Kent Film Club (Season 2023 Episode 11)
This week Chris Deacy is joined by Alex Davis to discuss the films; Clash of the Titans, Star Trek IV, Hidden Figures, and The Green Mile.
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TVTranscript
00:00 (dramatic music)
00:02 - Hello and welcome to Kent Film Club.
00:15 I'm Chris Deasy and each week I'll be joined
00:18 by a guest from Kent to dive deep into the impact
00:21 certain films have had on their life.
00:24 Each guest will reflect on the films
00:26 which have meant the most to them over the years.
00:29 And every week there will be a Kent Film Trivia
00:31 where we quiz you at home about a film
00:34 that has a connection to the county.
00:36 And now let me introduce you to my guest for this week.
00:40 After working in the accounts department
00:43 of her parents' small business,
00:44 she is currently doing a doctorate on OVID.
00:47 She is also an outreach ambassador.
00:50 She is Alex Davis.
00:52 Great to have you on the programme, Alex.
00:54 - Good to see you, Chris.
00:54 - And we're gonna start with your first film
00:56 which I think I saw on television
00:58 when I was very young, "Clash of the Titans".
01:01 - Yes, absolutely.
01:04 As you said, my PhD is in Latin poetry.
01:08 But my love of Greek mythology stems from
01:12 the films of Ray Harryhausen and this one in particular.
01:16 And that's really what launched my fascination
01:18 with the subject all those years ago.
01:20 - So when you watched this, when you were really,
01:22 I mean, you couldn't have imagined,
01:23 of course, all those years later
01:25 that you'd be studying this in an academic context.
01:27 But what was the thrill of "Clash of the Titans"
01:29 when you were growing up?
01:30 - I think even then, you recognise the skill
01:32 of Harryhausen's animation,
01:34 which even really now hasn't dated.
01:36 But the excitement and the thrill of the stories,
01:39 the monsters, I still love a good creature feature.
01:42 So the monsters and the beautiful Pegasus as well.
01:46 So it's lots of fun.
01:47 And you know, Harry Hamlin running about wearing a cloak.
01:51 - Because this is the sort of thing,
01:51 you'd have all these big names to ask
01:53 'cause Laurence Olivier is in this, isn't he?
01:55 - Yes, yes.
01:55 - And they would be appearing in this sort of thing,
01:57 which I always remember like "Friday Nights" on BBC One.
02:02 And "The Land Before Time" was another one
02:04 from that kind of era.
02:05 And it was that sense of, you know,
02:08 as somebody really young, seven or eight at the time,
02:10 that journey into another world, another time.
02:13 So influential.
02:15 Like those who've chosen Indiana Jones,
02:17 even in this series, the sense of,
02:19 I saw this when I was young,
02:20 and then I knew I wanted to be an archaeologist.
02:23 It sounds as though you've had a similar journey.
02:25 - Yes, I've always,
02:27 and I'm convinced it came from these,
02:30 that I'm fascinated by Greek myth.
02:33 And I had a copy, my parents bought me a copy
02:36 of Roger Lancelin Green's "Tales of the Greek Heroes,"
02:38 which I now know to be retellings
02:41 for young people of Ovid's metamorphosis.
02:44 So it launched me on that interest in my subject now.
02:48 But they're just really, really entertaining as well.
02:51 And this one, really, plenty of monsters,
02:54 including poor old Medusa.
02:55 - How do you feel watching it now,
02:58 as somebody who perhaps understands
03:01 the ancient world outside of the film
03:05 as a primary resource?
03:07 - I think the important thing is just still always
03:10 to keep it as something which you love
03:12 and something which is entertaining.
03:14 But I've just finished reading Natalie Haines' book,
03:17 "Stone Blind," which is the Medusa story,
03:20 but told from a number of different experiences,
03:23 but mostly from Medusa herself.
03:25 And she was a priestess,
03:26 and her punishment was to be turned into this monster.
03:30 And so she was punished for something terrible
03:33 that happened to her.
03:34 And then along comes our friend Perseus
03:36 and lops her head off
03:37 and uses her to deal with another monster.
03:39 So there are discomforts around those,
03:44 certainly ancient attitudes to women,
03:47 unfortunately, a lot of which remain now.
03:51 But I try and ignore that if I watch it,
03:54 because it still makes me happy.
03:57 But there are a lot of modern retellings
04:00 of these classical myths,
04:01 many from female authors,
04:03 which are so entertaining and so fascinating,
04:06 but turn on the head the way we think about these stories.
04:11 - Because there was another version of this film,
04:12 of course, in more recent years.
04:14 And the look on your face gives every indication.
04:17 We don't have to talk about that one.
04:18 But do you think that this version gets it right
04:21 in a way that that version gets it so wrong?
04:24 - I think whenever anyone remakes a film,
04:27 I think if you love a film and somebody remakes it,
04:29 it's always a problem to start with anyway.
04:31 But this is the one I grew up with.
04:36 I have seen the newer version,
04:38 and it's, again, good, fun, creature feature,
04:41 lots of entertaining stuff, lots of battles.
04:43 But it's not the same.
04:46 It's not the same.
04:47 It's only great, actually, when Buvo the Owl turns up,
04:50 and he's still original,
04:51 and he still makes that lovely clangory noise.
04:55 Apart from that, no, I prefer this one.
04:57 - And when you watch this version of "Clash of the Titans,"
05:01 even with all your academic studies
05:04 and the fact that you obviously see things
05:06 through a very different lens from your first viewing,
05:09 do you still remember that primary visceral sense
05:14 that this was awesome?
05:15 - Yeah, absolutely.
05:16 I was seven or eight when this film came out,
05:19 and it's still one of my favourite films.
05:23 I have the DVD at home.
05:24 I've never gone onto Blu-ray, but I have the DVD at home,
05:26 and it's something I'll sit and watch now and then
05:28 just to have something that's comforting.
05:30 My dad recorded this and the other Harryhausen ones,
05:33 the Sinbad ones, and Jason and the Argonauts, of course,
05:38 on video, and I used to sit and watch them as a kid
05:41 on a rainy Saturday afternoon.
05:42 So my connection is to this film,
05:45 and I love the story and all the rest of them,
05:48 but it's fantastic. - Well, fantastic.
05:49 Well, thank you, Alex.
05:50 Well, it's now time to move on to your second chosen film,
05:54 also from the 1980s.
05:56 You've chosen "Star Trek IV," "The Voyage Home."
06:00 - I began watching "Star Trek," the original series,
06:05 with my dad when I was six, seven.
06:09 They used to rerun them on Tuesday evenings,
06:13 I think it was, on BBC Two.
06:14 Just, I loved, again, the entertainment value of it,
06:18 but also some of the things that "Starfleet"
06:20 and the Federation stood for this much,
06:22 this inclusive idea.
06:24 I didn't understand that when I was six or seven years old,
06:27 but they were lovely people doing a dangerous job,
06:30 but having some fun with it, it was sometimes painful,
06:34 sometimes sad, sometimes very, very funny,
06:36 and then this one makes me laugh.
06:39 And I have loved Mr. Spock since I was a kid.
06:42 So, again, it's one of those childhood connections.
06:45 - One of the first films I saw at the cinema,
06:47 may have been the very first film,
06:49 would have been in the very late '70s,
06:51 would have been "Star Trek II."
06:53 So, seeing them all out of order.
06:54 I remember seeing it again at the cinema
06:55 just a year or two ago.
06:57 But what is it about the "Star Trek" movies,
06:59 because of course there's the big TV series as well,
07:02 what is it about the movies,
07:04 and this one in particular, that's so distinctive?
07:07 - I think this one in particular is ahead of its time,
07:10 because this came out in 1986,
07:11 was directed by Leonard Nimoy,
07:13 and he wrote a lot of the story,
07:14 including also a little nerdy detail.
07:16 He was the sound effect of the noise,
07:19 that womp, womp, womp noise that the probe makes.
07:22 They did some tests and decided
07:24 they couldn't find the right sound.
07:25 And he's like, "No, this is what it should sound like."
07:26 And yeah, little nerd moment there.
07:28 But this was ahead of its time,
07:30 because they were talking about ecological issues,
07:32 about issues with what humans are doing to our planet,
07:36 and the dangers that that holds in our future.
07:39 This is a space probe that arrives,
07:42 tries to talk to the Humpback Whales,
07:43 doesn't find any, and proceeds to set about
07:46 destroying the planet.
07:47 And this awesome group of people go rushing back to 1986,
07:52 find a couple of Humpback Whales,
07:54 drag them forwards, and drop them off in San Francisco Harbor
07:59 by nearly crashing into the Golden Gate Bridge.
08:02 And they tell the probe in what Admiral Kirk
08:06 at that point refers to as telling the probe
08:08 what to go do with itself.
08:10 And it's fun, but it's also an important idea.
08:15 - And there's something about San Francisco, isn't there?
08:17 Because I remember time after time
08:18 that came out in the very late '70s, David Warner,
08:20 again with the whole Jack the Ripper story
08:22 and setting that in modern day San Francisco
08:25 through the HG Wells time machine.
08:26 But it sounds like you've got a similar
08:28 kind of plot device here, albeit with whales.
08:31 - Yes, yes, I suppose so.
08:35 And that's in this universe is where Starfleet Academy
08:40 and the Starfleet headquarters is.
08:42 So it makes sense that that's where they're located
08:45 and that's where they come back to,
08:47 despite the fact, of course, they could fly around
08:48 the planet in a few minutes,
08:49 so it wouldn't actually be a problem.
08:51 But it's set in for what at the point
08:56 was modern day San Francisco.
08:58 So that must have made a certain amount
08:59 of the filming a bit easier.
09:01 Yeah, I think they're lots of fun
09:04 and I'm emotionally attached to them, they're great.
09:06 - And did you grow up with the TV series as well?
09:10 - Yes, yes.
09:11 My dad and I used to watch that when I was a kid.
09:16 And yeah, it was always fun at that point.
09:20 Looking back now, there are some issues
09:23 with some of the ways they deal with things,
09:26 those late 1960s ideas about,
09:30 even then about how people deal with women
09:34 or whatever, and there are some problematic,
09:36 deeply problematic scenes that make you wince now.
09:40 But at the heart of it, it's a really positive idea
09:45 and it's like this is glorious entertainment,
09:49 as well as them having some serious things
09:52 to say about inclusivity.
09:54 And the problems that 1960s had with that,
09:59 and again, that we still do.
10:01 So it speaks to me on a number of different levels.
10:04 This one is just entertaining,
10:06 Mr. Spock's alive again, and that's wonderful,
10:08 and they're having a good time.
10:10 And yeah, it's great.
10:11 - Because there's so much about the Star Trek universe
10:13 in terms of the way that the worldview,
10:15 I mean, all the fandom that's associated with it
10:18 and the conventions, and the way that, of course,
10:20 you literally had, well, the next generation,
10:23 but the way that this has really worked
10:25 from so many people's childhood,
10:27 and they feel very precious, very attached
10:30 to the whole Star Trek universe.
10:33 - Definitely.
10:34 I certainly am, the T-shirt in evidence.
10:37 Yeah, it's something that I remember as a kid,
10:41 and I was attached to, I used to watch it with my dad,
10:43 so that was cool.
10:44 And I still love it.
10:47 And periodically, again, sit down and watch the series,
10:51 or whatever, if it's on the TV while I'm doing the dinner,
10:53 I'll sit and I'll stand and watch it
10:55 while I'm doing the dinner.
10:56 And I know the script by now in a really nerdy way.
11:00 It makes me happy, but it also had serious lessons,
11:06 but this makes me laugh, and it also makes me cry,
11:10 as indeed, Rathakhan does at the end when Spock dies.
11:14 I cry just, I mean, default, every single time I watch it.
11:17 - Well, it sounds very infectious.
11:20 Okay, well, that's about all the time we have
11:23 for this first half of the show.
11:25 However, before we go to the break,
11:27 we have a Kent film trivia question for you at home.
11:31 During the filming of which The Lord of the Rings film
11:35 did Kent-born actor Orlando Bloom
11:38 fall off his horse and get injured?
11:41 Was it A, The Fellowship of the Ring?
11:44 Was it B, The Two Towers?
11:47 Or was it C, The Return of the King?
11:51 We'll reveal the answer right after this break.
11:53 Don't go away.
11:55 (dramatic music)
11:57 Hello, and welcome back to Kent Film Club.
12:08 Now, just before the ad break,
12:10 we asked you at home a Kent film trivia question.
12:13 During the filming of which The Lord of the Rings films
12:16 did Kent-born actor Orlando Bloom
12:19 fall off his horse and get injured?
12:22 Was it A, The Fellowship of the Ring?
12:25 B, The Two Towers?
12:26 Or C, The Return of the King?
12:29 And now I can reveal to you that the answer was in fact A,
12:34 The Fellowship of the Ring.
12:35 During production of the film
12:37 in which he appears in the role of Legolas,
12:39 he sadly broke one of his ribs
12:41 as a result of falling from his horse.
12:43 Did you get the answer right?
12:45 Well, it's time now, Alex,
12:46 to move onto your next chosen film,
12:49 and you've chosen Hidden Figures.
12:51 - Yes, I didn't see this until relatively recently,
12:57 but caused by my Star Trek obsession,
13:01 I've been a space nerd since I was a kid as well,
13:04 and they really started that interest in me.
13:08 So I have an undergraduate degree
13:10 from the Open University in geosciences,
13:13 and there was astronomy, cosmology,
13:15 planetary science in that,
13:16 and that again is all inspired by that.
13:18 So very excited about NASA things.
13:20 And my partner Owen recorded this,
13:23 and we sat and watched it,
13:24 and this is the story of these three ladies,
13:26 but also a big group of black females
13:30 who are working for NASA during the time of the space race.
13:34 And it tells their story,
13:37 which was quite literally hidden.
13:39 But these are mathematicians, these are scientists,
13:42 these are incredibly smart women
13:44 without whom these missions would not have happened.
13:46 The Americans wouldn't have got off the ground
13:48 and got out of the atmosphere.
13:50 And again, it makes me laugh, and it also makes me cry.
13:54 - And you're, I'm sure, way too modest to mention this,
13:57 but you had an award not too long ago.
13:59 Was it National Student of the Year?
14:02 And I'm just saying, as you're talking,
14:03 you've chosen this film,
14:04 and I get the sense that you may even have seen this film
14:06 after being nominated and winning that award.
14:09 But it's pretty obvious to me where you fit in,
14:12 because what you're doing is obviously
14:13 really sort of pioneering work in education and outreach.
14:16 And you've chosen a film which, when I saw it in 2017,
14:21 felt like it was really breaking the mould,
14:23 or at least it was about the breaking of the mould,
14:25 albeit some decades earlier.
14:28 - Yes.
14:29 These ladies' stories weren't told,
14:34 and they were fundamental to this completion of the,
14:36 okay, the Americans lost the space race,
14:38 but they were fundamental to that.
14:40 They were doing immense amounts
14:41 of mathematical calculations
14:43 that were not being done by computer at the time.
14:45 Eventually, NASA tried to replace them with a computer,
14:47 and that almost quite literally blew up in their faces.
14:49 But at the time, they were obviously
14:52 facing tremendous oppression,
14:53 firstly for being female, and also for being black.
14:56 So there's a scene in the film where they are,
15:01 they need to go to the ladies'.
15:02 They have to use the, I hate the word, colored bathroom,
15:05 which means they have to run down from their own building
15:08 where they're working.
15:09 They run, and she runs in the pouring rain,
15:12 goes to this other building, uses the ladies', comes back,
15:14 and then they get in trouble with their supervisor
15:19 because they've been away at the ladies' too long.
15:22 She says, "I have to run down the thing
15:24 "'cause this is a whites-only bathroom."
15:27 And that is agonizing, but you see that unfold,
15:32 and you realize just in that simple thing
15:36 just how difficult their world was,
15:39 the extent of the hard work they're doing,
15:42 about how I don't think we can really understand
15:46 just how difficult that is, that there are bathrooms,
15:48 but you're not allowed to use that one.
15:50 Do you have to run down the car park
15:53 and use another one in the pouring rain?
15:55 - And it was extraordinary when I watched that
15:57 because you've got that moment
15:58 that they're doing this incredible pioneering work.
16:00 They're so gifted. - Yes.
16:02 - And yet, they're not allowed to do basic things.
16:04 And of course, it's an insult to their human dignity.
16:08 - Yes.
16:08 - And yet, we remember, of course,
16:11 the wonderful work that they did.
16:13 But what I loved about the film was that it showed
16:15 that while they were doing all that wonderful work,
16:18 they were doing it against the backdrop of something
16:20 that now we would just, with our eyes wide open,
16:22 and think, "I can't believe that this happened
16:25 "within the lifetime of our parents," for example.
16:28 - Exactly.
16:29 These are incredibly smart people
16:32 doing very, very intricate jobs
16:36 that people's lives literally relied upon.
16:41 And simultaneously overcoming incredible challenges,
16:45 both for their gender and their colour.
16:49 And again, we come back to this same thing I said earlier.
16:52 We're still dealing with an awful lot of that now,
16:56 which is absolutely ridiculous.
16:59 So it's a very charming film.
17:03 It's eye-opening, and it talks about
17:06 immensely important issues that are just as important now
17:09 as they were then.
17:10 But it's also very heartwarming.
17:12 It's very funny.
17:13 And there are instances, there's one instance,
17:17 they're driving to work,
17:18 and they get stopped by a white male police officer.
17:22 The car breaks down, and he actually gives them
17:25 an escort once he discovers they work for NASA.
17:28 And they're driving along behind him,
17:32 and he's driving, and he's leading them to work.
17:37 And one of the ladies says something along the lines of,
17:40 "We're three black women chasing
17:42 "a white police officer down a road.
17:44 "When does this happen?"
17:45 And there's really heartwarming, funny bits in it,
17:48 but there's a discomfort underneath a lot of that.
17:53 So yeah, it really made an impact on me.
17:55 I had several good cries.
17:57 I have good cries on a regular basis in films,
17:59 and this certainly did that to me,
18:01 'cause it's so important, but also so groundbreaking.
18:05 - And I also think when the film reached its end,
18:08 during the end credits,
18:09 I think you see the characters as they are today,
18:13 'cause I think some of them certainly were still alive
18:15 at the time that the film was made.
18:17 Is that right?
18:18 And so you actually got to see the real personalities
18:21 behind the wonderful film that we've just been watching.
18:24 - Indeed, and I like it when films do that,
18:26 when they retell a true story,
18:30 and then you get those bits at the end
18:31 where you either get a bit of film or a photograph,
18:34 and a little bit of information about where they are now,
18:37 what they went on and did afterwards.
18:39 And that gives you that connection.
18:41 Yes, you could have told this as a story,
18:45 you could have invented,
18:47 maybe you couldn't have invented this, I don't know,
18:49 but the fact that it's about real people,
18:52 and then they give you real information
18:55 about what happened next, about those people now,
18:58 and where they ended up,
19:01 I think really gives you a deeper connection.
19:03 - Okay, well, thank you, Alex.
19:04 Well, it's time now to move on to your final chosen film,
19:08 and you've chosen "The Green Mile."
19:10 - "The Green Mile," absolutely.
19:12 I'm a big Stephen King fan.
19:14 I love his work.
19:17 I liked his very real, visceral horrors,
19:22 but much more recently,
19:23 he's written things that are a bit more psychological,
19:25 but this actually is a novella,
19:28 and it was published in a series of short stories,
19:34 but it's, again, has very important things to say
19:39 about how we treat people,
19:41 and how we see other people,
19:44 and how we bracket people according to what we see
19:49 when we look at them.
19:50 - And of course, another Stephen King adaptation
19:53 by Frank Darabont, who made "The Shawshank Redemption"
19:55 just a few years earlier.
19:57 - Yes.
19:57 - And this film really did appeal,
20:00 'cause it's over three hours in length.
20:01 - Yeah, it is, yeah.
20:02 - But it's the sort of film that many people
20:04 who wouldn't necessarily sit still in a film
20:06 for anything like that long did so for this one,
20:09 and it's such an engrossing story,
20:10 and it resonates on so many levels, doesn't it?
20:13 - It really does.
20:14 It's a wonderful story.
20:16 The cast is astonishing.
20:19 Tom Hanks, as always, is absolutely excellent.
20:22 Michael Clarke Duncan is wonderful,
20:27 and he's an emotional character,
20:30 and of course he is, he's in a terrible position
20:32 on death row for a crime he didn't commit,
20:34 and a crime which he tried to undo,
20:38 and then he discovers one of his cellmates
20:40 is actually the person who is responsible.
20:43 But he also has kind of supernatural powers.
20:47 He can take pain, he can take injury away,
20:49 he can take ailments away,
20:51 and he does fairly early on with Tom Hanks,
20:54 with his character, and yeah, it--
20:58 - And there's something as well,
21:00 because you mentioned the Tom Hanks character,
21:01 because of course, this is not giving anything away,
21:03 because we know from the beginning
21:04 that he lives to be a very old man,
21:06 and he's looking back over this time in his life,
21:08 and it's almost a sense that he lives to a very old age,
21:11 but there's a sense in which he feels
21:12 that he's being maybe punished
21:15 because of what happened earlier,
21:17 that almost he has to remember,
21:20 he watches everyone else die around him,
21:22 and this story needs to be told.
21:24 - Yes, absolutely.
21:27 John Coffey goes to,
21:29 the Michael Cluck Duncan character
21:31 goes to the electric chair,
21:33 actually content with the fact
21:37 that he just doesn't want to be on this planet anymore,
21:39 he's had enough with the way the world works,
21:41 and it grieves him deeply,
21:43 and despite the fact he's tried to do good,
21:45 he's ended up being punished.
21:46 So, but in having healed an ailment
21:50 that Paul Edgecombe's,
21:53 that Tom Hanks' character had fairly early on,
21:57 he imparted not an immortality,
21:59 but a length of life that was also given
22:02 to the little pet mouse that one of the other inmates has.
22:05 So, yeah, the Tom Hanks' character
22:08 is basically says,
22:11 I'm being forced to live on this planet longer
22:14 because I didn't prevent the death
22:17 of this sweet, kind, amazing man
22:20 who has these astonishing powers,
22:22 and I failed to act when I could have done.
22:26 - And it's one of the films that with my own students
22:28 in the context of things like "Christ Vickers"
22:30 comes up a lot,
22:31 and the initial JC comes up in this context,
22:33 but there is something about this film
22:35 that it brings in the magic,
22:36 but it's also set in a very particular period,
22:38 and although it's obviously not based on a true story,
22:42 I can't speak for Stephen King,
22:44 but it does feel as though this is a film
22:46 that would you say it's timeless?
22:49 - I think so.
22:50 It, again, doesn't really seem to have dated,
22:55 but that idea, that story,
22:58 whether it's set in the mid-1930s
23:00 or whether it would be set now
23:02 is still just as important.
23:04 It still has a lot to say about racism
23:07 and justice and fairness,
23:10 and he wasn't treated fairly, not by any stretch,
23:15 but it's also a beautiful story,
23:18 and it's a very emotional story,
23:20 and yeah, again, it had me laughing,
23:24 it had me crying.
23:25 - Well, you've chosen some amazing,
23:27 but not some, all amazing choices.
23:29 Well, I'm afraid that that is all the time we have for today.
23:33 Many thanks to Alex Davis for joining us
23:35 and being such a brilliant guest,
23:37 and many thanks to you all for tuning in at home.
23:40 Be sure to come back and join us again
23:43 at the same time next week.
23:44 Until then, that's all from us.
23:46 Goodbye.
23:47 (dramatic music)
23:52 (dramatic music)
23:55 (upbeat music)
23:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]