This week Chris Deacy is joined by Claire Pearsall to discuss the films: In The Loop, The Dead Poets Society, Hot Fuzz, and The Silence of the Lambs.
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00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome to Kent Film Club.
00:12 I'm Chris Deasy, and each week I'll be joined
00:14 by a guest from Kent to dive deep into the impact
00:17 certain films have had on their life.
00:19 Each guest will reflect on the films
00:21 which have meant the most to them over the years.
00:23 And every week there will be a Kent Film Trivia
00:26 where we quiz you at home about a film
00:28 that has a connection to the county.
00:30 And now, let me introduce you to my guest for this week.
00:33 She's a political commentator,
00:35 works in Parliament, and a school governor.
00:38 Outside her career, she is also a mother to one son
00:41 and has a couple of cats and a horse.
00:44 She is, of course, Clare Pearsall.
00:46 Welcome, Clare.
00:47 - Thank you, thanks.
00:48 - Great to have you on the programme, yeah.
00:49 Now, I don't know your films in advance,
00:51 so I'm literally gonna look at the screen
00:53 and I see that your first choice is In The Loop.
00:56 Why have you chosen this film, Clare?
00:57 - Ah, this is a documentary of my life.
01:00 It's when you're in politics, it is all-encompassing,
01:03 and the chaos is just unfounded.
01:06 And you must see that when you've had people in
01:09 from Kent Politics previously.
01:11 But it's just a real insight into how mad the world is,
01:16 how chaotic people are,
01:19 and just the foibles of politicians as a whole,
01:22 and they're not sure what they're going to say,
01:24 and quite often will just say completely the wrong thing,
01:26 and the consequences of that and the fallout of it.
01:29 And this particular film takes in American politics as well,
01:32 which is pretty much right at the top of the agenda
01:35 for this year, given that we have two elections coming up
01:37 in the UK and in the US.
01:39 So it's a real insight into what goes on.
01:41 - And of course, often that whole adage about art
01:44 can sometimes be stranger than fiction,
01:46 or fiction actually is stranger than art,
01:48 but actually it works in this case,
01:50 because sometimes you have those more extreme caricatures,
01:53 but sometimes you watch it and think,
01:54 actually this really nails the essence of a personality.
01:59 Is that why it resonated for you?
02:00 - It does, 'cause you can see different people,
02:02 and you just think, oh yes, I can see that character,
02:04 I know who that is meant to be.
02:06 And it is quite interesting,
02:08 the different roles that people play,
02:09 and you can see it around the halls of Whitehall
02:12 and into Parliament itself,
02:14 and you see the different characteristics
02:16 that people have in order to do the job,
02:18 and quite often the flaws that those people have.
02:20 And yeah, it is just a real insight
02:22 into what it is that I do,
02:24 and I must have watched the film now about 10 times.
02:27 - And is this the sort of film
02:29 that politicians themselves or journalists
02:32 watch and comment on?
02:33 But the thing about spitting image, wasn't it,
02:35 that they may not be caricatured very well,
02:38 but someone like Edwina Currie always said
02:40 that she absolutely loved being on spitting image,
02:43 because people were talking about her.
02:44 If you weren't on spitting image,
02:46 then somehow you were deemed peripheral.
02:49 So is that the case with something like this?
02:50 Do you kind of feel that the people
02:52 who are being caricatured kind of like being sent up?
02:56 - I think so.
02:57 There's always that old adage,
02:59 if you're not being spoken about,
03:01 then you're not news anymore,
03:02 and people do worry about that.
03:04 But also I think that this was made some years ago,
03:07 and it was deemed to be quite unbelievable,
03:09 but given the state of politics over the last three years,
03:12 I mean, it's nothing.
03:13 I think we've almost taken it as an instruction manual
03:15 on how to run the country.
03:17 - Yeah, and I think that's the thing
03:17 over the last few years.
03:18 We've all sort of said, you know,
03:19 hang on, on both sides of the Atlantic.
03:22 20 years ago, I remember when I,
03:23 or even 30 years ago when I was at university,
03:25 people would say, oh, it doesn't matter who you vote for,
03:27 they're all the same.
03:28 And then now you look at the real polarisation,
03:31 and to see something like this,
03:32 it must be quite cathartic for you.
03:34 - It is, it is.
03:35 And you sort of look at the character
03:37 that you play in all of this,
03:38 and I'm the one that's sort of running around
03:40 trying to keep everything on track
03:41 and stop the wheels from falling off.
03:43 And you realise quite how mad your world is
03:46 when you look at it from the outside.
03:48 - And do you see yourself in some way,
03:50 I mean, do you identify with particular characters,
03:52 or is it the case that you, you know,
03:54 you sometimes watch this thinking,
03:55 hang on, do they know something about me?
03:57 (laughing)
03:58 - Yeah, sometimes you do, and you just think,
03:59 yeah, I think I've actually said that before.
04:01 And the running around and the language that's used,
04:04 which is not very parliamentary
04:07 and not particularly good for daytime viewing,
04:09 but it is that world.
04:11 It is quite mad, and you have to concentrate
04:13 on 15 different things at once
04:15 and be an expert in everything for five minutes.
04:18 - And for somebody who hasn't watched this,
04:20 how would you describe this?
04:21 I mean, on the basis of what you've said already,
04:23 you know, actually it's sort of like, well,
04:26 it's as crazy as trying to describe
04:28 prime minister's question time.
04:29 But do you want to give us an insight
04:30 into exactly what the essence of In The Loop is?
04:33 - It is a hapless government minister
04:35 who makes a throwaway comment to the media about war
04:39 and ends up heading over to the US,
04:42 to the State Department,
04:44 looking for a secret war committee
04:46 with a general and some of the major US politicians.
04:50 And it's one of those things that transcends both continents
04:54 and everybody's looking for the right answer.
04:56 Nobody entirely knows what everybody else is doing,
04:59 but they're suspicious of absolutely everything.
05:01 And then in the background,
05:02 you've got the underlying story of the MP
05:05 and his local issues,
05:07 which are causing him more grief than perhaps world war.
05:10 - Yeah, and do you think it was modelled
05:12 on anyone in particular, from any particular party?
05:14 Is there a lot of speculation about who this could be
05:19 and whether they actually might be quite sort of happy
05:21 with the, almost like the fairness of that characterisation?
05:24 - I couldn't possibly comment
05:26 if it was being made to look like anybody.
05:29 I think this is a perfectly fictitious character.
05:31 - Yeah, and I think sometimes the people
05:33 who we do see in parliament themselves don't feel like,
05:36 they're entirely real people.
05:38 It's like, no, they've walked straight out of something
05:41 that could have been concocted in a world like this.
05:44 And I think there is a part of pretty much every politician
05:48 within parliament in this particular film.
05:51 I think it takes the flaws of everybody,
05:53 it takes the good bits of everybody
05:55 and just the absolute chaos of life in Westminster.
05:58 - And do you find that lots of fellow journalists as well
06:01 sort of will go to this?
06:02 I mean, after you've had a busy week,
06:03 I can imagine sometimes that this is either the best thing
06:06 or the absolute worst thing to watch
06:08 because you kind of feel
06:08 that you're taking work home with you,
06:10 or is this just something so wonderfully liberating to see?
06:13 - It is, it is a bit of a release
06:15 and you'll quite often see some of the quotes
06:17 that are in the film and previous series
06:21 which led up to the film called "In the Thick of It."
06:23 You'll see those phrases used quite frequently
06:26 and we all sort of run around saying them
06:28 and it breaks the moments.
06:29 If it's particularly stressful,
06:30 somebody will just give you a throwaway line from the film.
06:33 Everybody laughs and you think,
06:34 okay, what we're doing is not terribly serious.
06:36 We don't have to fall to pieces
06:38 and you can have a laugh at the same time.
06:40 - Fantastic, well, thank you, Claire.
06:41 Well, let's move on to your second chosen film
06:43 and this is quite a different genre,
06:46 "Dead Poets Society," weighed in, what, 1989?
06:49 - Yeah, I first saw this at school.
06:52 I did GCSE English and it was one of those films
06:55 that we were made to watch and I kind of thought,
06:58 oh, okay, a bit of an afternoon off of actual learning
07:01 and was absolutely blown away by it.
07:03 I think for me, I loved English, I loved language
07:07 and you look at the way the character, John Keating,
07:11 played by Robin Williams, how he gets people's interest
07:15 in language and learning and how to be individual
07:19 and stretch the boundaries of what it is they can do
07:23 and suddenly it was, I was just completely inspired by that
07:27 because I think sometimes teaching can be very, very strict,
07:30 it can be very, very rigid,
07:31 everybody needs to pass exams, everybody needs to learn,
07:34 but you forget the absolute joy and love
07:36 of things like poetry.
07:37 - And there's that thing, isn't there,
07:39 about the old guard for whom it's like,
07:41 well, actually, the iambic piamiters
07:43 and it's almost as though you can read a poem mathematically,
07:46 a good poem is one that mathematically
07:48 is structured in such a way,
07:51 whereas he says, rip it all up and they're like,
07:52 no, we can't rip up our books.
07:54 And of course, he brings them,
07:57 it's a bit like "Wonderful Over the Cuckoo's Nest"
07:58 in so many ways, but set in a classroom.
08:01 - It is and there's a particularly interesting part
08:03 where they're looking at the metre of poetry
08:05 and you're right, you can see that
08:07 in a very mathematical way
08:08 and you can see where the stresses are
08:09 and how long sentences should be,
08:12 but he made everybody go outside and march
08:15 to see if they would fall in line with each other,
08:17 if everybody had their own direction
08:19 and how rhythm can be used,
08:22 but it was just getting people out of the classroom
08:24 and I think that's so important,
08:26 that the joy and love that comes with language and learning,
08:30 I mean, it was one of my great passions.
08:32 So to see it borne out on the screen,
08:35 again, was one of those moments that you thought,
08:38 ah, you can do this, you don't need to sit and read
08:40 and poetry sometimes can be particularly difficult
08:43 to understand, but if you take it outside
08:45 and just look around and apply it to life,
08:47 actually, there's a breakthrough.
08:48 - Yeah, and I was thinking as well,
08:50 'cause when I first saw this, I was in university
08:53 and of course, you're watching this and thinking,
08:55 gosh, I had teachers actually like him,
08:58 but also teachers like the ones who in the end, of course,
09:00 that the old God, you know, win over,
09:02 like he brings this sort of liberation,
09:04 but they're not ready for it,
09:05 it's obviously set in, what, the '50s?
09:07 - Yes. - Yeah.
09:08 - So there was that sense of there being
09:09 a change of circumstances, a change of tide,
09:12 you know, we're watching this thinking, gosh,
09:14 you know, in a different era,
09:15 he would have been able to carry on practicing,
09:18 he was ahead of his time,
09:20 but it made me think of people who taught me
09:22 and how education was in some ways a joyous experience
09:27 and I've been in education all my life,
09:29 but also quite a rigid experience
09:32 and it sort of brought that dichotomy out.
09:34 - It does and I think for some people,
09:37 school is incredibly difficult
09:39 and we all think back to teachers that we've had
09:42 and the characteristics that they had
09:44 and perhaps the way that they taught
09:46 and you may remember them favorably
09:48 or not favorably, depending,
09:49 but I think that you will always look at that one teacher
09:52 who gave you the permission, I suppose, to be different
09:56 and I think that was always my problem
09:57 is that I wasn't particularly great at conforming
10:00 and I had an English teacher who just said,
10:02 go and read this, go and read that,
10:04 see what you think, tell me what you think
10:06 and nobody had ever asked me that,
10:07 they didn't ask me what I thought,
10:09 they wanted to know what I'd learned
10:11 and then suddenly you think,
10:12 oh, there's a whole world outside the classroom.
10:14 - Yeah, because I remember an English teacher,
10:16 interesting, so in a way, I see the resonance
10:18 and he didn't really teach us the curriculum,
10:20 looking back, I think, well, maybe that wasn't good,
10:23 but we loved his classes because we were free to speak,
10:26 we were able to do exactly what John Keating does there
10:28 with the pupils and that was 30 years later.
10:31 - That's right and I think it was just allowing people
10:33 to be their own person, I mean,
10:36 I went to a very good Kent grammar school,
10:39 but it was very academic and I'm not quite that character,
10:44 so it was almost a case of what can we do with her,
10:47 oh, let's see if she can deal with poetry,
10:49 let's see if she can understand text
10:51 and you're almost given the space
10:53 to believe that you can do something
10:55 and I think that that really helped
10:56 'cause I found it all very, very difficult,
10:58 so I'm much better if there's lots of things going on,
11:01 I like chaos, which ends, you know,
11:03 how I've ended up in politics,
11:05 but it was that, it was allowing me to look at something
11:09 and to enjoy it and to question something
11:12 without being told you're wrong,
11:15 I think that was a really big thing for me
11:16 and then just looking at that film
11:18 and those people were told, you want to be creative,
11:20 you want to be in drama or music, absolutely go for it,
11:23 that's what you can do, you can also go and be a lawyer,
11:26 a doctor or an accountant, but have joy at the same time.
11:30 - Yeah, hugely inspiring, well, thank you, Claire
11:32 and that's about all the time we have
11:33 for this first half of the show,
11:35 however, before we go to the break,
11:36 we have a Kent Film trivia question for you at home.
11:39 Which James Bond instalment featured a scene filmed
11:42 at the Port of Dover?
11:44 Was it A, Moonraker, B, Live and Let Die
11:49 or C, Diamonds Are Forever?
11:51 We'll reveal the answer right after this break,
11:54 don't go away.
11:55 (dramatic music)
12:00 (dramatic music)
12:02 Hello and welcome back to Kent Film Club.
12:09 Just before that ad break, we asked you at home
12:11 a Kent Film trivia question.
12:14 Which James Bond instalment featured a scene filmed
12:17 at the Port of Dover?
12:18 I asked, was it A, Moonraker, B, Live and Let Die
12:22 or C, Diamonds Are Forever?
12:25 And now I can reveal to you that the correct answer was C,
12:29 Diamonds Are Forever.
12:30 The Port of Dover was used for the scene
12:32 where Bond swaps identities with diamond smuggler,
12:35 Peter Franks, played by Joe Robinson
12:37 and makes his escape to France.
12:40 Did you get the answer right?
12:42 Well, it's time now, Claire, to move on
12:43 to your next chosen film and you've gone for Hot Fuzz.
12:48 Goodness me.
12:51 - Completely random film selection you're getting from me,
12:54 but Hot Fuzz is one of those films
12:56 that I think everybody can recognise.
13:00 Small town living, rural living especially,
13:03 and the policing issues that you have
13:05 and what is deemed to be important, difficult and terrible.
13:09 And then to add in somebody
13:11 who was a metropolitan police firearms officer
13:14 who goes and lives in a sleepy village.
13:16 I think it's just one of those great comedy moments
13:18 that was waiting to happen.
13:19 And again, this is one of those films that I've watched
13:22 probably more times than is particularly healthy for me.
13:25 But to see the characters and understanding policing
13:28 and people's attitudes to it, I think is quite telling.
13:31 - Yeah, and often, I mean, we were talking about
13:34 the in the loop earlier, but often that sort of sense
13:37 where you kind of feel, you know, it's an out and out comedy
13:40 but it actually really hits a chord.
13:43 - It does.
13:44 It's those, the issues that matter to people in villages
13:48 and it's things like a group of teenagers
13:51 hanging around, loitering.
13:52 And there's one particular character
13:54 who is one of those silent statues
13:56 and the people in the village don't like that.
13:59 And then of course, there's all the disputes over planning
14:02 and perhaps having a bypass near the village.
14:04 And it's all of those issues
14:05 that actually matter within communities,
14:07 not really issues for the police.
14:09 But when you're in a small community,
14:10 everybody has a part to play in it
14:12 and everybody gets involved.
14:14 And of course, because this is a great British film,
14:16 it pokes fun at all of the institutions,
14:18 the local supermarket, the local police, the local pub,
14:21 the local parish council.
14:23 So I think that's what attracted it to me
14:25 is it's just a great British laugh at yourself.
14:29 - And I just thought as well,
14:30 because in the context of "In the Loop"
14:31 we were talking about, you know, the MP
14:33 who can deal with the big affairs of state
14:34 but not the local issues involving his MP.
14:37 And you have that here that you can almost sort of like,
14:39 you know, somehow those things that should be peripheral
14:41 or should be marginal or local
14:42 actually end up being far bigger
14:44 and, you know, impossible to deal with.
14:46 And the film, I think, is very good at dealing
14:48 with that kind of level that sort of, you know,
14:51 why can't we deal with the micro level
14:54 but the macro level just seems so unbelievably easy.
14:56 - Yeah, and that's right.
14:57 And it's something like somebody wanted to put up
14:59 an extension or somebody was proposing a bypass
15:01 and they were going to benefit financially from it.
15:03 And of course, everybody knows stories,
15:05 whether they're in your community
15:06 or the next door neighbouring community,
15:08 everybody will understand that these are big issues
15:11 and everybody talks about it.
15:12 And this was, I think, sort of done before mobile phones
15:16 were really the way of communicating.
15:17 So there were walkie-talkies
15:19 between members of the parish council
15:21 and they have a group that their sort of motto is
15:24 for the greater good.
15:25 And when you sort of look at it, you go, yeah, actually,
15:27 it has some sinister meanings in the film,
15:29 but you kind of think that's essentially
15:31 what everybody wants, is they want their community
15:33 to be good for everybody.
15:35 Not really sure about the slight murders
15:37 that happen in this film,
15:38 but it's one of those proper comedy moments
15:41 where there is a swan on the loose
15:43 and that plays throughout the entire film.
15:46 They'll get a phone call at the police station,
15:48 the swan's out again, so that's it.
15:49 They dispatch police officers to deal with it.
15:51 It's so quintessentially British.
15:53 - Yeah, and actually that happened to me once
15:55 on the Broad Oak Road in Canterbury.
15:56 I don't know whether somebody let them loose or something,
15:58 but there were about 20 of them.
15:59 They were either swans or goodness knows what birds
16:01 they were, who were just like walking across the road
16:03 and you're thinking, you know, did this actually happen?
16:05 And I'm thinking, no, I invented it, surely.
16:07 But this sort of film is really good
16:10 at that sort of, the incongruity,
16:11 that's what comedy is all about.
16:12 It's the things that don't make any sense
16:15 and you put them together
16:16 and then see how people try to process that.
16:18 - Absolutely.
16:19 - Watching people work together in the community
16:21 to work out who are the good people,
16:22 who are the bad people, what the problems are,
16:24 and there's a cracking scene at a village fete
16:26 and it's something that everybody will know
16:29 with a village fete, but you're looking at a tower
16:32 which is trying to be rebuilt
16:34 and that's what the fete is for, to raise money,
16:36 and then a journalist is pushed off the top,
16:39 you know, onto the floor, you know,
16:41 and everybody sort of looks and then just carries on.
16:43 And I think that's why British films especially
16:46 are so good because they look at that
16:48 and it's not a funny thing to happen,
16:50 but actually we all know the attitudes of people involved
16:54 and they just go, "Ah, just move them to one side
16:56 "and we'll carry on 'cause we've got the tombola to run."
16:59 And it's that whole life of Britain
17:02 and yes, the serious issues matter,
17:04 but the fact that we can almost laugh off
17:06 somebody being pushed from a tower block,
17:08 it's, you know, it's one of those great things.
17:10 - And it's the ode to the local,
17:12 'cause here we are in KMTV,
17:13 and of course, it's the local stories
17:16 that of course, that's the thing that really matters.
17:18 And of course, we often deal with the big picture
17:20 because, you know, it's out of our orbit,
17:22 but you're watching this and sometimes thinking,
17:24 this actually is the sort of thing
17:26 you'd read in a local story, but here we are.
17:28 And those caricatures are the people
17:29 that we encounter in our day-to-day lives.
17:31 - Yeah, they absolutely are.
17:32 And there was a local supermarket
17:34 and you can see that this is the place everybody goes,
17:37 everybody gets the gossip from,
17:38 and it's just, it's one of those sort of cracking episodes
17:41 where you just sort of look at it and you go,
17:43 "Yeah, that could happen at my local co-op down the road.
17:45 "I live in a little village
17:46 "and I can almost see the characters walking around."
17:49 And you have your own language for the things that go on.
17:51 So this is like sort of peeking
17:53 into somebody's private world.
17:55 All right, it's taken to extremes,
17:57 especially when they bring out huge amounts of firearms,
18:00 but it was a classic, you know,
18:02 they've taken these things, they've locked them up,
18:03 and then suddenly they have use for them
18:05 down the little cobbled high street.
18:07 And it could be anywhere in Kent, to be honest,
18:09 even though it's not set there.
18:10 - Brilliant, well, thank you, Claire.
18:11 Well, let's move on to your final chosen film.
18:14 And oh my goodness, talk about an eclectic range.
18:17 The Silence of the Lambs.
18:19 - Yeah, now this is, I don't normally like horror films.
18:24 I'm not very good with that kind of stuff,
18:27 but I think this was because it's more psychological.
18:29 Yes, there is some pretty horrendous death in it,
18:31 but it's a very psychological film.
18:34 Yeah, Hannibal Lecter is put away behind bars.
18:37 He is a psychopath,
18:39 but has information that could help solve a murder.
18:42 And you get the FBI, Clarice Starling,
18:45 played by Jodie Foster, who goes and interviews him.
18:47 Now, she's very keen and she wants to learn
18:50 how she can solve a murder,
18:51 but actually what she learns
18:53 is how to understand individuals.
18:56 And if you're an FBI profiler,
18:57 I mean, that's gotta be right up there.
18:59 It's a really strange film,
19:00 that the main character is so awful,
19:03 has committed some heinous crimes.
19:05 You can't help but like him.
19:07 And you feel wrong for liking Hannibal Lecter.
19:11 Now, I don't know if that's Anthony Hopkins
19:13 playing the part exceedingly well,
19:15 but I've also read the books.
19:18 He isn't quite as likable in the books,
19:19 but you can still have a sense of,
19:21 you kind of almost wish he'd get away with it
19:23 because he's so charismatic.
19:25 And that is so far removed
19:27 from what you think a serial killer should be,
19:29 that it just drew me in to looking at the relationship,
19:33 not the murders itself,
19:35 but the relationship between two people
19:37 trying to understand each other and life and solve crime.
19:41 And you learn about yourself along the way.
19:43 - It's a hugely psychological film.
19:45 And also, of course, Anthony Hopkins is,
19:47 it's effectively a supporting role,
19:49 but it is so big that of course,
19:51 'cause he won the Best Actor Oscar for that.
19:53 But I mean, it's one of the most triumphant
19:55 and surprising films because I know Brian Cox
19:57 had played the role in "Manhunter" about five years earlier,
20:00 but this one really captured the imagination.
20:02 And it kind of revised our understanding
20:05 of psychological horror.
20:07 - I think it does.
20:08 I think it brings into sharp contrast
20:10 what we believe to be the issues and what they are
20:14 and how the mind is so incredibly complicated.
20:17 And I think that's a real, a huge compliment
20:20 to somebody like Anthony Hopkins,
20:22 that you can think that this awful, awful character
20:24 that you have some sympathy with.
20:26 And you can understand now why Jodie Foster's character
20:29 wants to go and is almost compelled to go and talk to him
20:33 more and more.
20:34 And he gets into her mind.
20:35 And that's what they always say, "Don't let him in,"
20:37 because that's when things will go horribly wrong.
20:39 But you kind of have to look into a serial killer's world,
20:43 I assume, to be able to understand what it is they do,
20:46 why they do it.
20:47 But it's the connection that they have,
20:49 that sort of magnetism of really awful individuals
20:52 and somebody who wants to make something good.
20:55 - And of course, she gets into his as well.
20:56 I mean, and of course, he respects her in a way
20:58 that he certainly doesn't respect,
21:00 that the more patronizing figures,
21:01 like, you know, who are overseeing him.
21:02 And of course, they made two sequels.
21:05 I don't know if you've seen them, what you think about them,
21:07 whether they should even have been made.
21:09 But of course, you do have the savior motif,
21:11 that of course, she's played by Julianne Moore
21:13 in the second one.
21:14 But she's still, she's pursuing him,
21:17 but of course, he lets her go.
21:18 And I kind of wish that they'd just left it
21:21 at the first film.
21:22 - Yeah, I agree.
21:23 And I've read the books, and the books are fantastic,
21:25 and they do take the story on.
21:27 But film-wise, I'm not convinced that it works.
21:30 I think this one was such a success,
21:32 and it was so special,
21:33 that anybody playing those parts after that
21:36 isn't gonna have quite the same impact.
21:38 And you don't want a serial killer
21:40 just to deliberately let somebody go
21:42 for the sake of a movie.
21:43 It isn't like that, and in the book, it's not like that.
21:46 And I think that's always the frustration.
21:48 If you read something and you love it,
21:49 and then it's made into a film,
21:50 it doesn't always translate properly.
21:52 And I don't think you get the depth of the relationship
21:55 and the learning, as you say, between the pair of them.
21:57 And he does respect her in the first film.
21:59 You don't feel that he respects her in the same way
22:02 in the second one.
22:03 It's much more of a traditional,
22:06 this psychological horror genre-type movie.
22:09 It doesn't have that special link
22:11 that they had in the first.
22:12 - Yeah, and it is so heavily characterization-based.
22:16 And I thought it was very intriguing,
22:18 because you kind of wanna follow where these characters go.
22:20 And it works on multiple levels,
22:22 because using a serial killer
22:24 as a means in order to catch another serial killer.
22:28 But the journey there is,
22:31 in the films, you've got the journey and the destination,
22:33 but it's the journey to that point
22:34 and how the characters are unraveled that makes it work.
22:37 - It does make it work, but I don't like the sequels.
22:41 They're not my favorite.
22:42 I've seen them, but I wouldn't watch them again,
22:43 whereas I have actually watched this a number of times.
22:45 And it does stay with you.
22:47 It's one of those movies that you can,
22:49 you think of every now and again,
22:51 something will pop into your mind.
22:53 And I just, it's that interaction between people.
22:58 And I suppose this goes back to some of my other choices.
23:01 I think it's the interaction between individuals
23:04 and what you can learn.
23:05 And even not by saying something.
23:07 Sometimes when the two characters were just sitting there
23:09 looking at each other,
23:11 it said more than pretty much half of the script.
23:14 And I think that was slightly more important.
23:16 It was the learning journey, as you think.
23:19 It was that that was more important.
23:21 And some of the best scenes were in this sort of
23:23 underground prison cell with the two people in two chairs.
23:27 And that was quite often the best part of the movie.
23:29 Very little going on around it.
23:31 - Well, yeah, much imitated, but never surpassed.
23:33 Okay, well, I'm afraid that that's all the time
23:36 we have today.
23:36 Many thanks to Claire Pearsall for joining us
23:38 and being such a brilliant guest.
23:40 And many thanks to you all for tuning in.
23:42 Be sure to come back and join us again
23:44 at the same time next week.
23:46 Until then, that's all from us.
23:48 Goodbye.
23:49 (upbeat music)
23:51 (upbeat music)
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