um ambiguity
Speaker:Brett: in the plot in the temporal um
Speaker:Brett: tone like you know the the chronological order in which the movies take place
Speaker:Brett: uh you know sometimes you can sort of you're sort of uncertain about where the
Speaker:Brett: plot is at any given moment etc but this this film was was much more straightforward
Speaker:Brett: much more you know right down the middle as far as plot goes.
Speaker:Brett: Right? Very chronological, very easy to follow.
Speaker:Brett: And of course, I think that has its benefits when you're trying to work on a concept like war.
Speaker:Brett: And of course, this is his first film, so maybe he doesn't feel as artistically
Speaker:Brett: developed or free to move in the directions he later would move in.
Speaker:Brett: But yeah, for a Tarkovsky film, this plot was very easy to sort of follow.
Speaker:Brett: It was very chronological and lacked some of the more,
Speaker:Brett: I wouldn't call them indulgences necessarily, but some of the more ethereal,
Speaker:Brett: metaphorical, and symbolic stuff that would come later in his catalog of work.
Speaker:Evan: It's interesting you mentioned that because I was watching an interview with
Speaker:Evan: an author who wrote a book on a bunch of Tarkovsky films.
Speaker:Evan: And she actually said, you know, she's obviously probably watched it hundreds
Speaker:Evan: of times or many times to write a book on his films.
Speaker:Evan: But she actually said something that's interesting. saying this is not necessarily counter to
Speaker:Evan: what you're saying brett but it's i'm wondering what do you think of this the very
Speaker:Evan: opening scene of the movie is uh kind of
Speaker:Evan: uh you see ivan the as the child kind of um he's you know on an apple cart he's
Speaker:Evan: it's you know this very beautiful nice kind of um music in the background it
Speaker:Evan: kind of seems like oh this is a very beautiful film and then you're immediately
Speaker:Evan: taken the opposite direction you see that this is now a dream he
Speaker:Evan: wakes up in a barn and he's dirty and everything.
Speaker:Evan: And so her theory or her comment was that you actually watching it only one
Speaker:Evan: time, you are a little bit confused sometimes what is the reality just because
Speaker:Evan: the cuts that he does sometimes are not very obvious. They just kind of immediately flip.
Speaker:Evan: And so there is a little bit of confusion sometimes when there is a dream.
Speaker:Evan: I think if you're watching closely and looking to analyze it,
Speaker:Evan: maybe it's easier to tell.
Speaker:Evan: But But I'm wondering if you think that that's actually, he does try and confuse
Speaker:Evan: the audience a little bit in giving you these weird back and forth sequences.
Speaker:Evan: And sometimes when he cuts, it'll be like a really close up and you don't really know where you are.
Speaker:Evan: You don't know whether it's going to be another flashback or it's a different
Speaker:Evan: flashback or it's modern time.
Speaker:Evan: So I think that's where you see his future style in action, where he does still
Speaker:Evan: try and give you that bit of kind of give the audience something they're not expecting, I guess.
Speaker:Brett: Yeah, no, I agree with that. And in fact I had in my notes I didn't get to it
Speaker:Brett: quite yet But with the exception of the dream scenes,
Speaker:Brett: You know, because I think you're saying that there's that's the seed of what
Speaker:Brett: would later become kind of, in some respect, entire films is this dreamy,
Speaker:Brett: ethereal, you know, chronologically sort of confused and ambiguous way of doing things.
Speaker:Brett: Those were sort of instantiated in these dream scenes.
Speaker:Brett: And, yeah, the cutting back to real life and back to the dreams,
Speaker:Brett: it did get confusing at certain times, especially on your first watch.
Speaker:Brett: I'm sure if you go back on the second watch, you can really nail that down.
Speaker:Brett: But for me, it just felt like this, you know, it's it's it's it's literally
Speaker:Brett: a shift from dreaming into reality.
Speaker:Brett: But reality is a nightmare. And so you're he he has these dreams of a sort of childhood deferred.
Speaker:Brett: Are they actual memories from his childhood or are they sort of dreamy reminisce,
Speaker:Brett: you know, a sort of nostalgia for something that never was because he was stripped
Speaker:Brett: of his childhood? I don't exactly know.
Speaker:Brett: But the dream world is the only world that Ivan can enter where he still has a childhood.
Speaker:Brett: And then he wakes up into the nightmare of the adult world, you know,
Speaker:Brett: lost his both his parents, lost his sister to the Nazis.
Speaker:Brett: And so I had that dream reality back and forth. And yeah, they blur together
Speaker:Brett: the way that they're edited or such that you don't exactly know.
Speaker:Brett: Exactly where you are in any given moment. It takes a second to orient yourself.
Speaker:Brett: And there's just this, yeah, this oscillation between the dreams of a childhood
Speaker:Brett: that Ivan and all children deserve and then the nightmare reality of war.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, definitely. I think that's well said. And one of the things I was thinking
Speaker:Evan: about, I've seen, I think when I was right after college, I went through a phase
Speaker:Evan: of watching lots and lots of war movies, World War II, Vietnam.
Speaker:Evan: Maybe not at the time I wasn't watching movies like this, but I think of how
Speaker:Evan: many movies there are about World War Two, and sometimes it's,
Speaker:Evan: you know, a specific unit or, you know, a rescue mission or the,
Speaker:Evan: you know, the beaches of Normandy, all these different things.
Speaker:Evan: But this is not any of those things.
Speaker:Evan: It's kind of something altogether different. It's based on a book.
Speaker:Evan: And it's, you know, we see the war through the eyes of a child going back and
Speaker:Evan: forth, as you said, between kind of the realities, the cruel reality of the
Speaker:Evan: real world and war and then the, you know, this dream or, you know,
Speaker:Evan: what you wish life could be like.
Speaker:Evan: I'm curious what you think that makes it, you know, in a way it's risky to make
Speaker:Evan: something like this. It's not like other war movies.
Speaker:Evan: And I'm wondering what makes it, I don't know, compelling or what makes it different?
Speaker:Evan: And do you think it is, can you think of any other, you know,
Speaker:Evan: war type movies where they really kind of press this button of,
Speaker:Evan: you know, childhood and youth or even just avoid, there's no battle scenes there's
Speaker:Evan: no the only shooting you really see are flares in the air a few times and you
Speaker:Evan: hear some gunfire but there's no actual war like you're you're only seeing the result of war.
Speaker:amanda: Well there is there is some bombs that do go off
Speaker:amanda: i i actually re-watched it and i
Speaker:amanda: was like oh yeah there's there's there's some bombs that do go off when
Speaker:amanda: they're in like the trenches kind of about three quarters of the way
Speaker:amanda: through i think right um but that's pretty much it um
Speaker:amanda: the perspective of like being from it's
Speaker:amanda: more humanizing i think it's not the movie's
Speaker:amanda: not so much about like the war as
Speaker:amanda: much because it's just a lot of dialogue and
Speaker:amanda: a lot of human interaction um i think it's like the emotional emotional
Speaker:amanda: part of war i guess the the trauma as i stated
Speaker:amanda: before and doing it through a child's perspective that
Speaker:amanda: is forced to be part of the resistance um
Speaker:amanda: forced to sacrifice their actual childhood to
Speaker:amanda: seek revenge and throughout the film you notice
Speaker:amanda: that like the older characters are trying to kind
Speaker:amanda: of like maintain his innocence trying to maintain his childhood in a way of
Speaker:amanda: like no kid you need to go to military school you know like you need to go to
Speaker:amanda: boarding school or whatever um and so it's just a very humanized uh aspect which is
Speaker:amanda: something that actually was starting to happen a lot in Soviet film in the sixties.
Speaker:amanda: Um, and so, um.
Speaker:amanda: That's, I guess that's what kind of makes a difference, not specifically about,
Speaker:amanda: because you don't really actually know where they're at.
Speaker:amanda: If they are in Russia, I mean, at the end, you see that they're at,
Speaker:amanda: you know, wherever the headquarters of all these Nazis are.
Speaker:amanda: I really like the use of real, real scene footage towards the end when they,
Speaker:amanda: you know, took out the Nazis. That's just always exciting.
Speaker:amanda: But yeah, it's a very humanized aspect.
Speaker:Brett: Yeah. And to add to that, you know, definitely movies jump to mind.
Speaker:Brett: There's like the classic American way of doing these World War Two sort of movies,
Speaker:Brett: which I think Evan was alluding to.
Speaker:Brett: Very straightforward, very much like here's this one platoon.
Speaker:Brett: Let's follow them. You know, Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down,
Speaker:Brett: you know, kind of like action movies that don't really get too deep into.
Speaker:Brett: I mean, they're good films in their own right, but they don't really get too
Speaker:Brett: deep into the psychology, much less these sort of different lenses,
Speaker:Brett: like a childhood lens, for example.
Speaker:Brett: Speaking of Kubrick, you can think of Full Metal Jacket, which had obviously
Speaker:Brett: humor that this film lacks, but also just the psychology of the soldiers themselves.
Speaker:Brett: It dove a little deeper while still having that action element.
Speaker:Brett: So it was a fun watch, but also a criticism of the war in and of itself and
Speaker:Brett: a diving into like, you know, that one soldier who goes sort of crazy and,
Speaker:Brett: you know, blows his own brains out that that psychology there.
Speaker:Brett: But this is very unique that it's so much through the lens of a child.
Speaker:Brett: Of a war orphan, right? He was orphaned by the war.
Speaker:Brett: This dream sequences, as I was saying earlier, that allude back to the childhood
Speaker:Brett: he might have had at one point or should have had in a just world.
Speaker:Brett: World and then you know to amanda's point at the end when there's
Speaker:Brett: like that footage of of you know the the soviets
Speaker:Brett: winning and taking over nazi headquarters etc
Speaker:Brett: i think it's it's not a coincidence that
Speaker:Brett: tarkovsky again shows dead children um he
Speaker:Brett: shows how the nazis killed their own children so there's
Speaker:Brett: that one scene of gerbils lined up next to all of his
Speaker:Brett: dead children and then another nazi commander i'm not sure who they
Speaker:Brett: were referring to who um shot all his
Speaker:Brett: kids in the attic and then hung himself and so
Speaker:Brett: you know when we're talking about seeing it through
Speaker:Brett: the childhood lens obviously the the lens
Speaker:Brett: of ivan and from a pro-soviet which any human being
Speaker:Brett: should have in this context especially a pro-soviet um
Speaker:Brett: you know perspective but then at the end like yeah nazis are are brutalizing
Speaker:Brett: children by starting this war brutalizing children all all around europe but
Speaker:Brett: the nazis themselves are sort of brutalizing um their own children in a sense
Speaker:Brett: They start this insane manic war for these fascistic expansionary reasons.
Speaker:Brett: And it all leads with their defeat and then to murder your own children.
Speaker:Brett: I think there's a separate question there of...
Speaker:Brett: You know it made me think in the moment like if you're in those circumstances,
Speaker:Brett: like wouldn't you still want to give your kids a chance at
Speaker:Brett: life like um you know like yeah you're going
Speaker:Brett: to be punished you can kill yourself etc um i
Speaker:Brett: guess there could be some fears about like you know pillaging or
Speaker:Brett: something when the soviets come in there's lots of lots of
Speaker:Brett: um discussion on both
Speaker:Brett: sides of that war about the atrocities being committed by
Speaker:Brett: the others there's a little fear there that maybe death is less
Speaker:Brett: of a punishment for your children than what could come but in
Speaker:Brett: most instances you can't imagine entire platoons of
Speaker:Brett: people coming in and just you know murdering children unless they're
Speaker:Brett: israeli or something but um sad as sad as that is um but yeah just the the moral
Speaker:Brett: question of of murdering your own children but that's that's not really pondered
Speaker:Brett: in the film it's just the the stark reality of of of the war itself traumatizing
Speaker:Brett: ivan and other children like
Speaker:Brett: him but then the nazis themselves um exterminating their
Speaker:Brett: own children and just like that that reinforcing that
Speaker:Brett: lens of trying to see the absurdity and the irrationality and the brutality
Speaker:Brett: of war and the way you highlight that best is to try to see it through the the
Speaker:Brett: eyes of of fundamentally uh you know sort of ontologically innocent beings you
Speaker:Brett: know children so i i found that to be interesting yeah i.
Speaker:Evan: Think it was the first word that i wrote down in my notes i wrote you know,
Speaker:Evan: a child's wonderment and innocence.
Speaker:Evan: And that kind of, to me, is the word that describes the movie.
Speaker:Evan: I think you, Amanda, said the people, the other soldiers want Ivan to have kind
Speaker:Evan: of a quote-unquote normal life where he can keep this innocence,
Speaker:Evan: that they want to prevent him from continuing to be this sort of spy behind enemy lines.
Speaker:Evan: And it's just, I think what makes it such a different kind of war film,
Speaker:Evan: It takes place during a war, but I almost don't even like to say it's a war
Speaker:Evan: film in the way we've been talking about it.
Speaker:Evan: It's that innocence that they're trying to withhold.
Speaker:Evan: And that's what those dream sequences are showing you. They're showing you that
Speaker:Evan: once upon a time, Ivan did have this innocence.
Speaker:Evan: He loved his mother. They went apple picking.
Speaker:Evan: They picked water from the well. They had this sort of normal life.
Speaker:Evan: And it's the war that kind of took that all away. and he's led him to being
Speaker:Evan: bitter and angry and want vengeance to do whatever he can to avenge.
Speaker:Evan: As you said, being an orphan, he's lost that innocence.
Speaker:Evan: And there's lots of moments throughout the movie where they try and give him
Speaker:Evan: a bunch of comics or kids' magazines.
Speaker:Evan: And he's like, I've read all those.
Speaker:Evan: And all the attempts to try and give him any sense of normalcy is just always just stripped away.
Speaker:Evan: And I think that's part of the impact of war is that you can shield yourself,
Speaker:Evan: even like those Nazi children. you know they're kind of shielded from what's
Speaker:Evan: going on but at the end of the day they also suffer everyone suffers.
Speaker:Brett: To add to that um the the way that the the older soldiers are portrayed is also
Speaker:Brett: obviously as amanda was saying incredibly humanizing um but they all were rallied
Speaker:Brett: around the shared love and protection of the boy um and and there's like this
Speaker:Brett: broader metaphor of of you know,
Speaker:Brett: a whole people trying simultaneously to shield the boy from the terrors in the
Speaker:Brett: sense of like, you should go to school, not be on the front lines.
Speaker:Brett: But also at the same time, just doing whatever they can to protect the boy.
Speaker:Brett: And there's a deeper sense that in war, like this war is happening in some sense
Speaker:Brett: to protect the future, to defend everything that is most sacred and holy for
Speaker:Brett: a community, for a nation, for a people, which is represented in their children,
Speaker:Brett: which is, you you know, the future of this entire society, this way of being.
Speaker:Brett: The Nazi children were killed in the end. The Nazi regime was coming to an end.
Speaker:Brett: And for the Nazis, for Goebbels and Hitler and, you know, all these others,
Speaker:Brett: they were picturing this thousand-year Reich and their children,
Speaker:Brett: you know, trying to breed these Aryan, you know, children to have this future that they imagined.
Speaker:Brett: That was destroyed by them starting World War II and ultimately losing it.
Speaker:Brett: And so I can see the dead Nazi children at the end as kind of reminiscent of
Speaker:Brett: that as well, but the soldiers, the lieutenants.
Speaker:Brett: Protecting this boy um spending so much time trying
Speaker:Brett: to protect him trying to put him on a right path even though the
Speaker:Brett: the context in which they're operating in makes that sort of
Speaker:Brett: impossible i think was a was a kind of a beautiful element
Speaker:Brett: of the film um and you can't watch this film and i mentioned israel earlier
Speaker:Brett: sort of flippantly but don't get me wrong like you can't watch this film without
Speaker:Brett: thinking about what's going on in palestine right now and that this exact trauma
Speaker:Brett: is being inflicted on children en masse as we speak.
Speaker:Brett: You know, some recent numbers coming out of Palestine suggest that over 150,000,
Speaker:Brett: 180,000 human beings have been murdered at this point.
Speaker:Brett: And Gaza is 50% people under 18 years old, so children.
Speaker:Brett: And so you're talking tens of thousands of children.
Speaker:Brett: And the ones that are surviving often will be missing one or both of their parents.
Speaker:Brett: Many have lost their entire families their entire
Speaker:Brett: extended families and that's why you
Speaker:Brett: know we talk about israel as the nazis of our time
Speaker:Brett: they're perpetuating the same sort of brutality and cruelty and it's the children
Speaker:Brett: of that society that really bear the the horrors of it because they're sort
Speaker:Brett: of fundamentally innocent and the least capable intellectually to deal with that And so,
Speaker:Brett: you know, I did think about Palestine the entire time.
Speaker:Brett: And the last thing I'll say on this point is it reminds me of this James Baldwin
Speaker:Brett: quote that I think really kind of gets at what we're talking about here, too.
Speaker:Brett: Baldwin said, quote, The children are always ours, every single one of them all over the globe.
Speaker:Brett: And I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this
Speaker:Brett: may be incapable of morality itself. self.
Speaker:Brett: And I've always loved that quote. I think it's beautiful.
Speaker:Brett: And I think it really speaks to what we're talking about here in seeing the
Speaker:Brett: children of humanity as our children,
Speaker:Brett: all of our children, and that anybody with a developed, mature sense of morality
Speaker:Brett: needs to see the children of the world as not Palestinian children or Arab children
Speaker:Brett: or Russian children or German children,
Speaker:Brett: but as human children that we all have a deep responsibility for.
Speaker:Brett: And one of the ways in which that responsibility is completely abandoned is
Speaker:Brett: when we bring down the whores of war on top of the heads of fundamentally innocent children.
Speaker:amanda: Absolutely and all wars are always a war on children yes and and also makes
Speaker:amanda: me like the going back to how the nazis um you know they killed their own children
Speaker:amanda: um you know there is a line you know like any loss of life is is a tragedy but
Speaker:amanda: killing kids fucking sucks.
Speaker:amanda: Beyond anything, you know, but, you know, I think about like with Israel,
Speaker:amanda: like, um, you know, one of the hostages was returned safely after the father
Speaker:amanda: thought his daughter was dead.
Speaker:amanda: And he was actually kind of like relieved thinking that she was dead because
Speaker:amanda: it's that, that mentality that it's better to die than being taken hostage,
Speaker:amanda: um, because of just the generations and generations
Speaker:amanda: of hate being taught um which
Speaker:amanda: is very reminiscent of how you know children of the
Speaker:amanda: nazis were taught to think about jews you know and um the hannibal directive
Speaker:amanda: is something that has now been shown to be implemented on october 7th and it's
Speaker:amanda: just it's the parallels are just you can't not recognize it um it's yeah so.
Speaker:Brett: Absolutely and how zionism itself um teaches children from a very young age
Speaker:Brett: to hate muslim arab palestinians um to dehumanize them and so you have like
Speaker:Brett: these interviews that come out sometimes of young kids you know um just just
Speaker:Brett: regurgitating the most insane.
Speaker:Brett: Fascistic anti-human rhetoric as
Speaker:Brett: if it's just common sense because this this
Speaker:Brett: fascistic settler colonial society has inculcated
Speaker:Brett: this barbarity into the minds of their
Speaker:Brett: children which in and of itself is a form of brutalizing children
Speaker:Brett: which your own children by teaching them this hatred
Speaker:Brett: this this fundamental division this dehumanization of the other um that is also
Speaker:Brett: child abuse you're literally murdering palestinian children and you're sort
Speaker:Brett: of stunting or murdering the psychology and the moral development of your own
Speaker:Brett: children to keep this fucking insane project going um and And it's just,
Speaker:Brett: it is absolutely disgusting.
Speaker:Brett: And the fact that so many people in this world, especially, I mean,
Speaker:Brett: in the imperial core in the West, seem to lack moral clarity on this point is
Speaker:Brett: just absolutely fucking astounding.
Speaker:Brett: And, you know, people that really fancy themselves intellectuals and morally
Speaker:Brett: deep thinkers, you know, I mean, Sam Harris, for example, wrote an entire book
Speaker:Brett: on morality and how we can root morality in a sort of scientific objective,
Speaker:Brett: a basis or whatever. And he's just a full on Zionist.
Speaker:Brett: And, you know, these people are fucking sick in the head, but they fancy themselves
Speaker:Brett: like truly deep moral thinkers while they do everything but condemn the mass
Speaker:Brett: slaughter of innocent human beings, families, and importantly, children.
Speaker:Brett: So it's just stark to see that, you know, in real time.
Speaker:Evan: And just from a, from like a personal note, just as people maybe have,
Speaker:Evan: maybe I mentioned other episodes and across of our episode with Intervention Pod,
Speaker:Evan: where we talked about kind of the having myself grown up as a Jewish person
Speaker:Evan: going to a, you know, a Jewish school and being pushed all of these Zionist kind of lies and myths.
Speaker:Evan: Maybe not to the point of seeing, you know, Muslims and Arabs as lesser people,
Speaker:Evan: but, you know, going to Israel, participating in a multiple day IDF program.
Speaker:Evan: I mean, they very much, I mean, I won't go too deep into this.
Speaker:Evan: Us. You could spend a whole hour as we did.
Speaker:Evan: But it's very easy to see how you can create these myths about people.
Speaker:Evan: And you could see how, when I think about those Nazi children that are killed
Speaker:Evan: at the end, I mean, they would perpetuate the same lies and beliefs about Jews,
Speaker:Evan: that the Jews are now going and doing it against Arabs and Muslims.
Speaker:Evan: So it's really just a pattern too, where it's also impossible to separate that.
Speaker:Evan: I hate to use the word conflict, but what's going on in Palestine and Gaza to this movie.
Speaker:Evan: So I'm glad you both brought it up and I think it's an important point.
Speaker:amanda: Yeah. There's also this Naomi Klein quote.
Speaker:amanda: I'm sure you all have heard about it and seen her book, Doppelganger,
Speaker:amanda: which I haven't fully read, but essentially saying that the Zionist mentality,
Speaker:amanda: that is taught is not the freedom of oppression, but the freedom to be the oppressor, something like that.
Speaker:amanda: I'm kind of butchering it, but that's definitely on par.
Speaker:Evan: The way we were taught about all of the various wars, the Yom Kippur War,
Speaker:Evan: the 67, all these different ones was that Israel, of course,
Speaker:Evan: was the victim and had to defend itself as we see being perpetuated to this day.
Speaker:Evan: But on a separate note, there's one theme that then I'm going to wait on it
Speaker:Evan: because I think it's, uh, I'm going to leave it alone.
Speaker:Evan: And that's, although maybe it does kind of fit into what I'm going to mention
Speaker:Evan: now is I saw an article online that referred to Ivan's childhood as,
Speaker:Evan: you know, a film about kind of like the tree of life.
Speaker:Evan: There's lots of moments in this movie where I think trees are very intentional
Speaker:Evan: and important to the plot.
Speaker:Evan: And I think it goes into something else I had seen about it talking about the movie as kind of a.
Speaker:Evan: Can be viewed as this different form or these various
Speaker:Evan: forms of dualities the child's idealism versus
Speaker:Evan: kind of the cruel reality of war which i think we've already talked about but
Speaker:Evan: i think it's uh very interesting to look at that perspective when it comes to
Speaker:Evan: how they use trees so the very opening scene you see some apple trees and you
Speaker:Evan: see ivan sort of floating above the trees and then immediately they show him
Speaker:Evan: kind of uh at root level literally where you You see dirt and roots of those trees from the ground,
Speaker:Evan: and then it flashes to the current time.
Speaker:Evan: And several times throughout the film, there is a scene in a grove of birchwood trees, yes.
Speaker:Evan: There's a couple of scenes in a field of birchwood.
Speaker:Evan: And then there's also a moment when Ivan wakes up from one of his nightmares
Speaker:Evan: or dream sequences, and he immediately sees there's a log of a birchwood kind
Speaker:Evan: of behind him before it kind of brings you back to reality.
Speaker:Evan: And then at the very kind of the last moments of the movie, you have him going
Speaker:Evan: through the swamp on the German side, you know, through these large trees that
Speaker:Evan: are just growing in muck and dirt.
Speaker:Evan: And they're kind of having to get their way through into the Nazi side.
Speaker:Evan: You know, maybe representing the evils of the Nazis. So I'm curious if you noticed
Speaker:Evan: any of those aspects of trees in it at all.
Speaker:Evan: And if there's anything to that, you know, I don't put anything that Tarkovsky does as accidents.
Speaker:Evan: And especially also brings me to kind of my question that you could also answer
Speaker:Evan: a part of this is there's this sort of random moment around 30 minutes in of
Speaker:Evan: this little love story amongst Masha,
Speaker:Evan: who's a nurse and her, you know, commanding officer or a commanding officer
Speaker:Evan: that seemingly doesn't really fit into the rest of the movie.
Speaker:Evan: It's kind of like a little mini vignette that's i mean i'm curious what
Speaker:Evan: you both think to see if it doesn't fit or if it does
Speaker:Evan: fit but it takes place in that birch field and that moment where the the the
Speaker:Evan: general not the general the lieutenant kisses masha is over sort of a pit where
Speaker:Evan: you see the kind of the roots of those same trees so all of those things kind
Speaker:Evan: of fit together to me as as something and i'm not maybe sure what it is well.
Speaker:amanda: On the on the topic of birchwood um,
Speaker:amanda: just doing like i i was really curious about because i was
Speaker:amanda: reading your notes and i didn't really notice like how prominent they
Speaker:amanda: are throughout i mean even like one of the cabins or
Speaker:amanda: the shelters is made out of that same birchwood i
Speaker:amanda: think right um and so i kind
Speaker:amanda: of was like okay what's the symbolism of this and so i think like
Speaker:amanda: birchwood is i guess it's a pretty prominent in russia
Speaker:amanda: um it symbolizes femininity and um
Speaker:amanda: fertility warms kindness peace tranquility and
Speaker:amanda: harmony they use it a lot in paintings and
Speaker:amanda: art and stuff like that and as you said like Tchaikovsky is
Speaker:amanda: nothing is accidental so I think
Speaker:amanda: that that yeah just kind of like okay so the best way I could like compare it
Speaker:amanda: is so I'm Mexican and like we're we're all about corn maize you know we come
Speaker:amanda: from from the corn um it's a really it's a staple of like how our people survived there's like entire,
Speaker:amanda: analogs written about tortillas and um i've read them all um but i think that
Speaker:amanda: it's kind of like with that you know like um birchwood is like a symbol of russian
Speaker:amanda: pride russian um i guess nationalism whatever i tread lightly on that um because
Speaker:amanda: that could be taken one way or another.
Speaker:amanda: But I just kind of think of it as like, yeah, that's like the symbol of,
Speaker:amanda: Of Russia, of the Russian identity, I guess.
Speaker:Brett: Yeah, that's that's interesting. For sure. I didn't know that had that meaning
Speaker:Brett: in those sort of cultural signifiers in that society. That's fascinating.
Speaker:Brett: Yeah, I mean, I always love one of the best things about watching a Tarkovsky
Speaker:Brett: film is this this profound eye for nature that he has,
Speaker:Brett: how he in every film that I've seen of his so far has these long lingering scenes
Speaker:Brett: where he keeps the camera on nature is always sort of placing human nature in
Speaker:Brett: the broader context of the natural world.
Speaker:Brett: Writ large um there's an interesting this is one of those things i'm not quite
Speaker:Brett: sure what to make of it as amanda like he was alluding to like you know it means
Speaker:Brett: something but you're not quite sure in the very opening scene um ivan is in
Speaker:Brett: like this you know i think it's a yeah one of those forests.
Speaker:Brett: And he comes face to face with like a spider web and is
Speaker:Brett: sort of like you know interested in it whatever and then
Speaker:Brett: later in the film masha um walks by
Speaker:Brett: like a tree that's the exact same type of tree and um
Speaker:Brett: kind of freaks out about cobwebs and steps back and she's
Speaker:Brett: like i'm i'm only scared of spiders um so the
Speaker:Brett: sort of like this this um natural thing
Speaker:Brett: this spider the spider web it's at
Speaker:Brett: one it's at one point delightful for the child um
Speaker:Brett: that is uh sort of innocent in a
Speaker:Brett: way of like not of just sort of like you know garden of eden
Speaker:Brett: style innocence and then as a later more
Speaker:Brett: developed up to mature person learns that this
Speaker:Brett: is a is a threat or a danger and can kind of jump back from
Speaker:Brett: it again not quite sure what that means but probably something
Speaker:Brett: he's trying to say there um with the with regards
Speaker:Brett: or i'll get to the love the love thing in a second with with
Speaker:Brett: masha and the kiss but one quote i found very illuminating regarding tarkovsky
Speaker:Brett: and how he does images as we're wrestling with the meaning of certain things
Speaker:Brett: um there's this quote where he says quote We can express our feelings regarding
Speaker:Brett: the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means.
Speaker:Brett: I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress, metaphorically, not symbolically.
Speaker:Brett: A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula,
Speaker:Brett: while a metaphor is an image, an image possessing the same distinguishing features
Speaker:Brett: as the world it represents.
Speaker:Brett: An image, as opposed to a symbol, is indefinite in meaning.
Speaker:Brett: One cannot speak of of an infinite world by applying tools
Speaker:Brett: that are definite and finite we can analyze the formula
Speaker:Brett: that constitutes a symbol while metaphor is a being
Speaker:Brett: within itself um and it
Speaker:Brett: it falls apart at any attempt of touching it end quote so i think that's kind
Speaker:Brett: of interesting and in that regard if you would take him at his word and then
Speaker:Brett: assume that he's doing that here um there is sort of a non-meaning it's just
Speaker:Brett: sort of meant to be an image that evokes feeling um and tries to get at the infinite space,
Speaker:Brett: and indefinite sort of aspects of human life which i found very interesting
Speaker:Brett: you know kubrick is different i think kubrick does a lot of symbols like kubrick
Speaker:Brett: is putting things in his film that have definite meanings he's trying to get
Speaker:Brett: you to catch on to these little easter eggs of meaning,
Speaker:Brett: and it's sort of interesting to think of tarkovsky as we've described him in
Speaker:Brett: previous episodes as a sort of anti-kubrick in a way where he just sort of steps
Speaker:Brett: back from even that meaning and just sort just has the image itself playing a role.
Speaker:Brett: So it's really, really hard to say. I'm interested to hear what both of you
Speaker:Brett: think about it, but I'll get to the Masha point in a second if either of you
Speaker:Brett: have any thoughts on that.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, that's kind of a separate. I just brought them up because of the moment
Speaker:Evan: when they're in those trees.
Speaker:Evan: But yeah, I think the article that I didn't fully finish reading it,
Speaker:Evan: the kind of where it talks about the trees of life, it also actually mentioned
Speaker:Evan: the spider moment you're talking about too.
Speaker:Evan: And I really liked that line that she's only afraid of
Speaker:Evan: spiders you know you're literally in a war scenario against
Speaker:Evan: uh the nazis and the thing you fear is spiders you
Speaker:Evan: don't fear you know you don't fear nazis you don't fear all these other
Speaker:Evan: things but i think that the you know the it seemed like
Speaker:Evan: all of the different trees did have different kind
Speaker:Evan: of just the way they looked and i think that quote kind of puts that
Speaker:Evan: into light is that they evoke different things in those
Speaker:Evan: different times you also see the scene where uh they go
Speaker:Evan: across the river and they see a several of their comrades have
Speaker:Evan: been hung they're hanging from a tree i don't
Speaker:Evan: know if i recall what kind of tree it was but you now you
Speaker:Evan: see you know that moment i think there's also a time when
Speaker:Evan: the um when ivan is talking to that
Speaker:Evan: sort of older man you know outside of the ruins of his house and he's looking
Speaker:Evan: for a little nail to hang up a picture which is also a really great scene we
Speaker:Evan: can also talk about and i think there's a moment where they show a tree behind
Speaker:Evan: it too so there are all these moments where they use these trees not simply
Speaker:Evan: as symbols but to kind of evoke something as you're watching it.
Speaker:Evan: And I think they're, you know, as Tarkovsky does in all of these,
Speaker:Evan: in all of the movies I've seen, it's just, it makes you, you can watch it three
Speaker:Evan: different times. I think have three different feelings each time you watch,
Speaker:Evan: you know, those, those scenes, which I think is what makes it so, them so powerful.
Speaker:Evan: But I don't know if you, if you have something to add, Amanda,
Speaker:Evan: we can, if not, I guess we could talk about the, the kiss too.
Speaker:amanda: Yeah. You know, Brett, I didn't actually really put two and two together with
Speaker:amanda: the cobwebs, like in the beginning with Ivan and then with Masha.
Speaker:amanda: And, And now that I'm thinking, like taking that and like, oh,
Speaker:amanda: that's got to mean something, you know, there's a few things,
Speaker:amanda: a couple of things that I think about with that, like cobwebs.
Speaker:amanda: I think about how in order for a spider to build a cobweb, there has to be some
Speaker:amanda: sort of calm and time, you know, a short period of time.
Speaker:amanda: I don't really know where I would go with that, but I just, how do spiders build cobwebs?
Speaker:amanda: That's my ADHD brain, like, oh, that's going to be researched later.
Speaker:amanda: But I also think about Ivan and Masha, like those two characters, like Ivan and,
Speaker:amanda: I don't know. I know that Masha's older, but she has such a childlike quality to her.
Speaker:amanda: Also, I guess an air of innocence that Ivan also have.
Speaker:amanda: And they're kind of both on different reactions to the war.
Speaker:amanda: I don't really know what she does. I guess by default, she's kind of a nurse
Speaker:amanda: or something, which is kind of very gender specific, but whatever.
Speaker:amanda: But those two characters, I just
Speaker:amanda: really feel like they both have an air of innocence to them and it's don't feel
Speaker:amanda: like it's too much of a coincidence that they both encounter cobwebs at different
Speaker:amanda: points where he sees it and then she runs into it um yeah we could walk we could
Speaker:amanda: probably make a whole podcast on just that.
Speaker:Evan: Totally yeah i was just gonna add one thing there's actually i'll link to this
Speaker:Evan: article i think it's pretty fascinating there's one moment when ivan is walking
Speaker:Evan: through a bunch of kind of the ruins of a house and all of the pieces of wood
Speaker:Evan: that are kind of broken apart look very much like a web,
Speaker:Evan: which again, can't be, you know, has to be intentional or it's kind of the same visual kind of sense.
Speaker:Evan: And so I think there must be more to that too that, you know,
Speaker:Evan: that I think is fascinating. But yeah, go ahead.
Speaker:Brett: Yeah, there's this oscillation with the trees between the delicate nature of
Speaker:Brett: them and the brute nature of them.
Speaker:Brett: So like I think of the cobweb, obviously,
Speaker:Brett: being like this delicate structure that is pinned to a tree that
Speaker:Brett: even a strong gust of wind could sort of disturb the
Speaker:Brett: delicacy of that of that web and then masha
Speaker:Brett: sort of when they're out in the forest with the lieutenant she's sort
Speaker:Brett: of like nimbly walking on one of the branches and walking back down it um sort
Speaker:Brett: of in this very like balanced and and delicate way but on the other hand you
Speaker:Brett: have like the nooses so on the same sort of you know a tree can hold the delicacy
Speaker:Brett: of a spider web It can also have the brute force of hanging somebody by the neck until they die.
Speaker:Brett: And then when they're in the swamp sort of like at nighttime or on the edge
Speaker:Brett: of the river in the marsh at nighttime, doing their little operation,
Speaker:Brett: as it were, towards the end of the film, one of the trees just tips over in the water.
Speaker:Brett: And, you know, you have all like the artillery shells in the background or the flares or whatever.
Speaker:Brett: And then you just have this huge tree fall over and it doesn't come close to
Speaker:Brett: the boat, but there's just this brute nature of it falling, splashing in the
Speaker:Brett: water, making this huge impact.
Speaker:Brett: And so, again, this sort of oscillation between the delicacy of nature,
Speaker:Brett: the delicate, limber, balanced form of it, and, you know, the way that human
Speaker:Brett: beings can use or destroy it at the same time.
Speaker:Brett: So I thought that was interesting. And the other thing I wanted to say with
Speaker:Brett: regards to Masha and the little love situation they have here,
Speaker:Brett: which you said that some people criticize as sort of being irrelevant or unnecessary,
Speaker:Brett: I kind of see it as, one, deepening the personal character of the lieutenant.
Speaker:Brett: You can see this other aspect of him outside of simply protecting Ivan or simply
Speaker:Brett: playing his role in the war.
Speaker:Brett: Um but also there is this tension between
Speaker:Brett: the two lieutenants that are watching over Ivan I don't know
Speaker:Brett: if they're two tenants colonels whatever captains um the
Speaker:Brett: younger one and the older one um where the
Speaker:Brett: younger one does seem to have some tension with regards
Speaker:Brett: to Masha but never overtly tries never makes
Speaker:Brett: a pass at Masha never makes it clear that he's flirting with
Speaker:Brett: her um but when he finds out that that her
Speaker:Brett: and the other lieutenant are out in the woods together he starts
Speaker:Brett: running after them um and i'm not sure what
Speaker:Brett: that means there's like almost a fear in the way that he runs is he running
Speaker:Brett: to break up some sort of love scene is is he worried that masha might be in
Speaker:Brett: danger in the hands of the other captain or lieutenant when they finally meet
Speaker:Brett: up the two men um nothing is really set nothing is said between them nothing is made clear but.
Speaker:Brett: It's sort of a question mark of why the younger one runs in to the woods with
Speaker:Brett: such ferocity, only to find the other captain and not really do much about it.
Speaker:Brett: So I don't know exactly know what that is.
Speaker:Brett: There seems to be something like a brewing love triangle there,
Speaker:Brett: but also that is subordinated between the two men,
Speaker:Brett: at least with their with their shared goal of like protecting and caring for
Speaker:Brett: Ivan and perhaps to make that love triangle.
Speaker:Brett: Um an overt thing that that causes division
Speaker:Brett: between them would put into a compromising
Speaker:Brett: position their shared goal of protecting Ivan so I don't know I was just kind
Speaker:Brett: of playing with those ideas and if if if I'm on the right track there then you
Speaker:Brett: know that's not that's not a meaningless aside but that is a sort of deepening
Speaker:Brett: um of the overall narrative that Tarkovsky is purposely trying to do and show us so I.
Speaker:amanda: Think also the the younger lieutenant or
Speaker:amanda: whatever he is I kind of also get the
Speaker:amanda: impression that because they seem like they're
Speaker:amanda: close in age that there's some sort of kinship
Speaker:amanda: with that i don't know if it's romantic or if it's just you know because it's
Speaker:amanda: someone that is his age um but there's also been criticism that the scene was
Speaker:amanda: like sexual assault you know borderline sexual assault and you know i i hate
Speaker:amanda: to be like well times were different then but the times were different then.
Speaker:amanda: People's perception of what's romantic.
Speaker:amanda: And I looked for, you know, in watching that scene, and then she runs into her old college peer.
Speaker:amanda: She looks longingly into the forest, looking for perhaps the younger guy,
Speaker:amanda: perhaps the, what's his name, Holen? Holen?
Speaker:amanda: Colon i think they pronounce it like colon or something like that
Speaker:amanda: i don't know i think i think to say
Speaker:amanda: like i see comments like online because i follow like the
Speaker:amanda: turkovsky like um instagram and he
Speaker:amanda: posts like video clips or they post
Speaker:amanda: because because turkovsky is dead um they post
Speaker:amanda: video clips and they posted that scene some people are like oh so
Speaker:amanda: romantic and other people like sexual assaults and
Speaker:amanda: it's like yeah i don't i don't know you know
Speaker:amanda: never read the comments but sometimes times um it is
Speaker:amanda: and i think you also i don't know if you mentioned this
Speaker:amanda: uh evan but i think you mentioned your notes about it
Speaker:amanda: being like oh yeah you did um about how he like
Speaker:amanda: kind of scoops her up and they're kind of over this abyss
Speaker:amanda: type this trench kind of deal
Speaker:amanda: um i don't know i don't really know what to make of it um but it does feel a
Speaker:amanda: little strange the scene does feel a little strange because of like i don't
Speaker:amanda: know she seems like she's not really into it but then she seems really into
Speaker:amanda: i don't know it's like it's it's a little uncomfortable um but well the i don't know the.
Speaker:Evan: Trench aspect the trench aspect i think makes it what i think is probably the
Speaker:Evan: most interesting aspect i mean it's kind of i don't know the scenes maybe eight
Speaker:Evan: minutes long something like that but one of the opening scenes with ivan is
Speaker:Evan: you see him kind of uh walking along sort of a trench
Speaker:Evan: area there's kind of a uh i think it's right before in this very opening dream
Speaker:Evan: sequence to kind of show the roots of the trench or something like that to me it almost seemed like,
Speaker:Evan: masha being sort of saved or kept innocent in the same way they want to keep
Speaker:Evan: ivan you know his innocence you know from falling into kind of like the trenches
Speaker:Evan: of war you know maybe it's you know.
Speaker:amanda: If if.
Speaker:Evan: She was uh romantically involved she could you know leave the war and not have
Speaker:Evan: to be you know know, be part of it anymore.
Speaker:Evan: And I don't know really what to make bread of the lieutenant running.
Speaker:Evan: To me, it also felt like this weird fatherly instinct or brotherly instinct.
Speaker:Evan: I mean, I know they're the same age, so fatherly doesn't sound right.
Speaker:Evan: But initially, the lieutenant doesn't seem to be wanting to care for Ivan.
Speaker:Evan: It's kind of like this weird thing he has to do. He doesn't even really believe
Speaker:Evan: he is who he is, that he's this spy for the Soviets.
Speaker:Evan: And then over the course of the rest of the film, he becomes protective of him, helping him,
Speaker:Evan: you know, trying to watch out out for him and eventually goes
Speaker:Evan: along on his final mission with him so i think maybe the
Speaker:Evan: lieutenant's running because he's uh you know
Speaker:Evan: has that same protective feeling of masha as he does for uh ivan so i don't
Speaker:Evan: know i also don't think the scene is uh you know out of place i mean it it feels
Speaker:Evan: slightly out of place but i don't think that the meaning and and what it could
Speaker:Evan: be is uh i think it would be a disservice to not have it yeah.
Speaker:Brett: Some um hanging over the ditch and kissing yeah you can
Speaker:Brett: make many different um it's a beauty it's a fascinating image where she's just
Speaker:Brett: sort of dangling over the abyss and he's you know grabbing her holding her up
Speaker:Brett: and kissing her something about the impulse of of love or the the romantic ideal
Speaker:Brett: even in the in the brutality of war,
Speaker:Brett: But yeah, it's like, is she just playing coy or is this like sort of a creepy
Speaker:Brett: ass situation? It's kind of hard to say.
Speaker:Brett: There's probably, I mean, this is the 60s and 70s, so I'm not exactly sure what
Speaker:Brett: you can expect from male directors at that time, but there's probably almost
Speaker:Brett: certainly a feminist critique of Tarkovsky's portrayal of women in general.
Speaker:Brett: I remember, I believe it's in Stalker where the wife was just very hysterical
Speaker:Brett: and fraught and didn't have a lot of dimension to her personality.
Speaker:Brett: Personality and masha has this similar sort of one-dimensional um
Speaker:Brett: you know very naive almost like reducing the woman to
Speaker:Brett: a child um you know in a sense
Speaker:Brett: um was being done here again 60s
Speaker:Brett: and 70s male directors patriarchal societies i'm not
Speaker:Brett: exactly sure what to make of it but there is a sense in
Speaker:Brett: which i'm not i don't feel like tarkovsky at
Speaker:Brett: least in the films i've seen maybe i could be wrong i've certainly haven't seen his
Speaker:Brett: entire catalog but that that women don't
Speaker:Brett: really play incredibly strong or or
Speaker:Brett: dominant roles whatsoever um and
Speaker:Brett: so that you know that's probably room for criticism there but
Speaker:Brett: but yeah i don't know it's fascinating scene and it was it
Speaker:Brett: was um i heard somebody describe it as that scene where they're kind of like
Speaker:Brett: dancing in the woods like slow motion dancing they're twirling around each other
Speaker:Brett: she's walking up the um you know the balance beam of the tree and walking back
Speaker:Brett: down um hiding behind trees you know um it was a beautifully shot and sort of
Speaker:Brett: choreographed a scene for sure.
Speaker:Brett: But again, it's really hard to squeeze specific meaning out of it.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, I think that's I mean, yeah, none of I don't think anyone could accuse
Speaker:Evan: Tarkovsky of any of the scenes not being, you know, shot and lit and all of
Speaker:Evan: the things aspects of it.
Speaker:Evan: But yeah, I think you're right though. I've seen one of the biggest criticisms is females.
Speaker:Evan: There's never any female protagonists in any of his.
Speaker:Evan: As far as I can think, at least not a lead protagonist. I mean,
Speaker:Evan: there's some characters like in Solaris, the wife.
Speaker:Evan: But another thing that's... Actually, Amanda, you brought this to my attention,
Speaker:Evan: or you mentioned this to me, and I hadn't given it as much thought.
Speaker:Evan: I think this goes back a little bit to the conversation comparing this to the
Speaker:Evan: conflict in Palestine and Gaza.
Speaker:Evan: We learn about the Soviet partisans, sort of this resistance movement that aids
Speaker:Evan: the military and runs its own little operations.
Speaker:Evan: And that's how Ivan becomes involved with the Soviet army.
Speaker:Evan: It seems like he was working with them, one of these groups,
Speaker:Evan: because he was angry that he had lost his entire family.
Speaker:Evan: And there is some cooperation.
Speaker:Evan: I'll be honest, I'm not deeply familiar with all
Speaker:Evan: of the workings of how the collaboration went along
Speaker:Evan: with the you know the rent army and uh these groups
Speaker:Evan: but i do think uh what you said amanda is interesting about
Speaker:Evan: how that group the partisans could be viewed
Speaker:Evan: as this sort of resistance or revolutionary group and you know maybe from that
Speaker:Evan: perspective ivan himself is sort of like a young revolutionary doing the things
Speaker:Evan: he can do risking his life you know he doesn't seem afraid of death at this
Speaker:Evan: you know at any moment in the movie uh maybe there's a couple scenes when he's having these kind of
Speaker:Evan: nightmare dream sequences as he's waiting for, you know, to go out on his missions.
Speaker:Evan: But I don't know how you make of those things.
Speaker:Evan: And if either of you know more about the partisans, I'm curious how it might fit in.
Speaker:amanda: I tried to do just some brief research on the partisans.
Speaker:amanda: And I do have to note that one of the things that I noticed most,
Speaker:amanda: especially researching online from the Imperial core is that there's always
Speaker:amanda: this reoccurring narrative of like resistance groups being,
Speaker:amanda: ragtag or useless or ineffective
Speaker:amanda: um i forgot like what some of the highlights are but it does kind of remind
Speaker:amanda: me of when you go look up the filipino like new people's army that's been around
Speaker:amanda: for what 50 years now one of the first articles you'll see is like oh 48 years
Speaker:amanda: of doing nothing thing or, you know, just kind of thing.
Speaker:amanda: And, um, I think that, uh, I mean, that's intentional, of course,
Speaker:amanda: you know, creating a narrative words are a minefield, but, um, I did. Yeah. Like, uh,
Speaker:amanda: I would really like to do more research. I don't know, Brett,
Speaker:amanda: if you know more about the partisans with your time with like guerrilla history.
Speaker:amanda: I'm sure you probably have the episode, but yeah, that's just something I wanted to note.
Speaker:Brett: Yeah, I'm not sure if we have ever done an episode on partisans in particular.
Speaker:Brett: Certainly would be worth doing one. I have much to learn about the Soviet partisans
Speaker:Brett: in particular, not super well read on exactly what they did.
Speaker:Brett: But what I do know just from general understanding of history is that in the context of an invasion.
Speaker:Brett: Partisans or the sort of civilian guerrilla fighters that work alongside or
Speaker:Brett: in sort of a dialectical back and forth with conventional military strengths
Speaker:Brett: are sort of like a natural emergence.
Speaker:Brett: Emergence you can think of it in the bay of pigs situation you
Speaker:Brett: can think of it in vietnam you can think of it in
Speaker:Brett: the the spanish civil war wasn't necessarily
Speaker:Brett: an invasion it was a civil war but you know left-wing areas being invaded by
Speaker:Brett: right-wing forces and partisans were a natural emergence to that so you think
Speaker:Brett: about it in the soviet context you have this expansionary nazi war machine coming
Speaker:Brett: further and further east you know committing atrocities as it goes you know
Speaker:Brett: Coming into your territory,
Speaker:Brett: it's a natural response for people who are not part of the conventional military
Speaker:Brett: to begin to just do their own operations, their own ambush attacks,
Speaker:Brett: their own forms of resistance.
Speaker:Brett: I mean, you can look in what was put up against the American invasion of Iraq
Speaker:Brett: and Afghanistan, a very similar situation.
Speaker:Brett: So I think in any context in which there is an invasion of a homeland by another
Speaker:Brett: external force, there are going to be the emergence of these sort of naturally organized.
Speaker:Brett: Um militant guerrilla warfare-esque groups
Speaker:Brett: um who start to who begin to resist um and
Speaker:Brett: you know that's uh that's clear now that the degree to
Speaker:Brett: which they work with the conventional military um i
Speaker:Brett: think that can probably differ depending on certain contexts
Speaker:Brett: there could be probably more hostile relationships but for
Speaker:Brett: what i understand about the soviet partisans there wasn't a hostile
Speaker:Brett: relationship between them and the red army there was a funneling
Speaker:Brett: of of intelligence of weapons etc and they
Speaker:Brett: they saw the partisans as a crucial part of
Speaker:Brett: the overall fighting force um so yeah i see the partisans
Speaker:Brett: as as a good and really a natural force that
Speaker:Brett: emerges in the face of invasion and you see it over and over shit even going
Speaker:Brett: back you know to the american revolutionary war um you know you you didn't really
Speaker:Brett: you have the development of something like a conventional military on behalf
Speaker:Brett: of of the american colonists but you know guerrilla warfare tactics were definitely used and the sort
Speaker:Brett: of ragtag guerrilla ambush groupings were a huge part of their initial assault against the British.
Speaker:Brett: So yeah, any context of invasion, this sort of thing is going to emerge naturally.
Speaker:Brett: And I think that's very interesting. And definitely we're studying more.
Speaker:Brett: We should do an episode on that at some point.
Speaker:Evan: The only thing I did find in my... Also, I didn't have a lot of...
Speaker:Evan: I didn't get a chance to do much digging on it, but apparently a large amount
Speaker:Evan: of the partisans that involved in Ukraine part of the Soviet Union were actually
Speaker:Evan: formed through the interior ministry.
Speaker:Evan: Of the Soviet Union.
Speaker:Evan: So it wasn't necessarily just a bunch of, it could have been just some farmers
Speaker:Evan: or random people banding together and going across enemy lines to kill Nazis or stop them.
Speaker:Evan: But I think it also, there was aspects of it being,
Speaker:Evan: an organized thing beyond just those kind of areas.
Speaker:Evan: So to your point, Amanda, of, you know, yes, there probably was a combination
Speaker:Evan: of sort of ragtag groups of people.
Speaker:Evan: But then also, I think it became very organized at some level,
Speaker:Evan: because it does seem in Ivan's childhood that there is some coordination because
Speaker:Evan: they had a meeting point.
Speaker:Evan: I think we mentioned another tree references that Ivan was supposed to meet
Speaker:Evan: at a specific tree where he would then be able to be brought back to the partisans.
Speaker:Evan: And I think we see that the partisans, was it the partisans
Speaker:Evan: who are are hanged or is it the still soldiers i
Speaker:Evan: don't remember now i'm not sure but either one of them it
Speaker:Evan: clearly there there's this uh coordination so uh it
Speaker:Evan: is a a fascinating thing that yeah i don't have too much
Speaker:Evan: other context and i know at the beginning we talked about some of those real
Speaker:Evan: life footage you mentioned amanda the uh you know using of actual footage from
Speaker:Evan: you know victory day and you know the the way that the film is kind of shot
Speaker:Evan: is it sort of kind of cuts off from the the actual incursion,
Speaker:Evan: Ivan's last kind of mission that we see to victory day, a time of celebration.
Speaker:Evan: But I think, uh, something that maybe is very well depicted in this is you have
Speaker:Evan: that celebration and all these different shots of how it is, you know, great.
Speaker:Evan: They defeated the Nazis, you know, that the Soviets defeated the Nazis.
Speaker:Evan: Let's, let's be clear, uh, versus the, the American involvement.
Speaker:Evan: Of course they had some involvement, but I don't need to go that far,
Speaker:Evan: but I think it's, I really like how they created this, uh, they show the prison
Speaker:Evan: that the lieutenant enters where he finds out that Ivan had died.
Speaker:Evan: And you see a guillotine, you see the ropes for additional hanging.
Speaker:Evan: So you do see victory, but you are very clearly shown the cost of war.
Speaker:Evan: I don't remember the exact number, but something like 30 million Soviets died.
Speaker:Evan: Maybe it's way more than that. Maybe I'm way underselling it.
Speaker:Evan: But countless millions of men and women died to defend their country.
Speaker:Evan: And I just like the way that it's depicted at the end, that there is no happy ending.
Speaker:Evan: And then maybe after we get your impressions on that, I do want to talk about the very last scene too.
Speaker:amanda: So towards the end of that, okay, first of all, war is a racket.
Speaker:amanda: That's why I always think war is a racket. um and
Speaker:amanda: there needs to be uh more
Speaker:amanda: people talking about how the soviets did when you
Speaker:amanda: know outside of our our bubble of people like
Speaker:amanda: people that actually understand comprehend and care about history um but one
Speaker:amanda: of the scenes that i aside from like the real footage of them like just defeating
Speaker:amanda: the nazis taking over one of their headquarters is the scene where there's all
Speaker:amanda: these like books and files like strewed all over the place. And they're,
Speaker:amanda: you know, taking bundles,
Speaker:amanda: And it pans out to this scene where there's kind of like on the left side of
Speaker:amanda: the screen, I took a picture of it, but there's a left side of the screen.
Speaker:amanda: There's like, I think maybe like an eagle holding the Nazi symbol.
Speaker:amanda: And they say, and the dialogue just really stuck out to me. He said,
Speaker:amanda: won't this be the last war on earth?
Speaker:amanda: See a doctor about your nerves, Galston. That's like the young guy again.
Speaker:amanda: But hold on, you were killed and I'm alive.
Speaker:amanda: I think i must think
Speaker:amanda: of persevering peace um and i think you know aside from the very last scene
Speaker:amanda: that really encapsulates a lot of the theme of the film um and yeah i just wanted
Speaker:amanda: to mention that i don't know where i was going with that but war's racket and.
Speaker:Brett: Um building off of that uh One thing I was thinking about was this quote that's
Speaker:Brett: been going around on right-wing social media circles, and Joe Rogan made a big deal about it.
Speaker:Brett: It's this absurd sort of thing where they talk about hard times create hard
Speaker:Brett: men, hard men create good times, good times create weak men,
Speaker:Brett: weak men create bad times.
Speaker:Brett: We're all aware of this sort of thing. and there's
Speaker:Brett: this um one there's this irony that people like joe
Speaker:Brett: rogan who you know live this incredibly comfy life
Speaker:Brett: has been a millionaire since his early 20s um you
Speaker:Brett: know has never faced any sort of violence of this type at all whatsoever um
Speaker:Brett: puts himself mentally in the category of of of hard men right all these all
Speaker:Brett: these conservative dorks um who who think in this way are are sort of immediately
Speaker:Brett: assuming that they are the hard men even though they live these super coddled,
Speaker:Brett: relatively comfortable lives.
Speaker:Brett: And I saw one of these figures, I think it was Bronze Age Pervert,
Speaker:Brett: one of these again, these fascist
Speaker:Brett: sort of dorks that are very big and right-wing social media circles.
Speaker:Brett: What they'll often do, and I think BAP did this explicitly, is just like sort of,
Speaker:Brett: um fetishize war as like super
Speaker:Brett: important for the develop like you know people who these all these
Speaker:Brett: people have not never been to war but they precisely because
Speaker:Brett: they haven't lived in war they fetishize it and romanticize it as a way of of
Speaker:Brett: of you know adding dignity or maturity or meaning to people's lives and they
Speaker:Brett: you know this is it's this in it's this um thing that you can't take out of
Speaker:Brett: human nature it's deeply ingrained in human nature and it's we're alienated from
Speaker:Brett: our ability to go ransack the
Speaker:Brett: next village or, you know, go to war for a cause bigger than ourselves.
Speaker:Brett: And these are always uttered by, by, you know, weak men,
Speaker:Brett: men that, that live very comfortable coddled lives because other people before
Speaker:Brett: them have fought and died and been traumatized and brutalized and created a
Speaker:Brett: world, at least for a time where that they, they can be okay to fetishize war.
Speaker:Brett: But anybody who's actually been in war, they're not romanticizing war.
Speaker:Brett: They're not fetishizing it.
Speaker:Brett: They're doing everything they can to never go back there.
Speaker:Brett: And it also makes me think broadening out of our own disgusting bourgeois politicians
Speaker:Brett: who are who've never seen a war they don't want.
Speaker:Brett: I think of figures like Lindsey Graham, John Bolton, Nikki Haley,
Speaker:Brett: fucking John Fetterman.
Speaker:Brett: Right. And you can go down. You can I can keep saying names for the next hour and a half.
Speaker:Brett: We all know who these people are these people who themselves
Speaker:Brett: are have never fought and would
Speaker:Brett: never be asked to fight constantly beating
Speaker:Brett: the drums of war wanting to create wars
Speaker:Brett: bomb countries bomb iran give israel everything
Speaker:Brett: they need use ukrainians as a proxy for your
Speaker:Brett: fight against russia these people who just see human
Speaker:Brett: lives as chess pieces they can move around aboard
Speaker:Brett: board and who get some sort of psychological gratification from
Speaker:Brett: beating their chest in this egoic way where you
Speaker:Brett: know they think that they're these war hawks and these
Speaker:Brett: these tough-nosed realists who live these lives of
Speaker:Brett: complete luxury and comfort all of them millionaires all of them surrounded
Speaker:Brett: by basically servants and staff doing you know their bidding they don't even
Speaker:Brett: have to do their own grocery shopping and yet they're so willing you know just
Speaker:Brett: frothing at the mouth Wanting to create war after war after war.
Speaker:Brett: And all of these people are the weak men that that quote is getting at while
Speaker:Brett: they think of themselves as tough men. And then you look or tough people in general.
Speaker:Brett: And then you look at the actual depravity of war, who actually suffers.
Speaker:Brett: I mean, just look what's happening right now with with Palestine,
Speaker:Brett: mothers and families and grandmas and entire bloodlines being eradicated,
Speaker:Brett: toddlers being sniped in the head,
Speaker:Brett: you know, medical supplies being
Speaker:Brett: so non-existent that you have to do deep surgeries without anesthetic,
Speaker:Brett: starvation used as a as a as a weapon of war.
Speaker:Brett: And all of these people have full bellies and they're uncomfortable,
Speaker:Brett: air conditioned houses, fetishizing and romanticizing brutal wars that as they
Speaker:Brett: speak are being brought down on the heads of innocent human beings.
Speaker:Brett: And so I just wanted to point out that glaring hypocrisy and to sort of ponder
Speaker:Brett: for a second the sadistic and absurdist psychology of people who think and fetishize like this.
Speaker:Brett: And we as communists, as people on the radical left, we want to get we want
Speaker:Brett: humanity to mature beyond class society and beyond war.
Speaker:Brett: And I don't think you can ever mature beyond war without maturing beyond class society,
Speaker:Brett: without those divisions amongst a people amongst the nation,
Speaker:Brett: rich and poor, but also globally, those incredibly skewed dynamics of the incredibly
Speaker:Brett: poor and the incredibly rich.
Speaker:Brett: That entire system creates the context for more war.
Speaker:Brett: And I think it's not a part of our human nature any more than any negative low
Speaker:Brett: base element of our evolution is part of our nature.
Speaker:Brett: Like chimpanzees often rape people or, you know, rape other chimps.
Speaker:Brett: This is a part of our evolutionary history from lowly beasts, right?
Speaker:Brett: Does that mean that it's some inexorable part of our human nature to always be like that?
Speaker:Brett: Or can we use our reason and our capacity for deep reflection and moral development
Speaker:Brett: to grow up beyond the need to act like that?
Speaker:Brett: And so anybody that says that class hierarchies are natural to or are just inextricable
Speaker:Brett: from our human nature or that war itself can never be transcended,
Speaker:Brett: I'm always incredibly, incredibly suspicious of the sort of people who seem
Speaker:Brett: committed and need that to be true.
Speaker:Brett: I do believe in the capacity for human beings to evolve beyond these things.
Speaker:Brett: And I think it's really our obligation as sentient, you know,
Speaker:Brett: moral and rational beings and self-reflective beings in the cosmos to grow the fuck up beyond that.
Speaker:Brett: And I hold out hope that one day humanity will.
Speaker:Evan: Are you saying that these guys playing Call of Duty didn't make him into real
Speaker:Evan: men that could withstand that?
Speaker:Brett: Exactly.
Speaker:Evan: That's honestly like...
Speaker:Brett: Exactly. That's all it is for them.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, it's literally a game to them. And yeah, it's...
Speaker:amanda: Not to bring up another movie, but to bring up another movie.
Speaker:amanda: I don't know if either one... I know, Evan, you've seen... I don't know,
Speaker:amanda: Brett, if you've seen Civil War, the A24 film that came out in the spring.
Speaker:Brett: Oh, not yet. Not yet.
Speaker:amanda: Um, there, there is kind of some parallels with that, with like the,
Speaker:amanda: the warmonger from his high tower.
Speaker:amanda: Um, and the final scene, I don't want to ruin it for you. See,
Speaker:amanda: um, but, uh, maybe you should go watch that after this.
Speaker:amanda: Um, but there are some parallels right there with that, with that point of, you know, reality.
Speaker:amanda: Is portrayed in that in that film with nick offerman's character who plays the president of,
Speaker:amanda: america um i think they i don't even know if they
Speaker:amanda: call it the united states i think it's called america but uh yeah there's
Speaker:amanda: there's some parallels there with like the man in the high
Speaker:amanda: tower you know um the the soldier
Speaker:amanda: that is so brainwashed into dehumanizing
Speaker:amanda: other people that don't look like you that they sit in
Speaker:amanda: a nice comfortable room and push the button
Speaker:amanda: on the drones that kill entire families or people at weddings
Speaker:amanda: and in shelters and but you know
Speaker:amanda: that doesn't make strong strong men um you know men men out men women out in
Speaker:amanda: the field doesn't make them strong just like it doesn't make a child strong
Speaker:amanda: to get beat up by their parents it makes them traumatized it makes them angry
Speaker:amanda: it It makes them resentful.
Speaker:amanda: It makes them not the whole human beings that they could have been,
Speaker:amanda: not to say that they won't ever have that potential, but it is definitely a
Speaker:amanda: stunting of maturity in humans and individuals.
Speaker:amanda: But yeah.
Speaker:Brett: Well said.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, I think, I guess before we finish up,
Speaker:Evan: I wanted to, since in the other episodes, it makes sense we talk
Speaker:Evan: about the very last scene and i'm curious kind of
Speaker:Evan: your maybe your impressions and i've seen some different things
Speaker:Evan: written about it so the the final scene after we get the
Speaker:Evan: victory day and we learn that ivan had been killed you know by the nazis uh
Speaker:Evan: during the war we get a kind of a dream sequence or some kind of vision sequence
Speaker:Evan: where you see ivan and his sister presumably playing sort of hide and seek on
Speaker:Evan: a beach and it's you know very similar reminiscent of very opening scene,
Speaker:Evan: kind of a very, you know, symmetrical opening and closing of the movie by Tarkovsky.
Speaker:Evan: But the thing about it is that Ivan at this point is dead. So I'm curious,
Speaker:Evan: this is maybe kind of a pointless exercise in like what your theory or how you would look at it is.
Speaker:Evan: Obviously, it can't be from his perspective as a dream sequence because he's now dead.
Speaker:Evan: But some things I've seen say, you know, maybe it's more of a perspective of
Speaker:Evan: the sister or the mother, or Or this is the vision of what the lieutenant would have wanted,
Speaker:Evan: you know, Ivan to have been able to achieve, you know, had he not had to have
Speaker:Evan: been involved in the war, had there been no war.
Speaker:Evan: So it is this sort of idyllic ending to it.
Speaker:Evan: And I think it's a better ending than having it kind of be that,
Speaker:Evan: you know, slightly darker, depressing, you know, the seeing all the horrors
Speaker:Evan: that the Nazis have for have, you know, have have committed.
Speaker:Evan: So, yeah, I wonder what you all think of the last the last scene.
Speaker:Brett: I mean, you know, there's no way to know for sure, but I kind of think of it
Speaker:Brett: not from a specific person's point of view, but from a universal sort of zoomed
Speaker:Brett: out perspective, Like a sort of non-individual perspective,
Speaker:Brett: a perspective of humanity itself, of just sort of reflecting on the fundamental
Speaker:Brett: innocence and the childhood that could have been, should have been,
Speaker:Brett: would have been, if not for the horrors of war.
Speaker:Brett: And um it's just sort of a sort of
Speaker:Brett: sad uh nostalgic almost uh you
Speaker:Brett: know what if in a sense and no and no single
Speaker:Brett: individual is dreaming that or thinking that it's just
Speaker:Brett: like zoomed out like the the eye in the
Speaker:Brett: sky is thinking it or reflecting on that maybe but one thing it it harkens back
Speaker:Brett: to is that that earlier quote that i that i read from james baldwin about all
Speaker:Brett: the children are ours and the moral responsibility and obligation that that
Speaker:Brett: imposes on all of us who are not children, who are adults.
Speaker:Brett: And some of us have children, some of us don't have children,
Speaker:Brett: some want children, some don't want children.
Speaker:Brett: But I think we should always be suspicious of anybody who is disdainful of children as such,
Speaker:Brett: whether that is the explicit overt form of supporting wars or fetishizing,
Speaker:Brett: romanticizing wars or funding and arming you
Speaker:Brett: know groups of people who are specifically going after
Speaker:Brett: children as the u.s is is doing right now or
Speaker:Brett: even in the in the more low level ways where people just sort of have this disdain
Speaker:Brett: for children this sort of like you know like oh my god they're you know that
Speaker:Brett: term from like 10 years ago like crotch goblins or you know um i i would never
Speaker:Brett: i could never imagine myself having kids they're just annoying little you know
Speaker:Brett: shitty messes or whatever Reverend.
Speaker:Brett: Whether you have kids or not, it's a totally valid personal choice,
Speaker:Brett: but I would urge everybody,
Speaker:Brett: no matter if you have any kids in your life or no kids in your life,
Speaker:Brett: to try to take seriously this Baldwin idea that all the children are ours and
Speaker:Brett: that just by virtue of being a human adult,
Speaker:Brett: you have an obligation and responsibility to try to create a world in which
Speaker:Brett: children aren't brutalized.
Speaker:Brett: And that starts with having a love for children is sort of being synonymous
Speaker:Brett: with a love for our humanity because we were all children once.
Speaker:Brett: And there's that fundamental, beautiful possibility and hope that is,
Speaker:Brett: you know, present in every child because they represent the future.
Speaker:Brett: There's this fundamental innocence, this best of our nature,
Speaker:Brett: this open-eyed curiosity about the world around them before it's sort of been
Speaker:Brett: beaten out of them or drowned out by concepts, etc.
Speaker:Brett: That we We should all have this obligation and think of all the children as
Speaker:Brett: ours and to have this loving, nurturing feeling towards children and wanting
Speaker:Brett: to create a better world, not just for ourselves and not even just for our own children,
Speaker:Brett: but for children as a whole, for humanity's children.
Speaker:Brett: And I really take that responsibility seriously as a father to my own children,
Speaker:Brett: but as a human being to try to fight for a world in which all children are safe
Speaker:Brett: and all children get a childhood.
Speaker:Brett: And when you see these incidences of war, when you see what's happening in Palestine,
Speaker:Brett: because that's the most concrete example currently happening,
Speaker:Brett: all the children in Gaza and in Palestine are being robbed of a childhood.
Speaker:Brett: They're being brutalized for this 75-plus-year-old European nationalist colonizing project.
Speaker:Brett: You're destroying babies and lives and futures for entire family lines and lineages
Speaker:Brett: because of some concepts you have in your head about God's chosen people and
Speaker:Brett: whose land this really is, etc.
Speaker:Brett: Etc and um it is so it is
Speaker:Brett: so absurd and so immature it's like there's almost like it's
Speaker:Brett: there's a a deeper level of immaturity on
Speaker:Brett: behalf of people who think like that and who can do that than children themselves
Speaker:Brett: right we see children as underdeveloped or immature but in some deep sense you
Speaker:Brett: know the the real immaturity and the underdevelopment come from the adults who
Speaker:Brett: brutalize them whether that is interpersonal abuse or wartime destruction or anything else,
Speaker:Brett: and so yeah I just want to like one of my last notes,
Speaker:Brett: is for everybody to take seriously that Baldwin quote and to think about creating
Speaker:Brett: a better world where that obligation to humanity's children is taken seriously
Speaker:Brett: on the individual and collective level.
Speaker:amanda: Absolutely. Another thing that I think about that we also have to understand
Speaker:amanda: that it's not normal for people to have to hold up their dead children to get people to care.
Speaker:amanda: Um like uh i
Speaker:amanda: personally do not have children but i weep daily
Speaker:amanda: for the children that i see every single
Speaker:amanda: day that are brutalized and additionally
Speaker:amanda: those that do survive that do manage to
Speaker:amanda: have their limbs you are going to have
Speaker:amanda: resistance for future generations and no one can be surprised by that no one
Speaker:amanda: could be surprised that when a child sees their entire family taken out and
Speaker:amanda: their livelihood jeopardized at every moment that they're going to sit idly
Speaker:amanda: by when they become old enough to do something.
Speaker:amanda: But as far as the closing scene, I think that also it goes to your quote, Brett,
Speaker:amanda: that you talked about symbolism and metaphor
Speaker:amanda: and how with the image you could take
Speaker:amanda: many things from that image and
Speaker:amanda: with that final scene um it could
Speaker:amanda: be what the viewer hopes the turn
Speaker:amanda: the outcome is for ivan that maybe he goes to
Speaker:amanda: heaven and he gets to be or whatever you know rendition of something like that
Speaker:amanda: like an afterlife or whatever um that he gets to be reunited with with those
Speaker:amanda: those memories and those peoples
Speaker:amanda: and whatnot or it It could be what the soldiers would want for Ivan,
Speaker:amanda: or it could be maybe even flashback, you know, to even before he was dead.
Speaker:amanda: Not to override exactly like the importance that the children of the world are
Speaker:amanda: ours and what you were speaking of.
Speaker:amanda: They are ours, every single one of them.
Speaker:Evan: Yeah, no, that was beautifully said, Brett. I don't pretend to top or not top,
Speaker:Evan: but I don't have much to add there except, you know, as someone,
Speaker:Evan: you know, with children too.
Speaker:Evan: And wanting to protect them and the same way you want to protect the innocence
Speaker:Evan: of or the same way that the you know the soldiers wanted to protect the innocence
Speaker:Evan: of Ivan you want a better world for your children and all children so they don't
Speaker:Evan: have to one day realize the horrors that,
Speaker:Evan: We unfortunately have to see on a daily basis on, you know, on social media,
Speaker:Evan: not on the news, because they would not like us to see those horrors.
Speaker:Evan: But I don't think I had any, I don't know.
Speaker:amanda: Unless they're, unless they're Russians or something.
Speaker:Evan: Yes, yeah, that's true. Unless it fits a narrow, I was gonna say a NATO narrative.
Speaker:Evan: That's not what I even meant. That was just a Freudian slip.
Speaker:Evan: A narrative for NATO, I suppose. So I don't know if either of you have any last
Speaker:Evan: thoughts on it, and if not, I guess we can call it.
Speaker:Evan: And I know, at least from your perspective, Brett, I think people know where to find you.
Speaker:Evan: But if you want to remind everyone your shows and if you have anything in particular
Speaker:Evan: you're going to be working on or anything like that you wanted to share.
Speaker:Brett: Yeah, first of all, thank you so much for having me on. I really love this series.
Speaker:Brett: Maybe we can keep it going. This is our third film.
Speaker:Brett: So if you're just listening to this, go back, you know, both of our podcasts,
Speaker:Brett: Left of the Projector or Rev Left Radio, and you'll find our other two episodes on Stalker and Solaris.
Speaker:Brett: Highly encourage people who are just interested in film or interested in history
Speaker:Brett: to check out the films of Tarkovsky. I mean, you know, one of the greatest to ever do it.
Speaker:Brett: So highly recommend people check that out. And then as for me and my work,
Speaker:Brett: I have two sort of fronts that I operate on.
Speaker:Brett: One is the political front, and you can find everything I do there at RevolutionaryLeftRadio.com.
Speaker:Brett: That's my main podcast, Rev Left Radio, and the sister podcast,
Speaker:Brett: Red Menace, I do with my co-host and friend, Allison.
Speaker:Brett: And then I recently in the last year or so have started a totally separate podcast
Speaker:Brett: called Shoeless in South Dakota, where me and my childhood friend who is an
Speaker:Brett: active recovery from alcoholism, we joke around,
Speaker:Brett: but we also talk deeply about mental health issues, addiction, recovery,
Speaker:Brett: relapse, and all spirituality,
Speaker:Brett: all of the things in that whole realm together.
Speaker:Brett: Human experience. So it's not very political, but it does cover that other aspect of human life.
Speaker:Brett: So if you're kind of interested in that, you can check out shoelessandsouthdakota.com.
Speaker:Evan: Awesome. And I guess, Amanda, for you, I can post your link to your social media,
Speaker:Evan: content as well as your, you also have shirts as well. I guess not only shirts.
Speaker:amanda: Yeah, I make communist propaganda on Etsy.
Speaker:Evan: Yes yes um but yeah amanda and
Speaker:Evan: brett as always it's a pleasure to have you uh on to talk
Speaker:Evan: more tarkovsky um you know these have been it's
Speaker:Evan: been a whole lot of fun to uh to get into movies that like
Speaker:Evan: these i think for anyone out there who you know maybe isn't used
Speaker:Evan: to watching you know these kind of things i think brett you mentioned and
Speaker:Evan: maybe the first one you did on uh so are as you know when
Speaker:Evan: you watch a movie like this it's it would benefit you
Speaker:Evan: greatly to just stick your phone in the other room i
Speaker:Evan: know it's hard and you're used to having your phone when
Speaker:Evan: you're doing things but i think you get a lot out of these kinds of
Speaker:Evan: films when you just kind of focus on things and you see the nature and the trees
Speaker:Evan: and everything that tarkovsky brings to it you know not just you know his film
Speaker:Evan: there's lots of other soviet movies and uh other eras too and just for anyone
Speaker:Evan: out there this is not coming for a couple months but i'll be doing an episode with the actual,
Speaker:Evan: existing socialism on East German cinema
Speaker:Evan: in a few months so anyone out there would recommend watching those kind of movies
Speaker:Evan: too there's lots out there if you have access to your library you should connect
Speaker:Evan: it to Canopy if they have access and you likely will find lots of great foreign
Speaker:Evan: films available to you or you could just go on YouTube but Brett, Amanda,
Speaker:Evan: thanks again for being on the show it's been a pleasure yeah.
Speaker:amanda: Thank you and also also long live the resistance.
Speaker:Evan: Yes and uh you can follow this podcast on the internets and uh all the same
Speaker:Evan: places as uh as brett's content and the at sea store so we will catch you next time.
