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Overview
Today’s choice is a vampire movie, but not a typical vampire movie. It’s very much an art piece and there is a lot to discuss. The lore of vampires is only touched upon and is not a strong part of the movie, and what is there is a bit different than what you may be used.
Byzantium has many themes that are brought up and has the feel of an art piece. The story focuses on ‘sisters’ and their life throughout the ages. This life is about to be changed forever, and that is more what the movie is about. The movie is based on a play and the screenplay was done by the same woman.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1531901/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantium_(film)
This movie has a wiki about it that contains about everything you could want in the movie:
https://the-byzantium.fandom.com/wiki/Byzantium_(film)
Trailer
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Transcript
Stephen 0:49
Alright, so I said to him, we ready? Yeah. Great. This is like episode three. So we’re cruising. Yeah, good.
Rhys 0:57
Good.
Stephen 0:59
Okay. Oh, I didn’t pull up my sheet. So hold on.
Rhys 1:02
That’s fine. I’ve got like, five tabs running on my second screen and I’ve got a book with notes written down on it over here. Okay,
Stephen 1:13
well, race Welcome. Hi. How you doing?
Rhys 1:16
Hey. Yeah, it was, it was pretty good. Cool.
Stephen 1:19
And we’re gonna talk about a different story this time. We are is a vampire one, but very untypical. Yes, so tell us a little bit about it.
Rhys 1:32
So, this is Neil Jordan’s film Byzantium. It was released in 2013. Neil Jordan is a director who is for the wide world probably best known for the crying game. He’s Irish. And the crying game came out to such great acclaim. I won all kinds of awards and things. Super cutting edge it was talking about trans issues back in the 80s and not in a campy way like Rocky Horror Picture Show kind of thing. And not in disturbing Silence of the Lambs sociopathic killer and kind of way like is a serious as a serious issue. He’s also Well, I don’t want to say well known but he’s also known for his other vampire movie. Which is interview with a vampire. Really? Yes. He directed that as well.
Stephen 2:35
Oh my gosh, because they are so different. There’s a are I mean, I was even mentioned interview that Byzantium is not your anreise broody, flashy vampires like interview with a vampire. And it’s not your last boys action flick. It’s something completely different. Correct?
Rhys 2:57
And I think well, thank
Stephen 2:58
you. I’m glad I’m right. On my opinion.
Rhys 3:04
It’s it’s a perfect choice for me. Because if you look at Jordan’s work, he spans both what I hate about vampires in Interview with the Vampire. And what I love about these niche vampire movies like Byzantium, right, so as far as how it was, it’s, you know, classified. It’s, it’s kind of an arthouse film. It’s kind of Gothic in its nature. It is a vampire movie. It was Irish funded. Oh, yeah. Okay,
Stephen 3:42
no, as you say, it’s definitely more a set piece and brooding than a vampire story. In fact, I think if you clock the amount of vampire activities, it’s maybe like two minutes in the whole movie.
Rhys 3:57
It’s very brave.
Stephen 3:59
Because it doesn’t need it. You know, what’s going on? It’s more about the girls their relationship and the you know, everything else but it’s the vampire is almost not the story, you know, yeah. And it’s,
Rhys 4:13
yeah, it’s a period piece as well. I mean, it takes place in the modern era, but there’s lots of flashbacks. And the flashbacks are done, you know, like with all of the weight of a typical period piece with costuming and everything. I mean, they’re not just slapping on you know, a powdered wig and going Oh, he gov and you know, moving on from there. They’re like, actually were not the whole the whole get.
Stephen 4:37
Yeah, out of the movies. We’ve watched this is the first Hollywood produce big budget type movie it felt like that the scenes the way it was shot, the way it looked it. it flowed to me, you know, it looked more like we had 50 different crews going out and filming and we took three years in story you know, that typical Hollywood type thing. That’s what this stuff like more than the other one so far.
Rhys 5:02
Yeah, it was shot in England. The whole thing was shot in England. In the reason I think that it was Irish funded is because Neil Jordan is like an Irish icon in Ireland radiotelephony Sharon is the is kind of like the BBC. You know, that’s the nationalized film industry for Ireland. And they gave him a grant for this, the movie cost 8 million to produce. So it was an 8 million budgeted film. It gross worldwide about $828,000
Stephen 5:38
Ouch. Yes, I wish I can see I mean, it’s not your summer blockbuster popcorn. But the weird thing is with all that budget, as even though I mentioned this, the special effects are minimal. It’s almost all practical effects. And there’s nothing outrageous. There’s not tons of anything for a special effect in there.
Rhys 5:59
Right? There’s CGI guys went broke working on this film, because there was really nothing for them to do. The movie really addresses a lot in the way of a topics of feminism and classism. And it speaks to it pretty heavily throughout the whole movie. And I think, for me, the ending of the movie is its Achilles heel. It’s the part that I don’t like. And it’s because of all of the work that they had done in the beginning. I think they throw it away at the end, and we’ll get to that.
Stephen 6:36
And I would agree, it almost felt like the end was the director’s said, or the executive said, Hey, do this. Because what we just said about it’s not your typical vampire movie with the class themes in the feminist themes. That’s the story. It just happens to be their vampires. Sunrise, almost an aside at time. Yeah, the
Rhys 6:57
vampire is just the vehicle to get the message across.
Stephen 6:59
Right, which makes good stories.
Rhys 7:02
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think it’s a visually very visually striking film. Yeah. They don’t. They’re not desaturating anything. The colors are there. They’re vivid, the direction is very well done. And the scenery is, I know it sounds odd to be talking about an urban environment or kind of a blighted rundown seaside town is like beautiful, but the way it’s shot it is. Is this was based on a play by an English playwright. Yeah. Wow.
Stephen 7:40
Because usually you can tell when a movie was based on Play, because it’s very much structured like the play this did not feel like that to me.
Rhys 7:47
Well, and I think the reason is, her name was more of a fini. She is English. And the play was called a vampire story. She was brilliantly hired on by Neil Jordan to do the screenplay. So she adapted her own play for the movie. And I think that’s probably why it worked out so well. In my opinion. Um, so the storyline to this movie. I’m going to kind of do it in, in two sections. I’m going to tell you what happens in real life and what happens in the flashbacks. And in the movie, they disperse it throughout the whole thing. So you see, part of modern life and then you see a flashback, and they see part of modern life in a flashback, you know it for pacing and things, but it’s confusing. So instead, I think we’ll just go through and tell it and then when we get to a spot, we’ll stick in all the flashbacks, and then we’ll go back and finish the thing. That sounds All right, as perfect. As the movie opens. I didn’t even mention who’s in it. sisha Ronan’s in it. An 18 year old Sears Ronin who’s best known for ladybird, which was a critically acclaimed film that came out recently. She’s in it, and she plays a teenage girl and it’s I don’t want to say it’s a comedy. It’s kind of funny, but it’s it’s a slice of life. It’s her and her mother during these trauma, traumatize years of, you know, becoming an adult. And the conflict between the two. That’s what the whole movie was about. But it was very critically well received. She’s also in one of my favorite movies that’s on my list of movies. That’s not a horror movie. Some of them do show up. It was her 13 year old debut called Hannah. Have you seen Hannah? Oh, yeah,
Stephen 9:53
that was her. I did that was her nicer.
Rhys 9:55
Yep. Yeah, give her blonde hair and take five years off where she looks completely
Stephen 10:00
Wow, wow. Yeah, I didn’t even recognize it. But now that you say and I can see what Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah, that was a good movie.
Rhys 10:09
Yes, she plays Eleanor, and the movie opens with Eleanor. She’s wearing modern day clothes, sitting at a desk and what looks like a shabby apartment next to a window. But as soon as she puts her pen down to write into her journal, you know, something’s different because she’s writing in a script that no, no modern adults use, much less like the Declaration of Independence. Absolutely. And I believe she writes the end. Yes, those are the words she writes. Then she takes this book and walks out onto a balcony and starts to rip the pages out of the book, crumple them up and toss them over the balcony. So she’s basically finished writing a story and she is disassembling it and scattering it to the winds. While she is doing this, an older gentleman is walking along. He’s got a walker. He stops, bends down and picks up the paper and unfolds it and looks up and sees her and she sees him see her and she proceeds to come downstairs to talk to him. Then you get a cut to gamma Atherton, who is playing Clara. And Clara is dancing in an exotic bar. She’s giving some guy a lap dance. She’s very good at it. She as an actress game additon is in a lot of movies that I haven’t seen. Because she does a lot of theatrical type films. Okay. Yeah, I
Stephen 11:44
didn’t recognize her.
Rhys 11:45
Right? She was a Bond girl. I think in quantum solace. Really? Yeah.
Stephen 11:54
Okay, off to go look that up now.
Rhys 11:57
But yeah, so she kind of reminds me as an English version of Catherine Zeta Jones. When she was younger, I can see Yeah, yeah, a little bit. So she’s dancing for this guy, the guy gets hansy security comes to break them up, and
Stephen 12:14
she steals his wallet to try to get away stealing his wallet.
Rhys 12:19
And she turns around, and his nose is bleeding a lot. So she definitely knows how to defend herself from this kind of situation. So we’re gonna go ahead and talk about what happens with Clara.
Stephen 12:37
And if you’re the end rise of Uber sexy type of vampire, that was your scene. That’s about as much as you get. There’s not a whole lot more of that type of vampire sexiness.
Rhys 12:51
Yeah, absolutely. There are. There are two scenes involving nudity. And they’re very brief. And neither one of them involve either of these ladies. Eleanor is vampire, Claire is vampire. And we’re about to find those out. So again, with pacing, they would cut between the two. But in order to make things clear, I’m just going to go ahead and tell you Claire’s first part of the story here. She goes back to collect her money because their boss is firing her for assaulting this guy. He refuses, the payer says that she’s not on the books. So how could he pay her? So she goes to the bar where she’s going to steal some money. While she’s at the bar, this tall, blonde guy comes in very creepy, with an old black and white photograph looks like it might be from the 40s. And he’s showing it around asking people if they’ve seen this woman. And it’s a picture of Clara and of course, as his code in a place like that no one has seen anything away. Now we don’t know who that is. He says it to the bartender who even says now I don’t know who that is. And instantly after she’s done with that, the bartender goes to confront Clara who is stealing money out of the cash register.
Stephen 14:16
Now the bartender wasn’t very convincing, though. No,
Rhys 14:19
no, not a whole lot. Now of course, blonde hair guy sees this happening, comes behind the bar sees Clara Clara sees him and she smacks him in the head with a bottle of liquor and runs. So she is running through the streets of it’s supposed to be London. It was actually actually East Sussex but it was supposed to be London. Americans don’t know. Yeah, she’s running through this crowd, in a teddy with a coat overtop of it and like long heels and she’s she’s making time she is moving. And this guy chases after her and you know, they’re cutting in Then out of buildings, there’s the whole chase tension, they end up on a roof. She walks over to a skylight on the roof. Because she’s got nowhere else to go, she jumps on the skylight and crashes through onto a bounce house below. The guy jumps through the hole, lands on the ballot, bounce house and puts her in a headlock and asks, Where’s the girl? And so now, at this point, we get the feeling that this woman must have something to do with the girl we saw writing the book earlier. So Clara takes this gentleman back to her apartment. She’s very obsequious about it. She’s apologizing. She’s calling him sir. Um, he’s being kind of a douche. As you know, these kind of guys will be I’m sure. And so she goes to leave the room. And he’s like, Where are you going, and she’s like, how you’re cut. And that will draw attention. So let me clean it up. So he follows her. And he follows her back. And she goes into the bathroom, to get the cleaning stuff. And he says to her, and this is one of the reasons why I love this film. He says to her all the time you’ve had and you’ve got nothing. Because one of my problems with vampire movies is that there’s this giant Secret Society of incredibly wealthy, large living human predators under the radar, and nobody knows they’re there. And that, you know, for some reason, they’ve managed to be successful for generations. And I just hate that it’s so improbable to me, I can’t buy into it.
Stephen 16:53
Well, this movie definitely isn’t that
Rhys 16:55
this movie is not that. And there’s a reason for it, which we’ll get to in a second. She comes out of the bathroom with like, alcohol and some bandages, and her one hands behind her back, which should raise some alarms. He sits in the chair, and she tells him to close his eyes. And I don’t really think that was even necessary.
Stephen 17:19
No, but it points out how her attitude change and she was completely in control and manipulating him. And all of this shows that you know, she’s a confusing character at this point, because she’s stripping at a club dancing, and then she tries to steal something. Okay, that seems typical. But then she gets in this fight being chased in disguise looking for and she’s running, she jumps through skylights, like holy crap, you know, she’s like, really, you know, going for it not just running and screaming. And then she does what comes next and shit. But this whole time, she’s like, you know, very subservient to him, and totally holds for it. So it really shows her character all over the place, and you start to wonder a little bit, you know, what, what is she exactly? I mean, obviously, we know she’s a vampire, but she’s got a lot going for.
Rhys 18:11
Yes, the guy completely lowers his guard and closes the size. And then she produces a Garret and basically, she slices his head right off his shoulders. Yep. There you go. She does.
Stephen 18:23
Most gratuitous violence scene the whole movie.
Rhys 18:27
Yeah. Yeah, I think so. She soaks the apartment and gasoline and lights it on fire. Which I would like to point out is very inconsiderate to everyone else living in your apartment building. So
Stephen 18:40
again, she, you know, that’s another part of her. She didn’t care. You know about any of the people at the strip club, the guys who write answers to the people whose money she tried to take this guy the other apartment, she didn’t care. Yes, that’s an actually important aspect of her character.
Rhys 18:57
It is. So Clara, that’s Clara. And you might be wondering, where’s Eleanor this whole time, she strikes up a conversation with the old gentleman who invites her back to his apartment and before you start thinking, Oh, I don’t like where this is going. It’s not that at all.
Stephen 19:12
Right? They have an interesting conversation before that on the steps that he he. He looks like he’s looking into her soul. Like he’s like, I know who you are. Very. I mean, he dropped some very big hints, not weird connotation sexual stuff at all. It’s just very big ICU type thing. Yeah.
Rhys 19:34
And you come to find out why. They’re sitting in the apartment. He’s got this photo album, and he’s showing these pictures. And there’s this woman he loved. And I’m sure there’s, you know, I’m sure there’s a film critic out there who could tell me the whole meaning of this. But he goes into this story about this woman that he loved and it wasn’t his wife. It was his brother’s wife and she never knew and I’m just like, fascinating. But, you know, that’s like just a prune branch right there. It was this little story. It’s over now. So the story within, but he’s been collecting her pages from her stories as she’s been throwing them out. And he is tired of living. He’s old, all his friends are gone. And he’s basically asking her to kill him.
Stephen 20:23
He doesn’t even call her angel of mercy or something like that. Yes. And I think the whole story what I got from that, that he tells is that I why I took it and understood it is that recently, this woman he had pined over for literally his whole life had passed away. So to him there was no reason to continue living. The life he did have is gone. And this other lady that he had pined for is gone. There’s nothing left in life for him. Yeah,
Rhys 20:52
motive. I can see that nicely done. Um, so she, um, acquiesce to his demands. She has a thumbnail that grows rapidly and crazy sharp, but looks like a guitar pick that strapped to her her thing. She pulls his arm over and punctures his vein in his artery in his wrist, and then proceeds to suck the blood out of his wrist, which is nuts. Sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say it’s probably the most disturbing scene in the movie for me. 18 year old Sasha Ronan, sucking on some old guy’s wrist. Yeah, I
Stephen 21:33
don’t know. I think it was to be a little uncomfortable. But there’s a reason she’s doing it with him. And the whole thing is, a lot of the standard vampire tropes are gone. They’re not here. Right? And that’s the first one. She’s not sinking her fangs into his throat in this big dramatic, you know, Bela Lugosi scene, she pokes his wrist and just sucks the blood. And even when she brings her head up after she sucks them dry. There’s very little blood. Yeah, there’s all these like blood all over the but it’s not like that at all. It’s neat. It’s very efficient. Yeah. No, but I found it interesting though. After Clara cut off that guy’s head. She didn’t drink any of the blood. So I thought that was interesting.
Rhys 22:19
Um, and this right here in this early part of the movie, they define their roles as vampires. l. Eleanor sees herself as some sort of beneficial angel of death when she needs to feed, which we see later in the film. She will find someone who is older and wants to die. And somehow they recognize her as that. So she’s not she’s not taking victims as much as she’s helping people along.
Stephen 22:48
Yeah, she’s, you know, what was Kevorkian? Yes,
Rhys 22:52
yes. Yeah, exactly. Claire. On the other hand, Caesar, number one is Eleanor’s protector. But number two, she also sees herself as somebody who is purging the world of horrible people. And that’s her job in her eyes. That’s what she’s here for. Number one, she,
Stephen 23:15
she’s still almost an angel of mercy and death, just another side of it. So they’re closely linked. They just have different viewpoints of how they go about it and what they think is worthwhile. Right regard.
Rhys 23:29
Yeah. Um, so it turns out that Clara is Eleanor’s mother.
Unknown Speaker 23:39
And
Rhys 23:41
we’ll get to the flashbacks here in a second where they define everything, everyone’s role in things. But Claire turns out to be Eleanor’s mother. And as they’re leaving, cuz Eleanor leaves the guy’s apartment goes to go back to hers, sees what’s happened and like, lays in declara she liked it here. She wanted to stay here. You know, what’s the problem? Why do we have to leave? and Clara doesn’t even really take the time to, to explain. She’s just like, we’ve got to go now.
Stephen 24:17
She’s very upset. Yeah, very much so.
Rhys 24:22
So they start by hitchhiking. Again, this is not Count Dracula in his carriage with six coaches, and you know, a whole entourage of luggage and things. This is like two girls just summon a ride out on the road.
Stephen 24:40
Right. And it’s also important to note, they look like they’re only a couple years apart. Right? Because then they introduce themselves as sisters through most of the movie.
Rhys 24:52
Yes. And that actually turns out to be one of the ambiguous things from the play. When wire I had read In the play you because I read a critics review of it, you go through the entire play and at the end He’s like, she says she’s her mom. But I left the theater wondering if they’re sisters instead. So there was no real clarification in the in the stage play. Here there is when they go when they do the flashbacks, they clearly define who’s who. And I have two musical notes about this, and they come up right now and they’re back to back, which is really strange to me. But they’re back to back. The first is they this guy in the semi truck pulls over, and they climb into the semi truck. And then he pulls out. And as they’re pulling out, Clara trying to make Eleanor feel better, starts to sing a song, a British folk song. And eventually, Eleanor joins her and, you know, puts her head on her shoulder and they seem like to have worked out, hey, you burnt down my apartment. They seem to be past that now. The song she’s singing is called mother’s lament. And it’s a song It’s a silly little song about a poor mother who had a house full of kids. And she goes to wash the baby and he’s super skinny and she turns around to grab the soap and he slips down the drain and dies and his life’s better because he’s hanging out with the angels now. The only reason I know that is because of the band in the late 60s cream at the end of Disraeli gears their their huge breakthrough album. They did a recording of this song so I know it by heart. I know the lyrics.
Stephen 26:48
Yes. Okay.
Rhys 26:50
Um, but I think it it’s really it plays to a theme in the film is that, you know, it’s the mothers lament, you have this mother who’s wringing her hands over, you know, what happened to my baby boy. And here you have, Eleanor has just completed. I mean, you have Claire who’s just committed this horribly violent acts. And she did it to protect her baby girl.
Stephen 27:16
So that they definitely this and the other, there’s another one that they definitely use to good effect to help proceed the story along and help set the rolls. I mean, it was a very well chosen song, along with the other ones sing later.
Rhys 27:35
So the guy drops them off. They kind of walk across the field, they’re kind of you know, they’re roughing it. They’re just making their way and they end up at a seaside town. And Claire is like, this looks like it’ll do. And Eleanor instantly starts having flashbacks of You see, like girls in like 1800s habits, walking along the beach. And she’s like watching him. She’s like, I’ve been here before. Now songs playing behind this as well. And it goes from that into kind of a flashback scene. But the song that’s playing is Coventry Carroll. And it is an ancient Christian hymn that deals with the Massacre of the Innocents as told in Matthew, chapter two, verses 16 through 18. And if you know for all the people who aren’t familiar, King Herod was in charge of Jerusalem, and Israel. And when Jesus was born, these three wise men from some far from far kingdoms came this long distance to present him with gifts. And when they went to leave, Herod stopped them had been brought to his court and there’s like, what are you doing here? And they’re like, the King of the Jews has been born. What are you talking about, that’s what we’re here for. And then they left. Herod in his infinite wisdom decides to protect his throne he is going to order the massacre of all boys that are like under two years of age throughout the entire kingdom. Now Joseph and Mary and Jesus had left by then so they weren’t even in the place that this was happening. But you know, it took place and this him this is the central theme of this hymn, and it’s kind of like it goes through and it’s like, you know, Jesus was great and you know, thank God for all of this but you know, all you poor kids who died during the massacre, the innocence that was rough on you.
Stephen 29:49
What a way to sum it up.
Rhys 29:50
Yeah, I mean, it’s beautifully done. Yeah, that’s, that’s the that’s the whole feel of the song. And
Stephen 29:57
and when she sees we No, this is a flashpacker we should, you know, figure it out because she sees herself. Maronites the girl. Right? And this is also the first scene, I noticed that there’s a lot of red brought out in the scenes that it’s in the background. It’s just the splash of color that there’s a lot of somber neutral tones. But then you’ll see one thing that’s red in the scene quite often, it started popping out to me.
Rhys 30:28
Absolutely. Um So, while they’re there, Clara goes finds they’re just walking through this seaside amusement park, and Claire Aspies prostitutes and like their pimp, and she’s like, Huh, I can do business here apparently. So she tells Eleanor to go and enjoy yourself. You know, just go run around this strange town at night while I conduct some business here. This now we’ll start talking about the flashbacks, the past history, because this is where things start to tie together. I’m Clara at one time was a young girl living at the seaside and impoverished kids at that time. If you live near the sea could go down to the sea, and they would rake through the flotsam and jetsam and see if there was anything they could get that they could sell. There’s a particular food that they have in England, which we don’t eat here. It’s called cockles. And cockles are really just little tiny shellfish. I mean they’re like clams. And these guys put it on toast. They come pickled in a jar. I have relatives from England and you know, they love the stuff they brought they brought us I’m not a fan myself. But Claire is out there raking through the surf looking for stuff. And this very handsome man in a Navy shipments costume of and they say this happened around the Napoleonic Wars. So that lets you know roughly the kind of outfit he’s wearing. He shows up and asks her if she hands him one of these. And he asks her if they’re sweet. It’s got these kind of creepy sexual overtones because Clara it looks like she might be 14 at the time. He eats it, and then gives her a pearl. And he hands her this pearl. His name is darvel and it kind of solidifies him as he’s the good guy. Yeah. Now it’s not a pearl
Stephen 32:52
that with this, what you’re saying the connotations, innuendos, you know he’s giving this girl he thinks is a pearl, the pearl, it helped clarify that. Wait, yes,
Rhys 33:02
yes. Then another Navy guy comes up on horseback, which automatically tells you he’s a higher status than darvel. He is Captain ruthven. And he asks if she wants to take a ride. And darvel says don’t go with him, but she does anyways. And is so was the kind of thing that would happen back then. You have this young poor girl out there scrimping for whatever money she can get or food or sustenance. He just takes her to a whorehouse rapes her, and basically forces her into prostitution for the madam of the house. Yep. And when she says something like you just taken and left me with nothing. He flips her coin and says, I’ve given you a career. Like hey, you should be thanking me
Stephen 33:57
so chivalrous? Yes.
Rhys 33:59
Um, so she goes ahead, and she lives her life in this in this brothel. And Captain ruthven becomes like a regular whenever he’s in town, he comes in Caesar. At some point in time, she ends up pregnant with children with a child. And there’s a rule at the time, that you’re not allowed to have a child in the brothel. In this particular one, and Eleanor actually References This. At one point she says, she says, once upon a time I was born, and it’s still a fact that the day you were born is the day you’re most likely to be murdered. Most human souls are killed by their mothers hands, then by the hands of strangers. My mother tried to murder me but love confounded her. And that’s exactly what happened. She was holding the baby. The madam of the brothels like he can’t have that thing here. And she’s looking at the baby and she just falls in love with Eleanor baby Eleanor, and decides to give her up for adoption to the local church.
Stephen 35:10
And that’s, you know, the theme with Clara the whole movie, her main motivation is helping her daughter to, it may get twisted a little bit at times. Oh yeah, after so long being a vampire, but that’s her whole motivation is protecting her daughter taking care of her daughter, make sure your daughter has a good life to find that in this case, but you know,
Rhys 35:35
now Claire is still human at this point in time. So she drops Eleanor off at the church and says, as long as I’ll come back every month and check in on her and as long as she’s alive, I’ll drop off gold for the church. You guys can do whatever, just keep my baby alive. And she would come at night and climb up to the orphanage and look in through a window and see, you know, just check in to make sure she was there. Um, along the way, she ends up getting sick, because believe it or not the healthcare in seaside brothels in seven or 18th century England was not
Stephen 36:14
great. Yeah, but they didn’t like vaccines. So no,
Rhys 36:17
no, not so much. And you know, it’s hard to vaccinate against tuberculosis, which is what it looks like.
Stephen 36:22
She Yes, that’s what I thought it was too. Yeah, she’s coughing up blood. And there’s another important thing all you’re probably about to say the same thing or maybe, but the disease is a very blood based disease.
Rhys 36:38
Yep. Now, the good Captain comes to see her and no matter how sick she is, she still performs her duties because she still needs to be paid. So I’m Captain ruthven, comes back. And you can see he’s got like lesions on his face now from visiting one to many brothels. He is obviously in later stages of syphilitic syphilitic disease. So his mind might not even be working properly anymore. He’s probably spread this disease far and wide. He is just they basically took the man and put the outside of him to be as ugly as the inside of him was. Plus, he probably
Stephen 37:21
is passing this on. So becoming a vampire probably actually saves them along with the tuberculosis.
Rhys 37:28
Correct. Darvill shows up at the brothel. And he asks Claire if she remembers him and she does. But Captain ruthven seems very upset by seeing him and it turns out that he was injured and he was dying and ran into some darvel ran into some guys who knew this place they had this guy who knew of a place state stay kid come here. Yeah. So it’s basically like a sheltered cave on the side of the sea. You walk in it’s hard to get to you walk in and it appears that you die but you end up being cured of all the disease This is what darvel hears he shows up goes down apparently dies and Captain ruthven comes down and basically Rob’s his body lose his body and then hightails it out of there Yeah, he
Stephen 38:35
didn’t just die he’s like covered in blood. Yes, I must say the part movie where he goes, touch us some water and like Ruffin walks like you know 300 miles to the right by waterfall that I’m like, What? And he turns his back to get the water and I’m like, that was like the worst buy you know film scene in the whole movie in my opinion.
Rhys 38:59
Yeah. So this is why ruffins very surprised to see darvel he’s convinced he’s dead. Any You know? So when darvel theory starts giving him a step back he’s like I was just hanging on to this for you. wasn’t going to take it on is darvel sees that Ravel’s darvel sees that ruthven is in bad shape. And so he plans on giving him this map on how to get to this place. Clara stills the map. And she does this she shoots rough vanilla leg. Yeah, yep, yeah, shoots him in the leg, grabs the map and hightails it out of there. And she goes herself to this abandoned cave, walks down the cave and sees a replica of herself. And the replica proceeds to kill her and then all of the waterfalls in the islands start running red.
Stephen 40:01
Yeah, that was the most artsy, you know, seen
Rhys 40:10
a little over the top. Yeah. In my opinion. We got it. It does.
Stephen 40:16
Go ahead,
Rhys 40:17
though raises the question for me, are they actually being turned into vampires? Or is something else just taking their form in their memories? and leaving that? Yes.
Stephen 40:26
And that’s a good question because unlike most movies where you’d see the number one ancient vampire that’s all powerful, that’s the most hideous looking is the start, you know, you’d see one of those and there’d be a big scene with him changing them to a vampire. No, it’s it’s we’re not going to show this to you but hopefully you’re smart enough to figure it out. Yeah, that’s exactly what it is. Yeah,
Rhys 40:51
so it it I like the ambiguity of are they vampires or is this like this could be an alien race. You know, it’s just like hanging out in this place looking for some sort of corporeal form to take over
Stephen 41:04
and because it’s this one place it gets treated almost religiously? Yeah, you know, there’s some and with her being in the convent, you know, there’s a lot of religious overtones of this too, because it the the guys and this, it’s it is like a religion. It’s a very secretive religion in many ways.
Rhys 41:23
And she finds out all about it because they hunt her down the existing vampires hunter down and bring her back. And there is a vampire, a very distinct looking vampire there. His name is savella. Although I don’t know if they ever say it in the movie. It’s just listed on the cast sheet as savella played by Yuri gabrial. And he seems to be all in for we should just end this abomination and kill her now. There’s never been a woman vampire ever. in Darfur,
Stephen 41:57
I think
Rhys 41:58
that right? Much less one of low birth.
Stephen 42:02
Oh, yeah. That was Yeah,
Rhys 42:03
yeah. I mean, what did she do? She was a harlot. Oh, we don’t want anything to do with them. Darvill makes the case for her. And so they’re like, fine. You can we won’t kill you. But you have to follow our rules.
Stephen 42:20
And, and we don’t want to see you anymore.
Rhys 42:23
Yeah, yeah. Get out of our sight. You abomination. Right. But we don’t just don’t break any rules. She ends up breaking one of the rules.
Stephen 42:34
Yeah, probably cutting a guy’s head off. And that guy we’ve seen?
Rhys 42:39
Yes, yes. The guy whose head was removed was there with savella. When she was presented to them, she goes back to check on her daughter. And she’s not the only one who goes back to check on her daughter. Captain ruthven goes back to check on Eleanor as well. And proceeds to rape her there in the convent. And that seems to be okay with you know, the nuns because she’s an orphan girl. He’s a hybrid captain. He’s obviously he knows what he’s doing. But it’s not okay with Clara who sees it happen? and Clara comes rushing in and kills him. Very, very
Stephen 43:25
violently. Like we’ve already seen her do. I mean? Yes. Again, it’s that theme protected her daughter at all costs. Yep.
Rhys 43:32
And ruffins whole thing was, I mean, it wasn’t even like he was lusting after Eleanor. He didn’t know he she existed. He knew that Claire stole something from her. And so he was going to steal Eleanor from Clara, basically by giving her syphilis, just but in you know, giving her this horrific disease while she’s so young. Claire is not going to let that stand. She takes young Eleanor with her to the sacred place on the rocks, and proceeds to turn her into a vampire. And that’s when she breaks their rules. Yes, she is again made to do
Stephen 44:10
that. Which again, we see the reflection of Eleanor
Rhys 44:15
Yes. Yes. So they’ve been on the run from this vampire consortium ever since 200 years, for 200 years. Now we go back to the future. All of these flashbacks happen and little cuts throughout like I said to break pacing and things. We go back to the we go back to the modern times. And now I understand why Clara when she’s walking she happens to know where you can find a prostitute because she was one for so long. And she’s you get the feeling that this is something she does to supplement their income because they don’t have tons of inherited wealth squirreled away somewhere that they can live off of. So she’s gonna She gets some john, this kind of guy glasses, kind of clumsy looking. And then heading into like some lit up back part of some ride or something. Well,
Stephen 45:12
that’s where she’s at with the other pimp. They’re at an abandoned amusement park. It looks right. And she’s in one of those game booths with a lot of flashing lights. And the ones that were kind of focused on behind her were red. I noticed.
Rhys 45:28
Yeah. Yeah. With the whole vampire theme, and all yeah. So you know, she like gives the guy the price list. He gets this money out. His name is no, he then proceeds to break down because his mother’s just died. He owes a lot of bills. She had this whole hotel that she used to run, and he’s not doing a good job of it. And he’s just a lost soul. And she hears potel and no mother, and lost soul. And she’s like, I can work with this. To change. Yeah, she’s like, no, you’re going to take care of me now. And so they leave together.
Stephen 46:15
She doesn’t even see her. Her manipulation coming out again. She’s very, you know, changed attitude.
Rhys 46:22
While she was doing this, Eleanor was in town looking for stuff to do. And she’s walking past a window of, I don’t know, like an old folks home. I thought it was a restaurant. At first I did too. But everyone in there’s old, which makes me think it’s kind of a posh retirement community kind of thing where they like have waiters and things that come by and see if you need drinks or whatever. But there’s a grand piano in there. And I’m Eleanor walks in, off the street, sits down at the piano and starts playing Beethoven. Beautifully, beautifully. Um, fun fact. sitia. Ronan did not know how to play piano when she took that jack took that gig. She learned how to play all her piano parts in 12 weeks just by muscle rote memory.
Stephen 47:10
Hole. Wow, that’s now I’m very impressed by that. That’s Yeah, I know how hard that is. Yeah,
Rhys 47:16
this very sickly looking waiter guy comes over his name’s Frank. And he’s like trying to very awkwardly hit on her. And it’s, it’s kind of like the awkward in the hopeless meeting each other because neither one of them know how to do this. Right? He asks, Is she in England, not just England, a lot of places you have this whole culture of busking where people will just show up, put a hat down, start playing music, people throw money in the hat
Stephen 47:48
in New Orleans.
Rhys 47:50
Yeah. So he asks if you know if she’s got a hat to pass, and she’s like, I don’t have a hat, and then she runs away. She’s hanging out at seaside. little later, and Frank shows up, and he’s got money for her. He passed around a tea cup. And there’s some more very awkward flirtation, and she’s like, no, we’re done talking. And she leaves. And poor Frank just looks so dejected. Clarify answer with no. And she’s like, Look, this is no, he’s going to rescue us. He’s our knight in shining armor. And they go to the hotel and it is called the Byzantium.
Unknown Speaker 48:35
Yes.
Rhys 48:38
And this is where they’re going to live.
Stephen 48:41
So that’s the first Isaiah antium reference that I picked up. There’s one later I want to ask you about, so we’ll get to that, to the best
Rhys 48:49
of my knowledge. There are just those two. Okay. Okay.
Stephen 48:53
And the one the second one wasn’t even real clear. That now I’ll get to that in a bit.
Rhys 48:58
Yeah, we will. Um, so I’m going through my notes seeing where I where I want to pick up from clear as clear as idea is, this is a lovely place. No one’s easily manipulated, I can easily set up a brothel here. And so she heads back to the fairgrounds soon seduces the pimp. who’s running all these girls working there in the streets, he’s running them by paying them basically in drugs. She gets him to an isolated part of the of the beach. And, you know, he’s thinking he’s gonna have a great time and then she proceeds to feed off of him. And she says, the world will be more beautiful, beautiful without you, which I think perfectly encapsulates How Clara sees her role in the world to find these malignant tumors of society, and to excise them herself on occasions,
Stephen 50:10
but she turns around and does the same thing he was doing. But she does treat the girls better than
Rhys 50:15
he does. She runs into one of the girls is coming down off of her high and the girls like, want to just kill me in and Claire’s like not today. Not tomorrow, if you feel like it, I can help you out, but not today. And so she brings these girls back to the apartment back to the Byzantium and proceeds to just basically run it like a brothel. guys come in, pay for a good time with the girls that go upstairs. The odd thing that I found, and I guess it’s not odd, but Eleanor decides she wants to go to school. And so she’s walking along one day on the sidewalk and as she’s walking along, her she stepped into traffic or what I mean not like dangerously, but Frank happens to be going by a bicycle swerves to miss her, hit something falls over and cuts his arm. And blood just gushes everywhere. And seeing the guy being so sickly in the vast amount of blood. You know, he’s not right. health wise. Yeah, she feels responsible, she grabs his bicycle. She helps him go back to the house. But not only does she feel responsible, she’s lured in by the blood. Which you see in the end, when she gets to the house, meets his parents and they rushed him to the hospital. Turns out he has leukemia. He’s on blood thinners. So they got to get into the hospital right away. He leaves and drops his bloody rag, and she picks the rag up off the porch and proceeds to like slurp the blood out of it. Yeah. And she gets the big old Talon coming out of her thumb, which seems to be like an involuntary thing. It just when you’re
Stephen 52:03
more than shuttling things and stuff. Yeah. That and I was gonna mention too, it’s interesting that these two women are about 216. And like 230 years old, you know, they’re, they’re very close in age, but they’re like over 200 years old yet, they still fall into the same structure of I’m the mother, I’m going to take care of you and get a job you go play and she wants to go to school. And I find that a little weird or maybe it’s even saying you know, even though they’re vampires and they’re immortal, emotionally they don’t mature anymore. They don’t grow from that point. Right? Not just physically. That’s kind of I took it because it seemed odd. I need
Rhys 52:47
to mentality and emotionality ceases to mature just as the body did when it happened. Yeah. Which is really interesting take on vampires because a lot of plate interview with a vampire. They had the little girl vampire, you know, or if you’re playing Skyrim the Assassin’s guild has a little little girl vampire Who? She’s she knows she looks like a little girl. She uses it as a lure to get people but she’s not like in her head a little girl. She’s right. Sounds
Stephen 53:20
like Scotty Young’s I hate Fairyland.
Rhys 53:25
Yeah, okay. Um, Eleanor comes back to the house. The prostitutes gave her a little bit of grief. You know, kind of making fun of her. And Clara basically comes out and says, you do that again and you’re just out on your ass. I won’t have that in this house. This my sister. She’s nothing to do with any of this. Super protective. Clara goes to see Frank in the hospital. He’s sleeping. Frank’s mom shows up. And she’s like, well, don’t tell him I was here. I just wanted to see how he’s doing. And she leaves.
Stephen 54:00
And that’s another difference between a lot of vampires. They have feelings. They care. really care. Clara cares about Eleanor, not so much everybody else. Yep.
Rhys 54:11
And as Eleanor is leaving all the blood in the area starts to make her kind of jonesing. And she can again that weird Angel of Death thing she can sense there’s this patient who’s ready to go. She goes into the room. The patient’s there the patient’s like, Are you here for me? She’s like, I am Peace be with you. And proceeds to feed on the lady. The whole time this is happening. You see savella and Darnell darvel. They’re dressed as like g men like investigators in the goings first the apartment where the beheaded guy is, and then they go down to the apartment downstairs with a guy where Eleanor suck the guy’s wrist out. And so they’re like they’re chasing after they’re narrowing them down. Now,
Stephen 54:59
I have Question there? Yeah, why were they wearing the masks? I couldn’t figure out exactly why I understand the one was burnt but like the old man, you know, they but they were mask and once they looked around a bit, they took it off. But initially the word maybe it was to cover up their face for other people. Just because an investigation crime scene I wasn’t sure, but it was interesting that, you know, it stuck out to me. So
Rhys 55:28
sometimes, when I’m watching foreign films, there’ll be Cultural references that happened that I don’t get that could be. And it might be one of those things. They’re posing as policemen, maybe like the CSI teams in Britain, show up at a crime scene wearing masks. Yeah, you know,
Stephen 55:45
it was interesting. Yeah.
Rhys 55:49
Um, Frankie gets out of the hospital. And Frank and Eleanor happened to be in seems like your creative writing course. And it’s not like, you know, write this and bring it back. It’s like, lie on the floor, close your eyes. And you get the feeling that the professor even thinks What a load of crap. This is. Yeah, he
Stephen 56:13
came across a little bit, stuck on himself that I’m too good to be doing this. But I have to.
Rhys 56:18
Yeah. And Frank tells this story, which is really interesting about David Atkinson, when he was a kid, he didn’t have any friends because he was sick. And it turns out, he’s a he’s a, he’s an expat. He was American. And they left America, because his dad’s American, his mom’s British. They left America to come to England, because England has universal health care. And he had a horribly expensive disease. And so he is out of out of away from home in a way. But while he was there, he was ill, and he didn’t have any friends. So he had this imaginary friend named David Atkinson. And it turns out, David Atkinson was the name of a boy who used to live in the house and he died. The teachers like, literally rolling his eyes is like, Great story, Frank. Okay, people, here’s your assignment. But I think it’s really interesting that Frank has this ability to see the dead, and the person that he’s stuck on this one girl that we ever see him interact with. happens to be dead.
Stephen 57:28
Again, they’ve never clarified that. Exactly. And they kind of did with darvel you know what the undead thing but you know, it definitely was is a lot more ambiguous in this movie. Yeah. And, and the other thing I find interesting is his parents did just about anything take care of him, which is what clarens do with Eleanor so they have that similarity. And yeah, you know, he sees paranormal something and he hooks up with the one paranormal girl in the whole freakin town.
Rhys 57:58
Yes, who just so happens to have recently moved in. He invites her tours to his birthday party. And here we have. We have these two conflicting things that aren’t really in conflict. They want to be in conflict, but they don’t even want to they feel they have to be in conflict, because Frank wants nothing more than to be completely 110%. In Eleanor’s life, and Eleanor wants nothing more than to be able to tell someone her tale just to be able to talk it, get it off her chest, the catharsis of actually being able to tell somebody, but she knows. Clara has said and we don’t hear Clara say it until later. But Clara has told her in the past knowledge means death. If people know who we are, we must kill them. So she is super reluctant to do this. And the kid I mean, these two paths are just you know, they’re going along parallel like this and they want to touch but there’s this whole Claire is going to kill you if she finds out. Um, so what Eleanor decides to do Is she writes your story like she always has, but instead of throwing it away, she gives it to Frank to let him read. Frank thinks the story is made up he thinks she’s just having a game. She insists she’s not. Frank makes the horrible mistake of giving it to the stupid lazy s Creative Writing teacher. He proceeds to give it some other woman because he’s concerned for Eleanor now he’s like, who writes like this? There’s something going on.
Stephen 59:42
And she said it’s good. Even says it’s really good. It’s really good.
Rhys 59:48
Um, she specifically References sunart which is really weird to me. Sue snot, Su c na n T. It’s a super obscure.
Stephen 1:00:06
sucrose.
Rhys 1:00:07
sucrose sukrin. Zhu Korea. Yes, yeah. Super obscure vampire reference. And the thing that’s very interesting to me is that it’s not even a European vampire reference to Koreans are actually part of and this is one of the things vampires with me, I hate how they have a whole laundry list of things to defeat a vampire. They’re susceptible to this to this to this, and a whole laundry list of special powers they have. I get how that happens. Because the vampire mythology comes from lots of different cultures. Yeah. And they just like, mash them all together with a big thing. And they’re like, now there you go. So Sue Koreans are actually Caribbean based vampire witches. Yeah. So it’s really not a European type thing at all. But interesting choice of words.
Stephen 1:00:57
Yeah. And here’s, I’ll bring this up. And I know it’ll probably be touched upon later, it was an island. So that kind of falls along those lines, and the movies Byzantium. And when you look it up, the only thing that really comes up is the Byzantium Empire, which is gone. And so I took it to mean that that island was originally enhanced, inhabited by people from the Byzantium Empire, this whole growth of the vampire religion is from that era that goes by as a teen era type thing. Yes. And then, you know, it’s just hey, here’s an Easter egg, the name of the hotel happens to so it’s almost like they’re going full circle and coming around and starting this whole vampire religion again, from the hotel, because, you know, they go from there.
Rhys 1:01:46
That’s an awesome take. I always saw the hotel as being Byzantium. Because the Byzantium Empire was incredibly powerful and successful. Until it wasn’t right. And when it when it wasn’t, it fell. And the same thing happens to the Byzantium empire that Clara has created here,
Stephen 1:02:11
right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, true.
Rhys 1:02:15
So these teachers are worried about her well being. And so they think they might have to get the authorities involved. So Claire, Eleanor gets invited to Frank’s birthday. And as a gift, she gives him this box and inside the box, little rolled up piece of paper. I don’t know that he ever actually unrolls it. But it’s pretty clear to me she’s giving him the map. To the special secret Island. Yes. Oh, she can’t.
Stephen 1:02:56
She has to kill him. She told the story. But if not, you attending? I have an alternative plan. Yeah. Right.
Rhys 1:03:07
So she gives him that as a gift. The teachers in Meanwhile, contact the authorities who happened to show up to be darvel and savella. Who are talking to this female member of staff
Stephen 1:03:21
now, before this, the teacher is interviewing Eleanor. Yeah, they have a very interesting conversation, because Eleanor essentially tells the truth, but that she’s not believed.
Rhys 1:03:31
Yes, not at all. And there’s a scene somewhere in there where Eleanor is playing the piano again. And what she’s playing technically amazing. And the fact that she learned to do that in 12 weeks blows my mind.
Stephen 1:03:46
Yeah, if she’s getting out a rage, because it’s it’s very fast and aggressive. Yes. I wasn’t sure what it was.
Rhys 1:03:53
The first one is Beethoven. And you know, if you’re familiar with Beethoven’s kind of lifting kind of stuff, there can be complexities to playing Beethoven, but the other one was, it was moving. And I was impressed. Yeah. Um, so, the male teacher goes to Byzantium to talk to Clara. And first Claire thinks he’s they’re looking for a prostitute. When he tells her what’s going on, she proceeds to go into full Clara mode, seduce him, and then kill him.
Stephen 1:04:29
Yeah, she teases. Yeah.
Rhys 1:04:31
Yeah, because, you know, he’s like, this is all ludicrous. And then she’s like, Okay, fine. And then she basically says, but I’m a vampire, and you’re going to die now. So and the same thing happened with Eleanor and the female basically is Eleanor’s like, cards on the table. This is what I am and the teachers like how am I supposed to believe this and she’s like, when you’re old. And everything about you hurts and you see me walking down the street. Then you’re going to know and you’ll call for me. So they both kind of play into their roles with the two different teachers. Just Eleanor’s is more of a I don’t want to say a veiled threat but it’s kind of like you’re going to get old. You’re going to need me someday.
Stephen 1:05:19
Yeah, yeah, not really a threat. She’s just almost like, tired of dealing with it all.
Rhys 1:05:25
Yes. So when Eleanor shows up, I mean, when you know, no one shows up to buy santim she and Clara get into it because Claire is like, How could you do this? I’m gonna go kill that boy. You know what’s gonna happen? knows like, everyone just calm down. It’s gonna be fine. Or little nerd guy. Yeah. Yeah, you see what’s coming. Eleanor gets in the elevator and rides down. Clara forces the elevator door open and pour Knoll, falls into the open elevator shaft and dies. This poor nerd guy’s got this beautiful, super hot, 200 year old vampire. pimp living in her house living in his house. He knew he had to come to some geeky end like I’m gonna trip over my feet fall down. They say elevators.
Stephen 1:06:17
It was very quick. It wasn’t even a struggle. Yeah.
Rhys 1:06:21
I’m Clara informs Eleanor that she’s going to go kill Frank. And that’s that and she leaves. Eleanor reaches up and manages to get poor dead an old cellphone and bring it down. And this is one of the things that I should have mentioned earlier, but now’s as good a time as any. One of the few vampire tropes that they have is that the vampires cannot enter home unless they’re invited in.
Stephen 1:06:53
Oh, yes. That was the one they kept. I noticed. Yeah, yep.
Rhys 1:06:57
Garlic, sunlight. None of that stuff’s an issue. She shows up outside of Frank’s house. And he opens the door and he knows right away who she is. And she’s like, aren’t you gonna invite me? And he’s like, no. Why would I do that?
Stephen 1:07:17
So now he believes
Rhys 1:07:18
Yes. Yeah. He had his doubts. He thought she was messing with him for the longest time. Now he knows, oh, this is a real freaking thing
Stephen 1:07:26
after the map. And he’s also getting desperate because it sounds like he’s doesn’t have a good prognosis to live. Joe. He does not point out also, the second disease of the movie is another blood. Blood disease.
Rhys 1:07:38
Yep, absolutely. So Eleanor calls him on the phone saying, Claire is coming and he’s like, Hello, too late. She’s here already. And then darvel and savella show up at Byzantium. And with the female teacher with the female teacher at Clara, here’s it. Clara starts making a beeline back to Byzantium. Let’s savelic end up killing the teacher. Not yet. But yeah, yeah. In the car, right. So they managed to get Eleanor out, get her into a car, they start driving along. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Claire is on their windshield.
Stephen 1:08:34
She throws herself at the moving car.
Rhys 1:08:37
She does a bit she punches through the windshield. And she’s like crying. It’s Avella? Slow Ville, it hits the brakes. And it’s really, if you ever seen the Mythbusters where they’re like, How easy is it to hang onto a moving car? Have you seen that way? next to impossible, right? They slam on the brakes. And there is like a pause. Like a 22nd pause before she falls off the hood. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, if you hit the brakes, the person’s gone instantly. This is like her and then she
Stephen 1:09:18
they transfer the energy. Yes, it all stirred up and then it like it was like a magnet. Right?
Rhys 1:09:25
kinetic and potential energy there. So she’s lying on the ground Sevilla plants runner over, drives over where she should be and she’s gone. So he gets out of the car. He’s chasing after her. She comes out of nowhere, wraps a chain around his neck and starts doing the whole thing like she was with the Garret
Stephen 1:09:45
till obviously they still heal pretty fast. I mean, obviously he will. sicknesses. She just got hit and run over and now she’s fighting. So yeah, see, but again, unlike most vampire movies, they don’t show everything knitting back together and all that, right? It’s just well,
Rhys 1:10:06
and there’s none of the super leaping or you know any of that crazy kind of stuff that you see in Bizarro vampire movies that, you know, the Twilight’s and stuff. There’s none of that. I mean, this is a woman with a chain around his neck and her knee in his back. And I kept thinking, you’re not going to pull that through his neck?
Stephen 1:10:22
If you do, I’d be very impressed. Yes.
Rhys 1:10:25
Um, Darnell, comes over and intercedes and hangs on to her. It’s Avila goes and gets a sword out from his trunk. Yeah. And here’s your second Byzantium reference. He got it during the Krissy crusades at the fall of Byzantium. Yeah. He presents it to Darnell. Until sir, now it’s his his honor. Dardanelles honor to kill this abomination.
Stephen 1:10:53
Now, I’ve wondered, but the sword? What if, if that’s the only connection that really has, or if there’s some other mystical connection with the sukrin that’s in the cave, on the island. It left it wide open. I mean, it’s like okay, this sword just seems like a normal sword. So who cares? But the name of the movie and where it’s from it just I thought about that for a while that it’s somehow seems like it might be and it was in a nice case, you know, very well taken care of. And, yeah, so that was unclear.
Rhys 1:11:26
Your theory about the secret and the Byzantium Empire and all that really helps this a lot. Yeah, I just figured, because for me, the end of this movie is trash. And I just figured this was a holdover from the play. And it had meaning in the play. But here the producers are like, ooh, sword, no, use that. And they just throw it back into the scripts, you know, for dramatic effect. But it’d be your theories a lot better than mine.
Stephen 1:11:58
Well, that’s why there’s two of us doing the podcast.
Rhys 1:12:00
That’s right. Darnell, of course, ever, the gentleman will not kill her. He notes that he does note that Eleanor is wearing the pearl that he presented Clara around her neck on a necklace. So obviously, you know that pearl he gave her so long ago made an impact. He be heads savella instead that to wrap the movie up. He and Clara seem to end up a team. Eleanor comes up to give Claire a hug. And then Claire is like you’re on your own now kid, you got to grow up sometime. You’re 216 years old, you shouldn’t be live with your mom. So she kicks her
Stephen 1:12:47
butt again, you know the what we were talking about that if they’re emotionally in that aren’t maturing, it’s still you know, fit. So But with that, so you got our derval and Clara. So I think the sequels going to be like a buddy cop movie. Yes, yeah, that’s exactly what they’re planning.
Rhys 1:13:06
You can’t keep me in darvel. And then, Eleanor takes poor Frank out to the islands. And he proceeds to join her in the vampiric eternity, which is their bizarre afterlife.
Stephen 1:13:24
Right. Now, the apparate Abul aberration created an aberration correct. And, and then here’s my other question. So we’ve only seen a few members of this society. And the only one left that we’ve seen is darvel. But they’re still on the run. So obviously, there’s many, many more elsewhere.
Rhys 1:13:46
darvel says as they’re walking away, Claire is like, are they going to come after us? And darvel says the Brotherhood is strong. Yeah, so it hints at Oh, there’s plenty more where this came from? Um, so that’s the movie. People who will like this. You showed me there’s actually a fan page for this. Yeah, this year 2012 movie, which just goes to show that vampires sell. Yeah, I mean, there are people who are dedicated to vampires. They’re into this. And again, for me, I don’t even like vampire movies and saying that I went through the list of projected movies for this season. Three of them are vampires. We must just be getting all the good ones out of the way, I guess.
Stephen 1:14:35
Yeah. So if you like vampire movies, just stay with season one after that. Who knows?
Rhys 1:14:39
Yeah, you’re not gonna hear about much. But that’s what I loved about this was that you didn’t have the whole Yeah, there was this hint of a secret society and everything but it was not so prevalent, like interview with a vampire. That’s like the whole thing. There’s just vampires everywhere. And they Yeah, that’s always been my issue with vampires. They try and force them into the mainstream. And it’s like, there’s no way that would exist. Yeah, at all. For me, the money falls apart at the end, based on two points, the first of which is they’ve gone through this whole movie talking about how you can be born with a silver spoon in your mouth. And that’s going to pay dividends for the rest of your eternal life. Just like darvel or even, even ruffman, a horrible person, but because he was someone of class and wealth, he was a captain and he was, was promoted to captain of Her Majesty’s Navy, he could do anything he wanted. The lower classes, the Clara’s get stepped on constantly, they just get absconded with and turned into prostitutes. If you know that’s what the wealthy people want to do. So they have that theme. And then there’s the whole theme of the patriarchy, right? Because the Brotherhood is a brotherhood, there are no women, and they have rules and you’re going to listen to them, You useless harlot, what have you done with all your time, we’re not going to help you, we don’t even want to see you. And then in the end, she still can’t defeat the patriarchy on her own. She has to be rescued by a man.
Stephen 1:16:24
That’s true. I didn’t even catch that.
Rhys 1:16:26
And it just seems like such a miss for me. For me, she would have killed savella. And she would have let darvel live just out of her. You know what you did me a solid once and I’m gonna let this one slide. And that, that right in the perfect ending to this movie,
Stephen 1:16:44
you’re right. It’s kind of the same issue I said, with the last house on the left the remake that it felt like the mother should have been the major one killing everybody. But they they they set it up for that it was perfect for that. And then the dad did most of it. And I was like, well, that kind of made it so yeah, this You’re right. This is kind of the same thing if you’re going to bring those out. And that makes this a very modern movie with all the things going on in our our culture, with women’s rights and feminists still, even to this day, and women showing a lot of strong women in stories in the movies. It’s a big push right now, in this movie, even though it’s several years old fits that very well. And you’re right, that kind of backs off on it.
Rhys 1:17:28
Yeah, really stumbled right at the right at the end zone, they just completely dropped the ball. The other problem is a plot point issue for me. Eleanor takes Frank to the island, and takes him down into the thing. If this happened once, 200 years ago, why doesn’t the Brotherhood have somebody watching the island?
Stephen 1:17:47
Which, okay, the only thing I would say against that is if this is religious, quasi religious, like we were saying that there probably could be a religious reason not to be on the island. Or maybe, you know, the secret would kill anyone that’s left on the island, and they can’t leave. I mean, there could be they don’t show it in the movie, right? But you could argue it, at least, philosophically. That
Rhys 1:18:13
being said, I love the movie. Those are just the two things that it only comes up at the end. Because Yeah, you the first time when Clara goes well, she’s the first. Of course, she can sneak in because the vampires like no one’s ever gonna find this place. But she does because she’s got the map. And then she goes and makes an abomination herself. So from that point on, you would want somebody guarding it. And then in the end, when Eleanor shows up, and there’s nobody there they just walk right in. I’m like, yeah, that seems a little weak. But
Stephen 1:18:45
it also could show the ego you know, we’re all powerful. We nobody can defeat us. And suddenly there’s this woman putting a cog in the raising the cogs and messing things up the hubris. Yeah, very much so.
Rhys 1:18:59
Yeah. But other than that, I just love this film. It’s beautifully done. It actually did win some awards. It was nominated for about seven or so it won two. And they were if does, which are basically the Irish version of the Baptists, which is the British version, the Oscars if you want to tie all that stuff back. And I also love how VAT how horror movies. And our next movie, we’ll talk about this more horror movies makes very strange bedfellows. So here you have a British playwright who does a screenplay for an Irish director, who gets funded with Irish public funds and shoots the movie in England, set in England. And then it gets released everywhere Britain, the United States. So it makes these really weird pairings. We mentioned it during martyrs because The guy who did martyrs, you know, that was even a French Canadian herring. He did when he did St. Ann’s, he did it in French and English because it was happening in Belgium.
Stephen 1:20:11
And the next one’s got similar things with Council. Yes, absolutely things I was going to mention also, we talked about the song they sang earlier in the movie later in the movie, they sing another which sounds like a folk song him or whatever. And that one has to do with blood. So again, the whole blood theme. And then one thing they say that Eleanor says, and I think I hear darvel also bring it up, basically, eternal life comes to those who are ready to die. And that’s got a double meaning. Because Eleanor’s giving these older people eternal life going to heaven, but darvel, and for all of them, if you’re ready to die, then the sukra will take you and you’ll become a vampire. Yeah. And it’s interesting how the vampires can’t create our vampires only the sukrin can do,
Rhys 1:21:06
right. Yeah, it’s another vampire trope that they kind of broke. Yeah. I had mentioned to you that. For the first this is our third movie. Yes, right. Yeah, yeah, our first third movie, all of our friends, our pairing, friends have all had the same kind of stereotypes. You have the one who’s all about getting everything done. And then you add the other one who’s all about, you know, kind of like the dream. So in this case, you had Clara who was all about getting everything done. You had Eleanor, who was all about, you know, being the kindly Angel of Death to people in the battery, you had Mickey who was all about, I just want life to be what it was, and you had been it was all about we’re going to survive. And then you had the same thing in martyrs, because you had the one girl who was all about, I’m going to get vengeance on these people, then yeah, the other one who walked around and just took care of her the whole time.
Stephen 1:21:59
And all three of them, and the world changes for them, their relationship doesn’t stay the same. And everything in their world changes. Yeah.
Rhys 1:22:09
And that theme is about to change. Because the movies that come after this, you know, I think the next one, you’d be hard pressed to make that argument. Yeah, in the next movie. I know, in in the ones following, cuz I’ve been watching ahead. It doesn’t, it doesn’t. It doesn’t come up again. But these first three definitely similar themes, similar character arc types through the whole thing.
Stephen 1:22:43
Hmm, yep. Well, the next one definitely is different. I think this is gonna be the first one, we get some disagreement on some things. And our feelings on it. So that’ll be interesting.
Rhys 1:22:54
Yeah, I suppose I don’t think it’s gonna be as heavy of a disagreement as you think, okay,
Stephen 1:22:59
we’re not gonna be screaming and throwing things. Right? Never have it’ll be a good discussion. So, all right. I think that covers it for Byzantium good movie to go see
Rhys 1:23:10
if you know, absolutely. It’s not impossible to find.
Stephen 1:23:13
No, it was one of the easier ones for us to find. Yep, so cool. All right, man. Then we’ll talk next time in little hint. That’s the triangle. Awesome.
