This week we discuss one of the most important revolutionary films ever produced, "The Battle of Algiers." Directed by Gillo Pontecorvo and staring Jean Martin, Saadi Yacef, Brahim Hadjadj and Tommaso Neri, the film was released in 1966 and portrays the actions undertaken by rebels during the Algerian War against the French occupation of Algeria.

Released only four years after the Algerian War and the successful revolution and independence of Algeria from the French, and less than a decade after the events of the film itself, "The Battle of Algiers" was shot on location and is cast almost entirely with members of the Algerian community who were participants in the revolution or lived through it. We discuss the impact the film had on society at large, the way in which it starkly portrays the violence of revolution while perfectly capturing the inherent humanity of those of us who want to bring about a better future for all even though we must use the tools of violence to do so.

To discuss the film we are joined by Aaron, a good friend of one of our hosts, an activist, an organizer, and a man with more to say about this film than we could ever fit into a single episode.

Left of the Projector Links

https://boxd.it/5T9O1

https://leftoftheprojectorpod.threadless.com/

https://www.instagram.com/the_red_gobbo/

https://www.instagram.com/millennialmarxist1/

https://leftoftheprojector.com

Bill: Hello, and welcome to Left of the Projector. I'm your host, Bill,

Bill: back again with another film discussion from the West.

Bill: If you'd like to support the show for as little as $3 a month,

Bill: you can go to Patreon forward slash Left of the Projector pod.

Bill: If you like the dress and style, we've got shirts, and at leftoftheprojectorpod.threadless.com,

Bill: show everyone you've got the best taste to orient.

Bill: Wherever you're listening, give us a rating and subscribe so you'll get notified

Bill: of our weekly episodes that drop every Tuesday. Now, on to the show.

Bill: This week on the show, we are going to be discussing one of the greatest depictions

Bill: of revolution ever put to film, the Battle of Algiers.

Bill: It was released in 1966, written and co-directed by Guillaume Panticorvo.

Bill: It was filmed on location in Algeria and was received to glowing reviews,

Bill: winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Bill: It was initially banned in France, for obvious reasons.

Bill: The film only features several actors, primarily Jean-Martin as Colonel Philippe Matteau.

Bill: It remains one of the most important films depicting the struggles against colonialism.

Bill: With us to discuss the film tonight is my friend, Aaron, a very good close friend

Bill: of mine, real life, the real meat space. Aaron is a political organizer.

Bill: He's a fan of the show of his own admission. He's excited to be here.

Bill: He watched this film in high school. It helped radicalize him,

Bill: especially from his family.

Bill: When his father taught him about decolonization movements from a young age,

Bill: taught him about leaders such as Nkrumah, Suku Ture, Maria Cabral, and Lumumba.

Bill: As well as the Algerian War of Independence and the FLN. Aaron,

Bill: welcome to The Left to Projector.

Aaron: Hello, thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be on, I'm not going to lie.

Ward: Happy to have you.

Aaron: Thanks.

Evan: Welcome.

Aaron: So, especially when I talk about this film,

Aaron: I always have to bring up the historical context because

Aaron: what we see in the Battle of Algiers

Aaron: is approximately four years of

Aaron: 130 long year colonial occupation by france and algeria and i'm going to point

Aaron: out two different like sort of events comparable events to give scale as to

Aaron: how long and how close after the independence of algeria this movie was made so,

Aaron: For how long the colonization, French occupation of Algeria was,

Aaron: we can look at the U.S. and Hawaii.

Aaron: And actually, it's scary how close it lines up because France was in Algeria

Aaron: from 1830 to 1962 and about 132 years.

Aaron: And so the Queen of Hawaii was ousted in a coup backed by the United States

Aaron: in 1893 and the islands were annexed in 1898.

Aaron: So do you want to know what year

Aaron: 132 years is from 1893 that's 2025 that would have been this year yeah.

Bill: That really yeah.

Aaron: And then that.

Bill: Really puts in perspective.

Aaron: If it was eight if you're looking at 1898 it would have been 2040 so imagine

Aaron: if you will and this is how the french viewed algeria they didn't see it like

Aaron: a colony they saw it as a state like they call it a department similar to how

Aaron: the United States views Hawaii.

Aaron: So imagine indigenous Hawaiian people starting an armed struggle and basically

Aaron: bombing resorts and, uh, uh, you know, attacking the military bases in Hawaii.

Bill: We can only wish, we could only be so lucky. We could only ask for such a thing.

Aaron: And then by 2040 or so, cause 2025 has already passed.

Aaron: They, they liberate Hawaii and then, you

Aaron: know four years later a film is made about you

Aaron: know the final final days and to give

Aaron: an even more like prescient example um we look at october 7th right and how

Aaron: close this film was to the actual battle of algiers you know from uh 56 to 60

Aaron: to the uh early 60s you know,

Aaron: If you're going off of 2023, right, the difference in time would be,

Aaron: this would be like if a movie was directed,

Aaron: from the perspective of the Palestinian Liberation Forces about October 7th and released in 2032.

Aaron: That's how close it would be.

Aaron: And that gives you kind of an idea of how just controversial and like,

Aaron: absolutely upended the political landscape in

Aaron: the 60s and you had the vietnam and i have honestly

Aaron: so much to talk about this film like for example

Aaron: in 2003 uh the u.s state the u.s pentagon actually screened this film to study

Aaron: it before the invasion of iraq because they felt it was one of the best depictions

Aaron: of both insurgency and counterinsurgency it's been studied by the ira in ireland plo.

Bill: That's an interesting point because we see you know

Bill: as as using as an example of counterinsurgency considering

Bill: the fact that you know they very point you know pointly says

Bill: at one point like oh and we will see victor despite

Bill: the fact that uh the colonel himself points

Bill: out that the in indochina they did

Bill: the same tactics and they lost there and then

Bill: what do we see in this it's like yeah they they quote unquote

Bill: win and like four years later it's algerian

Bill: independence but i i want to i

Bill: want to rewind just a little bit and do what we always do

Bill: which is talk about our everybody's experience

Bill: or their history with the start you know

Bill: and since aaron you have the most to talk about in terms of like your history

Bill: with the film i'm going to leave you for last because i know you have to have

Bill: a lot to say about that so evan ward uh either of you want to give us your history

Bill: your personal history with the

Bill: film you know how when you first saw it you know what we always do here.

Ward: I'll go first so i've seen

Ward: this movie probably like a handful of times um a couple times before i was really

Ward: political and i was like oh sick ass war movie you know didn't really think

Ward: too much about it just pretty sick war movie and then now being political it's

Ward: like god this movie is fucking great really really accurate depictions and just

Ward: what the struggle actually entails,

Ward: And I love it. And now it's to the point where I try to watch it at least once

Ward: a year, but that's still pretty, pretty relevantly new thing to me.

Evan: Yeah, for me, I've seen this maybe, I want to say like four,

Evan: four or five times, you know, maybe a handful, as you said, Ward.

Evan: I think the first time I saw it was near the time that I started.

Evan: My political ideology was drastically changing.

Evan: I was watching a lot of Soviet films and films that weren't just kind of your typical American fare.

Evan: And i just remember being struck every time

Evan: i watched this there's no portion of the

Evan: film that's more i don't know

Evan: uh just i'm just i feel like i'm like

Evan: sweating and my blood pressure is rising when they're when the three women

Evan: are planting the various bombs in the different locations my

Evan: like i feel like my heart my like my my blood

Evan: pressure is rising as probably theirs were in doing this in real life like during

Evan: the real struggle and I just think that it's such an important film that anytime

Evan: I watch it I then tell everyone else who hasn't seen it that they should watch

Evan: it regardless of your political perspective but definitely if you're on the left and it's,

Evan: I don't own it on, uh, on, uh, I do collect, you know, some physical media and

Evan: this is what I don't have the criteria collection, a copy of,

Evan: but I need to change that soon.

Bill: So this is actually, this was my first time watching it.

Ward: Oh, Bill.

Bill: Listen, this has more to do with the fact that, you know, I don't,

Bill: I don't sit down and watch.

Bill: There's certain things I just, I just don't like, you know, get around.

Bill: I, I mean, I have read about this, uh, which is relevant to this in a lot of

Bill: ways. But yeah, this was actually my first time watching it.

Bill: And one of the things that really struck me was the manner in which this contrasts

Bill: with war or like movies depicting conflict from an imperialist perspective made

Bill: by imperialist media or Western meat.

Bill: What this was in which that the, it was the way the victims of violence throughout

Bill: this film were humanized by both sides at the direction of, you know,

Bill: people who were making this film at the behest of and in celebration of Algerian independence.

Bill: And yet they still humanized the victims of violence,

Bill: the French victims of violence in a way that you don't see in Western media

Bill: when they show movies of Western, you know, military, you know,

Bill: bombing countries and, you know, murdering innocents or civilians.

Bill: And they never once even like give them any credence or any,

Bill: they pay no attention to them. They just move on.

Bill: Um, and it really struck, you know, it really stood out to me that in terms of like just the, uh.

Bill: Almost like the ideology but the core philosophy

Bill: of like humanization and how starkly

Bill: that stands in in contrast to the western ideology of just dehumanization of

Bill: anybody that isn't from the imperial core um but um now i know i touched on

Bill: it very like lightly in your introduction but you know aaron your history with

Bill: this movie and what it's meant to you i.

Aaron: First watched this when I was in high school. And this,

Aaron: I mean, my family had always talked about decolonization, but it never really

Aaron: registered in the same way before this film is after, because like everybody has said, it feels real.

Aaron: It is very real. And it, it does not glorify violence, which I think is really important.

Aaron: Neither the deaths of the Algerians nor the French, like

Aaron: you see the french stumbling and you see uh the

Aaron: paint and i want to highlight something especially important especially talking

Aaron: about the bombings uh depicted in the film um many of the cast were fln members

Aaron: during the algerian war of independence like these are not people divorced from what happened,

Aaron: and you know the actually the the the actor who plays jafar um yes of saadi

Aaron: he was one of the political his character is basically what he did during the

Aaron: battle it is based on his memoirs and so he knew Ali Lopuant he knew,

Aaron: according to.

Aaron: Algerian newspapers I saw apparently his nephew was Petit Omar you know this is not,

Aaron: this is very real to them. And especially with Ponte Corvo,

Aaron: as Bill will say, Ponte Corvo is one of my favorite directors because he absolutely

Aaron: hates using professional actors.

Aaron: He'd much rather take people from the communities that he's depicting, right?

Aaron: And you see this in the battle of algiers where the only formerly trained

Aaron: actor is jean martin as the

Aaron: colonel who's actually his character that wasn't

Aaron: a real person it's just an amalgamation of different french leaders

Aaron: but the the actor who plays ali

Aaron: la pointe uh brahim hadiji hadaji

Aaron: he is you know that

Aaron: was his first acting role pretty much and he

Aaron: didn't really become an actor afterwards like he

Aaron: did a few films afterwards but he didn't

Aaron: make it his career and ponte corvo does

Aaron: this in all his films especially one i've i hope y'all will do on the left of

Aaron: the projector kimada which means burn which has marlon brando in it by the way

Aaron: and he basically got indigenous people from columbia people who are living there

Aaron: and was like yeah this is a movie about a slave revolt on a you know.

Aaron: 16th of 17th century island in the caribbean and we want people from the caribbean here and it's.

Bill: It's a really it's a really interesting thing because you

Bill: know we we laud i mean we just had the critics choice awards and like you know

Bill: people were given awards for acting it's like we laud actors and yet these people

Bill: are not actors but as like evan you know like you said like watching that bombing

Bill: scene like that's intense acting like they brought that to life in a way,

Bill: And it's just like, you know, we, we,

Bill: We hold actors up to such, you know, in the West, like we hold them up to such

Bill: like high esteem and throughout history, you know, and, and yet these are not,

Bill: they're not trained actors and yet they brought it to life in a way that you

Bill: would think that they were, you know,

Bill: actors that have been spent, you know, decades on screen bringing characters to life.

Bill: And, and it's, you know, it's more likely because they were still,

Bill: you know, because to them, this is real, you know, or was real.

Evan: They're almost reenacting something as opposed to acting.

Bill: Yeah.

Ward: I mean, they, these aren't trained actors giving such a real performance that

Ward: there are certain American releases of this movie that had to like have a disclaimer

Ward: saying that like no portion of this film is newsreel because American audiences couldn't understand.

Aaron: And especially to like all the extras are actual Algerian people from Algiers,

Aaron: like, and they did an interview with Pontecorvo and he said he wanted to create the chorus of the Cosmo,

Aaron: right? He wanted it to feel real.

Aaron: And you hear it with the, with the, the, especially like one of the most horrific

Aaron: parts of the film, in my opinion, is when the French, uh, police commander, it's, it's, it's funny.

Aaron: Cause he's not even given a name, at least not to my knowledge in my rewatchings.

Aaron: He goes into, I don't think so. He goes into the.

Bill: Oh no, he very briefly, he's referenced like, not that it's,

Bill: this doesn't even, but he is referenced by his name.

Bill: Like when they leave that like party, which I think is important,

Bill: which is an important point.

Bill: Like that man, he is literally at like a party.

Bill: Like, and then they're just like, Oh, I'm going to leave this party where I'm

Bill: like, just like living my life. and that's like how divorced these people are from like,

Bill: their humanity in a lot of ways. Like he's at a party and he's just like living

Bill: his life and he's like, oh, we have to go bomb somebody.

Bill: Like just casually, just like, just leaves a party where they're drinking and

Bill: hanging out with kids and just playing cards and shit.

Aaron: Especially the, the noise. And it's, it's constantly referenced the chorus of the caspa.

Aaron: It's called ululation. You know,

Aaron: the, the noise the community makes is a symbol of the community pain.

Aaron: And I remember the very first time I watched it, because I had some familiarity

Aaron: with the subject matter, people were like, why are they doing this at the end of the film?

Aaron: They've only done it during periods of pain, like when it talks about the independence of Algeria.

Aaron: And it's sort of like happy that they've won, and it goes to the point of what cost.

Aaron: And that's like a constant point in the film.

Aaron: And I, one of my favorite things that I noticed on this rewatch is that Petit Omar's, um,

Aaron: first lines in the film when he makes contact with Ali LaPointe is men have

Aaron: two faces, one smiles and one cry, the other cries, which is revolution in a nutshell.

Aaron: You know, one smiles at the thinking what we, what can, where we can go,

Aaron: what heights we can achieve.

Aaron: But one face cry is seeing what's lost, all the death, the destruction,

Aaron: the pain inflicted by the occupation onto the people living there.

Aaron: And I also would like to say, you know, this is something that I thought about

Aaron: and I never really thought about before, too, in the movie, the use of the guillotine

Aaron: at the beginning, right? In the West, it's a symbol of liberation.

Aaron: But, you know, and especially as I did research on this, in a lot of parts of

Aaron: Africa, and especially in the Pacific,

Aaron: in the French colonies in the Pacific, it's seen as a symbol of brutal occupation

Aaron: and almost the exact opposite of what we think of it here.

Bill: We should probably stop celebrating the guillotine in general,

Bill: especially if you're a leftist and you understand that the French Revolution

Bill: was not a true revolution. It certainly wasn't a leftist revolution,

Bill: and it was a bourgeois revolution.

Bill: Yeah, agreed. It really does change the way it is thought about or what way

Bill: should be thought about or seen.

Aaron: I mean, I could just keep going on stuff. I, we could talk about the, um,

Aaron: in the film itself, how Ali LaPointe, and I think I saw some of the show notes,

Aaron: you know, he's not some military, like he's not some politically educated guy.

Aaron: He is the Algerian equivalent of Joe Everyman. He's been in and out of prisons.

Ward: Not even educated.

Evan: Yeah, can't read.

Ward: He's illiterate.

Aaron: Well, no, that's the thing. And I looked this up for the recording.

Aaron: At the time of the occupation, roughly 10% of indigenous Algerians were literate.

Aaron: So he is literally Joe Everyman. Like most of the men could not read.

Aaron: The people could not read.

Bill: Do we, this is never covered in the movie.

Bill: But like, how did he become involved with the FLN? like what led him to that

Bill: entirely like do we know do we have that information.

Aaron: It's it's subtext it's they it

Aaron: Jafar kind of alludes to it he's

Aaron: like oh lots of Algerians come to us in the prisons because

Aaron: a lot of FLN are in prisons and it's the same like bringing

Aaron: it full circle to Palestine like it's the same you

Aaron: know a lot of these revolutionary people are

Aaron: imprisoned and they make contact with people in

Aaron: the prison system and it's like well we got to

Aaron: prove that you know and he says this in

Aaron: the sense of like well we got to make sure you're not that works but yeah um

Aaron: and i love how the film shows that you know we'll he's like why didn't you have

Aaron: me go after the shop owner or anything else and he's like because the french

Aaron: would never risk another frenchman They would risk an Algerian person,

Aaron: but they would never allow like a French officer to come under risk.

Aaron: And it's important to note too that, you know, LaPointe is told by,

Aaron: you know, Petit Omar to just casually like assassinate him.

Aaron: He doesn't do that. He makes a big spectacle of it. He unleashes his rage.

Evan: He wants to look him in the eye, too, I think, is part of it,

Evan: right? He was supposed to shoot him in the back, but he wants to shoot him from the front.

Aaron: And not just that, too. He beats the man when it's a blank. He's like,

Aaron: oh, I don't have bullets.

Bill: Yeah, when he can't.

Aaron: Yeah. Oh, let's go.

Bill: Not even blanks. It's not even blanks.

Ward: It's just empty.

Bill: Oh, yeah.

Aaron: It's got nothing in there.

Bill: Just click.

Ward: This thing's empty.

Bill: It's got nothing in there.

Ward: It's still got some weight to it. Let me smack you with it.

Bill: Yeah.

Aaron: Yeah, and.

Bill: For those who have not seen the movie, just to like totally clarify,

Bill: what happens is that LaPointe is given the task to assassinate a French police

Bill: officer after making contact with a rat,

Bill: an Algerian rat, like a coffee shop owner, who is giving information on the FLA and resistance.

Bill: He is given the task to prove himself to the FLN. He is given the test to assassinate this officer.

Bill: So for those who have not seen, that's exactly what we're discussing is he is given that task.

Bill: And then it turns out it's all a test.

Bill: The proof is that he's not a narc. It's to prove that he is really one of them.

Aaron: It's phenomenal acting on on behalf of the uh brahim hadagi you know the actor

Aaron: who plays because you you feel his his rage and frustration you know and this is not just he's.

Bill: An intense person.

Aaron: Yeah and uh it i mean you'll see this in a lot of ponte corvo's work you'll

Aaron: see these amazing people acting in his films and then they just you try to find

Aaron: other work that they're in and they're.

Evan: Nothing else i think what what also strikes me i mean you were you're asking

Evan: bill like sort of how is laplante sort of radicalized how does he sort of get

Evan: you know um involved with the struggle and i and i think one of the things in

Evan: my notes that i kind of or in my own personal notes too is.

Evan: It's sort of like the i lost my train of thought it was like the he was right

Evan: you know he was he was not like this well-educated person that was radicalized

Evan: by reading and learning about press revolutions.

Evan: He was simply radicalized by his life on the street in a colonial empire.

Evan: The French colonial empire in Algeria.

Evan: And he is very willing, clearly, to do whatever it takes to be part of.

Evan: He obviously knows about the FLN and what they are and who they are.

Evan: And so joining them to me is simply just kind of the, I don't know,

Evan: I don't want to say like the rest is history, but you know, you live this and

Evan: you want to do something about it, you're going to find a way to join the struggle.

Evan: And then I think I put a couple of quotes from Franz Fanon from Wretched of the Earth.

Evan: And one of the quotes when he was sort of talking about the type of people that

Evan: are involved in revolutions, he says, the peasantry is systematically left out

Evan: of most of the nationalist party's propaganda, but it's obvious that in colonial

Evan: countries, only the peasantry is revolutionary.

Evan: And we can maybe decide whether that's fully accurate or not.

Evan: But I think people like LaPont are crucial to the success of these organizations.

Evan: And we see it later on, sort of post and sort of the epilogue of the film is

Evan: these guys start the revolution or start this uprising in this battle.

Evan: And while maybe they lose the battle, they're able to win like the hearts and

Evan: minds of all the people in Algiers and eventually succeed in their revolution.

Aaron: I'm really glad you brought up Fanon because Fanon, as those who've read his

Aaron: work know, was in Algeria during the struggle, the Algerian War of Independence.

Aaron: And he was so close to the FLN. He was basically like an ambassador,

Aaron: like a guy going out talking on their behalf because, you know,

Aaron: they have to go to ground.

Aaron: They can't do anything. And to speak to the just the reality of this situation,

Aaron: too, because this is another thing in my notes that I wanted to bring up.

Aaron: So for those who may not be familiar with French politics, Marine Le Pen is

Aaron: the head of this far right nationalist party, the National Rally in France.

Aaron: And her father fought in the Algerian war and he was scathing in his attacks on this film.

Aaron: He hated it. I mean, obvious, but just to give you an idea of how real this is.

Aaron: And, you know, even to this day, like between the relations of France,

Aaron: France and Algeria, like to give you an idea on December 24th,

Aaron: so like two weeks prior to this recording out the Algerian parliament passed

Aaron: the law criminalizing the glorification of the colonial regime.

Aaron: And in 2021, this is actually, this actually drove me up the wall when I heard this.

Aaron: The Emmanuel Macron said that Algerians have rewritten the history quote,

Aaron: based on a discord course of hatred towards France.

Aaron: Like that's how tone deaf and like how, how segments of the French population

Aaron: see this as like, you know, this, this lost cause sort of fantasy.

Aaron: Exactly like the confederacy like this lost cause sort of fantasy this what-if-ism.

Ward: But counterpoint everybody hates the french so like who gives a fuck what they think right yeah like.

Bill: France i mean come on,

Bill: Actually, nobody cares.

Aaron: But yeah. And, um, just progressing through the film as well.

Aaron: One thing I also really wanted to highlight is that the film does not portray that FLN is saints.

Aaron: And I think that's really important too, because, um, well, obviously like F

Aaron: the French, I don't know if I can swear on the podcast, but.

Ward: Oh, absolutely.

Aaron: You know, fuck the French. But even in terms of like what they're doing in terms

Aaron: of sort of administering Algiers, right?

Aaron: They have this cleanup campaign of like, we need to remove any potentially subversive

Aaron: elements. And what does that mean?

Aaron: That means getting rid of junkies. And it says it in the film,

Aaron: junkies, drunks, prostitution. And some of this is seen liberatory,

Aaron: you know, when Ali Laplante guns down the pimp, the brothel owner.

Aaron: But some of it is, it makes you feel a little uncomfortable when you see the

Aaron: kids, literally, there's a scene in the film where there's kids just beating

Aaron: a drunken man on the street.

Aaron: And it's, it's from the perspective of the FLN and a lot of revolutionary forces,

Aaron: you know, you can't have these elements cause they can be corrupted.

Aaron: They could be used to, to, to counter infiltrate, you know, our space,

Aaron: you know, we have to be united.

Bill: Yeah, that was a very interesting, um.

Bill: I mean, like on one hand, like criminal, like the direct criminal element,

Bill: it's like, that's kind of like on one hand, but like the like drunk,

Bill: I mean, but at the same time, it's like,

Bill: if we look at a history of the way colonial forces have introduced those elements

Bill: to a population that they are, uh,

Bill: colonizing and oppressing, you know, if we look at America,

Bill: you know, that the United States got deliberately introduced alcohol to the

Bill: indigenous population and fostered and pushed it and created a.

Bill: Chemical dependency amongst a lot of people uh in

Bill: an effort to weaken that group to some degree you

Bill: know and it's yeah it's it's hard but again

Bill: we return to like how like this like you said like they don't present them as

Bill: saints and i think that this is again like when we come back to it's like there

Bill: is a stark difference that between the left and marxists marcus marcus londonists

Bill: who call for revolution and want,

Bill: change, but we also acknowledge, nobody here, we all here acknowledge that to

Bill: have a true revolution in which we will see a better future will require violence, correct?

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Aaron: Yeah.

Bill: But do, do any of us want that? Do we, are we eager for it?

Aaron: No.

Ward: No.

Aaron: And the film shows that.

Bill: Exactly and it's like and it's the same thing

Bill: when it comes to that it's like none of them are like oh this is like great

Bill: we have to do this it's like yeah they're like another like yeah we gotta do

Bill: this it's like fuck we gotta do this now it's like fuck suck this sucks like

Bill: we don't want to have to do this and it's like if this was presented from if

Bill: this was written by what's his face the mil,

Bill: Red Dawn. What's his, I forget his name.

Ward: Milieuse.

Bill: Milieuse, yeah. If this was written by Milieuse, Milieuse would be like, oh, this is awesome.

Bill: We're going to glorify all of this violence. It's going to be great.

Bill: It's awesome. And we're going to kill the drunks. And we're going to hold it

Bill: up as a monument to moralism.

Bill: And it's such a stark contrast.

Ward: Could you imagine like seven scenes in Battle of Algiers where the Ephelon just

Ward: stops what they're doing, raises their guns up in the air and goes,

Ward: Ephelon, like Wolverine style.

Aaron: And I'm sorry. I just want to bring up two quick things. First,

Aaron: this movie actually was an inspiration partly for Red Dawn.

Evan: Yeah, unfortunately.

Bill: Which is horrifying.

Aaron: Yeah. And then number two.

Bill: Yeah, we know that. It's terrible.

Aaron: And number two is, I just want to bring up the counterpoint of the real sort

Aaron: of rallying cry moments are just people in the streets or people in the prisons.

Aaron: Like you see in the prison where the guy goes, long live Algeria.

Aaron: And the prisoners respond so vehemently.

Aaron: And it's not the French that silences them. It's the guy who says,

Aaron: we got to see if he's going to have any last words.

Aaron: We got to see him before they guillotine him. You know, we have to give him

Aaron: the chance to say his last words.

Aaron: And especially too on violence and on the glorification of it,

Aaron: it's important to really know it's, I always highlight this.

Aaron: The FLN is never the party that really drives the escalation, right?

Aaron: The, the beginning part, the, and we, they were told at the beginning of the

Aaron: film, there's been fighting in the mountains. There's been skirmishes.

Aaron: They only really attack the police and it's really only to just get their weapons.

Aaron: I don't think they even like ensure that they kill them. They just ambush them,

Aaron: steal their rifles and guns and then flee.

Aaron: But once the, and this is another scene that happens in the film,

Aaron: once the, the residential complex is bombed in the Caswa and the FLN and the

Aaron: people are angry and, you know, they see the FLN as these protectors, these civic guardians,

Aaron: you know, they're presiding over weddings. They're doing good things for the community.

Aaron: The people are like what are you going to do they just

Aaron: bombed our homes and you know jafar

Aaron: the supposed head even makes a visible

Aaron: appearance when you know by all rights that would be really dangerous for someone

Aaron: in his position and says we will avenge you don't worry we can't just storm

Aaron: the european quarter and fight them like this because we'll all die and then

Aaron: you start to see the the bombings of cafes the bombings of the airports the

Aaron: civilians so they didn't start attacking civilians.

Aaron: It's more of a rising of the escalation ladder.

Evan: Yeah, exactly.

Evan: That's a really good point. And part of, in going back even slightly further

Evan: for when Jafar meets LaPont for the first time,

Evan: and I think he's kind of, after he explains to him sort of the reason for his

Evan: test, he specifically calls out that first we have to organize and then we can take action.

Evan: And so they focus so heavily on the organization of the FLN to actually be that

Evan: support system for the community.

Evan: And as you said, it's only because of these other incidents that they sort of

Evan: escalate their violence. And I want to just read one other Fanon quote from Wretched of the Earth.

Evan: It kind of goes back to, you know, the idea of violence. And it's from just

Evan: the page three, first paragraph of the book for anyone who is reading at home.

Evan: In its bare reality, decolonization reeks of red hot cannonballs and bloody knives.

Evan: For the last can be the first only after a murderous and decisive confrontation

Evan: between the two protagonists.

Evan: This determination to have the last move up to the front

Evan: to have them clamor too quickly some say the

Evan: famous echelons of the organized society can only

Evan: succeed by resorting to every means including of course violence and so you

Evan: don't necessarily want that violence but it isn't inevitable when you have a

Evan: protagonist or a colonizer whose only method is violence so you know that's

Evan: what you end up getting and.

Aaron: Yeah and we we look at parallels today

Aaron: you know in israel palestine you know the the the cries for justice of the people

Aaron: in gaza in rafa in remote even in the west bank as well in east jerusalem you

Aaron: know we we see the the the deliberate,

Aaron: It's like Bill said, like you could, if you took off the grainy filter and, you know,

Aaron: change the architecture a little bit, you probably couldn't tell the difference

Aaron: between Ramallah or East Jerusalem and Algiers in this film.

Evan: And on top of that, as the violence starts to escalate, we see the police's

Evan: response is to essentially seal off the Arab quarter and creating,

Evan: and everyone in my notes like apartheid, like this is the apartheid.

Evan: This is Jerusalem, as you just said.

Evan: So it's forming the same structures to blockade the undesirables,

Evan: as the colonizer would say,

Evan: into a region so that they can be more easily maintained and dealt with.

Ward: Yeah, it's that escalation that we see from the colonizers first before the FLN has to respond.

Aaron: Yeah, I would say this, like, I typically divide the film into three parts.

Aaron: And when I watch it, the first part being like the sort of the organizing of

Aaron: the FLN, we see the backstories, what's going on.

Aaron: And then this is the second part, the sort of like,

Aaron: the FLN has the manpower and

Aaron: everything and to give you an idea in the

Aaron: actual like algerian war about like

Aaron: just to show how brutal it was

Aaron: i believe 1.5 million algerians died

Aaron: in throughout the course of this and

Aaron: you know it is it is a horrifically brutal

Aaron: occupation it is it

Aaron: is violent it it does not hide its

Aaron: violence it does not pretend i mean one of

Aaron: the generals who was in

Aaron: charge of the french military in algeria the real generals he even said on a

Aaron: 60 minute interview um if you don't mind give me a second to get his name he

Aaron: said on a 60 minute interview that yeah we use torture we tortured them we murdered

Aaron: people like this is what it took to keep algeria.

Bill: Matto is very he's very upfront about that. He was like, there's no, he does not like,

Bill: No bones about it. He's like, yeah, this is what you do. This is what you have to do.

Evan: He doesn't use the word torture. He basically was like, we used enhanced interrogation.

Evan: Like he used his little metaphor to make it sound or his, yeah. Anyway, sorry.

Bill: Very straightforward. It says, like, do you want to, when they have that press

Bill: conference, he says, it's like, do you want to keep Algeria?

Bill: Oh, then we got to do this. Did we have to be barbarous? We have to be monsters.

Bill: Like he's straight up just like, do you want it? Do you want it?

Bill: Then all right, this is what we're going to do.

Aaron: Yeah.

Ward: Slings you have to go to.

Aaron: And I also bring up, now that we're talking about Mathieu, I also always bring

Aaron: up, we don't see Ali LaPointe first in the film. We see Mathieu first.

Aaron: We don't see the resistance first. We see the occupation.

Aaron: We see a man being tortured. Our first thing is not to draw a parallel. This was Red Dawn.

Aaron: The first thing we'd see is an American flag and a guy with a fist raised up

Aaron: in defiance. But no, in this, the folk and it speaks to the focus of the film.

Aaron: The focus of the film is not violence for the sake of violence.

Aaron: It is about the earth, like some sort of bombastic violence,

Aaron: the way it's portrayed in Western media. But it's it's a tragic thing.

Aaron: It is something that is a last resort and people feel they have no choice.

Aaron: And also the guy is paul i don't want to attempt his name i'll sorry i'll so

Aaron: rest is i don't fucking know but this guy it's.

Bill: Okay to butcher french names remember it's okay and.

Aaron: To give you guys some context on this dude he's a real piece of

Aaron: work he went to work with the um with the brazilian um military dictatorship

Aaron: he went to work with the u.s military this is not a a guy we want to be celebrating

Aaron: by any stretch of the imagination somehow.

Evan: He lived to age 95 like all these fucking war criminals do.

Aaron: Yeah yeah,

Aaron: I just want to bring up, you know, Mathieu's first thing is about the counterinsurgency.

Aaron: He has this footage of people, random people, and he's like,

Aaron: is Algeria our enemy? Of course it's not.

Aaron: And we, the audience, are kind of like, are you sure about that?

Aaron: Because it seems like the whole of Algeria is your enemy at this point.

Aaron: And he's saying, like, we have to live with these people, but we have to be suspect of everything.

Aaron: And there's the fruit merchant who

Aaron: spills his stuff and everybody in the thing laughs

Aaron: at him but Mathieu who's portrayed as this guy who served in Indochina

Aaron: who was in the resistance and for the record the actual actor was part of the

Aaron: French resistance against Nazi Germany so even he has radical background you

Aaron: know he protested the Algerian war from metropolitan France and so which is.

Bill: It's such an interest out of everybody. Like, I know that he chose him partly

Bill: because he was a stage actor and like he wanted to keep like,

Bill: it's like, oh, he's an actor, but also he's a stage actor.

Bill: So he's not like quite as known. But the fact that he was blacklisted, as you said earlier,

Bill: for his defiance and his stance against it, like there is no part of this that

Bill: isn't thought about radically, you know, and in opposition to the empire.

Aaron: And just to highlight like because

Aaron: i love guillo pontocorvo's movies right like

Aaron: to give some context on this dude like this man

Aaron: was part of the he was part of the italian communist party in 1941 he was he

Aaron: was uh definitely like part of the resistance part of the resistance there pontocorvo

Aaron: yeah pontocorvo sorry the director

Aaron: of the film he is his politics shines through in everything he does.

Aaron: And he always makes it a point like in these films that he does to get actors

Aaron: who quote unquote, get it right.

Aaron: For those who know Marlon Brando, you know, he is a very politically active

Aaron: actor, you know, they're less savory things about the man too,

Aaron: but, um, his standing up for indigenous peoples,

Aaron: um, in the United States.

Aaron: And he's in one of Ponte Corvo's main

Aaron: movies uh kimada burn the other big

Aaron: one besides the battle of algiers and it's funny because

Aaron: on a separate side tangent columbia pictures

Aaron: offered to make a movie about you know

Aaron: like i think like uh like a dramatization

Aaron: of the sort of indian wars in the united states with uh brando and ponte corvo

Aaron: and brando refused columbia pictures because they wouldn't give political rights

Aaron: to the film to indigenous people he said i want them to have creative control

Aaron: over this film and colombia obviously said no.

Aaron: And Ponte Corvo was like, yeah, if he's not doing it, I'm not doing it.

Aaron: And the film never got made.

Aaron: But yeah. And going back to the movie,

Aaron: you know, it's like now that Mathieu has entered the spotlight,

Aaron: we see the occupation becomes even more brutal and how the FLN has to respond even more so.

Aaron: And also i just want to highlight even matthew says like id checks are pointless

Aaron: because who is going to have their papers in order yeah the resistance he's

Aaron: like this is a stupid practice i.

Bill: Love how during that whole scene they actually they show her they show one of

Bill: the women that bob like they she's right there.

Aaron: Yeah there she is.

Ward: Okay yeah no i like that too because it's like

Ward: it's very much how like

Ward: western western societies operate where

Ward: it's like okay guys let's have our hr meeting on how to

Ward: fucking be colonizers okay and it's like yeah it really churches up like how

Ward: they should be doing things but it's only in that meeting for that moment that

Ward: they talk about oh they need to do it the right way but then we immediately

Ward: see the reality is no they just got more brutal.

Evan: They were just aiming to get more permission, essentially, from France to be

Evan: more brutal during this time.

Evan: And one of the things I wrote as they were kind of showing that video of the

Evan: checkpoint is sort of like pre-surveillance state monitoring of insurgencies.

Evan: Obviously, now we have cameras and drones and AI, you know, insanity in Gaza and other places.

Evan: And they didn't have that, but they still had this understanding of how these

Evan: groups work with the sort of the pyramid structure where not everyone knows each other.

Evan: But if they can get to one person, they can get to the person above him and

Evan: slowly move their way up the chain.

Evan: Like the way that he describes their plan to the sort of people living in Algeria is, I don't know.

Evan: You may not agree with what he's doing, but it's a very well-crafted scene.

Aaron: And I just want to bring up, you know, Mathieu, he's questioned, too, by the press.

Aaron: And he says, at some point, people were like, aren't you guys being a little brutal?

Aaron: Like, aren't you guys being a little fascist-y? And he gets visibly offended,

Aaron: saying that, you know, I fought Nazis.

Aaron: If you think we're Nazis, then like, he's basically like, I'll fight you right

Aaron: here. If you think I'm a Nazi. Okay.

Aaron: And it really speaks to how close, how similar this is, how this is fascism

Aaron: and how the interfascist sort of confrontation in a sense between like France

Aaron: and Nazi Germany, right?

Aaron: It strikes a chord because you're being identified as the enemy.

Aaron: Like you're no different from them.

Evan: I mean, it reminds me also now of situations where like Benjamin Netanyahu has

Evan: had press conferences where he responds to people calling, you know,

Evan: the things that Israel is doing as related to Nazis.

Evan: And, you know, then he's, of course, like, oh, it's Hamas that are the Nazis

Evan: or the fascists or the people waving Palestinian flags.

Evan: And it's the true ironic sense of the fascist calling the people trying to protest

Evan: and, you know, free themselves.

Evan: They're apparently the fascists, you know, as depicted only by the fascists.

Aaron: And as we move through the film,

Aaron: you know, one thing I want to always bring up during to people's attentions

Aaron: to the use of lighting is really important because the Algerians never like

Aaron: not until the very end when they're desperate, don't really strike at night.

Aaron: It's always during the daytime they're in the populace but the French,

Aaron: and it's flipped are usually in the dark until the very end of the film where

Aaron: you know the final raid that we see at the beginning and at the end just another thing I thought of.

Evan: That's interesting. I hadn't, I hadn't, what do you think the reason for that?

Evan: Is it easier to get around because they have curfews in the evening for,

Evan: you know, anyone who's, you know, Arab?

Aaron: Well, not just that, but, well, I think that is absolutely a part of it,

Aaron: like in a, in a real sense.

Aaron: But when you think about it, right, like Algerians going into,

Aaron: and this actually, thank you. Thank you.

Aaron: Um, uh, Evan for, for bringing this up.

Aaron: It segues nicely into the next part of the film.

Aaron: Um, the Algerians have to be in the French spaces.

Aaron: They have to work there. They have to go there. And so they can choose whenever they want to go.

Aaron: So, and they got to blend it back into the populace as, you know,

Aaron: revolutionary movements do.

Aaron: But the French going into the Casbah is unheard of.

Aaron: Like, why would a French person go into the Algerian quarter?

Aaron: Why would you lower yourself?

Aaron: As is one of the colonizers, we see how powerful this, this ability to go between

Aaron: quarters is during the strike,

Aaron: the UN strike where the FLN says, brothers and sisters do not go to the French quarter.

Aaron: Do not open your shops. Do not do anything. uh we

Aaron: want to show the u.n what happens and

Aaron: in the real u.n vote the u.s abstained they saw

Aaron: that this the french were on their way out they were like and

Aaron: we see this like in the suez crisis which is mentioned a few times in the film

Aaron: which for those who may not know is when france and britain had their last hurrah

Aaron: in an attempt to to maintain their colonial power when And they tried to overturn

Aaron: Gamal Abdel Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal,

Aaron: working through their best friend of Israel,

Aaron: you know, and try to seize the canal by force.

Aaron: And it was defeated. And the U.S. basically scolded them and said,

Aaron: no, see, we're in charge now.

Aaron: We're the leaders of the capitalist, you know, imperialist bloc now.

Aaron: You guys don't get to make these decisions anymore.

Bill: I did find the, it really was like, it's just like, oh, look,

Bill: the UN, as useless as it is today, it was then.

Bill: The UN, a history of not doing anything for anybody being oppressed by the West.

Bill: Good for you. At least you're consistent.

Aaron: Well, the actually the really interesting thing, too, is at the beginning,

Aaron: obviously the UN is a joke now, but at the very beginning in this stage of it,

Aaron: you know, the 50s and 60s, it had a lot of weight to it because they'd just

Aaron: come out of the World War Two.

Aaron: And the US took it very seriously. They didn't veto things as much.

Aaron: They didn't try to be like the bully that they are now in the UN because they

Aaron: recognized all these countries are getting independence.

Aaron: And if they try strong earning people, they will, the Soviet Union's waiting

Aaron: with the, you know, hey, you hate these guys. And that's why they abstained.

Aaron: They saw like, if we vote in favor of France, we look horrible.

Evan: One of the other things I wanted to note, because we've brought up a few times

Evan: that the press conference and a couple other mentions of, you know,

Evan: when they're sort of putting to them, you know, oh, you know,

Evan: don't you want us to stay here? You know, obviously we need to do this.

Evan: There's something else that I found that maybe there's some like subtext or

Evan: maybe it's obvious as I'm watching it is it's very clear that the French want

Evan: to or Matteo wants to control the narrative that the press is also using.

Evan: There's sort of the moment where they're sort of outside and entering in the

Evan: press conference or they're maybe he's like leaving and they're all sort of

Evan: crowding around him asking him questions.

Evan: And it's very clear he wants them to portray this in a way where he's claiming,

Evan: oh, like, you know, unbiased, like the way you want to do it.

Evan: But it's like if you guys do your jobs, meaning for empire, the people around

Evan: the world will know what's happening.

Evan: And it's very clear that if

Evan: they lose the press and they lose the narrative as

Evan: part of this general strike and everything that's going on the the world will

Evan: change their perspective i think that's also extremely relevant to palestine

Evan: where you know maybe five years ago the national or the the global perception

Evan: of the palestinian struggle was far lower than it is now after seeing.

Evan: The genocide that Israel has committed and all of these things and seeing what's

Evan: going on and they can't hide what they're doing anymore.

Evan: And it did seem like from my reading is that the world was starting to see what

Evan: the French were doing in Algeria more than they had ever had before.

Aaron: Well, also, too, and this is mentioned a lot in this sort of press conference part of the film,

Aaron: the Battle of Dian Ben Fu had just happened and the French were absolutely routed

Aaron: in what was called Indochina,

Aaron: now Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

Aaron: And for those who may not be familiar like because

Aaron: this battle was so decisive this is the

Aaron: equivalent of like oh well why don't you guys have uh

Aaron: guns and we don't have the same guns and bombs and stuff

Aaron: well the vietnamese did and they trounced the

Aaron: the french and that's part of the because the pr was so bad france withdrew

Aaron: and said okay we're out we're leaving you guys win okay and And that's where

Aaron: kind of Mathieu is afraid because it's mentioned a lot that he's a veteran of the Indochina War.

Aaron: And, you know, he was at Dimdenfu and he's trying to prevent that sort of PR

Aaron: spiral of like, oh, well, we really don't have control of the situation. Maybe we cut our losses.

Aaron: And to give an idea of what's happening in metropolitan France at this point,

Aaron: this issue was so divisive.

Aaron: It brought down the Fourth Republic of France. like soldiers from algeria went

Aaron: to corsica and were basically like because they were taught debating about withdrawing

Aaron: and they were like you will withdraw over our dead bodies.

Aaron: And it almost sparked a civil war and charles de gaulle had to come out of retirement

Aaron: and was basically like okay guys you win i'm back let's figure this shit out

Aaron: and that's that's how like Because this is like when I brought up the Hawaii

Aaron: point, that's what I mean.

Aaron: This is the equivalent of like a state, like for all the bluster,

Aaron: like this less revolutionary example.

Aaron: But if Texas left the United States, like that would be the sort of psychological

Aaron: damage it would do to the U.S. psyche.

Aaron: If Alaska became independent or Hawaii became independent, there would be elements

Aaron: of people who would be like, no, I'm from here.

Aaron: And like to give a more historical perspective,

Aaron: like at the time, so as the film goes on, we might be fast forwarding a little bit in the sixties,

Aaron: France basically decided to dismantle its colonial empire in 1960,

Aaron: 1961 on its own terms, quote unquote,

Aaron: really shifting to a neocolonial model.

Aaron: And they gave independence to every territory in Africa, except for three of them.

Aaron: The first being French Somaliland, which is now Djibouti.

Aaron: The second being the Comoros, which is a small archipelago in the Indian Ocean, and Algeria.

Aaron: That's they gave political independence to everybody

Aaron: else except those three and to to

Aaron: give an idea i i looked

Aaron: at the populations of these places at the time you know jibouti had a population

Aaron: of 86 000 people right at the time the comoros had 198 000 people these are

Aaron: not huge like places not to say that colonialism is justified when there's small

Aaron: amount of people but You can see where I'm getting at.

Bill: You heard it here first. Baroness and Fabian. As long as, listen,

Bill: under 200,000 population, totally okay.

Ward: But Valentine.

Aaron: In Algeria, there was 11 million people, and metropolitan France had 47 million people.

Aaron: And of those 11, approximately 1.1 million were basically colonizers from France.

Aaron: Like, they would not surrender. And as the war became more desperate,

Aaron: these colonizers formed their own military organizations, their own militias,

Aaron: and basically did their own...

Aaron: Pogroms and it got to the point where even today like macron basically in the

Aaron: sort of you know macronist way said we committed war crimes in algeria and did not apologize for it,

Aaron: which is basically this is not an apology no he said this explicitly this is

Aaron: not an apology We're just acknowledging that it happened.

Aaron: And that's how this whole relationship defines. And there are still the descendants

Aaron: of these people who live there.

Aaron: I mean, there was a mass migration. They're called the Pid Noir who left after the independence.

Aaron: But a lot of them stayed and remained part of Algeria, you know,

Aaron: because they felt it was part of their home.

Aaron: And, yeah, that's why I bring up the point.

Aaron: This is not just, we see colonial, especially when it comes to Africa,

Aaron: we see, we think of the metropolitan areas as seeing this as far flung provinces

Aaron: with like, oh, we lost it.

Aaron: Oh, well, like how Britain viewed India. But this, this one was different.

Aaron: This is like how the US views Hawaii or Puerto Rico or, you know,

Aaron: to an extent, indigenous territory, uh, indigenously held territory in the United States.

Aaron: Like they would rather destroy the country than give it up for the same reason

Aaron: that we, we, we, for the same reason, you know, we say sovereignty for the Algerian

Aaron: people. they say is it not our sovereignty to keep our territory united.

Bill: It is even.

Aaron: Though it was obtained through horrific means.

Bill: It just you know i can i cannot help but anytime like seeing it it's just like

Bill: like oh we're here and it's just like go home like you it's not yours like they act,

Bill: so the attitude of presumed,

Bill: It's the entitlement. It's just a constant sense of entitlement.

Bill: It's like baked in and it just, no matter how cynical and jaded I get,

Bill: no matter how old I get and how, you know, how much time I spend on this planet watching this shit,

Bill: there's a little part of me that's still just like,

Bill: wait, like why do you think you're entitled to this? Like, where do you get off with this?

Bill: Like, you show up and you're just like yeah this is ours now it's like what

Bill: in what way why do you think that what makes you think that why do you think you're so fucking.

Aaron: Speaking of entitlement i want to bring up

Aaron: something very poignant it's about this is

Aaron: not the french this is the portuguese but the portuguese if you

Aaron: think the french were brutal based on this film the portuguese were much

Aaron: worse in angola in

Aaron: mozambique but what i really want to bring up is portugal

Aaron: used to have a province in the indian

Aaron: subcontinent called goa and the

Aaron: the indian after indian

Aaron: independence you know joe aral nehru the indian government

Aaron: said okay thanks thanks guys you

Aaron: know the rest of you also have to go france had some possessions

Aaron: in portugal so france i i'm not

Aaron: as familiar with how france left uh they called it

Aaron: pondicherry but in goa portugal was

Aaron: like what do you mean go this is

Aaron: our this is a state this is a part of portugal like we

Aaron: will fight you to the bitter end and they all

Aaron: they tried to call in like nato over this

Aaron: and they said nato like our our sovereign territories being attacked back us

Aaron: up here and that's where the the corollary of only territories north of the

Aaron: tropic of cancer will be defended because they're not the u.s was basically

Aaron: like we're not defending your colonial empires.

Aaron: This is stupid and.

Bill: You're going to.

Aaron: Give up doha to india.

Bill: I mean and that's it we have to that is most likely a political choice on the

Bill: part of the u.s with like this would serve us very well if their colonial uh

Bill: properties you know we're not defended there's no way.

Aaron: Yeah and to go back to the film i want to bring up as the strike is going on

Aaron: um at a certain point at the end of the strike Like when the conflict heats up,

Aaron: they capture a guy, Ben Meadie.

Aaron: This is the guy with the glasses and handcuffs in the press conference with Mathieu.

Aaron: And I just want to bring up a really quick thing. Because in the film,

Aaron: and this was a real controversy in French-Algerian relations,

Aaron: one of the reporters asks, you know,

Aaron: well, this is after when news of his death arrives.

Aaron: And one of the reporters is like, so we know you keep FLN prisoners bound.

Aaron: And you're telling us he ripped up his shirt and hung himself. Like, how?

Aaron: And it took until Macron's presidency recently to admit, yes,

Aaron: French paratroopers killed Ben Midi.

Aaron: That's how long it took for france to basically talk about this and and say

Aaron: things about this you know.

Bill: Yeah that felt very uh epstein coded

Bill: like there was a media came to

Bill: i was like oh this is epstein like this is an epstein moment like this is you

Bill: know one day we're gonna come back to this and it's gonna be well maybe i don't

Bill: you know but i i definitely i would like you to talk more about uh the media

Bill: like the the real life individual that he you know,

Bill: and you know like his his position exactly you know um and like what you know his role was.

Aaron: So to give you all an idea, like a lot of the, we don't, we see very little Ben Meadey in the film.

Aaron: But he is part of like the executive committee of, because the FLN is not just

Aaron: in Algiers, as they reference in the film, they're in the mountains,

Aaron: they're in the deserts, they're everywhere.

Aaron: And he was part of the leadership committee in Algiers at the time.

Aaron: And so he is one of the political heads, one of the political and military heads in Algiers.

Aaron: So he's pretty much the equivalent of an Ali Leprunt, a Jafar in terms of rank

Aaron: and influence amongst the people.

Aaron: And you know he was captured in the same way that and he was more politically.

Aaron: Radicalized like he had more formal education than Ali LaPointe he went to a

Aaron: French school he was more but he,

Aaron: He's seen as a hero to the Algerian people. The same as Ali Leprante, the real man.

Aaron: Like, there's statues of him throughout there. The same as Petit Omar.

Aaron: These are all real, like, especially the FLN people, are usually real people.

Aaron: And if they're not, like Jafar, they're played by the people they're supposed to be acting as.

Aaron: Because you're not going to have Yosef Sadi, the guy who's the actor,

Aaron: being like, yeah, I'm Yosef Sadi. I'm also playing myself here.

Aaron: You know, they had to give them a different name, but yes.

Aaron: So Ben Meadie was, was captured and they, they did the interview and everything.

Aaron: And everyone is like, basically the French were like, Oh, we don't know.

Aaron: We don't know what happened. You know, we, we, he, he was alive one minute. He was dead the next.

Aaron: And that's pretty much their, their sort of position on the thing.

Aaron: They tried repeatedly to do it to because this would be like and guess who was in his guess who was,

Aaron: who had custody of him before he died our good friend Paul I was sorry whatever

Aaron: his fucking name is that guy who went to Brazil like the this is the level of

Aaron: brutality of it and people were saying that you know.

Aaron: Everyone, one, Islam, he's a devout Muslim man, and Islam is very clear about

Aaron: not committing suicide.

Aaron: And two, like it says in the film, most of these people, given the chance, would rather flee.

Aaron: They're not going to kill themselves because they see, but they know they'll have a chance.

Aaron: Like, if they can just get that one chance to escape, to go back to the struggle, they'll do it.

Aaron: You know like and we see that like literally in the

Aaron: first in the opening of the film that the guy who is

Aaron: literally crying crying out free algeria which

Aaron: honestly if you take out algeria and you put in palestine i

Aaron: would not it would sound so prescient to today like roaring through the prisons

Aaron: roaring through the streets of the old city roaring through this all of all

Aaron: of historic Palestine and so.

Aaron: He's a very influential figure. We could talk a lot about him,

Aaron: but I especially want to talk about, you know, as the film, the post-climax

Aaron: of the film, you know, when we see the net closing in on Jafar,

Aaron: on Ali LaPrente, and Mathieu's strategy is working, right?

Aaron: And this is also why counterinsurgents love to use this film.

Aaron: They're like Matthew's thing of like the cell structure is what organizations

Aaron: use, revolutionary organizations use.

Aaron: In places like Vietnam, it's mentioned like people from the IRA in Ireland, the PLO in Palestine.

Aaron: This is revolutionary science, as best the word can describe.

Aaron: And we see the net closing in and we see how people react differently to this.

Aaron: And this is where they start attacking at night, like with the ambulance and

Aaron: where the strategy is kind of lost a little bit because everything is dying around them.

Aaron: But as the movie tells us, you know, everything, it's not dead and buried, but it is struggling.

Aaron: And it's important to know you know sadi yosef

Aaron: was was captured and the same fucking

Aaron: general the same asshole the real life

Aaron: general said that oh like trying to

Aaron: disparage the memory of the

Aaron: man said oh he betrayed ali la point he was our

Aaron: informant when you know there are historians who say no that that doesn't track

Aaron: at all like this is this makes no sense and you know we see how different people

Aaron: are responding differently like some are are going out you know to the.

Aaron: The French are blasting over the air raids. Imagine hearing this,

Aaron: like your comrades, like where he's like, um, Simurad, Jafar,

Aaron: all of them have been captured and just listing all the people.

Aaron: And, you know, the guys who hear that, and I'm talking about the scene where,

Aaron: they're like, we need a letter of a fair trial from you, Mathieu.

Aaron: We want to make sure that our rights will be respected. And they basically use

Aaron: it as time to prep, you know, a bomb.

Aaron: And we see you know there are

Aaron: people who just will not be taking and another another quick thing uh because

Aaron: we i kind of uh sped past that a little bit um also the sacrifices especially

Aaron: of the algerian women cannot be underestimated the fact that like such a the veil the veil the

Aaron: hijab is such an integral part of their identity and

Aaron: they shed it in the sake of for the fight of revolution

Aaron: to look french to take on the visage of

Aaron: the colonizer such a powerful scene and it shows the length that they'll take

Aaron: for freedom to to basically sacrifice their culture for others and and i saw

Aaron: especially poignant where jafar talks to the elderly woman who is less French

Aaron: looking, quote unquote, whatever that means.

Aaron: And she's like, I need to be part of this. I'll bring my son.

Aaron: We will make it work. That's how driven these people were.

Aaron: And the brave women and people who.

Aaron: Were in this in the struggle and you

Aaron: know for i also want to bring up because sometimes people

Aaron: poo-poo the film about oh it uses child soldiers like

Aaron: look at petit omar and i kind of

Aaron: push back at that because occupation touches every part

Aaron: of life and so they don't

Aaron: give him a gun and send them to the to to go kill

Aaron: french people they use him in roles that they know subversive roles like passing

Aaron: information like i love the political intelligence when he takes the microphone

Aaron: during the checkpoint and he's like the fln has not forgotten you we will win

Aaron: we will we will survive this i.

Bill: Think that that is a especially in the west that is a a um often used it's similar

Bill: to the um The excuse that, you know,

Bill: Israel uses like human shields and it's like, it is both a...

Bill: Tacit like admittance of

Bill: the actual like criminality and the

Bill: barbary barbarity of the west and how

Bill: like how they use that as an

Bill: excuse while simultaneously continuing to

Bill: do things that put those people put people

Bill: in positions they claim are human shields which

Bill: is not true um but they're still going

Bill: to do whatever they claim you know do um and

Bill: then the idea that like also like people don't

Bill: treat children as humans with

Bill: like full life experiences that with

Bill: agency exactly they don't treat them as if

Bill: they are full people with their

Bill: own minds and thoughts and who have been

Bill: affected by things it's as if they they act like

Bill: because somebody is a because a person as a child

Bill: they are incapable of

Bill: understanding things or being impacted by

Bill: like they they take the notion of western childhood

Bill: and apply it to you know and in the west childhood is treated as basically like

Bill: a bubble it's like they're just totally insulated from everything and they just

Bill: take this like naive presumption and apply it to like a child like petite omar

Bill: who is his circumstances are.

Bill: Vastly different than the average child on the streets of you know new york

Bill: city you know or in the suburbs or anywhere within the you know like it's just wildly different.

Aaron: It is this mentality of segregating adult things yeah and child things like

Aaron: i i mentioned i grew up learning politics

Aaron: in my in my in my household growing up if

Aaron: you if you weren't sharp on

Aaron: your politics you would get clowned on even as

Aaron: a kid and you know that's that spoke to

Aaron: how my parents obviously we're not literally treating they're not

Aaron: literally treating people as kids as adults but like they're

Aaron: not infantilizing them you know saying oh you're

Aaron: too young to understand this like no you need to

Aaron: understand we are under occupation and

Aaron: some children they they chose like petit omar

Aaron: in this too and so it's important to make that distinction versus like the often

Aaron: characterized depiction in western media of oh we're just giving this like 10

Aaron: year old boy a rifle which is the fln would not do that which is done totally.

Bill: For shock value and as a means of ginning up response from the population that you're looking to,

Bill: basically manufacture consent with that's why they do that that's why they make those claims.

Aaron: Exactly and so as the film closes

Aaron: we see the net closing on ali la plant and

Aaron: i want to bring up he does not at no

Aaron: point in the film is he like fearing for his

Aaron: life he's like oh i'm like he knows how

Aaron: this ends on some level like you

Aaron: you see the determination in his face he's not afraid

Aaron: to die yeah exactly and what really

Aaron: speaks to the character and i like this in the portrayal is

Aaron: he gives no qualms to anyone who wishes to

Aaron: surrender he says if you choose to to

Aaron: leave and also i love just as a side note

Aaron: in terms of filmmaking the the the chekhov's

Aaron: gun of making the the wall like hide

Aaron: out and because we saw it at the beginning and we see them making

Aaron: it and it's like oh we know this is coming back oh yeah we know how this ends

Aaron: and he says to the woman there when he's basically talking to what's left of

Aaron: the fln in algeria from from our perspective he's like if you want to surrender

Aaron: that's okay you you can go and he says but i'm not going.

Aaron: And like the real Aledepunt, like the real person, he dies. He dies fighting.

Aaron: And he is seen as a martyr and a symbol of the Algerian defiance.

Aaron: And one thing I really, really absolutely want to highlight is after they blow it up and he dies.

Aaron: And not to mention, and also I just want to make a quick side note. in this

Aaron: in the real life version of this i believe 16 other people died

Aaron: so it's not just he died and they

Aaron: just got him this this kills many other

Aaron: algerians um there's a french soldier saying you know what what do we do now

Aaron: we've we've won right and he's like oh we've gotten along for 130 years before

Aaron: this and even that is just a whitewashing of the history because if you look,

Aaron: Like even if you just do a cursory look at the Wikipedia page of colonial Algeria,

Aaron: French Algeria, you'll see there are rebellions.

Aaron: Throughout the history of the thing it's not what we got along that's from your

Aaron: perspective from their perspective it's like okay this attempt may not have

Aaron: succeeded but we will try again.

Bill: Yeah it's it's it always comes back to that it's like that that notion of that

Bill: the colonizers notion of it like you know um well it didn't affect me so we got along fine.

Ward: Yeah back to.

Bill: Brunch i've been benefiting i've been.

Aaron: Benefiting we got.

Bill: Along fine it's been it's been great it's been you know it's been wonderful

Bill: i love it it's you know meanwhile.

Aaron: I can't help but bring up the hawaii example like

Aaron: imagine if something like this happened in hawaii how many

Aaron: americans would say oh well i mean hawaii was like what's

Aaron: we've never had issues here yeah like indigenous

Aaron: hawaiians what are you what are you talking about like while

Aaron: hawaiian people and i've met hawaiian people who stand by

Aaron: their culture and someday wish to

Aaron: to be free there to see their kingdom restored you know this is not some distant

Aaron: thing for them and it's really important to talk about the ending of the film

Aaron: because the ending of the film is the most Beautiful way to encapsulate it because

Aaron: it doesn't just say, oh yeah, but the Algerians won. Hooray.

Aaron: No, it shows them like, and it's so beautiful because it says,

Aaron: oh, everything was quiet.

Aaron: And then everything just erupted. Like we don't understand.

Bill: Again, it returns to like, I thought we were fine. Like everything's fine.

Ward: Was it not business as usual? I thought we were back to business as usual.

Aaron: And then we get this amazing scene. And I love the description of the Algerian

Aaron: flag is, you know, the star and crescent on a green and white background.

Aaron: And they're like, they just tore bedsheets.

Aaron: They took whatever cloth they could find and made a flag out of it, out of defiance.

Aaron: And in those protests in 1960, hundreds of people died.

Aaron: A lot of people died. but they refused to to surrender and it it culminate and

Aaron: it it's it's not some like,

Aaron: bombastic thing like a red dawn sort of like we fought them off at the end it

Aaron: is it is a very somber thing that it says you know after years of struggle algeria

Aaron: is finally independent in 1964 There's no great glorification.

Aaron: The film recognizes the sacrifices of all the people throughout this film and

Aaron: throughout revolutionary struggle.

Aaron: Revolution cannot glorify violence. It accepts that it's necessary in its places and times.

Evan: There's one quote I wanted to bring up that we kind of went past this before,

Evan: but I think it's relevant to the end of the film and sort of you don't see into

Evan: the future. It doesn't give you the post.

Evan: Again, it only was filmed in 1966.

Evan: But I believe this is when the conversation with Lepland, he is being told sort

Evan: of, or educated, I guess you could say.

Evan: And I'm blanking now on the character.

Aaron: Oh, Ben Meade.

Evan: Yes, Ed Meade.

Aaron: Ben Meade.

Evan: He says, um, it's hard enough to start a revolution, even harder to sustain

Evan: it and hardest of all to win it. It's only after the revolution,

Evan: only after we've won it, that's the real difficulty begins.

Evan: And I think it's like a very poetic way to describe sort of the ever so difficult

Evan: nature of each step in the way.

Evan: And you see throughout the film as sort of like the organization and the start

Evan: of the revolution, but you don't really see the end of it.

Evan: But the way they depict the end of it is, as you said, it's just a beautiful

Evan: way to kind of show the culmination of their efforts.

Aaron: And yeah like your point is absolutely

Aaron: right about the this is where the real work begins

Aaron: and i love that quote you know because when

Aaron: you look at algeria like the referendum to to give independence i said 62 64

Aaron: sorry it's 62 um first 99.72 percent of the people voted for independence So

Aaron: it was pretty much unanimous.

Aaron: But, you know, there you look at the history after the fact and you see like

Aaron: literally the first thing you see on the I pulled up the Wikipedia page because

Aaron: I can't like actively look for sources right now.

Aaron: But the first thing after independence is the 1965 coup.

Aaron: Right. Like literally a few years later, there's political struggles like this

Aaron: is the real work of figuring out a real Algeria.

Aaron: What do we do with the Pinot, the French who choose to stay?

Aaron: You know, what do we do about the inhomogeneity of Algeria? You know,

Aaron: Algeria is not just Arabs.

Aaron: There are Berbers and Tuaregs and other ethnic groups here. Like, how do we build a state?

Evan: And there's multiple parties within Algeria. Like the FLN isn't the only,

Evan: you know, the only party.

Evan: There's the Communist Party there. I think the.

Aaron: Exactly.

Evan: The, I don't know what, I don't know what the initials are, but like the national

Evan: movement, you know, those are, which I think was founded by,

Evan: I actually don't have it open at the moment.

Aaron: I think it's disaffected people from the FLN.

Evan: Yeah, probably right. Exactly.

Bill: Split. Split.

Aaron: Yeah. And this is the difficulty. I mean, we see revolutionary projects like,

Aaron: you know, Cuba, China, Vietnam and say and think, oh, yeah, look at it. There you go.

Aaron: That's it. But we what we like, I love the quote of like, you know,

Aaron: they talk about the failures of socialism, but look at the failures of capitalism

Aaron: in Somalia and in, you know, Afghanistan and all these places.

Aaron: But, you know, we also have to look at, you know, the struggles post-revolution

Aaron: of a lot of these societies because, you know, these revolutionary movements are not homogenous.

Aaron: You know, they're not just one hive mind operating, you know, as one mind, right?

Aaron: People have different opinions and they put aside those opinions for the sake

Aaron: of the independence struggle.

Aaron: But what happens when that unifying force is gone?

Bill: It really makes me think of, and this was in reference to something completely

Bill: different, but Ward and I were discussing the other day, a completely different thing.

Bill: And how Ward said, you know, how it's like, how liberals hate leftists because

Bill: leftists are unwilling to just gloss over things.

Bill: How we're going to point out that it's not real, that you have to confront the

Bill: difficult parts, that you can't just gloss over it. You have to confront it. And like...

Bill: In a world in which we watch media, which co-ops revolutionary struggles,

Bill: like we are fed it by the state.

Bill: Watching this is such a profound difference.

Bill: There is no glossing it over. There is no hand-waving it away.

Bill: There's like, no, this is what it is. this is

Bill: a lesson you need to learn we are

Bill: going to give you it in a movie but this

Bill: is a lesson you need to learn if you want to

Bill: see successful struggle against things you

Bill: need to take this seriously you need to really move forward with this and you

Bill: can't gloss over things you can't ignore things because it makes you feel uncomfortable

Bill: because you don't like it you can't You have to take care of it.

Bill: You have to struggle with it. You have to internalize it.

Aaron: Yeah. I agree 100%, Bill. And for my own personal experience with this film,

Aaron: my fiance, ironically, when we started dating, this is months ago.

Aaron: Into our relationship i was like you need to watch this movie to understand like how i see the world,

Aaron: because i can't not see the world through this lens and this is the easiest

Aaron: way to show you i mean i could go all the live long day about books and like

Aaron: theory and things like that but what is more impactful than watching the brutality

Aaron: of a colonial regime before your eyes,

Aaron: presented in such graphic detail and you know it basically forces you to confront

Aaron: it and i want to bring up a comparison i don't i i there's a lot of episodes

Aaron: of left of the projector i don't know if y'all have covered this movie the patriot

Aaron: you know with mel gibson and all them,

Aaron: and and it's i always because i mean,

Aaron: I hate, it's my, as a leftist, it's my guilty pleasure movie.

Aaron: I enjoy the filmmaking, the making of the movie, blah, blah, blah.

Aaron: But I contrast that quote unquote revolutionary film with the Battle of Algiers.

Aaron: How Mel Gibson is portrayed as this mythic, heroic figure and everything falls on him.

Aaron: Whereas in the Battle of Algiers, yeah, we know Ali LaPante,

Aaron: but we don't know. we we've we get only get passing lines about the rest of

Aaron: the people but they're so integral.

Bill: I think that you

Bill: are not giving those other people enough credit like

Bill: like not that i'm not giving them enough credit but like

Bill: i honestly don't think the film puts that much

Bill: more on ali than jafar like

Bill: the other ones like really like they don't

Bill: there is no like the only reason LaPont is given like any kind of like even

Bill: like I feel like any more like slightly it's just because like he's the audience's

Bill: like he's the audience's proxy but the way it is presented is very much like he's not,

Bill: He's not the hero. He's not, you know, he's not great man. There's no great

Bill: man theory in this at all. Yeah, no. It's not present.

Ward: I really like that too. It's very matter of the fact, like cutting through and

Ward: it's like, there's parts of the whole film where it's like cut like a newsreel

Ward: where it's like this day, this day, this day.

Ward: And it's not like anything like the Patriot, like how you mentioned where it's

Ward: like, oh, his personal relationships.

Ward: Let's get you invested as the viewer emotionally into this person and his family.

Ward: So that that way he seems more righteous when he does things.

Ward: And there's none of that. It's just very matter of fact.

Aaron: I apologize for not correctly conveying this, but like, I agree with you, Bill.

Aaron: Like, and that's sort of what I meant. There's so many characters,

Aaron: so many Algerian characters.

Aaron: And yes, we get, you know, Petit Omar, we get Jafar, we get Ali LaPointe as

Aaron: our sort of like pseudo main characters of the thing. but how many different

Aaron: men and women are active?

Aaron: Like we never really get a name of the guy from the beginning of the film.

Aaron: The first Algerian we see.

Bill: God, that, we don't, man, that is, oh, that's a rough scene.

Bill: And you start off with that.

Bill: You cut the tear, the whole thing.

Aaron: The horror of just seeing literally the, the, the torture sequences.

Aaron: And I will say there is like a, I think there's a version of the film without

Aaron: it when it was first released because it was so graphic for audiences of the day.

Aaron: I mean, now with the hyper violence of today, you know, I fear people have become

Aaron: desensitized, but when it's portrayed like this, it shocks you.

Aaron: Like when they put the electric clamps on the guy, when they have the guy curled

Aaron: up on like a bar and like, like it is.

Aaron: And they drop and they like do the forced drowning of people.

Aaron: Like they do horrific things to these people.

Aaron: And I, I, the, the, the film, it needs to do that. You need to reconcile.

Aaron: Like Matthew said, if you want Algeria, this is what it will take.

Aaron: And thank, God, the French didn't push any further.

Aaron: Yeah.

Bill: Apology not accepted.

Aaron: But yeah, but this, this film is, is especially relevant in this day and age.

Aaron: Cause I know one thing in the show notes was about Venezuela and it's so poignant

Aaron: to talk about because if you want the fruits of empire, this is what it takes to maintain empire.

Aaron: Like like matthew said like you know

Aaron: if you want to keep all the the happy you know privileges of being a superpower

Aaron: and there are no privileges for the working class let's get that straight um

Aaron: it's for really the ruling class it's it's like well you got to deal with this and just like how,

Aaron: maduro was unjustly and viciously kidnapped from his home country you know like

Aaron: we're dealing with the fallout today like like how the,

Aaron: bill said you know oh the tendency to

Aaron: gloss over things like no like we've we've entered a new phase of of history

Aaron: we've entered a new phase of of relations between countries the same way in

Aaron: algeria algerian independence the end of decolonization it's just the world

Aaron: keeps spinning and you know did.

Evan: You have any last uh last thoughts or anything you uh didn't get to.

Aaron: Oh yeah well one quick thing i i'm

Aaron: gonna officially start this and i'm gonna comment on every video

Aaron: y'all post but do kimada do more

Aaron: of ponte corvo's work bill knows this

Aaron: i have been ranting at him to watch more

Aaron: of this dude's work because it is honestly phenomenal

Aaron: um i wanted to thank y'all

Aaron: all for having me and to share

Aaron: my love of this film you know i i love film it's

Aaron: one of the best ways to convey political feelings

Aaron: because you know a picture is worth a thousand words like the ability

Aaron: to to show revolutionary struggle and

Aaron: not just read about it but see it from people who

Aaron: were there who were participants and it

Aaron: especially because the movie is made is

Aaron: the script was written by uh yes of saadi the

Aaron: guy who plays jafar who was one of the political heads

Aaron: of the fln during the

Aaron: battle of algiers he was there he was basically doing

Aaron: what jafar was doing and so to

Aaron: it's it's so powerful like one one can't even call it acting in the same way

Aaron: we call acting in movies here because acting in like a DiCaprio movie is pretending

Aaron: to be someone. These people aren't pretending.

Aaron: This is what they live for.

Bill: It's funny you mentioned DiCaprio considering what he just won a bunch of awards for.

Evan: Well, I think what you did do, Aaron, actually, is volunteer to return to do

Evan: another Pontecorbo film.

Aaron: Oh, I will absolutely. If y'all ever want to have me come back,

Aaron: I will. I love talking about movies. Bill knows.

Evan: I haven't seen Bird, and I've heard of it, and I almost feel like,

Evan: yeah, I need to see that very soon.

Aaron: If you think there were good quotes in this movie, that movie is just completely,

Aaron: it will drown you in great revolutionary quotes.

Aaron: Like, it is such a good film. And the guy, I gotta look him up.

Aaron: I gotta do him justice. Like I want to, I want to explore, I want to just show,

Aaron: um, how just antithesis of, uh, actor he is.

Aaron: Uh, if you'll bear with me for a second, um, the man is named,

Aaron: he plays the, the, like, like we've discussed, there's no like titular characters.

Aaron: There's no traditional protagonist, but his name is Evaristo Marquez and he

Aaron: plays the character Jose Dolores.

Aaron: And just to go off his Wikipedia page, before being involved in the film.

Aaron: Like this is just from his Wikipedia page, so take it with a grain of salt.

Aaron: He was a herdsman and illiterate and he was approached, he was in three movies,

Aaron: I think it was like extras after the film.

Aaron: Um, but he was his, you see, you think of that and then you watch the movie

Aaron: and, you know, Marlon Brando talks about how, how much he loved working with

Aaron: him, how, how great he was.

Aaron: And he basically said, like, he was, they tried to make him into a,

Aaron: like, they tried to get him in movies and he went back to being a herd, a herdsman.

Aaron: Like that is the character of this man's films. And there's actually a documentary,

Aaron: a return to Algiers that Ponte Corvo did decades later about the filming of the battle of Algiers.

Aaron: So if you want me back, I haven't seen that.

Evan: So this is sort of unrelated, but just, I thought would be like a nice bow in

Evan: the 1966 Academy Awards battle of Algiers was nominated for best international film.

Evan: It lost to a french film and i just i feel like that's just like a sorry guys you are not gonna slap.

Ward: In the face.

Evan: And it's also the only film to ever be nominated for academy awards in three

Evan: consecutive academy awards it was nominated for the feature film in 66 i think

Evan: uh screenplay in 67 and then best director in 68 which is crazy didn't win any of them.

Aaron: Yeah no it that the battle of Algiers has been absolutely mistreated by the

Aaron: academy. But then again, we're working class people.

Bill: Yeah.

Aaron: What do we care about?

Evan: The academy is a joke. we, we, I.

Ward: Only care if we can use it to talk shit.

Bill: Yeah. Exactly. But like earlier tonight, I was talking about the house sinners

Bill: got just absolutely shafted.

Bill: And Jackie's like, I've, she's like, you never care about this stuff.

Bill: I'm like, I only care because sinners got shafted.

Bill: I don't give a fuck. I'm mad because I love this that's it I'm only because

Bill: of that movie that's all like I.

Aaron: Well, you got to tell Jackie, this is fueling my fire right here.

Aaron: I already hated the Academy. This is just giving me more reasons to hate me.

Bill: Yeah, exactly. I'm so fucking-

Aaron: Why are you trying to rain on my hate parade?

Ward: Also, I love Andor. So anytime Andor loses to Severance for the pit,

Ward: I put off watching those shows for several months.

Bill: Severance is good. Severance is good.

Ward: Well, it needs to stop winning over Andor or else I'm never going to watch it.

Ward: The ticker just keeps adding.

Aaron: Yeah i'm i'm grateful you all gave me the opportunity to be here i'm always

Aaron: willing to come back uh bill knows how to hit me up maybe i'll get a yeah maybe

Aaron: i'm a ghost actually i'll tweet.

Bill: But that's like it's like how at the end when it's like a hot word how do you know joy.

Aaron: Maybe next time I'll get an actual camera so you all see my face.

Evan: All good well Aaron I really appreciate you uh coming on and talking about this

Evan: always important and also incredible film so much.

Aaron: Appreciated yeah absolutely this was great having me yeah.

Evan: And uh Bill and Ward we will uh catch everyone next time on left of the projector.

Bill: Have a good night, everybody.