Explore every episode of the podcast Films Change Lives

We discuss:

Film as a gratifying experience, a roller-coaster ride!

The value of shared or collective experience

Wanting to extend the film by talking about it

Classical narrative

Chains of cause and effects (and also effects before causes!)

The film’s will or the “filmind” (applying a philosophical concept from Daniel Frampton’s book Filmosophy)

Cinematography by Larkin Seiple

All stylistic elements working together for maximum affect

Blurred distinctions between reality and dreaming

Being programmed to fear, but this being mixed with unusual, rescuing moments of humor

Ideas and representations of quintessential American community

American communities representing types of people, and as previously imagined in westerns, or Classical Hollywood films by John Ford or Howard Hawks or Alfred Hitchcock

Non-diegetic music as a form of thinking (especially in connection with the child protagonist, Alex)

Music that honors the power of a child

The importance of rationality in the face of terror, but also the limits of that

The fragility of a stable community in America (even going as far back as the post WW2 era)

The ending as a payoff for the anxiety we lived through the film!

Possible social statements on police brutality, the commonality of gun violence, and specific threats to children in schools

Bruce Kawin’s concepts of “good” and “bad” horrors (i.e. horrors with a sense of moral purpose, or not)

The genesis of the film in some of the director’s Zach Cregger’s life—his living with an alcoholic parent, and his dealing with the sudden tragic death of a friend

Genre mixing: combing the western, horror, zombie movie

George Sanders, “A Swim in a Pond in the Rain”

Drawing on Sanders’ teachings, the story as a structure or a framework upon which we can hang our ideas

The film allowing critical distance and time to process its own extremities

Connections with John Carpenter’s original Halloween

Tonal complexity, bravura performances, and a knockout final sequence!

NOTE: this episode includes mature content, including many references violence and thematic content unsuitable for children

We discuss:

Representing the American Midwest, the especially lives of people in Minnesota

Tonal ambiguity and cinematic strangeness!

Carter Burwell’s genre-bending score

Ironic parallels between Fargo and Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)

William H. Macy’s oddly charming performance as a loathsome character

The film’s connections with westerns and films noir

The film echoing Shakespeare’s problem plays and/or theater of the absurd (notably Waiting for Godot)

No Country for Old Men (2007) as the inverse of Fargo

A Serious Man (2009) as it resonates with the humor of Fargo

The subversion of narrative and gendered norms, especially in the strength of Margie’s character and in relation to Classical noir

A harsh winter environment for offsetting and understanding the warmth and softness of Margie

A feminist approach to the characters of both Margie and Jean

The value of gallows humor

Defining a worldview of the Coen Brothers, in terms of confronting awful things with hilarious details

Finding surprising depths of morality, especially in relation to ideas of greed and toxic masculinity

The significance of a key representative scene featuring two non-main characters: Officer Olson and Mr. Mohra

How the film speaks to current trends in the political climate of America

What morals we can learn from the film NOW, going beyond its nostalgic value

We discuss:

The wonderment Marcel inspires

The voices of Jenny Slade and Isabella Rossellini

The genesis of the movie

The treatment of everyday objects as precious, sometimes repurposed

The impact of multi-media storytelling

The significance of seeing the world on a different scale

Sources of inspiration, such as Sarah Penwarden’s creation of found poetry (in relation to Marcel’s world of found objects): see “Reliving a Poetry Symposium through Found Poetry”

Disconnection as well as connection through social media

Deciding what to hold on to

Finding one’s place in a big world

The importance of showing conflicts unresolved

Breaking from Hollywood norms of conflict-based and investigation-based narrative construction

Thinking beyond the limits of the body

The idea of dust as skin, and its being all around us as a symbol of mortality

The opposite of fear-mongering

Cherishing everyday and re-appreciating everyday details

The power in a way of seeing

Small details that matter hugely

Buddhist implications of the film’s processes

Philip Larkin’s poem titled “The Trees,” as featured in the film

We discuss:

The reality of hospice care

Michelle Aaron’s book Death and the Moving Image (Edinburgh University Press)

Familial, cultural, and cinematic strategies for coping with grief

The place of children in a household of grief-stricken adults

Grief management in a specifically Mexican cultural context

The importance of memories and especially remembering moments of laughter while facing death

Ideas of non-linear time

Spirituality as a form of healing hope

The value of ritual

The reality that family members handle death and grief in wildly different ways

The importance of communicating with children through a time of grief

The significance of names

The film’s ending and the wishes is does/does not grant

Non-dogmatic belief systems

How children can experience and express grief

The value of conversation with and among grieving family member

s

This podcast reflects my love of cinema and hearing about the films that have changed other people’s lives for the long term. While I’m an established scholar, editor, and author who loves sharing my own love of cinema, I’ve come to realize that it’s the dialogues with others that teach me the most.

We discuss:

The dearth of nuanced representations of deaf people on film, and CODA as an important new example

ASL in cinema: pitfalls and opportunities for relaying physicalized expressivity

Music as self-expression in relation to coming-of-age and personal growth across generations

Perfectly imperfect parenting 

Leftist emphases on community-minded, localized solidarity

The value of generative quiet

A film that inspires amateur music-making 

Connecting music with togetherness in CODA

We talk about

The deceptively simple plot of The Quiet Girl

Exquisitely nuanced visual and sonic details of life within it

The distinctively Irish vision and mindset of the film

The Irish language being featured (unusually for a globally successful release)

Sharing the film experience with loved ones who will understand

The difference between realizing and verbalizing what is to be understood in this very subtle film

The significance of subtexts throughout the film

Painful suppressed truths of dysfunctional family life and potential domestic abuse

Music relaying consciousness

Stephen Rennicks’ compositional style

Subtleties of sound effects and Foley artistry

Sonically being in the world

Unspoken but full love

Small but crucial acts of kindness

Please forgive the relatively low-grade quality of this pilot episode. We recorded it at home via Zoom, which felt right because of the personal subject matter. It was a cold, snowy, winter day, and the film uplifted us. We discussed:

Processing the film together, in real time, while it was still fresh

Being virtually “seen” by the film

Queer isolation

Queer children and their parents

Multi-generational politics of queerness

Transcending time and death

Communication with the deceased

Hope beyond tragic ends

We discuss:

Algeria’s War of Independence

Willful forgetting and the obligation to remember colonial history

The reality of France's (post)colonial impact

Personal and collective guilt and intentional amnesia

Inter-generational trauma

Themes of personal, national, and multi-national guilt

The obligation to confront the harms of history, even when they implicate one’s own family

The massacre of French Algerians on October 17, 1961, led by Maurice Papon

The reality of France, and especially Paris, as a divided place

Maurice Bénichou’s performance in relation to the star power of Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche

How we individually and collectively respond to the painful ripples of history

W. H. Auden’s poem, “Musée des Beaux Arts”

We discuss:

A children’s film for adults

Family and friendship

Grief

Non-linear time

Maximalist fiction in contrast with this minimalist film

Father/child dynamics

Mother/grandmother/daughter dynamics

The non-existence of objective time

The value of subjective time

Carlo Rovelli’s work on time from a scientific POV

Hanna Meretoja’s “The Ethics of Storytelling”

Freud’s fort-da game, and the reality of a child needing to “let go” of the parent

Inhabiting the space of the film

Objects that speak

Sharing the film with loved ones

We discuss:

Greta Gerwig’s distinct directorial approach

Authentically representing teenage life and being

Social class in America

Emotional realness

Meaningful ellipses

Phil Lowrie and “Crash Into Me” as a “crystal song”

Stand-out performances by Saoirse Ronan Laurie Metcalf

Maternal melodrama

Suppressed emotional truths and poignant subtexts of life at high school

Sisterhood beyond the family