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Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Ever had something you love dismissed because it’s “just” pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it’s worth talking and thinking about. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, two sisters who think a lot about a lot of things. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, and wherever pop culture takes us, come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Deep Thoughts About Dead Again
It's the karmic credit plan: buy now, pay forever.
Tracie shares her deep thoughts about the 1991 Kenneth Branagh film Dead Again on this week’s episode. Branagh brought intelligence, style, and some pretension to this noir homage that tells the tragic love story of Roman and Margaret Strauss–who have apparently been reincarnated as Mike Church and the amnesiac Jane Doe he calls Grace. While the movie hits all the right mystery beats while you’re watching, Branagh’s story insists on false binaries that do the audience’s thinking for them. And despite being the romantic lead, the character of Mike makes it entirely clear why so many women would choose the bear.
Put away the scissors and put on your headphones, because this is for you…
This episode was edited by Resonate Recordings.
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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She says I'm afraid of you, Mike, which is a vulnerable thing to say.
Speaker 2:Yes and brave, very brave Because and that shows trust also because if she didn't trust him, she would pretend everything was fine and figure out a way to get out.
Speaker 1:Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit. I'm Tracy Geidecker and you're listening to Deep Thoughts About Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? On today's episode, I will be sharing my deep thoughts about the 1991 Kenneth Branagh film Dead, again with my sister, emily Guy-Burken, and with you. So let's dive in Em. I know you saw this movie. I think we saw it together. We did. We saw it in the theater together. But tell me what you remember about Dead.
Speaker 2:Again, I had a crush on kath brana from this film. I'm not roman, uh-huh uh, scissors yep, there's a gender swap reincarnation thing, and gosh. So I I will tell you a few years later, because that came out when I was 12. So when I was, I was working my first job at Joan and Gary's Original Bagel Bakery in Owings Mills, maryland. Terrible place to work.
Speaker 2:But, there was a guy who came through the line one day when I was working the register and there was something about him where I was like this guy like I'm 15, this guy was an adult not my type. There was something about him where I'm like I'm really attracted to this guy. Why and I realized a few minutes later his mannerisms reminded me of the character that Branagh plays in this film, and he was also. He was blonde as well, but anyway. So that's what comes up when I think about this film, and I know there's probably more in there but that's it.
Speaker 1:So tell me, why are we talking about it today? Both female leads because there's two stories was Branagh's wife at the time that they were married, like I remember loving that? There was like a real life romance between the two of them that you know and that I thought that was some I don't know. It felt really significant to me at the time and so it popped up on our list and I decided to do it. Now it was like it's a little bit of a you know, we try to mix it up, so it's not all comedies or all whatever, and so this is like the psychological thriller. So that's part of why I just said it was time for a different genre, but specifically Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson and sort of the romance between them, which they're now divorced and have been for many years.
Speaker 2:I wanted to sort of look back at the romance and see if that holds up.
Speaker 1:She's married to willoughby from um sense and sensibility. Now, who's younger than her? Is she she? I didn't know that. Yeah, so I loved him as he loved me. Sorry, that's what I think I'm doing. I think of willoughby, okay, so I really wanted to look at the romance and like, just was curious. It looms large in my imagination as smart that's, like the. It was a smart movie but also still very entertaining. So I was just curious if it holds up. So that's why it's on there, so it's not like a super deep sentimental reason the way some of our movies are.
Speaker 1:But I thought it could be a fun look back and mostly I do want to talk about actually the storytelling and some of the choices that are made for the storytelling and also I do want to talk about the romance in both stories between these two characters and what I may have been kind of internalizing from them and sort of the smart piece of it too, like I think sometimes the discernment between genuinely smart and elegant and like pretentious, for me in particular can sometimes be a complicated nuance that I'm not always up to the challenge, especially in 1991 when I was 15.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 15. And so I have opinions about Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot, for that very reason.
Speaker 1:Strong opinions. I actually sort of think my overall sense of Branagh is part of actually why I bring that up in general, because I think Brana has a hard time discerning between smart and pretentious.
Speaker 2:So I also wanted to mention because we've talked before about why I became a French major and you know, 40% of it was Beauty and the Beast and like another 30% was Yvette from Clue. Percent of it was Beauty and the Beast and like another 30 percent was Yvette from Clue. I've realized recently that a big part of it was because I read Agatha Christie novels as a young child and I read all the well not all, but many Hercule Poirot and he would just say stuff in French with no explanation and at the time, because I was like nine, I was like so, apparently, if I want to read, I need to know some French, because I thought all books were like this. Read I need to know some French because I thought all books were like this.
Speaker 1:So anyway, side note that can go on our bloopers because it's nothing to do with Dead Again. Please continue, all right, so let me see if I can give a synopsis of the plot, and actually I don't want to share a lot of details, so I'm going to try. I'm going to try. I say this every time, but I'm going to try and keep it pretty tight.
Speaker 1:So the movie opens with these panning over headlines from 1949. I think the first, or one of the very first things we see is the word in all caps murder. So through these headlines from newspapers, we learn about Roman Strauss, who allegedly murdered his wife Margaret. He's a composer. He allegedly murdered his wife Margaret with scissors and he dies for it, like gets a death penalty for it. All of the articles are written by the same journalist who is called Gray Baker. He's the one the smoker. Yes, I played by Andy Garcia. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. So that was in 1949.
Speaker 1:So now we learn the story of in today, which is in the early 90s, a woman, a Jane Doe, shows up at a convent school for boys run by the catholic church, in the home of roman strauss like that's actually made clear pretty quickly. So like the old estate that was owned by the man who allegedly killed his wife, who was a composer, is now a school for boys run by the catholic church. And this woman, an amnesiac who is not speaking, shows up like, clawing her way into the estate that once was Roman Strauss's. One of the nuns like wants to. She's staying there. One of the nuns like wants to.
Speaker 2:Like, keep her like a pet, love her and hug her and call her George yeah.
Speaker 1:Please, father, can we keep her? No, like take care of her, because you know she's obviously been through some really bad stuff. She has these night terrors where she wakes up screaming even though she actually isn't speaking at all, and so the nuns are like really worried about her. They want to hold on to her at the school and the father, the priest who runs it is like absolutely not, like this is not our problem, but he calls Mike Church, played by Brana, who is like a private investigator who actually grew up at the school and owes him a favor or something isn't his name church, because he was a foundling yes, so they, he, the priest calls him to get his help to try and figure out who this woman is.
Speaker 1:So he takes her to have her picture taken and his buddy who works at the paper who's newman, wayne knight yeah, him, so they're gonna put her in the paper.
Speaker 1:He tells a story about having amnesia. Briefly at like didn't remember who he was, and then his daughter like showed up at his bedside and he like all of it came rushing back. So he's trying to give her hope that it's going to come back. And Mike takes her to like the county psychiatric hospital and it is bad, like real, it's pandemonium and violent and scary. So he takes her back to his apartment and he clearly kind of has the hots for her. We see him kind of like chastising himself for not being cool. So that's happening in the modern times.
Speaker 1:Enter Derek Jacoby as Mr Madsen, who runs an antique shop and dabbles in hypnosis. He saw the paper article because they decided to run her picture and say like do you know this woman? Like get in touch with my church. So Derek Jacoby shows up and he like hypnotizes her, like just very, very quickly, and she speaks, like she talks, and something happens and Mike's like I don't believe it. And Derek Jacoby, whose name is Mr Madsen, is like she wasn't talking at all and now she is. Why don't you come by the store? So he's kind of a charlatan. Well, he's not a charlatan because he generally does hypnotize, but he uses it for sort of unethical purposes, like we witness him. He's an antique dealer and we witness him like he's got a woman under hypnosis who was a child in the White House with Teddy Roosevelt and he's asking her about specific pieces of furniture, like where he might be able to track them down. But he is genuinely a hypnotherapist or whatever. So he regresses the Emma Thompson character, who we don't know her name yet, though Mike is calling her Grace.
Speaker 1:It goes to black and white and we are seeing the same two actors playing Roman Strauss and Margaret Strauss. And it's really smart when I look back at it now, because in that first session with Mr Madsen in his shop, she's getting very agitated. And so he says stay distant from it, just be an observer, don't let yourself get into it. And so she says it started the day that Roman met Margaret, and so it's about reincarnation. We're led to think that she is the reincarnation of Margaret, and so the storytelling visually is very interesting because we've got the black and white of what happened in the 40s and we've got the color of what's happening now. So we watch these two stories kind of play out.
Speaker 1:As the grace is trying to figure out who she is, people are after like one person, like a man comes and pretends to be her fiance, but it turns out like mike realizes he has some detail wrong and they're like trying to find where she is. Like they end up at her apartment. She's an artist and all of her art has all these scissors in it. And at one point she and Mike have this romance and they fool around one night. And it matches exactly the way that we saw Roman and Margaret fool around the first time. They were out in the rain and Margaret said I, I'm, you know, I'm soaking, I'll ruin your couch. And he says I'll get another. And like the same thing happens then, to the point that grace says this is just what happened with, with them, you know. So it leads to like a suspicion between mike and grace, so much so that and this scene I do want to name like I want to tell the story a little bit more detail, like she's a little afraid of him Because that's the.
Speaker 2:I even remember that in the trailer, him saying like I'm not Roman, like trying to like I'm Mike, I'm not Roman.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so she's a little afraid of him and I can't remember exactly what order. At one point Madsen regresses him.
Speaker 1:And he is there too, I think that happens, he, who Mike, regresses back and is in the 40s, in the same house and whatever. And that's where we learn the gender swap that you remember Mike is the reincarnation of Margaret. But that's a big reveal at the end. That's after Grace is afraid of Mike and she says I'm afraid of you. And he's a little annoyed that she's afraid and sort of hands her this here, take the scissors, because like scissors were the murder weapon, take these scissors, take these scissors.
Speaker 1:And he like goes, like drags her through his apartment and hands her all the scissors. And then he hands her his gun and says you're scared of me here, train it. And she's like really upset, crying, like this is he's being abusive with this. And finally he sort of comes to and like realizes how much he's upset her and he's sort of like oh my God, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I would never hurt you Margaret. And he calls her Margaret. And then she's like, and she points the gun at him which I remember that very clearly, even from 91, that I would never hurt you Margaret and then both of them kind of freaking out when he uses the name of the dead woman about her. So meanwhile Mike has met in the very beginning, this psychiatrist or psychologist, robin Williams I thought Robin Williams was in this.
Speaker 2:I thought I remembered that. Yeah, I had forgotten. Oh, and this is where he says something like it's karma you buy now, pay forever. Something like that.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, he does. So the Robin Williams character, whose name is name is cozy something or other, was a therapist who lost his license for sleeping with patients and it's just this like kind of gross character, unpleasant, yeah, very unpleasant, but like really smart. And so mike comes back to him a couple of times also like knows about hypnosis and stuff. Mike finds him because a man has left him money in his will, has left the robin williams character money in his well like eleven thousand dollars or something which in 90 I didn't look up what that is in 91 dollars but probably at least three times.
Speaker 1:So yeah, like over 30 so um and and uh, apparently the deceased had been impotent and Robin Williams had treated him and so like there's a great line where Mike's like he must have had a hell of a hard on when he wrote his will. Sometimes like these, like people just keep coming back. It's fate, you know, you keep meeting the same people over and over and over again.
Speaker 1:That's part of why grace is afraid of mike is that she's afraid that they're like it's gonna happen again they're repeating the same story exactly so we learned that mike was, is a reincarnation, and we learned he actually is the reincarnation of margaret. And so then we see grace back at her apartment. Her name is not actually Grace, that's what Mike was calling her, but I'm just going to call her that, that with all of this artwork that she's made with scissors in it, and Mr Madsen is there and is like you cannot trust Mike. It's going to feel really good, but that's how fate works and this cannot but end badly. And actually Hansard, this tiny antique gun from his shop to protect herself.
Speaker 1:And then we see the scene that you remember with the smoking. Mike actually finds Gray Baker, who was the reporter who was reporting on the death of Margaret, but we learned through the flashbacks also had a bit of a romance with her, like a flirtation, yes, but like an ongoing flirtation between the two of them. We are not given the impression that they ever actually flirted, had a physical affair, but there was a romance between them. So Mike sees him and throughout we've been hearing Robin Williams say to Mike Church, and we've heard a couple of times you're either a smoker or you're not, so pick which one you are and get busy doing it.
Speaker 1:Graybaker is a smoker Because he's got a trach, doesn't he? He's got a trach. He uses this device that he has to hold up to the tracheotomy in order to speak, and he begs for a cigarette. The nurse who let Mike into the room said no matter what he says, don't give him, don't let him smoke. And he actually smokes. He lights the cigarette in his mouth but then holds it to the hole in his neck in order to that image has stuck with me.
Speaker 2:Not that I ever thought I'd be a smoker, but it was just like nope. And that's Mike's reaction too. He's like I am not a smoker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was the point. That was the point. So in the flashbacks we saw that Baker was there the day that Roman was executed and asked him if he actually killed his wife and he leaned in and whispered something in Ray Baker's ear. But it turns out he didn't whisper, he kissed him on the cheek. Baker no longer believes that Roman was responsible. He thought that he was at the time, but he no longer believes.
Speaker 1:And Mike's like well, who would know? Who did it, who could have done it? And Baker says if anybody knows, it'll be the housekeeper. We've seen from the beginning. There was a housekeeper and her son, frankie. So Inga and Frankie, who were with Roman, helped him out of Germany. The implication, I guess, is that he was Jewish because he got out of Germany and his wife at the time died when they were going over the mountains. And at one point Margaret's like why would a woman with a bad heart, like, want to make a trip over the mountains? And he was like we had to get out of Germany, but they never actually say it explicitly, which was kind of weird to me watching it now that they avoided it so completely. Anyway, so we can come back to that. Maybe we saw some like friction around Inga and Frankie, like in the past. I don't remember exactly who says it, but maybe it is Mr Baker, but apparently Inga and her son opened an antique shop called the Laughing Duke, which is the name of Mr Madsen's shop. His name is Franklin Madsen.
Speaker 1:Now he's played by Derek Jacoby with this British accent, but we see Mike confront Inga, who's a very old woman now, and she tells the whole story. Frankie killed Margaret with the scissors and he had a stutter from the beginning. His speech impediment got worse so she took him to England where they gave him treatments, including with hypnosis, and he became obsessed with it. So the sort of exposition is that he speaks with a British accent now because the speech therapy was in England and that's how he got into hypnosis. So Mike knows now and Inga hands him the anklet. There's this whole thing with the anklet between the two of them.
Speaker 1:She hands him the anklet which had gone missing and he thanks her and leaves. There's this very creepy scene where Inga turns the TV on. She stands up and has to actually press a button, which now seems crazy. You can turn it on with a button and then within 30 seconds a hand reaches over and turns it off. And it's Frankie and she says I couldn't live with it anymore. And he's like I understand, I understand. And then he puts her to bed and then he smothers her with a pillow.
Speaker 1:So in the final scene, back at the apartment, grace is freaking the fuck out when Mike shows up because she's sure he's going to kill her and that this is fate and he's come to kill her. And I mean because mr madison, who we now know was frankie, had been saying as much, right, and so she's freaking out and but he manages to get in the apartment, he's trying to explain and he says this is for you, and he reaches into, like his breast pocket. And this is for you is a phrase that has come up again and again, again. That's what frankie said when he killed margaret. We also see Roman sort of say it in like a vision that didn't actually happen. So she freaks and shoots him in the shoulder and he is unconscious. But then she like looks to see what he was getting out of his pocket, sees the anklet, and she's like, oh God, what have I done? What have I done?
Speaker 1:And then Frankie shows up and we know he's just murdered his mother and she's like, oh god, what have I done? What have I done? And then frankie shows up and we know he's just murdered his mother and she's like I shot him. I shot him and he was like thank you, you saved me the time. And then he's gonna I don't remember exactly how he incapacitates her, but he's gonna kill them both. But then mike wakes up, there's a big tussle and he ends up frank Frankie ends up impaling himself on this giant statue of multiple scissors that Grace has created. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they live happily ever after, not Frankie, grace and Mike.
Speaker 2:Grace and Mike. Well, it ends with the scene of them kissing, doesn't it? Yeah, I remember that being like I've never seen anything like this before. This is the end of the film, but you know I was 12, so yeah, being like I've never seen anything like this before.
Speaker 1:This is the end of the film, but you know I was 12, so, yeah, it ends with a yeah, it ends with sort of a kiss. That is, I don't think it's meant to be that moment. I think it's meant to be sort of like Like in the future, like a yeah, synecdoche, like a part for the whole of their lives together. They've broken the curse or whatever. So yeah, and there's like smaller details that help kind of like create through lines that I did not share. But that's what happens. So it passes Bechdel, because Inga and Margaret talk about stuff besides men and boys. So we have per Alison Bechdel. Are there more than two named female characters? Yes, do they talk to each other? Yes, do they talk about something other than a man or a boy? Yes, so it passes Bechdel. So that's cool.
Speaker 1:Margaret is kind of a badass. She's a pianist and has a successful career and Emma Thompson's portrayal of Margaret, I feel like, is nuanced and whole. She's in love with Roman, but there's a lot more to her and she pushes back on him when he behaves badly and their relationship, as we see it, actually feels really fucking healthy for 1949. I mean, not perfect. They're having money trouble and so things are not great. And he gets jealous of Mr Baker Ray Baker, and she, like withholds information from him about Baker Mm-hmm, and he knows it. So I'm not suggesting it's like perfect.
Speaker 2:It's not something to emulate necessarily, right.
Speaker 1:But it also doesn't feel in any way like abusive or Demeaning or bullying, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly. So that feels really good in some ways when I think about the romance. Like what I was imbibing about the romance, mm-hmm, and we're led to believe that. So she, margaret's on the phone with Gray Baker, cutting things off with him, and Roman sort of comes in on her, like on the phone with him and hanging up, and we're led to believe that that's what led to the jealous rage that ended in her death. But then when we see what actually happened, like they both apologize and like hug and it's like it brings them closer. So those sorts of things like feel good in in rewatch the 90s romance.
Speaker 1:Maybe a little less so because like initially I don't know I'm I'm talking in draft here, so I'm open to like questions and pushback, but initially it's entirely caregiving from mike to grace. She's amnesiac, she's terrified and she doesn't know why and she doesn't know her name, she can't speak, like she's, she is mute. And so initially, like he brings her home to his apartment to take care of her at one point, like she's washing her hair in the sink and he's like oh, you missed a spot in the back and he like helps her with a bit at the back of her neck and it's clear he's like turned on by it. He doesn't do anything untoward but like it's clear he's affected by this and like it feels like all about sort of her looks and her vulnerability.
Speaker 2:Don't they say something when they take her picture for the, the newspaper? Like we'll definitely get people writing in about this.
Speaker 1:Yes, because of how beautiful she is.
Speaker 1:And they do. Like we hear Mike fielding a call, she has an Irish clatter ring. And so they say, like that's one of the ways they're using to try and identify her. And like we hear him talking to somebody who's like no, I'm not, you tell identifier. And like we hear him talking to somebody who's like no, I'm not, you tell me about the ring.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, a coiled snake, yep, okay, and a tattoo right, like like lots of people, like see the picture on our try. So yes, for sure. And then, as the romance develops, like it seems a little bit more kind of reciprocal, but still like there's no there there for me. And in fact there's that moment, like I can't remember the order, but I'm pretty sure they've already had sex in that moment when I would never hurt you, margaret, what led him to say that and call her by the wrong name though? That moment when, like, shoving scissors at her and like hands her his gun is horrible, like it's it's really bad and he's not physically abusing her, but it's it's abusive, yeah yeah especially given where she is and and where she's been and he's he's upset like that 's's like him being upset about picking the bear.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's a man versus bear level of upset. Because he's upset, not because she is freaked out and he's mad at her for not trusting him. Even though she has no memory, she's reliant on him and she has no reason to trust him well, and all this weird shit is happening with.
Speaker 1:The only memories she has are from 1949, where she thinks she was killed by the person he now is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, so that that's a like, that is a very much a like. You know, take this as a, take this as a, take my gun, that's, that's a like. The kinds of meltdowns there were many men who had, like I, I it's one of those like it might be apocryphal, but I I read about like a man taking his sister out into the woods and like leaving her there and, like you know, see if you like the bear now, and it's just like you know, this is why we choose the bear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this right here. I think that's exactly it, because she says immediately prior to that, I'm pretty sure she says I'm afraid of you, mike, which is a vulnerable thing to say.
Speaker 2:Yes, and brave, very brave, and that shows trust also, because if she didn't trust him she would pretend everything was fine and figure out a way to get out Right. And so I do, real quick, want to just explain what the man versus bear thing is, just in case our audience doesn't know it. It's been about six or eight months ago. It somehow came up one of those interviews on the streets where someone was going around asking women would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear or with a random man? You don't know? Would you rather be alone in the woods with a bear or with a random man? You don't know? And almost universally, women chose the bear. And men, upon finding this out, a lot of them had a complete and utter meltdown. How dare you say that About me, about me. And women were saying things like well, the bear's not going to act different depending on whether or not there's other bears there. Yeah, the bear's not going to try to lull me into a sense of safety before attacking.
Speaker 1:The bear's not going to blame me for what I was wearing. Yeah, and if I get mauled by a bear.
Speaker 2:No one's going to say what were you wearing, right? So, anyway, you were saying, like recognizing the level of trust that someone shows by telling them that you're afraid or that they're hurting you. That shows that they trust you enough to share that with you.
Speaker 1:Movie like with a deep kind of like wistfulness about the relationship, about both sets, like both relationships, the one between roman and margaret, but also, but also the one between mike and grace, and I'm not sure that that was warranted that wistfulness.
Speaker 1:You know that like oh of like 15-year-old me thinking of some future romance, and there's a degree to which I think I didn't see it because I was 15. But there's also a degree to which I sort of was like oh, but he's really her right, he's Margaret reincarnated, and so somehow, like the gender swap made that abusive moment okay. I'm putting quotes around that in my head which no, just no, just no. Sorry, baby Tracy, that was not okay, I don't care what his previous life was Right, and so that so that I'm staying with it because I really wanted to just say that out loud like there's a level of sort of like romanticization of that like moment of friction and then it's resolution in the end of the film that made me think that that is like okay and it's not. I mean, like everybody's allowed to have a mistake, but like I'm left with the impression that, like Mike Church would do that again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no sense that, like he says I'm sorry, you know I'd never hurt you, but that's what every abuser says as soon as they're done slapping you around.
Speaker 1:Like. He doesn't say I'm sorry, I overreacted. He doesn't say I'm sorry, I took it personally that you're scared. He says I'm sorry, you know I'd never hurt you, and so I don't know that you'd never hurt her, you just did, even though you didn't physically, like she was in anguish. When you're shoving these scissors into her hand and then the gun.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so anyway, I like, I, I wanted to name that because in, in terms of like what our project is, that's the kind of moment that I want to surface and shine a light on, so that I can maybe work to unravel that in my own, the furniture of my own head, sure. So in terms of romance, I feel like that's that's work, to unravel that in my own, the furniture of my own head, sure. So in terms of romance, I feel like that's that's the big thing that I want to like, investigate. Now, in terms of storytelling, in some ways, like Grana did an amazing job, like I was, like even I knew what happened and when I was watching it two nights ago, I still was on the edge of my seat. You know, like I like, and so in some ways, like good on you, kenneth Branagh, like you did it, and when I shine a light, even a little, I'm like, oh, wait a minute. Oh, like, we see, like I said, the this is for you is like a line that comes up repeatedly, but and we see that from Grace's dream that Roman says it to the guard.
Speaker 1:But, and Grace was Roman, but Roman didn't know. That's what Frankie said. Roman wasn't there while Frankie was killing Margaret. In fact, roman was like finishing. He had had had writer's block and was working on this opera and the first and only time they heard it was he was finishing it while she was being killed, and Gray Baker knew that Inga would know what actually happened. There were only four people in the house, one of them's dead. Why is it so hard to figure out which of the three?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And like are we meant to then believe that Roman was protecting Frankie? Why? I mean, we saw that he protected inga because she and frankie like helped him get out of germany, and frankie's a kid, so maybe, but like for me now, looking back, and I wish I'd seen a little bit more of something I do want to just in defense of kenn Branagh is that's what you get with mysteries For sure.
Speaker 2:Yes, because you've got the economy of characters. You've got like there's a reason why the close rate on like investigations into murder is so much smaller than what you would come to believe based on police procedurals and mystery novels, and all of that and it's because the author controls how many characters are involved. Those sorts of things, like even the queen, agatha Christie, will have things that, if you spend time thinking about it, are kind of a leap or kind of a like seriously, wouldn't that be obvious? That only by going on the like, suspending your disbelief and you don't even have to with Agatha Christie because she was so good, but just like in the moment it's like yes, yes, yes, and then only if you spend time thinking about it afterwards you go like that doesn't make sense totally that's, and that's what this is.
Speaker 1:While you are watching the movie, you are totally believing it and, like the reveal, when you realize that mr madsen is frankie is like I mean, it's, it's, it hits, it really really lands. It really lands. So for sure, completely. And you know, I'm allowed to say like hey well, and then there is.
Speaker 2:There is like, the best mysteries which I know is what Branagh wanted to make are the ones where you don't go like couldn't they have figured out? One of the other three people in the house committed the murder? Like, the very best mysteries that have ever been written are the ones where there are no moments of like whoa.
Speaker 1:And there's very few of those. So I honestly I'm sort of saying like I just wish I'd had a little bit more motivation for Roman to take the fall Because effectively. Like he had to know. It was either Inga or Frankie. There are only four people in the house, and one of them's dead.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he knows he didn't do it. Yeah, so he had to know it was one of the two of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I guess we're meant to kind of assume, because we do hear him defending them, yeah, so there's that. I think there's also a degree to which I'm holding him to a slightly higher standard too, because there's a degree to which I feel, like in my point about, or in my sort of question about discernment between smart and pretentious Brauna, like when I look at it now and I read someone sort of say this I'll see if I can find it and put in the show notes Like I didn't quite follow. It may have even been contemporaneous, because there's not a whole lot written, like people aren't really talking about it that much anymore, but contemporaneously there were folks who loved it and hated it, and the folks who hated it were sort of like he's trying to pull one over on us, like he's trying to make us think it's high art when it's really just entertaining, or he is somehow like making fun of us for wanting to be entertained, us being americans. Specifically, you know that we have rana, thompson and jacoby who are the three leads effectively all british actors and rana and thompson playing american characters in the 90s version and thompson playing an american woman in margaret. Rana playing this, like with this german accent for roman strauss.
Speaker 1:One person points out that, even like, when we first meet Mike on screen, he's parked in this old convertible and somebody yells like hey man, you're on the wrong side of the road. Like, was that? Like an inside joke about the fact that he's british? Okay, that's what this one commentator was saying. Like and like, like. I do like this. This like big hollywood story. Like this hollywood. Intrigue is the center of of this story.
Speaker 2:Like why was that commentator thinking that? What evidence did they give that he's making fun of americans wanting to be entertained?
Speaker 1:they were suggesting that this was a film that just wouldn't go over with brits. Huh, I don't know if I buy it. I don't know if I buy it, but that's what they were suggesting but I don't know like that.
Speaker 2:That also doesn't necessarily tell me that he's making he's making fun of americans that that could be a young british filmmaker who loved american films totally I mean because it definitely feels like a send-up of like the 40s.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like he's doing the hard-boiled private detective genre yes, yes, and like okay, it's a very American genre, but that doesn't mean that other people can't take it, run with it and do something fun with it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. So. I don't know, I'm not. Not, this isn't like a fully baked idea, but like there's something. I think maybe with the influence of this commentator who I'm not sure I followed, but but their words are cooking and the degree to which there's like all of this, like either or thinking in this film, like even the you're a smoker or you're not. Yeah, I'm sorry, but I reject that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's not how it works.
Speaker 1:That's not how addiction works. So there's all of this sort of either or thinking, even like it's fate or it's not, it's poppycock, or it's not, like you're Roman or you're Margaret. There's a lot of either or thinking. That is sort of the undercurrent of this film, of the conflict. In this film, even you know, like even Margaret, has to choose between Gray Baker and her husband.
Speaker 2:Well that so you were talking about how, like Brana is brilliant, like he really is, he's also pretentious. Some of that pretension comes out, I think, in wanting to do the thinking for us, in that, like the either or thinking so, like he's feeding to us, like these are the two options you have available to you, instead of allowing the audience to come to their own conclusions about stuff and that's part of why I both love and hate his Poirot films is he is doing some things brilliantly and then some things he's deciding for us who Poirot is, contrary to how Agatha Christie wrote him, contrary to how the character is, because he's decided this is the right way, and I think that's part of what pretentiousness is, is like I know better and I'm going to go with it. In some ways, I might be talking out of my hat.
Speaker 1:No, I don't think you are. I don't think you are. I'm processing what you're saying because I do think that there's something, even the sort of like gender swap, reincarnation, fate or no fate, like they broke the cycle, like I wonder if it could have been like what a different movie. It would have been like what a different viewing experience if some of that had been left a little less decided yeah yeah, a little more ambiguous yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, yeah.
Speaker 1:I wonder, like I wonder what a viewer experience was if there was a little bit more left for us to kind of discern on our own or imagine on our own.
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly, like again, I don't want to like overtake with talking about Poirot, but Murder on the Iron Express was fantastic and I really, really liked it in a lot of ways, except for the mustache, because what the fuck? It is not what a mustache is supposed to look like. Also, backstory that Poirot had had a woman who he loved and lost like he was asexual. But the other aspect of it is Poirot is like well, I can't let you get away with this because I am, and there's a sense that he might be neurodivergent or something like that. At the end and that's not how Christie wrote and it felt like because Branagh wanted a bow to tie it up with. When there is often ambiguity in Agatha Christie, now you always know who did it. She always makes sure justice prevails for the most part in some way, but justice for her is often extrajudicial justice and people committing suicide to avoid being that's what happens in the movie the Orient Express.
Speaker 1:No, oh, no, sorry, I'm thinking of the Nile, yeah, yeah yeah, death on the Nile.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen Orient Express. Yeah, and that's something where ambiguity is not a bad thing for a story. Mm-hmm, and your interpretation is not necessarily the right interpretation, ken.
Speaker 1:Well, especially in a story about reincarnation, yeah, or about the possibility of reincarnation, about the possibility of fate, right, because it's not just about sort of motives and like justice, it's also about like the nature of the universe and human existence.
Speaker 2:Well, and Mike Church is like so Grace thinks that she was Margaret and Mike was Roman. And Mike is like all this is poppycock. Okay, it's not poppycock, but I'm not Roman. Okay, it's not Poppycock, but I'm not Roman, I'm not Roman. You know, like it's still this very like, you know, when he discovers that he was Margaret, that's like whoa, this is the thing that blows my mind. You know, like it's kind of glossing over the wonder of it all.
Speaker 1:It's like it's accepting something really ridiculous, because you're fighting against the smaller ridiculousness within it, right, yeah, and the clarity of the memories of the past lives also, I feel like to your point kind of erases some of the wonder and the like, just like weirdness, of the fact that we're talking about people who've been dead for 40 years. So anyway, those were just the things that I wanted to talk about. I mean it's it's a beautiful movie. These people are beautiful, emma thompson in particular oh my gosh, she was absolutely gorgeous.
Speaker 1:I mean, she's still gorgeous, but she's, she is, and she was at the height of her sort of Luminosity, yeah, yeah, and it's really showed off well. And the romance between Roman and Margaret is believable and beautiful and magnetic, like even the way there's a scene when they're first the thing with the I think it's, I don't even know there's a scene where he's like sort of kissing her hand, her knuckles, and he's sort of moving toward her while still just like kissing her hand.
Speaker 1:It is so hot and it's like not sexual but, it is like just the chemistry of it is just really palpable and and the connection between the two of them just really like comes off the screen. I really believe it. And all of that in the black and white sort of Hollywood glamour of the 40s which, interestingly, like, we make reference to world war ii repeatedly. Repeatedly because gray baker says he misses the war because news is boring now and strauss had to escape germany, and yet we don't acknowledge any kind of jewish identity, which is still feels like really weird to me. But I maybe it was brana just not wanting to touch that, I don't know, but he did touch it. It's like he touched it but didn't name it it's either do it or don't do it kind of you're either going to mention the war or you're not going to mention the war.
Speaker 2:You're a smoker, you're not a smoker.
Speaker 1:Do or do not there is no try, yeah, so that's a little bit weird, but also like I don't know so.
Speaker 2:So I also wonder if that was like because it's the era of colorblind, blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff If he thought he was being more sensitive as a Gentile British blonde man like you know what. I'm just not going to mention it, I'll let people draw their own conclusions. I could have, he could have thought he was being sensitive that way.
Speaker 2:So, maybe, totally, maybe. Let people draw their own conclusions. I could have, he could have thought he was being sensitive that way. So Maybe, totally Maybe. So there are two things that I remember very vividly. One is when she first comes back to his apartment, he lends her some clothes and the jeans she's wearing are not his jeans. It's the other thing. I remember it was a couple years later. We were watching it on TV, the whole family. I remember it was a couple years later. We were watching it on TV, the whole family.
Speaker 2:And there's a scene in the 1949 where Emma Thompson, as Margaret, is wearing this clingy silk dress and you can see a little bit of her belly. And I remember saying something about it and everyone being like what are you talking about? She looks great. And I just wanted to bring that up because the level of body expectations that I had as a 12-year-old were really toxic that I felt like not only did I think it, but I felt the need to say it out loud in front of our whole family that like wow, she's got a belly there, or something like that.
Speaker 2:And she does because she's a human being, right, right. I remember like holding both of those things at the same time, like that you know she's wearing these jeans, she looks fantastic and they're definitely not men's jeans. And also, ugh, belly, and just the amount of pressure that we put on women's bodies. That I definitely internalized is so overwhelming and that I, like I very vividly remember that moment of watching that movie and then thinking like when everyone was like no to me. I remember thinking like I gotta rethink some things.
Speaker 1:Like I remember being like, okay, this is definitely me, this is not the family being wrong, interesting yeah, okay, all right, let me see if I can reflect back some of the things that we're talking, that we talked about. So I spent a lot of time talking about the ways in which I romanticized the romance. I did that on purpose, especially the one between Mike and Grace, but in them Margaret was less fully vulnerable, like she was able to push back in more powerful ways than in the moments that I sort of laid out in our conversation between Mike and Grace. And I think that there are ways in which, because it all works out and because we learned that Mike is the reincarnation of Margaret, that I sort of like forgave or excused kind of bad behavior on his part, and not only in the way he behaved and sort of shoving the scissors at her because she said she was scared of him. But also when he does apologize, he doesn't say I'm sorry, I overreacted, I'm sorry, I took it personally. He says I'm sorry, you know, I would never hurt you, which is not very reassuring from someone who's just been kind of emotionally abusive.
Speaker 1:We also talked about sort of this was less cohesive thought, but we talked a bit about the way in which there's sort of an either-or thinking, about the way in which there's sort of an either-or thinking, like a series of either-ors that undergird this film that end up I don't know if we said it quite this clearly, but I'm going to go ahead and make this assertion that the nature of the either-or that Branagh leans on over and over and over again ends up having him do some thinking for us.
Speaker 1:Like he removes some options for us, which then end up sort of diminishing the power of the story in some ways, because it removes some of the wonder of the fact that this is a reincarnation story Because, like, as you point out, we're so busy, like thinking about the gender swap, we like stop thinking about the like holy cow, you know, like these two people were reincarnated, ended up running into each other again and wait what reincarnation like. So the the nature of this like, over and over and over again, either or you're a smoker or you're not. It's fate or it's random, and the answers are not smoker, fate, rather than like it's complicated, it means that Branagh is doing some thinking for us, that I think you propose that that is a form of pretension, where his smarts, he makes himself superior to his viewer.
Speaker 2:And that might have been what the commentator you were mentioning was reacting to. Yeah, agreed agreed.
Speaker 1:I'm just thinking this through. It is interesting that we have this Robin Williams character who definitely plays in the gray although he is one of the people who names the either or because he's the one who gives us you're a smoker or you're not. That comes from robin williams. But he also lives in this gray as this, like former therapist who slept with his patients, but it's like so gross. Anyway, I named that in the person of margaret strauss.
Speaker 1:We have this like really whole and badass woman, like successful pianist.
Speaker 1:We kind of get that she is a full partner in her marriage with roman, not just like arm candy and that I still really enjoyed.
Speaker 1:I still really enjoyed and even there like we see a lot of friction in their marriage. But like the moment that we initially are invited to believe was the cause of her murder, when we're left to think it was him that did it, is actually a moment that brings them closer together. So that too felt like a even for you know, 15 year old tracy kind of idolized that and I'm not sure I want to emulate that in romantic relationship, but I'm not sure it would lead me completely astray, in the same way that I think that, like romanticizing Mike Church would we talked about the fact that Branagh put a Jewish refugee as his protagonist but never named the fact that he was Jewish, which feels like weird and cowardly kind of, although at the time he maybe thought that was a more sensitive thing to do, since he is not, in fact, jewish. This film does pass Bechdel, though I don't know that. I would characterize it as feminist and what am I forgetting?
Speaker 2:Just holding up again that for the criticisms, we're lobbying against this. It is very well constructed and beautiful. Lobbying against this. It is very well constructed and beautiful. Branagh did a really, really good job.
Speaker 2:And to the point of that commentator who thought that he was making fun of Americans for wanting to be entertained I haven't read it but I would push back on that because to me, branagh's career as a director has always struck me as wanting to take a genre he likes and make it his own. I feel like that's what he's done with the Poirot films and I feel like he liked hard-boiled private detective mystery type movies and he wanted to make it his own and he kept it in America because that's a very American genre, but he did bring like he brought three British actors to play the main characters. I think that that is. He's very good at what he does. He has some blind spots that I don't know that he's ever like grown from or learned from, but in some ways he doesn't have to because he's so good. You know, like he could be even better, but I don't know that he has the ability to look at what he does and push through to the even better because he does like deciding for us. He knows he's smart, he is, he's very smart, and so he kind of rests on that and that creates some really gorgeous and very entertaining movies that, for the most part, I'm really happy to watch, although some of them afterwards.
Speaker 2:I will rant for a few minutes about certain aspects of it. Yeah, so next time I am going to be bringing you my deep thoughts about Silence of the Lambs. Oh shit, I am really. I'm interested and excited to watch it, to rewatch it, because I haven't seen it in probably 25 years, and it has since I have come to understand how the difficulties and marginalization that transgender people experience like. I did not understand that last time I saw the movie, so that is going to really inform my view of it this time. I also I'm really interested and kind of excited to talk to you about my experience of reading the book, which I think I might have told you. It's the only time I've ever thrown a book across the room. Yeah, I think. Yeah, yeah, you did, you did. So I don't know if I told you on the air or not, but no, I don't think so. So I look forward to it.
Speaker 2:I'll get to it next week.
Speaker 1:I'll look forward to that.
Speaker 2:So that's what I'm bringing next week, so I'm really looking forward to that.
Speaker 1:I'll look forward to hearing it Talk to you, then Talk to you then. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon. There's a link. Thank you, to Resonate Recordings for editing today's episode. Until next time, remember, pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head?