The hitman, solitude, the state or definition of being incomprehensibly and utterly alone with only your own thoughts to keep your deeds confidential. Because there is no one else to trust outside of your own mind. When your destiny seems premeditated and every action is working against your favor, what can that do to a person?
In John Pierre Melville's, 1967 Classic Lace Samurai, we take a deep dive into one of the most iconic assassin movies that sparked a wave of inspiration for creatives across the world. Melville created a darkness so alluring that others had to follow. Under stress and pressure will you begin to lose your feathers?
The hitman, solitude, the state or definition of being incomprehensibly and utterly alone with only your own thoughts to keep your deeds confidential. Because there is no one else to trust outside of your own mind. When your destiny seems premeditated and every action is working against your favor, what can that do to a person?
In John Pierre Melville's, 1967 Classic Lace Samurai, we take a deep dive into one of the most iconic assassin movies that sparked a wave of inspiration for creatives across the world. Melville created a darkness so alluring that others had to follow. Under stress and pressure will you begin to lose your feathers?
Le Samouraï
[00:00:00]
Gabby Browne: The hitman, solitude, the state or definition of being incomprehensibly and utterly alone with only your own thoughts to keep your deeds confidential. Because there is no one else to trust outside of your own mind. When your destiny seems premeditated and every action is working against your favor, what can that do to a person?
In John Pierre Melville's, 1967 Classic Lace Samurai, we take a deep dive into one of the most iconic assassin movies that sparked a wave of inspiration for creatives across the world. Melville created a darkness so alluring that others had to follow. Under stress and pressure will you begin to lose your feathers.
I'm Gabby Brown. This is Aaron Cower. Hello, and Jonathan Van Sickle. Hi. And this is The Limelight by Spotlight Studios.
Jonathan VanSickle: So I picked this [00:01:00] movie because I really fell in love with the way John Pier Melville told a story. It was very unique and something I hadn't seen before at the time, and once I did, I immediately. Saw the connections to other movies that I, I've loved throughout my life. To see the performance of Alanda Long and the way that he brings such calm intensity to this character and to the movie itself.
I thought that was super impressive and not overly played. I really just wanted to share this with you guys and get your interpretations on it. It's not a super complicated plot. We follow the life of this self-proclaimed samurai, a hitman in Paris, France, as he goes from a perfectly controlled routine environment to spiraling into chaos.
The first scene in the movie, we see Jeff laying on [00:02:00] his bed in a very gray. Small apartment. We see light coming through the windows beautifully playing with the smoke of his cigarette that he's smoking, and we see his canary just kind of t chirping along.
Gabby Browne: Sorry, I just wanted to get the trumpet in the, and also
Jonathan VanSickle: we begin the beautiful film noir soundtrack that they put behind this film.
We love the French. Once the credits roll, uh, we're giving, we're given a quote to kind of introduce us to our heroes creed. There's no greater solitude than that of the Samurai, unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle. Melville actually created this code for the character. He created an entire book of code and creed that our main character is going to live by throughout this movie.
Aaron Couser: You can see the smoke of his cigarette creating a mysterious atmosphere
Jonathan VanSickle: with the [00:03:00] light in the windows. It's beautiful. Mm-hmm. It's so simple, but just beautifully done. Melville
Aaron Couser: makes dream like movies. Mm-hmm. You see kind of the, the camera kind of panning in and out knowing that this now is gonna be kind of like a dream kind of situation, which is sets the tone of the film as well.
Gabby Browne: Yeah. Because it's also like, yes, this is realism, but is it realism? There's no man out there that is gonna live in this form of solitude like this. There's no real person that is like this. You know, this is a, this is a realm where Melville's making you of suspend your disbelief.
Aaron Couser: So it's really a vehicle for him to kind of create a metaphor Yeah.
Of, of a person that chose and code that he chooses to live by. And the consequences I guess, that come, can come from that.
Jonathan VanSickle: When we can see, he's a, he's a creature of habit. He has a very strict routine. He leaves his apartment dressed [00:04:00] impeccably down to the last detail of the angle of his hat. I mean, you could tell this guy is a perfectionist in every move he makes is very intentional, being
Gabby Browne: so crisp and particular about certain aspects like you see so many times in in murders and killers.
Either they're very sloppy or they're very definite.
Aaron Couser: His outfit, his trench coat and his hat, it almost seemed like that was kind of his armor. He's safe at home. He prefers to be home outside in the jungle. As Melville put it, he has to put his armor on. He has to put the trench coat and the hat, almost like a samurai hat to protect him.
That's the visual that I got out of that. At least. I like that a
Gabby Browne: lot too. For me, I like that metaphor a lot more cuz it makes sense why he does some of the stuff that he does. It's cuz it is kind of ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah it is. It is ridiculous. Put your hood down. Put your collar down, bro. Yeah,
Aaron Couser: I mean, I think Melville probably, and this is the only Melville movie I've seen so far, which I'm excited to watch more of [00:05:00] them.
Same. But I can't wait to watch other kind of things that, you know, take you like, oh, remind you that you're kind of watching a movie. Mm-hmm. Because it's, there's something that's just a little
Gabby Browne: off. Of course there's, you know, birds tripping and music in the background, but it is like, you're just being brought into this experience and you just have to be in homie's routine there.
The confidence this man has,
he's, he's leaving his apartment, pristine dress, watches a man pop out of his car, immediately hops on in, he walks barely down the street, and he gets in his car and he pulls out this ring of like a hundred keys and just starts going and putting it and then setting it down right next to another. And
Jonathan VanSickle: that's exactly what I love about that scene.
It's so simple. And we're still in the part of the movie where we've had zero dialogue at this point. We are just watching and taking this story in. You can almost see with his face and the way he's trying each key to start the car and the way he sets [00:06:00] it down methodically, slowly, that he would be there for an hour trying every key.
His pace would never quicken, his heart rate would never seem to go up. He just does everything. With this routine. I mean, I think that's one of the things about this movie that draws you to it is despite his decisions and what he does, this guy's just cool. It's
Gabby Browne: just this blind confidence that everyone wishes that they have.
Yes. It's like, man, I want to go into a situation and I have that level of control.
Aaron Couser: He sees a, a female and she's obviously very interested in him.
Jonathan VanSickle: I was really trying to place it within the story. Uh, having seen the movie multiple times, I really didn't see any connections except I think this shows us two things that Jeff and women have a connection.
He is also very noticeable as we discussed about his appearance, his striking eyes. I mean those blue eyes, and I'm not sure if that was the intent, but that was the only thing I could gather was the [00:07:00] relationship that he was gonna have with women and the way they notice him and the way they interact with him.
Her
Gabby Browne: face slowly, like fades into a shadow, makes the eye contact, and then there's like some shadow over her face. He's making eye contact with this beautiful woman who's never seen her face slowly fades from his mind. This could be the life that he could be having right now. That's kind of what I took it as, as like, he's looking at himself in a mirror, almost like seeing himself in another situation, but then getting back to the
Aaron Couser: job, okay, he just stole his car.
He's doing something illegal. But a beautiful woman is interested in him and almost seems like inviting him to have a sexual relationship. And maybe a normal, normal man would go that route, but he's staying on the code. Yeah, he's staying on, he's sacrificing a, an intimate relationship. Earthly pleasures.
Earthly pleasures to do what the [00:08:00] contract is. It's there for a reason. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's always a, you know, so if your, your interpretation.
Gabby Browne: Hello. When the director is like, Hey, you got this, you got a brain figured out.
Aaron Couser: Yeah, you watch movies today and you're like hardly see any real true art anymore. But here you mean It's just pure beauty. One guy writing a script, directing the movie. In total control, you put a genius. Like Melville into a film noir genre that is simple and formulaic.
He can open it up and do something so much more
Jonathan VanSickle: beautiful. Absolutely. By doing less too. Absolutely, and I think that's a really impressive part about this, is everything that we see in film noir, he tones down and he brings it back and it makes it, like you said, it makes it breathe so much more.
Aaron Couser: Exactly.
Breathing. That's a great way to put it. It is
Gabby Browne: another directorial [00:09:00] style that allows the audience to assume that they're smart. You'll figure it out. We're not following from spot to spot. Shaving out all the junk. Yeah. Shaving out the junk. We don't need that. He is assuming that the audience is smart enough to understand while
Jonathan VanSickle: being immensely influential on current American cinema was inspired.
By earlier days of American cinema, cinema and film noir, which at the time in 1967 had moved out of the spotlight. It was something that was very kind of passe and done multiple times. So John Pierre Melville on the other side was looking at America saying, man, I really love what they're doing. I love all these things.
But he just toned everything back, all of the cheesy lines, the internal monologue with these names and legs for nays, the nuances.
Gabby Browne: I
Jonathan VanSickle: hate it. He toned it all back with everything, with the sound, with the way he told the story, with minimal dialogue and also with the color of everything. Also, to your point, Aaron, the way everything is [00:10:00] shot is so beautifully done, and with so much intention.
To really convey that mood to the audience. It has been seen time and time again in modern cinema where people will take cues from this movie and retell it. Essentially, he
Aaron Couser: brought the art from, just from his imagination, knowing what makes a good, great
Jonathan VanSickle: movie. Making this movie. I mean, as Aaron as you stated, this guy was in encyclopedia of film knowledge and one of the directors at this point that he was really in love with was a Keira Kwa who was bringing back the whole Samurai movie movement the way a Keira Kwa wrote movies and the way that he approached the subject matter very bluntly, very plainly.
I think you can see that bleed over a lot into the way that this movie specifically is shot.
Gabby Browne: Absolutely, yeah. Whenever I think of Phil Noir, there's a lot of time. There's this overarching monologue, inner monologue. You're constantly hearing this. You're constantly being told exactly what the character's [00:11:00] doing and thinking and feeling all of the time.
You have no idea what what Jeff is doing anytime. He's constantly keeping you on your toes.
Aaron Couser: Steals a car, then he goes into this CD middleman garage.
Jonathan VanSickle: No words. No words. Just pulls in and he starts changing the plates. Yeah.
Gabby Browne: And I guess, uh, Jean Pierre Melville had no idea how to film that scene. He was so overwhelmed.
He was like, I have no idea. Like what is going to be the best take for him coming in? Alon Delan just was like, I'm good. And just started driving and just had the cameras rolling. And they used that take of just the singular one cut of him pulling into the garage because he's like, you don't need to do extra.
We're just gonna do this one cut. And so he just started driving and that's the one that they kept. It seems like this actor also had a lot of confidence.
Jonathan VanSickle: Very sure. Like he
Aaron Couser: knew how to play this character pretty well.
Gabby Browne: Yeah, absolutely. I just thought that was a little fun fact about that scene specifically that [00:12:00] like he just did not know what he was gonna do for that part.
Well, and that just like
Jonathan VanSickle: shows the perfectionist nature of Melville, like a throwaway scene of pulling into a garage. He's like, how am I gonna shoot this? I know, right. Do this. I
Aaron Couser: gotta make it
Gabby Browne: perfect. Well, it's the introduction of the first like other character that our true character interacts with.
That that part is like really important because he has such minimal interactions in such little people he actually trusts. I truly think this is the only, him and Jane are the only two people in this movie that he unequivocally trusts. True. Even though he doesn't talk much, he's like so much more important than he like leads on to
Jonathan VanSickle: be.
He's the catalyst
Aaron Couser: to pull these hits off. He's important. He's
Jonathan VanSickle: silent part but deadly. Mm-hmm. We see him switching the plates for Jeff and as he's waiting, he is. Smoking another cigarette, uh, which becomes a theme in this movie. The amount of cigarettes smoked in this film. I mean, I don't know if you guys watch a lot of French movies, but holy cow, those people put down the cigs,
Gabby Browne: the French eat cigarettes for breakfast.[00:13:00]
I'm not like, even when you watch modern French movies, I'm like, watching Blue is the warmest color. And I'm like, you are 15. Put that
Jonathan VanSickle: down. Finishing up at the mechanic and being given his paperwork and a gun, which in this time in France is a very big deal. We have to remember, again, this is not America where anybody can just roll up to Walmart and get a gun.
Not this is, you know, this is already highly illegal. What is happening here?
Aaron Couser: Different kind of society for sure than mm-hmm. Than what we have in America. Or even like, you know, the normal film, new art movies. Yeah, absolutely.
Gabby Browne: 1920s and thirties. As an American watching any type of modern or even old European or British or Ozzie, any type of show is like insane.
Like if you guys have, every top boy is like crazy because they have to get guns so illegally. Like they have to like go underground to their specific gun dealer. And like here, you watch movies in the United States and people are [00:14:00] literally rolling up in an SUV and being like, okay, we got this today. We got this today.
What are you illegally buying today, sir? Like, that's just, it's just so different. Understanding the risks that he is going to, you know, like you're killing someone with a gun that's like a chosen decision.
Aaron Couser: It's like killing someone back in the day with a sword. Really making a decision to, to kill
Jonathan VanSickle: somebody here.
Yeah. But before he kills, he has to set up an alibi. Absolutely.
Gabby Browne: He goes in and visits his mistress, Jane. She's beautiful, beautiful lady. We have our first spoken words of the movie, which she utters. I like when you come here because you need me, and I'm sure that that means something so much more just because she knows she's being used.
But it's like, I like when you need me. Uh, it's the first emotional aspect of the movie that we've seen so far. So I just loved her character
Jonathan VanSickle: and he
Aaron Couser: does seem to need her. And
Gabby Browne: he says, [00:15:00] Hey, you're gonna be here from seven 15 to two tonight. And he, she said, Nope, you can't be here till two. I have someone else coming over at two.
And so he, he dips. He's like, okay, thank you. Bye. And then we're off to settle our post 2:00 AM alibi. Mm-hmm. So we have 15 minutes of un unrecorded time, but that is, uh, I'm sure for driving purposes. He goes into this poker room at a hotel and ask these gentlemen, how long do you guys have the room? And he says, oh, we got it all night.
And he said, cool, I'll be back till two. Okay. You should probably bring money in case you lose. And he says, I never lose. Not really.
Jonathan VanSickle: And then he leaves.
Aaron Couser: That was his parting words as he's leaving the poker game. Setting the alibis up. And then he goes to Marty's. Let's talk about Marty's bar. I wanna go there.
You've almost reminded me the clockwork orange, the black and
Jonathan VanSickle: white, the monochromatic, the very hard, stylized [00:16:00] angles. Yeah.
Gabby Browne: Beautiful. That's the suspension of disbelief once again. No bar looks like this dude. Like what place is, who's hanging out here? Like the most elite of elite? Which also makes you wonder who, who is Jeff about to kill?
Yeah. Like what kind of bar is this?
Jonathan VanSickle: When he's in the bathroom, we see him putting on these white gloves. Oh yeah. These pristine white cloth gloves. And immediately the audience, you're, you're triggered. You understand this is business now. Something is about to happen.
Gabby Browne: White gloves to a murder scene, like most of the time it's black gloves.
That's the, once again, I'm sure that means some Melville chose that to mean something. David, I think
Jonathan VanSickle: it just speaks to him and his diligence as, uh, an assassin and to having these clean kills that they can no way link back to 'em. Mm-hmm. So the white gloves, obviously, you know, trying to cover up your fingerprints, everything, every type of remnants that you were there.
Mm-hmm. Every proof that you were in the building erased.[00:17:00]
We see a few characters notice him as he's walking through the club. We see a co check lady in the very entryway of the bathroom. We see a bartender. And possibly another waiter kind of follow him as he's walking back. Like Abby said, iconic look with that tan trench coat. Hard to miss. I know on the hood it looks taller and we're also sh shown our first glimpse of the jazz pianist who is given a lot of screen time at this point.
And uh, she's, first of all, she's absolutely gorgeous. She's, every time she's on screen, I just fall in love and my eyes get wide. I mean, she's a great cast. So much presence.
Gabby Browne: Yeah, absolutely. Extremely. Yeah. Mm-hmm. They always talk about actors in film, having a certain type of stillness to them, and especially with her playing so well and also having that same type of stillness.
Yeah. It was [00:18:00] very captivating.
Jonathan VanSickle: He walks through the club past the stage to a back kind of hallway. He enters a door that says private on it, the man inside. Startled surprised. Who are you? And Jeff says, it doesn't matter. Marty is killed, blasted three times. It don't
Gabby Browne: matter. It does not matter. He does not care.
Jonathan VanSickle: Mm-hmm. He has a job to do. Yeah. And that's it. And then he leaves,
Aaron Couser: uh, he leaves, uh, unseen. Oh. Oh,
Jonathan VanSickle: after we see Marty being shot, we cut to the pianist walking down the same hallway. We just saw him walk
Gabby Browne: down. Yeah. Her name is Valerie, but we don't know that yet. We can, I think that that's also an important thing because no one in this movie has names.
Really? Uhhuh, you know, there's Mr. But Mr. What? Because
Aaron Couser: it's a dream and it, these people are just symbols of
Jonathan VanSickle: something. Yeah. Startled. They both just kind of stare at each other and share a moment. They're like
Gabby Browne: two feet from each other. Mm-hmm. This is not like a [00:19:00] mistaken identity type of situation. This is, and I can smell you type of situation.
Exactly. Like you are so close to me right now. Mm-hmm.
Aaron Couser: He has to make a decision. He's being seen, he's being seen committing this horrible crime. He could kill her, put her in the room, you know, with Marty, but he chooses to take the gloves off, just walk by, spare her life knowing probably gonna be consequences to that.
That
Gabby Browne: ain't the job, dad. Yo, you know, he, this, he, he was contracted to kill one person. He kinda shows
Aaron Couser: what a code is, what a samurai is. It's a code. There's a moral equilibrium right there, you know, that he's not a monster.
Gabby Browne: Even if she sees him right now, even if this is going slightly more awry than he had thought, that she wasn't a part of the contract.
Like, I'm not gonna just kill two people for no reason and I don't even know if I look at it as much as a morality thing, this is not my job. I'm not gonna do this, you know? Mm-hmm. Like this went a little bit slightly [00:20:00] wrong, but no, I'm not killing her.
Jonathan VanSickle: It also shows the confidence that he has in his alibi. Yeah, his alibis are airtight. I wasn't here at that point. He leaves the jazz club, hops in his car, doesn't look back, and we see him on a bridge Tossing his gloves. Yeah, tossing the revolver and getting back in his car to head to his poker night, playing poker with the boys and then all of a sudden a knock at the door.
It's the police. Marty,
Aaron Couser: I'm assuming, was a pretty big player in that town. Everyone's going to his hangout. Highfalutin people. This is a serious,
Jonathan VanSickle: serious crime. Have they? I don't know if it's ever uh, exactly plainly stated, but I think we see enough people in the club noticing Jeff. Mm-hmm. The first time he's there that maybe they got Okay.
An idea of this tan trench coat, gray top hat looking person.
Aaron Couser: Yeah. So they're going all everywhere to find. Someone [00:21:00] in a similar trench coat fits the
Jonathan VanSickle: description
Gabby Browne: in how Yeah. Mm-hmm. He says, what's 400 suspects in a city of 10 million? Like, go find them. Yeah. And from every district, just go pick up people.
He's,
Aaron Couser: he's been rounded up with other 400 other suspects. You got all the big players that saw him, the host, the bartender, the other maitre ds co
Jonathan VanSickle: check
Gabby Browne: lady, and then the pianist. Sorry, I didn't mean to Adrian Brody. This the pianist. No. Yeah, they're all there. And of course Jeff is like, what? Fourth in line?
Like he's literally like one of the first guys that they picked up. Everyone starts going through, this is probably two in the morning after this shooting. Mm-hmm. And they're asking these people who just got off work to go through and ask, oh, this one? Yes, he looks like him. And they say no for the most part until they get to Jeff.
Some people recognize him, some don't. Some [00:22:00] aren't sure, but the pianist definitely says she does not recognize him. Which is, uh, is you dumb? Sorry. No. Or is she like in on it? It's a very uh, big question. What is she doing? Why is she saying no, that she does not recognize him, even though they were like in make out range of each other
Aaron Couser: for real, that is gonna be the, um, smoky cloud over the rest of the movie.
If she said yes, pretty sure he is done right. Duh it
Gabby Browne: duh. Yeah, he's over. I, I just don't understand too why she told the inspector that she like, was so close to the killer. Like, and then decides still to lie about not seeing him. It's just so interesting.[00:23:00]
And I don't know why. And Mr. Inspector gets this gall about him, about Jeff, because it's like you literally picked up 400 men and your top five first people you're gonna have a gun for. That's why He's the inspector. Yeah, he is the inspector. All of those doors to get us into the police station because my God, door, door, door, like what is the
Aaron Couser: Scooby do Melville, you know, he's really using movement now.
Once we're into the police station, go back to that quote about like tiger in the jungle. Mm-hmm.
Jonathan VanSickle: There's no greater solitude than that of the samurai. Unless it is that of the tiger in the jungle,
Aaron Couser: you start seeing the, the brilliant movement that Melville is, is putting into place here. Absolutely. The inspector is in full control.
You know, it's almost like, you know, two giants in control of their situation. You kinda see the back and forth bringing people into different rooms, pushing him back, trying to find the little details. Jeff [00:24:00] is just standing there in total confidence playing his game, the way he knows how to play it, even though he's now in in very dark waters.
He's being brought into a police station where normally he would've already gotten away with
Jonathan VanSickle: this. Exactly, and I think his alibi is a great pointer. This is why the inspector is so suspicious. One of his coworkers says he has an airtight alibi, two airtight. He says, I was at Jane's house from seven 15 to 1 45, and then
Gabby Browne: he got to poker at two in the smoothness of Jeff's life, the straight line, that is his clean kill.
The inspector is the disruptor moving everything around, closing the doors. This is the first sound movement. What has been such a straightforward motion from Jeff? It
Aaron Couser: was going just according to plan, and now everything's been put on its head in more ways than one really. That meeting with Jane, the inspector knows [00:25:00] she's not telling the truth, but he can't totally prove it.
He brings in her husband.
Jonathan VanSickle: I think he's kind of like her main, I I, maybe she might have not have been a Lady of the night, but I think the situation she had with Mr. Wiener, the man that we're introduced to is, is very much almost a financial situation. Yeah. Sugared daddy situation. Exactly. For sure. I don't know, they don't exactly define it, but you can tell her heart belongs to Jeff.
Gabby Browne: Someone's gotta pay the bills and it's definitely not gonna be Jack. Exactly. Where's that muddy coming from buddy?
Aaron Couser: This inspector really pushes her on this really threatens her wellbeing, her her freedom. Well, and her
Jonathan VanSickle: privacy. Yeah. At this point, because not only is he questioning the validity of what she's saying, he drags in this other man into this situation, basically putting her relationship she had with Jeff completely on
Gabby Browne: blast.
Yeah. Now he knows that he's not the only guy in her life. Right. He
Jonathan VanSickle: separates them. They don't do this together [00:26:00] in the same room. He completely separates and isolates them and begins pinning these pieces against each other to get the facts,
Gabby Browne: cop tactic put you in another room and they're saying, Hey, oh God, you're buddy.
He next door. He's talking, you know, he's telling us everything. I like
Aaron Couser: to watch those interrogations on YouTube. They understand the human brain and, and the, the
Jonathan VanSickle: psych push. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Aaron Couser: And who, you know, how loyal really are. You
Gabby Browne: didn't work with Jane, though,
Aaron Couser: it didn't. No, you know, she didn't crack. She could have easily just squealed on them, kept her
Gabby Browne: lifestyle going.
Truly right now the cop is causing her more harm than Jeff. You know, the cop is releasing details about her life to the public. The cop is, is the problem right now. Jeff, Jeff did something in between the time of seven 15 to two or 1 45 and she doesn't know what that is. She has no idea. Like of course they're asking her or telling her possibly things about what he did, but she doesn't know for [00:27:00] sure.
She just knows he was supposed to be, you know, there. It's not really that hard of a secret to keep.
Jonathan VanSickle: After he leaves the club on the kill, we get a very quick scene of Jeff going into Jane's building but not going into her apartment. He stands outside the door and just waits. We hear another person approaching the building.
He flips on the light and walks out as we see. What we now know is Mr. Wiener walking in once again solidifying his alibi. So in an attempt to confirm this alibi, the inspector asks Mr. Wiener, did it feel like your place in the bed was still warm or something to that effect? I guess I'm not very observant.
And uh, he says, you know, now that I mention it though, when I entered the building, a light came on and someone left and passed by me. This is where the inspector, once again, [00:28:00] puts everything into action. He grabs Jeff, he grabs a bunch of his fellow officers. He says, grab your coats. Grab your hats. We're doing a lineup.
He lines them all up in another room. This police station is just rooms on rooms, on rooms. It's amazed. Biggest, the biggest police
Gabby Browne: station. My God. Like the,
Jonathan VanSickle: and so he lines all the men up. With Jeff included in this group, and then he switches his hat with one man, takes his coat and makes him switch it with another.
So now Jeff is in a different set of clothing as
Aaron Couser: AOBs, observant as Wiener proclaims to be. He goes, well, uh, I don't see the guy, but. I remember that trench coat on that guy, that hat on that guy, and the face on that guy. Pointing to Jeff. Pointing to Jeff, yeah. And he goes, Hmm. The inspector goes, Hmm. So much for being not very observant.
Yeah, because you picked every single pe uh, article, clothing that was on Jeff at the time. Inspector knows. It's Jeff. It's really a brilliant scene from Melville. Not just how the inspector be some kind of [00:29:00] crazy genius, but to point to a reason why he really does know it's Jeff. How he got to that conclusion, why, and that's why he presses on Jane even more on in the next, the next encounter with
Gabby Browne: her.
The inspector grabs Jeff takes him to every single person that saw him in the club that night. Do you remember this man? No. Maybes? No. I don't knows. I'm not sures. Yes or no. Some people say yes, some people say no. The sweet host girl says, I'm not sure he's not gonna be mean to her, of course. But then they finally get to the pianist and she looks him straight, straight dead ass in the eyes, and he looks down at her, she says, no, I don't recognize him.
Saves his ass. And then he says, can I go? And he says, I guess so. Jeff's out.
Jonathan VanSickle: Jeff knows that he's probably being followed by the police. He takes kind of an unorthodox path [00:30:00] through the city of Paris, through the metro, uh, from a cab, we see a reoccurring theme of Melville's films, and that is his love of Paris, his love of France. It's really beautiful the way this is shot and the way you feel like you're in this jungle of a city where Jeff is this proverbial tiger.
Aaron Couser: He knows how to move around. He knows how to use a subway. He knows how to use the streets, and he knows how to use decoys too. The first place he went to feel like he was trying to indicate to the police, this is my home. When they go, oh yeah, this is where Jeff lives up in elevator,
Jonathan VanSickle: down another elevator and out a back door.
If you're
Gabby Browne: a good assassin, you should assume you have a tail after leaving the police station, right?
Aaron Couser: Because a tiger always knows where the predators are in the jungle. He goes to meet Mr. Blonde, another fellow assassin, represe
Jonathan VanSickle: representative middleman, so to speak, between whoever contracted the hit and this middle man who gave Jeff the [00:31:00] job, Jeff's
Aaron Couser: thinking, he's probably gonna get his money now, $2
Gabby Browne: million.
And then he is like, you got arrested. That's not really part
Aaron Couser: of the deal. No, no. Now you are a threat to
Gabby Browne: us. Yeah, you're a liability bro. And he pops in one right in the noodle. Just
Aaron Couser: graze
Gabby Browne: his arm when I was looking at that one, first of all, Gabby, 1967, Fran, France, you know, like, this is French cinema, but I, when I saw it, I, I thought it was, uh, through and through, but it wasn't
Jonathan VanSickle: well, and part of the confusion of that is this scene is actually shot.
From another cabin of a train going by these two men tussling on the bridge. Ah, just another moment of Melville being an absolute brilliant artist, doubling down on the chaos of what is happening. Everything is switching. In this moment, Jeff is realizing that he is now not only in trouble from the police, but in trouble from his employer.
They're trying to clean up all the loose ends of this murder, and one of them now is him. And this is [00:32:00] where
Aaron Couser: a simple story really starts becoming complicated now is a chess game. He was the hunter and now he's totally the hunted where he is got the crime, sending it, and the police all coming after him in different ways,
Gabby Browne: multiple poachers in the jungle.
They're ready to get that. That tiger. The tiger
Jonathan VanSickle: hide. And the only reason he's not getting
Aaron Couser: caught is because the ladies in his life, Valerie and Jane, are being loyal to him.
Gabby Browne: He has to clean up that wound immediately tosses his hat up, tosses his trench coat on the thing. There's blood coming out of his arm
and he goes to get cleaned up in his little first aid kit hitting his kitchen. The tiger licks his wound. Smoke it. A smoke. He lays down. Yeah, he passes out and then he's, then he's immediately. Off, but he does the stupidest thing. My least favorite [00:33:00] thing in the entire movie. Well, first of all, he puts on a very more conspicuous, strange coat that he probably should have worn the first time he goes off and decides to take his, his crumpled band, bloodied bandages with him and just tosses them into the gutter.
And literally three seconds after he tosses them into a gutter, a cop comes and picks 'em right up and it's like, okay, you physically saw him drop it off in the street? That's ding donk. But I mean, I guess like they don't have like DNA or blood testing in that same realm, but it's like they literally washed you to
Jonathan VanSickle: it.
Aaron Couser: They know he's wounded. Yeah, they know
Gabby Browne: he is wounded. They know he is hurt. They don't know how though. And that's also so suspicious as like a cop thing. His blind confidence, he lost the cops. They don't know where he lives. Yeah, they do. They know where you live. They're watching your
Aaron Couser: house. Yeah. That inspector's pretty smart.
He goes right back to Marty's. Uh, he just kills somebody at Marty's. Uh, you're high, you're, you're high on the suspect [00:34:00] list and now you're just immediately going back, uh, and sitting at the bar and ordering a whiskey. Yeah, and I think the
Jonathan VanSickle: bartender actually makes some kind of comment about that, about, you know, returning to the scene of a crime or something like that.
It's a witch. Jeff Flatly says, I'll have a
Gabby Browne: whiskey bartender is a part of the crime syndicate. He said, no in the lineup. What is the pianist? Why'd the pianist say no? And he needs to know why. And that's why he came back. He has to look this woman in her eyes again, pretty, pretty eyes, and, uh, ask why
Jonathan VanSickle: Jeff waits for the club to shut down.
We see Valerie leave the club, and as she's getting to her car, we see that Jeff is waiting for her. He asked if he can get in and she says, sure. What do they talk about
Aaron Couser: in the car? She says,
Gabby Browne: why did you kill Marty? He says It was a job. What kind of man are you? And then invites him into her house. The thing about the house is it's the crime syndicate's house.
It makes you have this insinuation. Is she with the crime syndicate? Does she not like the boss man?
Jonathan VanSickle: [00:35:00] He's, he's basically pressing her for information on who hired him to kill Marty. He's trying to get to the bottom of this, you know, he's trying to protect himself well. She
Gabby Browne: obviously knows something more than she's saying because why would she cover for him?
He knew
Aaron Couser: that there's no reason for her not to identify him, so the fact that she didn't means she is involved with him at some level and he wants to get it out of her, and he feels that she might reveal it since she took such a huge risk on not identifying him.
Jonathan VanSickle: Jeff knows for a fact that this woman saw him leaving the scene of the crime and recognized him multiple times in the police station, and multiple times she defended him.
Jeff might not know exactly why this is, but he believes that it is important to unraveling this mystery.
Gabby Browne: She, she says, we can talk about things, but you need to call me in two hours. You're know, not here buddy. Then he, uh, dips on [00:36:00] out and we cut to a knock on oh, sweet old Jane store and she says, chip just like she always does, and fuck, no, it's not Jeff Beg. We're opening the door. Cops are breaking down.
Everyone's in there, they're rifling through her drawers. Literally opening, pulling out her underwear and just dumping it on the floor. Like, okay, wow.
Aaron Couser: Huh. Now, now the interrogation is getting a lot more serious. Like he's really pressing her and he's full on intimidation at this point. Totally showing her her statement and giving her an out.
I will tear this up and you will not get in trouble for making a false statement. You will not go to jail, but there is a high risk if you don't do this, that your life is over
Gabby Browne: and she says, In other words, you want me to perjure myself in return for which I'll be left alone. But if I stick to the truth and get in your way, then I won't hear the end of it.
Is that it? And he says, fellas, let's get outta here. And he makes eye contact with her the whole way while every man [00:37:00] exits the room. And he's like, just huge intimidation factor. And she's just like, guess I gotta call Mr. Wiener to fix my drawers.
Aaron Couser: The con inspector's, uh, goons are now planting surveillance into hi into Jeff's apartment. Oh, did you notice though, that the cops had the same set of keys? I think it just shows that they're all one and the same. Like they're all yeah, shady. Backstabbing criminals. Every single one of 'em. Even if, even if you were
Jonathan VanSickle: the police, it's a bite.
Yeah. Any means necessary mentality. Mm-hmm. That these guys do not care what kind of the cops moral Yeah. Fibers or code that you may be bending. It's they're, they're there to get a job
Aaron Couser: done. Those, that kinda links them in a way like Yeah,
Gabby Browne: the parallels. Most of the time in these old, uh, stakeout techniques, they would put a recorder hidden in the room and then when the individual left, they [00:38:00] would come back and retrieve the recorder.
So they would have secondhand information, they wouldn't have live information happening. So I really liked that this was like a look into how they would do live surveillance. Um, back in the day. That is really creative to have a walkie talkie set straight up next to a microphone and a tape recorder. I really
Aaron Couser: liked that.
Exactly. Cause I was thinking like they don't have this kind of technology.
Gabby Browne: No, exactly. I was like, what, what are they gonna do with this? But they set it up right next to a tape recorder. I thought that was really lovely.
Aaron Couser: I loved that. I agree. I noticed that on the second viewing, they're like, oh, that is really brilliant,
Jonathan VanSickle: Melville.
Even when he's giving you a super serious. Dark emotionally, dark visually movie. You get a little sprinkle of comedy as they're setting up this bug, he's hiding it behind these curtains and he pulls out almost like a walkie talkie sized piece of equipment and puts it up, kind of looks at it. Once again, this is all done with zero dialogue.
Nah, that won't do. Takes it down and pulls out this little teeny tiny baby [00:39:00] like imagine Will Ferrell, and you know, the Zoolander skits back in the day. Teeny tiny little bug and places it up there. And that, that scene always gives me a little chuckle because that's another thing that, it's like beer in a dream,
Aaron Couser: but you see an, an interaction with the bird. Every scene in this movie means something. Melville doesn't have to film Jeff feeding a bird. It's boring, right? Yeah. Feeding a bird, but it means something. Jeff is keeping the bird
Gabby Browne: alive. It's just one thing he takes care of besides himself.
Jonathan VanSickle: I think it was a really fascinating connection between the Canary and Jeff. The
Aaron Couser: first thing we see is the bird chirping. It's a metaphor, but what is it a metaphor for? Is it his heartbeat? Is it his soul, his relationships? Or it could be a mirage of many things. It's really the most important part of the movie.
Ladies [00:40:00] in His Life are basically metaphors for the bird, keeping each other alive, the bird's keeping him alive. He's feeding it every day. Almost like the same with Valerie and Jane, how they're protecting each other, keeping each other safe. What was your interpretation of the bird?
Jonathan VanSickle: I think really the bird is not only a, a tool for Jeff to realize when his sanctuary has been intruded on, when he could be in danger, but I think it's also really symbolic of Jeff's mental state throughout the movie.
I believe they're both deeply, deeply connected.
Gabby Browne: Definitely deep, deep connection between, uh, Jeff and the Bird. And this is a sense of humanity that he is caring for this. Living creature and needing to keep it alive, but for what reason? I also think the sounds that the bird makes, the tweets, the, the chirping that this bird is constantly making is once again another ploy from Phil Noir and jazz and the beats that it makes up.
The beginning of the movie, the bird [00:41:00] is in a very calm state. Tweeting in type of a way that like, kind of makes you think that it's like fine, it's doing okay. Shows his mental state going through the movie. It's this haunting opposition of the jazz throughout the entire movie. It's the same type of disruption too that I think the inspector gives with the tweeting, the haunting, eerie overarching sound that that makes in comparison to the silence of this film.
This is a living creature. This is a living thing.
Aaron Couser: And when he came back from his wound, you saw all also the feathers being ruffled from, from the bird. Yeah. Mm-hmm. As you go from different scenes too, like when they're putting 'em up, all the suspects to it be identified, the way it looks is almost like a bird cage in in the back.
Yeah. You kind of see those, like those bars. And even in the police station, the glass panels are the same. It looks like a cage. It's a constant motif where everyone is in this peripheral bird
Gabby Browne: cage. Mm-hmm. [00:42:00] Entrapment. Everyone is just fully entrapped.
Aaron Couser: They're all the same. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, as we met, we told said about like the keys and things that link each other.
They're all basically in the same situation.
Jonathan VanSickle: Yeah. No matter what side you're on, may it be the gangsters, the police, or Jeffs on his own. We're all restricted by the cages that we live in every day. And I think that's a big point that Melville is trying to make in this movie. Jeff is our
Gabby Browne: a protagonist, but everyone usually refers to the police and police officers, as you know, just police officers.
Both of you guys said inspectors, goons multiple times. And the same type of parallel to the goons. You know, the police necessarily aren't the good people in this. I said police officers multiple times in inspectors and you guys were like, no, these the hustlers,
Aaron Couser: these the goons. It is interesting cause that's how I, we perceived them.
Yeah. You know, they're the same as the, the crime syndicate.
Gabby Browne: That poor animal is very flustered, and then we start losing his little feathers,
Jonathan VanSickle: and that's a big part of [00:43:00] this scene. Yeah. You can tell the whole time his bird is very stressed out by the presence of these two unknown men in its habitat.
Aaron Couser: Yeah.
Very concerned for Jeff. Yeah.
Gabby Browne: And, uh, his owner. Yeah. What his friend do would do we possibly see some parallels with, with the bird and Jeff's, uh, humanity at this point, he's starting to see that starting to unravel a little bit.
Aaron Couser: Jeff comes home, right? Yeah.
Gabby Browne: Basically, yeah. He comes home,
Aaron Couser: he's coming home to make the call to
Gabby Browne: Valerie and he needs to change his bandages too. That's another part of it. He has to like, fix up his wound cuz he started to bleed through his shirt. So That's right. He needs to get in there. Right? So
Aaron Couser: he goes home to call Valerie and to um, heal him.
Heal himself, and he's just about to make the call when he notices the bird is not right, not acting correct. He's
upset.
Gabby Browne: Yeah. [00:44:00]
Jonathan VanSickle: Uh,
Aaron Couser: which is brilliant. You know, it's a
Jonathan VanSickle: brilliant Melville technique. It's his canary and a coal mine, man. It's awesome. It's awesome.
Aaron Couser: Uh, and he goes around, looks around everywhere, and he finally finds the little, uh, recording device.
Gabby Browne: He's so confident about it too. Just throws back those curtains, like,
get on. It bothers me. It bothers me a little bit. I just wanna push him down, kind of.
Jonathan VanSickle: He doesn't have the sanctity of his home anymore. Yeah. Because they've clearly been in there. Exactly. And then this is when the tiger comes out. And this is another one of those scenes that is strangely important, but also very vague because he calls at the exact time that Valerie tells him to.
We see Valerie next to the phone, seemingly waiting for the phone call. She hears the phone ring. She stands up and leaves the room. What'd you guys think about that?
Aaron Couser: Yeah, confused. You know there's gonna be, there's a reason for it. This
is
Gabby Browne: also the crime syndicates house. So it may not have been a safe [00:45:00] time per se.
Maybe someone came back when they are in the car when they're talking for the first part time, he asks her, do you just like messing with the police? And that's kind of something I've had in my mind throughout this entire movie. Like obviously she's with the crime syndicate in some type of way, like either as a prisoner or as an advocate for them.
There's this like question of, does she just like to mess with people? Is she purposely making these decisions for herself, or is she just like, oh, call me at two, or call me in two hours. And then she sees it and she's like, I actually don't feel like it. I am not motivated to do this right now.
Aaron Couser: I think that's probably the best way to think about it.
Gabby Browne: We go back to the apartment after he does not receive an answer from Ms. Valerie.
Mr. Bird is freaking out again. Like hard, hard freaking out. Mr. B. Blonde guy pops out of the kitchen with a gun, pops [00:46:00] through
Aaron Couser: the Oh yeah, through the wall with the
Gabby Browne: glasses. Kitchen. Yeah. Through the, yeah. Guns for, in French culture have so much more of a fear fracture than they do for us too. Definitely.
The gun's coming through the glass first. The gun's gonna get ya out. It's like the sword, you know? Yeah, yeah. Is it kinda comes
Aaron Couser: to the wall. Yeah. And you think okay, he's he's gone for, he's done for, but actually Blonie has an ultimatum. For him it's a property. New terms. Yeah. A deal that if you do this one other contract than your sins are being brought to the police station and, and idd will be
Gabby Browne: forgiven.
But he doesn't just come with words. He comes with the money. The money from last time and two, 2 million up top for the next job. So, uh, a little bit more of a motivation factor. Here
Jonathan VanSickle: we get another unique look at Jeff's. Inner mentality when he has this gun being held to his face and he is being told exactly what to do.
And the guy is basically like, why are you so quiet? What do you have to say? And he says, I don't talk to people when they're pointing a gun in my face. [00:47:00] And he says, is that part of your creed? I think he says, it's out of habit. It's outta habits. It's outta habit. He's another beautifully kind of comedic, but also very serious.
Like showing you what these stakes are, and that's when the blonde man kind of lets his guard down, slowly lowers
Gabby Browne: the gun and puts his gun away. Object. Costello to the rescue, whips that shit around P and guess who's on the opposite side of the coin now, Mr. Blonde.
Aaron Couser: The action in this movie is pretty basic, which I think it's done on purpose.
That choreography for that fight scene is just,
Gabby Browne: yeah, no, it was
Aaron Couser: pretty kind of silly. Roger Ebert made a quote. Action is the enemy of suspense. How action releases tension instead of building it better to wait for something to happen than to sit through a film where things we don't care about are happening constantly.
Mm-hmm. And that's kind of how like that action scene played out for me. It released a tension, but this is not an action movie. The first [00:48:00] hit from, from Marty was just real simple. Bang bang. Even the, the fight on the train was quick, super, super quick and
Gabby Browne: simple. Yeah. It's just like a change in intention.
Like a change in shift in the scene. And that's what he uses it as.
Jonathan VanSickle: And That's exactly right. I was gonna say, he uses this as a transition, as a storytelling plot device to change the stakes, change how the story is unfolding.
In Unarm him and then turning the gun to Mr. Blonde, we finally learn of the big boss
and where he lives. Mm-hmm. Jeff has the information he has been seeking.
Gabby Browne: He's really spiraling. This is his, like his straight line. Yeah. His usual tricks are not working. Every single person, this is like a true like conspiracy theory type of moment where everyone on the train, the old lady with, with the newspaper, she's clicking a button telling the police that Costello is here, [00:49:00] he's here, he's on this train.
The way
Aaron Couser: that the inspector kind of set it all up, you know, have all the routes, it's the
Gabby Browne: kind of montage I want. I want the montage to relay the information and feelings and emotions of the main character is feeling like I felt stressed, I felt paranoid, I felt confused. I never knew who was gonna be the next one.
That was probably a cop.
Aaron Couser: And that shows like him as really a tiger in the jungle maneuvering around, saving
Jonathan VanSickle: himself. Mm-hmm. And also, like you said, think it holds true so much for this movie. It's where the hunter becomes the haunted. Yeah. And you see it most clearly in this scene. Like we said, every single person, it seems like the he encounters on the metro is somehow attached to the police.
And you see his eyes darting from corner to corner, just constantly watching his back. In these moments, he gets into another unmanned vehicle where he does his same key routine. So this time when we see Jeff trying to start the vehicle, he doesn't seem to have that same collected [00:50:00] nature about him. We can start to see the stress is starting to kind of build on him.
We see the same scene with him, uh, taking this stolen vehicle to his buddy at the garage, switches out the plates, hands him the registration, hands him a gun, and then. He, he basically says, this is the last time. Yeah.
Gabby Browne: He says, norm.
Jonathan VanSickle: Yeah, guy. But
Aaron Couser: why is he giving him the last time in anyways? Because obviously this guy knows that Jeff is, he's hot right now.
Gabby Browne: It's like this whole ordeal with fatalism in this movie. This is the last time everything is so definite, everything is so final. It does really seem like it's all set in action, set in motion. There is a predetermined destiny to this movie for sure. And I think that's why he says it's the last time, like he knows and so does Costello.
We're in a dreamlike state again, so it's supposed to be like we're getting close to waking up. I [00:51:00] guess
Aaron Couser: the book of Boto is fictional, but he based it off the code of the samurai. And one of the great lines of Code of the Samurai is one who is a samurai must before all things keep constantly in mind, by day and by night, the fact that he has to die, that is the chief business.
And he doesn't try to save himself.
Jonathan VanSickle: Mm-hmm. What is, how once does he try to run? Nope. He follows
Aaron Couser: the code to the very
Gabby Browne: end. He makes eye contact with that lady at the very beginning of the movie and he's like, okay, things are going down. And
Aaron Couser: he shows that in every single next beat of the film. Then
Gabby Browne: takes off and heads to James for the last time.
Don't worry, I'll work it all out with his cops. Hasling you baby. And he is, she's like, no, everything's fine. He gives her a hug and he says he's gonna figure it out. He knows he's not gonna figure it
Jonathan VanSickle: out. Well what he
Aaron Couser: means by it is he's going to keep her safe. There has to be [00:52:00] something that he can do to protect the ladies that have protected him.
Mm-hmm. This entire time, no matter what, cuz it's his code.
Jonathan VanSickle: We see him heading to his next location to take out the big boss. And as he's in the elevator approaching this penthouse, we see him once again putting on the white gloves,
Gabby Browne: signifying we're about to get a job done, baby. He's about to
Aaron Couser: do a hit. A very important hit.
A hit,
Gabby Browne: a hit, a very important
Jonathan VanSickle: hit. We see him walking through a hallway with large pieces of art. We can tell. This is a very, very rich person who lives here. He says, you
Gabby Browne: got the 4 million, you accept the new contract. You shouldn't have come. And Costella says, I'm leaving. And then shoot soon.
Jonathan VanSickle: Yeah. Another absolute just cool mo moment.
Yeah, yeah. Just quick,
Aaron Couser: just you blink in your mi you, you miss the assassination. He doesn't mess around. He doesn't do small talk. He doesn't negotiate. He doesn't negotiate. It's just over. All the police are after him. [00:53:00] Valerie is a major danger. Jane has a real high
Jonathan VanSickle: chance of going to jail. Well, and at this point, what is the last hit?
Because we could assume that he wasn't contracted to kill Oliver. That is a man who put out the contract for him to execute. So we still have that last loose end to tie up.
Aaron Couser: Yeah. We haven't been told who it is yet. Before he leaves the car to go into Marty's again. Mm-hmm.
Jonathan VanSickle: You can, you
Aaron Couser: see that the gun's totally loaded.
As an audience member, you're thinking he's going to perform the hit. It's gonna kill someone. He's gonna kill somebody. Very important. It's a brilliant
Jonathan VanSickle: scene. Well, and he does a couple specific things when he enters the club this time, firstly, he walks straight to the coat check, girl checks his hat, and she looks at him recognizing him, knowing who it is.
At this point, you can see the shock and almost fear in her eyes. And as he checks his hat, she hands him the tag, which he doesn't take, and walks straight over to the bar to where we're now introduced to another one of these characters that knows Jeff's intentions and [00:54:00] abilities. And as he's standing at the bar, taking in the scene of the club, he slowly puts on the white gloves again.
That is the funniest
Gabby Browne: part of the movie. The bartender size. The bartender size, he like backed up and he was like, right here, right here, man. We're doing that now. Too rough for
Jonathan VanSickle: me.
At this point, he makes eye contact with Valerie. She seems confused to see him there. Kind of shocked, but almost glad. And he slowly approaches her on the piano as she's playing and they share an intense look, which we have seen many times now between the two. A meaningful look, almost a look of understanding because she
Aaron Couser: knows that.
He's about to get killed.
Gabby Browne: She tells him, don't stay here. Like when he's still sitting at the bar, she tells him to leave like cuz she knows and she doesn't know the hits on her, obviously. But then he pulls the gun out and she just says, why Jeff? And he said, I [00:55:00] was paid to,
Jonathan VanSickle: but after this we don't get the quick action that we had seen before.
Jeff seemingly just stands still for a moment and then we don't see, but we hear gunshots
Aaron Couser: and Valerie thinks she's gone. You see her reaction visibly and just shock her. But it's actually, it's all the inspector's. Goos, four quick shots, bang, bang, bang, bang. Jeff is dead. Thinking they just saved Valerie from assassination, but the inspector notices something, he sees the gun and all the bolts are are missing.
So Jeff had no intention of killing Valerie.
Jonathan VanSickle: He was
Aaron Couser: basically taking the samurai sword and sticking into into himself to save the ones that were loyal to him, which is brilliant and beautiful. The band is cleaning up the instruments. The police are gathering evidence around the stage. You just see Valerie almost in this kind of cage
Jonathan VanSickle: of the stage of stage.
Mm-hmm.
Aaron Couser: With a few [00:56:00] lights being pointed on her like she is now a bird. Jeff protected the bird.
Gabby Browne: He protects what cares for him and what he cares about. She was a victim through these men as well. He could tell that
Aaron Couser: that is the brilliance with the movie is cuz that's all up for interpretation. Mm-hmm. Why?
What was her motives? But in the end it doesn't matter. It was just about the code that the people followed at the end. And that's the movie.
Jonathan VanSickle: I think this ending is, uh, fascinating every time I see it. Like you said, Aaron, there are so many questions that remain unanswered, but the way the story is told, and like you said, Jeff's insistence to follow his code, to do the right thing, to fix all these problems that he and, uh, these circumstances have created.
I mean, it's, it's so [00:57:00] masterfully done that all those other questions, the answers aren't necessarily needed cuz there's so much beauty in what this lone wolf does. In this selfless moment to, like you said, uphold his code and do what he believes in that moment is right. He
Gabby Browne: constantly stuck true to himself.
Aaron Couser: I think back on the moment when he leaves the hotel room for the first time and they tell him to bring cash and he says, I don't lose. Not really. He's lost, but not really. But he kinda
Jonathan VanSickle: won. Yeah. Kinda
Gabby Browne: won. Yeah, because he, he's the one who went out the way he wanted to go out. He
Jonathan VanSickle: dictated the circumstance.
Yeah. And like you said, and the code of Beto, he knew this was something he was working towards every day was his death. He orchestrated and planned it out brilliantly.
Aaron Couser: But it was a brilliant movie. I'm so happy you
Jonathan VanSickle: picked this movie, John. Yeah, me too. Thanks guys. And I'm, I'm really excited that you guys enjoy it and I had a really good time talking about it.
Aaron Couser: We've been talking about this for over [00:58:00] th about three hours.
Gabby Browne: Yeah, that's
Aaron Couser: crazy. Which you, it has to be a brilliant movie for us to do that. As simple as it is, there's just so many incredible complexities, so many genius themes, and the ability to just allow, as you always say, Gabby, allow the audience to think for themselves and the director to trust that they're smart enough to figure it out on their own or for themselves, whatever interpretation works best for
Gabby Browne: them.
Yeah, because there's not a right one. There's never a right one. That's the kicker. There's never a right one. He was dead the whole time. If you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion, you can't help but make a good movie. What
Aaron Couser: did he do to you? Nothing at all. I didn't even know him.
The first and last time I saw him was 24 hours ago.
Gabby Browne: What kind of man are you?[00:59:00]
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Aaron Couser: Spotlight,
Gabby Browne: spotlight. Spotlight. Spotlight. Spotlight.