Jean Renoir's The Grand Illusion

Welcome back to the new thing for you. My name is David Barnes with me as always is my good friend Alex. How are you Alex? I'm doing Todd Bienvenue and hello.

I'm going to be tri-lingual like the movie we were talking about. Yeah, yeah. And I'm going to make you a little departure from your tricexial character. You'll just try anything.

This is going to be a long night out. A long night. How are you doing? Greg's in a good mood.

You've always tried to do a little unhappy. So he's 20 jokes. Hi guys, I'm doing great. Happy to be back in America and the Land of Freedom.

Yeah, where were you before? Jamaica Mon. Did you enjoy yourself? It was fine.

It's a lovely country. What did you do? Did you get high? It's a little fun story.

It's illegal to do marijuana in Jamaica. Yeah. I found that out the hard way. Yeah.

Were you offered drugs? Yes, I was. Yeah. I was.

But it's the jerk chicken? I did eat a lot of jerk chicken. It's legal to smoke marijuana if you are a member of the, what's the religion? Rustafarian?

Yeah. It's legal for your. Rustafarian. It's legal.

But for non-rustafarians. Not legal. Interesting. Yeah.

You know what happens when you smoke a lot of ganja? Greg? I don't. I don't.

You start to have illusions. Maybe even grant illusions. Ooh. Which brings us to the title of our film for today.

David? Yeah. So we watched the 1937 French War film, the Grand Illusion by Jean Renoir. I really like him as a film director.

I've seen a few of his movies. One's obviously that stand out that are the most famous is the human beast about a man that kills. The rules of the game, which is a very funny movie about aristocrats and the mixing of social orders and conventions that they each adhere or don't adhere to. But he is a very fine filmmaker, very famous filmmaker.

This film is based off of... And he's the son of the of the real Renoir, like the painter. He also made the car. The famous French car.

That's not a Renoir. Oh. What do you think? He's thinking of Renoir.

Anyway, so let's let's cut to it. This film is in black and white. Boo. But once you can't get...

So it's not an English. No, that's true. It's a little bit in English. Jerk.

Here I am trying to watch this movie. Anyway, there's a scene where... There's a couple of times where it's in English. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's very deliberate.

Two scenes in English. Two scenes in English. I recall. There's at least two or three moments.

Yeah. I can think of that as two. But there's one scene where he's showing them around the fortress prison that they're in and the German head of the fortress, who's an aristocrat. He's talking about his French aristocrat.

And they're speaking French and they both know French English and German. Right? And then he switches from French to English when talking about how he slept with this woman named Fifi at the Maxime's club in the next. So he says it because he doesn't want the lower class Germans and the lower class French to know it.

So he speaks in a language so that when he's getting to show how he's sort of got a vulgar sign. He should have been using those hand motions then because that kind of made it obvious what he was talking about. Was he doing it? Oh, for three, Greg.

This is bad. Sorry. I'll stop. Greg, you were wrestling, right?

You were an athlete. Okay. Do you go for every opportunity or do you select them carefully so as to actually have a victorious outcome? What do you do?

Don't shoot every shot. Listen, you lose 100% of shots. You don't take. You miss 100% shots.

You miss. I lose. Anyway, anyways, let's jump into an office. It's an office.

So they're two main characters, but there are sort of characters that are quite funny. But the two main characters are named. They're their aviator. So this takes place during the First World War, filled in 37.

So we'll talk about what it may foreshadow. But these two French aviators, there's the aristocratic captain will do or pre you, depending on if you want to pronounce this last name in the working class Lieutenant McBrayer or that movie, but some of us. Hey, pronounce it off. Marshall.

Marshall. And they are they are gunned down. They're shot down on a mission to take recon photographs for essentially no reason. So you see the military bureaucracy.

I worked with it. They already had the pictures, but they weren't the one guy wasn't happy with it. I got his pictures. I'll go take some more.

Correct. And he goes with them and he wants to fly over and see it turns out that just gets them shot down. One thing I'll notice is they're both officers. Marshall used to be a mechanic.

Right. Engineer. Yeah. And so they he's a working class man.

He comes from a far. He talks about his grandfather's cows. And they're mixing together because in this war, there's right. It's not fought by the aristocracy with some of their like, who begins around them.

It's really everybody together mixed up. And so the rank term officer is no longer, especially because of technology and you need people who just are artisanal and they're sort of training. You need them together. And so that's like a core part of this.

But sorry, you were giving us an option. Yeah. So I'll try and wrap it up there. They're shot down by a German aristocrat, von Rauchenstein.

And they're taking... Well, that's the guy that shoots them down. Yes. And he later is the commandant of their...

Oh, wow. Okay. And so he's also an aristocrat. So he and Bulldo have an immediate affinity for one another.

They speak French, which is the language, of course, Alex and I speak. And so anyway, they're taking prisoner of war. And so time is kind of compressed there. They spend some time in the first prison of war camp and then they're taken to a castle, kind of German imperial fortress, or surely they can't get out.

It's intimated that they've tried a number of times to escape. So they're kind of escape masters, but they're never killed for it, probably because of their rank. And so that kicks off the story. So it's the aristocrat, the working-class man.

There is a very wealthy Jewish... And so you have this, again, this cast of prisoner. So you have a very, very wealthy Jewish prisoner named Rosen Ball, who is actually the third leading character of the film. And then a very short funny guy.

Who's the funny guy Alex? I forget his name, but he's a vaudeville actor. And then there's three stages to the movie aside from the beginning. There's the first prison camp where there's a bunch more, and that's where you have this professor character, this guy who's like a land surveyor.

You have the actor, the aristocrat, the wealthy child of the Jewish banking family, and then the engineer mechanic who was from the beginning. The second stage is when they're about to escape, they end up being moved to a different camp. And then move to the fortress where Raffordstein and Baudieu re-encounter one another. That's the sort of second stage of the film.

Then finally, for reasons we should talk about Baudieu, helps Rosen Ball and Marishel escape. And it's about them leaving and they end up sort of walking to Switzerland 200 miles. And they spend a little bit of time after Rosenthal sprains his ankle and he can't go on any further. Being helped by this German woman where they spend a few little while and even over Christmas.

Several months, what's that? It seems like it's several months. Yeah, yeah. Then off they go.

And they get to slip time to fall in love. Which you know, after a little while in prison, even the German country yells, which are pretty good. So they barely make it to Switzerland. German troops shoot at them.

But then this is not what they realized. They've made it over the border. But we don't, you know, there's a lot of questions about the end of the movie. Important, meaningful questions.

But it has like a vignette feel of like three 40 minutes or something like that. Or it's about two hours. So. Yeah.

So how do you want to dive in? You think this movie, how about that first of all? Well, you were in Jamaica and who we decided what to do. We wanted to do a film.

And I've always liked when I was films. I mean, Alex is half French. I thought it would be nice to discuss it with him. I liked it before.

So. Yeah. Yeah. I liked it.

I liked it. And Barr, Barr gave a few of them. I looked at them and I'm just sort of drawn to World War One stuff in general. And I could see there was like a class element that I thought was really interesting.

Well, well done. Two. I don't need one thing to start with. Let me, let's start a talk of the political names, first of all.

Which is that the big issue behind this is that it seems like it seems like it's a political thing. It's that is that it seems like air stock is going to disappear. It's already begun to disappear in France, thanks to the French Revolution. Which is cited.

Which is cited as by Ralph and Stane. The Germany is obviously recently unified, right, as a monarchy. And they're not, they haven't been subject to the sort of democratic revolution yet. And you see this, for example, in the way that the French and the German behave throughout the film.

The Germans are formal ordered from a proper while the French are far more loose. They're dressing in drag there. Which I know Greg is really. Sorry to say.

Yeah. They make jokes with their superiors. So even though we'll do is an aristocrat and obviously in an officer of rank that doesn't stop mischievous French soldiers from having a good time with him. Yeah.

He also he tries to escape from prison a few times and how much time is listening all the times and one of them is dressed in drag and will do says, yeah, it's necessary to lower oneself sometimes. It was a little joke, but it really shows I think a difference. You could not imagine Ralph and Stane dressing in drag. I know in fact to bulwark what Alex said, second to grow.

Ralph and Stane, there's a very poignant conversation he has with Bulldo. Where he's talking about what already at this point feels like a bygone era, this era of aristocrats and how in the end this war is going to be fought between economic masters and their way of life is, well, what's the point even in fighting? Where this one keeps her in the top? He would lead you into battle willingly.

I actually do wonder if it gives him credence to Lenin's accountable or one of you guys have read this, but his argument is that the proletariat is like you stupid English birds. You stupid English bourgeois, why in the world you fighting the French bourgeois and the German bourgeois. They're your real allies and your enemies are the aristocrats. I've always read that in the natural relations.

I've read it several times. I've always thought, yes, this seems silly. But you really do get a sense in this film that as you mentioned, these aristocratic characters see themselves as sort of the natural allies. You said that Ralph and Stane pools both USI and speaks to him in French and in German and in English, right?

He seems to have more in common with him than he does with his common German. He certainly treats him as French counterpart with more respect than he does as German servant. He won't countenance during a pivotal scene in the movie. He will do his accordors to be searched and it just happens that he had to make a shiver escape rag handoff from his window.

That takes to my word. But for both of us, he says their words is as good as mine, which goes two ways, right? Trust them and because you can trust me or you can trust me about as much as you can trust them. I think he doesn't recognize how eroded his morals are.

He does not give everything for their country or both of them give everything in the end. Will do helps his two subordinates escape at the cost of his life. So he shot. He plays this kind of job.

He goes on this deception. So he runs one way and makes a lot of noise to the German guards. Pay attention to him. Ultimately, Ralph and Stane has to fire upon him and kills him while his two friends escape.

But Ralph and Stane himself, his whole body is covered in burns, 90% burns. Does that one on his neck thing is wearing? His whole body is broken and burned, which is the other one. He's got two spinal fractures.

He has a plate and his neck. He's pretty messed up. He's also drinking a fair amount, like taking shots. I think he's probably a considerable amount of pain.

He wears gloves, I think his hands are all burnt. So I always thought that was the most tragic thing, but yeah, that makes sense. He stays steadfast for the Imperial Army. It's hard to tell how much he's fighting for France rather than the personal.

He says it's not personal. He explicitly says it. Of course, he could be lying. But when Marshall says, hey, thank you for doing this.

He cuts him off several times. I'm not doing this for you. Stop trying to think of me. This isn't personal.

It's a sense of duty or something like this. And I wonder how much of it is. He says at one point, does he or Raffenstein say for us to die in war is a tragedy? It's a tragedy for the commoners to die in war for us to do it or something like that.

So is he doing his duty by trying to save his men? I think this doesn't make a whole lot of sense. What happens is Raffenstein invites him to his room and they're sitting around having a drink or something like that. And he's in his office or quarters.

This is very intimate. It's close. He shows him his flower. He's been cultivating because he's the only flower in the whole castle.

Yeah, there's all the nettles that the ones he says have ever else. And that's where they have the conversation about the future of aristocracy. And Raffenstein says, look, no matter what happens, whoever wins, one outcome is certain that we're done for. There's no more aristocracy.

And Voldio is very sensible. Tocobillion says, well, it'll be foolish to fight against time. And then he also says, perhaps they don't need us anymore. And I think he finds a way in which they do need him.

He has a kind of dignity in Raffenstein's eyes that he can exploit. And it buys them time to get out of there. And they escape. And so what does he become?

He becomes the hero of the future, saving the common man. And that's one role that aristocracy can play. I think the film is suggesting is it can sort of lament in their lonely castle, like tending a dronium, or they can be the sort of stewards of the future era. And that's the path that we'll do.

It takes. He's been prepared by the revolution. It seems like there's a sort of obvious path forward in that direction. So I think, but I don't think that means that Renoir is endorsing this, right?

Like, that's the decision Voldio makes. It's not clear that that leads us to a happy solution. Is it clear that he even had to die though? Well, do you have any question?

It seems like at the certain point he was just like, well, just shoot me. No. Well, are you trying to give his subordinates as much time as possible to get away? Right.

But you're right. He could have put up his hands and said, all right, come get me. I don't know. I mean, he had a risk.

He had to risk. He had to be left behind, I leave. And that was based. And they have all these conversations.

Marshall has been saying this behind his back. Finally, he says it to his face. Like 18 months we've been together. He was like, I'm like that with my mother and my wife.

I was like, all right. That was so funny. But he's like, look, I have a sense of... That's the risk of family, by the way.

Was that? That's the risk of family. I mean, so we're a comical. Are you very your mother?

That's the Georgia family. That's a different family thing. Where you're distant from your mother and your wife. Yeah.

So you're distant from anybody. But he serves his purpose in this sort of social... So he had to be left behind at least, possibly injured, possibly killed. He pays the full price.

I mean, the death has to be there for symbolic reasons because this was the thing that determined that defined his life in a way, that action. Yeah. He said he's so above everybody, too. Even Rosenthal, who's vastly wealthier than Bulldo.

He owns the old castles. Yeah. Yeah. That Bulldo's family was inhabited.

I think one of them, or that Bulldo played in his child. Yeah. I mean, he says he owns three. He says he's very proud of being wealthy.

And you can buy your way into the aristocrats' households now. Not into the respect, not into equality with them, into social status, but you have their houses. Right? And Rosenthal's clear sighted about this, too.

He speaks very openly. Yeah. And the land. But I mean, Topal talks about this, too.

And he actually says that this is a way that you can actually enter the aristocracy. Right. This way, this is what Topal says, beginning to march to America, that over the course of centuries, right? Being able to buy ranks of nobility was one of the first things that's really opened up.

The aristocracy to not just familial lines. I mean, if you own the castle after a few generations, you know. Yeah. I guess that's sort of you start to not pay attention to whether they were.

Though something tells me just a hunch that if your last name is Rosenthal, they're not going to forget. That's if you change in France, you shouldn't have a problem. Especially in France. One thing I think is a good point to pivot to.

There's kind of two themes that ran throughout the film that were a little more subtle than the obvious, more obvious class theme, which was the theme of language, both those who are multilingual and those who are not. Just a kind of firm guy. There's all these moments switching between French and German and English about being able to communicate with one another about the conditions under which you'll learn a language. Marich shall falls in love with the German woman and then he learns German, but he doesn't learn it the whole time.

He's in the German prison camp. Does he can't speak English to their guys to learn about the tunnel in their room? There's a Russian guy talking about how Latin has multiple declensions to a French guy, I think. The guy translating pen.

He said Russian like this like Latin as well. He says multiple. He said he said he said he's going to be a clench. So that's one theme that we should talk about about language and why he learned the second language in the context of the film.

The other one was the constant focus on food versus books or learning. There's like a food obsession throughout the film. Obviously, there's a bad crap. But then Roosevelt's getting all this wonderful food and there's so much of focus on dining and where they're going to go and eat about how the one guy goes to Hollandae wants to see two lips.

The other guy's talking about cheese. I took that to be quite sexual actually, because when he says when he talks about the cheese he actually makes like a round shape with his hands. And that's the funny vlog of the guy who says that right? He's like no, no, you want the milk, the milk, the cheese.

I took that to be sort of overtly sexual. But naturally, if you remember that books are the cause of a riot in the film amongst the Russians. Yeah, they're expecting caviar and it's starting to get books from the sorry, sorry, sorry, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. You could forget that they were even in a prison camp during World War II after World War I, sorry after World War II. They're eating so well.

It seems fine to me. It sounds like heaven. Dancing with your friends. Good food by your rich friend who cooks food for you.

Books. You can translate pindar. It seems there's there's booze. Konyak.

You guys said this is the only guy I ever had. The best way to spend a war. Right. Should we have a family family?

So why escape? It's interesting. There's two guys in the fortress who seem to be fine with staying there. One is the pindar guy.

He's not trying to leave. He's just like, oh, I get to sit and read my books all day. Yeah, this sounds great. So I was in the fortress books, but they do try to the answer books at one point.

But then there's a sign prevents that. He sort of says, okay, yeah, but then he says you stupid. I took that to be some anyway, doesn't matter. I took it to make fun of him for wanting it.

He says poor pindar has to suffer with this guy's doing. Yeah. And then there's the black guy who's doing art who seems to not care about escaping, right? He seems to be taking it everywhere.

Everybody is in on the escape. Nobody talks. Nobody else seems to want to escape. It does seem kind of foolish.

Well, they have in the second prison camp instead of German rules. They have French rules, which are more relaxed. They're like having snowball fights outside. Yeah.

And it seems a little bit more. And then the second. And then secondly, why leave the German woman's house? Elsef.

By the way, I watched Frozen first on the stage. Like, why, like, things are great there. There's a cow. They're going along with the kid.

Why not just wait the war out there? Um, Maxims isn't around. I don't know. I think because they don't either.

They're French. They're not even difficult. The war is going to drag on for a couple more years. I mean, you're kind of, you kind of can't be seen out too much in public, I guess, but also they want to get home.

And it's also seen where they're discussing how long the war is going to go on. Right. They have no idea. They're worried.

It's just years and years. Yeah. That's true. I mean, sort of the food thing was interesting because you see some people are food obsessed.

They don't like the books being there. Some people are comfortable in the prison eating well. Some people are spending their time learning. I think there's a sort of low bodily interest versus higher intellectual interest theme there.

But then the language part, I thought was really fascinating. I'd like to go back through the movie and just try to think through every single instance where it where it comes up. But it's interesting. The aristocrats are all multi-lingual.

They speak to one another and they use their language to hide from people what they're saying, right? Like so when the. Ralph is talking. But he goes in Stein.

He speaks German too. Yes. Right. Okay.

So he's multi-lingual. So it's not only the upper class. They're multi-lingual. Yeah.

It's because he's Jewish because he's fled from Austria and Romania or whatever to France. So he's got. I mean, so it's interesting. You have that multi-lingual aspect.

You have aristocrats and then you have the peasant types like Marishaal and the German woman. And we'll speak there only a ton. Yeah. And then they start to learn each other's language because they're falling in love.

Yeah. And they both lost quite a bit in the war. She feels sympathy for them because she's lost her husband and her brothers and it's just her and her child. She wants an an French name.

And a French man is who suffered and understands it is in a way better. So there's like a more humane scientific. So it's just like, I mean, there's so many instances with language that seem to point to ways in which people live between like nations, right? Whether they're sort of being forced around like Rosenthal or whether they are sort of of the sort of courts of Europe, the way that Ralph and Stein and and and and both you are or they just fall in love.

They're peasants who are going to just speak the vulgar tongue, but then they learn because they're in love. So it seems like there's just multiple registers that this is operating. And the whole movie is illusory also from the title. You think about the horrors of World War I.

And again, like verdun comes to mind because we're familiar with what happened there. But also the prisoner of war camps were hellish places. These weren't places where guards were nice to you or prisoners put on theatrical productions before the guards for that matter were had fun or food was just shared in some democratic way. These are places where you get killed where everybody was starving.

This kind of thing was super atypical, right? You're in a German sharing in history at all. I mean, like my grandfathers of P.O.W. were too.

I mean, he would never talk about it. There was no indication that it was anything like it's portrayed in this bill. No. But I said we don't have historical knowledge.

Was it was this in any way, even if not typical, did at least did this kind of thing happen in the world? I don't know. I mean, it is an officer's camp. I think that's important, which means that they treat them with a sense of rank.

Right. So they can receive packages that packages are searched. They have a kind of dignity that they're afforded. I mean, even when he shoots down the plane, Ralph Einstein says, go get the, you know, the, you know, whatever the enemy and if their officers bring them in here.

And so I don't know. I mean, it is a kind of interesting vestige of gentlemanly conduct. One thing I thought was interesting is that the film is showing you that the old distinction between like aristocrat and pleads is being replaced by the distinction between officer and general unless the troop, right? But the problem is that the distinction of officer is open to the pleads.

So there's like a new hierarchy coming that's based on technical competence as much as her, you know, heritage, right? Or martial virtue. Yeah. Yeah.

I feel like you didn't exhaust what you want to say about language. So let me just ask you guys, you studied foreign languages. Why? Was I love?

It is a humane quality to it, right? Like when you're reading Plato or the integrate, you're trying to see what he said and how he put it into words or see what he thought and how he put it into words, right? I had a student, I had a student say to me once as a student who went on to graduate studies. He said back to me something that he said I had said, but I don't ever remember having said, but I'm like, oh, that's really good.

So I'll claim it as my own. And if I did say that, I'm sure I'm a son of a guy from somewhere. I said, one of the main reasons to study foreign language is because you become aware that your language does not have a monopoly on wisdom, which is not at all course reflected in the movie, but the notion that actually access to something that you otherwise would entirely miss about the world might only be accessible if you study foreign language. Yeah, even if you play was great, but in English, English, you're still you're always missed.

Like why did I start studying Greek? Because I thought Plato might have wisdom. And that's the simple answer. Yeah.

And there's, there's, I'm very just a little bit from Herodotus, you know, Herodotus book three chapter 38, it's a famous short chapter in which Darius has Greeks and some Calithians, some tribe in India. Anyways, the bureau of burial rights, right? And it said, I did a whole paper on this one. So there's said to be interpreters or translators there.

And they show up only seven or eight times in all of Herodotus. They're called herminatus, so herminutics. But what they do is they, they allow the Greeks to understand what these these these tribes is saying. And how they're getting disgusted.

And it's interesting because none of the other interpreters are said to be there. And you get the sense that what the Greeks can do and that makes them sort of sort of exemplars of what it means to be humane. Is that or civilized? Is that they are curious what other people are saying and what they're thinking?

They don't want to know so that they can manipulate things, which is how some people use interpreters in Herodotus. They want to know just understand as if they need to, and they can consider it without anger. They can consider it without wanting to go native or something like that. But they can remain themselves while also being open to others.

And that's very difficult to do. And I think that might be the definition of where Herodotus is civilized. You're talking about Herodotus actually, I mean, in that example too, it's war, right? I mean, sort of basically that brings up this, these people face to face who have to speak to each other with different languages.

And you're mentioning of Marcia with Elsa the German gal, like it's love, right? That brings them together. So even in the movie, it's war in love that is bringing people together and making them speak foreign tongues. Yeah.

And I think their relationship is interesting because if the aristocracy is disappearing and after you get to that third season movie, there's no more of the aristocrats. You don't see, well, do as a dad, Ralph and Sainte is just crying in his tower because the last aristocrat aside from himself is dead. He burned up. And I think he wishes he had gone out in that death so that he would have had a real fitting death.

But so that is sort of like, what is the future of Europe is, I think, the question posed in that last third stage of the film. And it's left open ended, right? Because they fall in love, they learn each other's language, but ultimately he has to go back to France. She has to stay in Germany.

Who knows what will come of him? He might just be put back on the front lines immediately and die. Will he actually want to come back and get her? And if he does, where do they live?

Do they stay in Germany? He says, we'll go back to France, right? So he says both, right? I'll come back here and we'll go back to France.

I think that's what I mean. But in any case, there's all these questions of what will happen. And in a way, it's the question of the future of Europe, which is, are these national boundaries really going to go away just because the aristocracy has gone? And this is related to the question of war, or is it just going to be more war on a mass level?

And it's just the bourgeoisie, the proletariat fighting against each other. Yeah. And will these linguistic distinctions, I mean, a way I was struck by, maybe I shouldn't have been, but that everyone spoke German and French, but not English. And I think a generation later, that's completely changed, right?

Everyone speaks English and Europe. I've traveled. I was just in Jamaica where they speak in which of course, it's having one spin in English, Colley. I mean, I've traveled just in pretty remote places in the world and everywhere I've gone, you can get by in English.

It's kind of amazing. I mean, we have a soft empire, Greg. A cultural linguistic empire. It's true.

I mean, American media rules the world and they want our films, they want our TV shows, influences their culture. And the Brits also leave the groundwork for the language too. Of course, of course. But I'm still wondering if sort of aristocracy isn't gwevel with multi-linguistic.

If it's sort of necessarily multilingual, if there's not something democratic to the singularity of one language across the world, is it demonic in some ways democratic to have one language? I mean, is it a rest of the crowd actually just be a number of foreign languages? I thought there was one implication that some of these risks were actually related even in the film. I don't know if that's right.

But so another reason to speak for one of those is because that you're banned. I mean, like, Ralph and French was really good. I thought it was, and he took a great pride. I think that reflects the German quality of it, right?

Because, you know, Germans are laid on the scene of unification and he wants to participate. The French aristocracy is already gone by that. I mean, the French Revolution was long before this. But he's sort of like eager to sort of hobnob it.

He's done his homework. He's very refined, very proper, but too proper, the current aristocracy. This guy isn't even really the count. He's like related to the count.

Right. And so he's just like, oh, yeah, that's my cousin. He lost his arm and married a rich woman. That's how he says about his future.

He's blending with the bourgeois. He's not sort of remaining in a restaurant. But I mean, I guess I was just trying to tease a lot more, but we can exhaust it and be done with you. But I don't know.

There's nothing going on being more land in obviously aristocracy. So you're more tethered to land, national distinctions, democracy tends to along with technology and mass democracy, as you mentioned. And there's a way in which technology also equalizes and makes sort of, we don't need one language anymore. I don't know.

I'm actually wondering if there isn't something more deeply. I didn't think about this question until you raised it. That there is something that multilingual capacities seem to be much more wedded to. I mean, I guess maybe this is true because European still couldn't be much more.

Much more multilingual that we are. I guess they're still sort of in a way less democratic yourself vestiges of their social behavior. I mean, that multilingual side of it seems to be a kind of boating with this very issue, right? You have to communicate.

You've got a European Union. You're going to scoot around. Okay. But how do you get like the German guy to talk to the French guy?

Like what's I mean, one of the Massolodians language or they learned the language that's sort of creeping over them by US hegemony. Right. And so, so I mean, that's, it wasn't there wasn't their language that was really popular. But people were trying to promote way back when Esperanto.

Is that it? Yeah. This isn't a tough right? You need to have a single language if you want like a true like world nation.

Right. And now you see a lot of people fighting against that. Right. Now it's one since he's here.

That's true. Yeah. I speak HTML. I thought it was fantastic.

I did too. Yeah. I got to admit like I'll say a couple things all about the movie. First of all, I got back in the country when you guys had records so I came late.

So I only watched it just today. But I will say that part of me thought you guys were fooling me with the grand illusion being the topic for me. I was like, this is I'm going to watch this movie. I'm going to show up and they're going to have done something else entirely.

But the other thing is like 20 minutes ago, I got kind of a lame movie. You know, you want to apologize for that wicked sentiment, but you just attribute it. Yeah. I don't.

You like it was totally not. It is totally not beneath you guys to pull a fast on me. Like have me show unprepared. And I talk about this is I don't know just make me look stupid.

Like always do. We don't do. But then what does this right? We need to tell them to say all these jokes guys.

Yeah, we force them. You guys like them and then have me deliver them and then you don't even laugh at them. What kind of a jerk would do that? Right?

Something for you to say. And then. Okay, sorry. This is the last thing about the movie.

Like 20 minutes in. Prior to 20 minutes. I was like, okay, it's not that great. I texted you guys about halfway through towards which you're like, this is a really good movie.

I'm like something flipped for us. Like this is this is a fantastic movie. So maybe we should tweet out where folks can watch it because we can buy them on the Internet archive. It's free to stream.

Yeah, there's not a lot that happens in this movie. And so again, it's just. I mean, I guess there's a scene where guns are firing and things like this, but it's all just driven the personal conversations and relationships for two hours. I mean, it's remarkable.

People make this comment all the time. We'll just make it again that we I think we buy a large lost or our taste for this kind of thing. Yeah. Why is that?

Just I think that it's not a lot of action. Not a lot of Marvel characters blowing stuff up and gliding rings. And yeah, I wish I knew more about the history of cinematography Titus. We excellent on this.

Would you sit close to the last word? If you stick collecting rings. It's true that is all that the suit. I got to confess, it's going to lose us a lot of fans.

I'm sorry. I watched that more movie where they collected all the rings. I was like, I was like, I was also that one. But I was just like, what was this like, there was no plot to this movie?

No, I mean, I totally understand terrible. My son wanted to watch God's illovers King Kong. So freak science. No, I don't know.

I don't know. It's like the politics of cinema, but like, this is because China is using its market. So yeah, so I think I think they recognize that American media has been a powerful tool for advancing American interests. You get all these movies translated to foreign languages.

People start to love American culture and all of a sudden you lose control of your people. Right? So what do they do? They say you want access to our market?

You've got to do this. That's the only thing that they make. So they make them incredibly anadon, just kind of action films that are completely not ideological or non political character. And it's and so like, what are you watching watching?

Like a stupid emoji movie or something like that. Yeah, it's absolutely correct. Absolutely. That's really something.

Yeah, I didn't think about that being another reason my television has been so much far superior. I think the movie's in the last 10, 20 years. That's a good point. Yeah.

It's less. It's less. Yeah, it's less aimed at the foreign market in that way. Chinese market for sure.

Ha. One movie. One movie question. What's the title for where you completely get it?

By the way, what's that? I want to talk about the title to before we go. Go ahead. Yeah.

I was wondering, there's a lot of this is metaphoric about like historical movements. Characters are sitting there. What's the prison camp? What are these prison camps?

A metaphor for? I can figure it out. Because you have like the restockers, the commoner, the officers are like the new sort of emerging bureaucratic aristocracy as they were elite. And I'm wondering what the prison camp is.

I thought they were just the Petri dishes. Where were you see the senator? Yeah, the next one. The last one was definitely, I mean, right?

The castle. It's aristocratic. Yeah. So that definitely probably has some deeper meaning.

They are able to escape it. He doesn't think they'll be able to see. But nothing's able to be. They're able to be able to see.

But nothing's able to be able to be there anymore. Yeah. Except for the one flower. He kills the last flower after Baudieu dies.

But it does make it seem like if this is a... The first camp seems more democratic. I mean, it seemed like a... I don't know.

I mean, the officers and the guys were together in the first camp. They were able to detunnels. I mean, it just seemed more... Yeah, I don't know.