Leo D.M.J. Aurini - April 23, 2015


Movie Review： The Thief (1997) 1 of 3

Hosted by
Leo D.M.J. Aurini
Mentioned
Margaret Atwood Barack Obama Stalin
PUAs, Con Artists, and the Dark Triad Podcast Talking MGTOW with Zerse

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

131.5

Word count

1,384

Sentence count

131

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I discuss the differences between Russian cinema and Western storytelling, political allegory, and the low-trust society in the post-World War II Soviet era. I also talk about how to understand the film "The Thief" and why it's so different from what we're used to in the West.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Thank you.
00:00:30.000 Hey folks, this requested video comes from Alex from Australia, who asked me to review the 1997 film The Thief.
00:00:38.620 And just let me tell you that this film is absolutely amazing.
00:00:42.500 If you like this channel, if you read blogs in the Manosphere, it's probably right up your alley.
00:00:47.580 You're probably going to really enjoy it.
00:00:50.120 It was very well put together and tells a very poignant story of being a boy growing up in the post-World War II Soviet Russia era.
00:00:59.760 Absolutely amazing.
00:01:01.300 This video won't have any spoilers, but parts two and three will.
00:01:04.940 So I strongly recommend that you, after listening to this video, go check it out for yourselves.
00:01:11.180 You'd be hurting yourselves to not watch this movie.
00:01:13.700 It's brilliant.
00:01:14.340 Now, in this film, I'm going to try and give you the background for what you need to really understand this movie.
00:01:23.120 Some useful information to inform your perspective.
00:01:26.320 And I'll be covering, first of all, the nature of Russian cinema and Russian literature in general.
00:01:32.100 Because it is a bit different from what we're used to here in the West.
00:01:34.820 Next, we're going to talk about political allegory.
00:01:40.600 And finally, the low-trust society.
00:01:44.680 And if you're thinking this might be related to my last video, it very much is.
00:01:49.960 But we'll get to that when it comes up.
00:01:52.380 So, first of all, the nature of Russian writing of Russian cinema.
00:02:00.540 You see, the Russians, the whole nature of their storytelling is very, it's very, it assumes that you understand the experience. 0.99
00:02:13.240 That you have some information about what it's like to be a human being.
00:02:17.220 What it's like to live in these circumstances.
00:02:20.080 See, with the Western storytelling, we tend to be more didactic.
00:02:24.680 We describe the sequence of events.
00:02:28.020 We're very linear.
00:02:29.080 We're very explanatory.
00:02:31.420 Whereas with the Russian style, it's more about the overall experience of the entire thing.
00:02:39.180 For instance, right now I'm reading Roadside Picnic.
00:02:42.580 Russian sci-fi novelette.
00:02:45.060 And at one point, the protagonist, he had a bad day, so he's getting hammered in the bar.
00:02:51.620 And as he gets drunker, people appear and disappear without saying where they are.
00:02:58.060 You know, suddenly Joe is somewhere else.
00:03:00.000 It becomes increasingly chaotic.
00:03:02.040 And it's not a clear sequence of events lined up to explain why all of this craziness happens.
00:03:07.960 He eventually throws an alien artifact into the middle of the bar that causes everybody to have an emotional freak-out and escapes through the window in the bathroom.
00:03:18.140 It doesn't explain how all of this comes about.
00:03:22.240 Because the protagonist doesn't remember.
00:03:24.120 He's drunk. 0.99
00:03:25.140 He's being a lunatic. 1.00
00:03:26.560 Drinking way too much. 1.00
00:03:27.400 Everybody's screaming.
00:03:28.300 There's loud music, etc.
00:03:29.460 And it's written in that manner.
00:03:35.060 So with Russian cinema, it's very much pulling you into this experience.
00:03:39.400 Pulling you into understanding the perspective of a character, rather than telling you what happened to them to give them this perspective.
00:03:48.140 I wouldn't say it's better or worse than, you know, more Western styles of writing.
00:03:54.640 But it is something that you need to be prepared for.
00:03:57.520 It's not going to be all laid out for you.
00:03:59.740 You know, we like things being all laid out.
00:04:02.120 Very explained.
00:04:05.140 Now, don't get me wrong.
00:04:07.140 Russian literature is not like that hack Margaret Atwood.
00:04:10.720 It's, uh...
00:04:11.760 Russian literature has a point.
00:04:14.200 It has a story that it's telling, that it's getting across.
00:04:17.200 But it uses a slightly different methodology of doing it.
00:04:21.080 So you kind of have to let yourself go and just experience it.
00:04:27.020 The next point I want to talk about is political allegory.
00:04:33.640 Now, some books are absolutely transparent political allegories.
00:04:39.400 If you take Animal Farm, it's the most obvious.
00:04:42.120 But even 1984, it's very much...
00:04:44.280 It's a directly political book.
00:04:48.200 Unfortunately, there's this tendency in people to try and push an allegory on something.
00:04:54.660 Or try and say there's an allegory where there isn't.
00:04:58.420 Now, I'm somewhat of a believer in death of the author.
00:05:02.280 Death of the author is a concept that the author doesn't always know what they're writing.
00:05:06.340 That you need the critic to interpret what the author is writing.
00:05:12.000 True literature, good literature with real humans in it, with real characters, requires interpretation.
00:05:20.900 And I do support that notion.
00:05:23.820 But oftentimes, what you'll find with the 101-level English student is trying to push some sort of narrative on it.
00:05:31.380 Trying to say that it's about Jesus and purgatory.
00:05:34.320 Or about how this is really about Barack Obama.
00:05:36.840 Or whatever nonsense.
00:05:39.340 Now, that said, The Thief does have an underlying political narrative to it.
00:05:46.340 Well, it's set in the post-war Russia years.
00:05:51.000 And that's what it's about.
00:05:53.060 It's about the disappointment of the Russian people with those years.
00:05:59.140 You know, the protagonist is a young boy, who does an amazing acting job, by the way, especially for a child.
00:06:06.280 And so the young boy kind of represents the Russian people.
00:06:11.940 And this is this film made in 1997 looking back 50 years, looking back upon childhood,
00:06:17.740 looking at the USSR under Stalin, and being disappointed with all of it.
00:06:26.140 So there is a political allegory there.
00:06:29.100 But it's very subtle.
00:06:31.420 And in fact, I really feel that this movie really speaks to us right now.
00:06:37.380 Because at the end of the day, the whole issue with Soviet Russia,
00:06:41.580 the issue illustrated by this movie, wasn't necessarily one of economics.
00:06:49.160 It wasn't one of richness or poverty so much as it was the issue of living in a very low-trust society,
00:06:58.740 which is where we live today.
00:07:03.120 And this movie really illustrates the fact,
00:07:06.420 and this is kind of the contradictory nature,
00:07:10.260 the paradox of living in a low-trust society.
00:07:13.080 In a low-trust society, trustworthy people are frowned upon.
00:07:21.900 Trustworthy people are held in suspicion.
00:07:25.600 Whereas people that are untrustworthy tend to do quite well for themselves.
00:07:32.480 You know, I mentioned in another video that right now,
00:07:36.020 one of the few growth industries is multi-level marketing schemes.
00:07:39.300 It's pyramid schemes.
00:07:42.380 And the irony being that what this economy needs desperately is real production,
00:07:48.340 real value being added, as opposed to value transference.
00:07:54.920 And yet it's the people in the value transference industries,
00:07:58.540 in the multi-level marketing scams or in the banking sector,
00:08:03.400 these are the ones that can make a lot of money,
00:08:06.120 that they have a really good credit rating,
00:08:09.540 so they get to drive a brand new car.
00:08:11.380 I mean, realistically, most of these people are,
00:08:15.140 like, technically speaking, they're poorer than your average waitress 1.00
00:08:18.180 because at least she owns her own car. 0.62
00:08:20.640 These people don't own anything.
00:08:22.440 And yet they're living the highlight.
00:08:25.220 Similarly, in the dating market,
00:08:28.140 if you play the scam artist,
00:08:31.640 you are going to get more success with women
00:08:35.420 than if you play the honest guy. 0.99
00:08:37.960 And we're not talking, like, beta, needy, pathetic. 0.98
00:08:41.240 We're talking about if you try and genuinely talk to women 1.00
00:08:44.340 and get to know them,
00:08:46.620 you are going to be less successful
00:08:47.980 than the guy that's just out there
00:08:50.040 just trying to get them into bed.
00:08:51.400 And this goes for everything, really, nowadays.
00:08:56.200 You know, for job interviews.
00:08:58.380 If you learn manipulation techniques,
00:09:01.720 if you learn NLP,
00:09:03.140 if you learn this stuff,
00:09:05.060 you will do better than the guy
00:09:07.300 that actually has a degree
00:09:08.960 and can actually do something productive for them.
00:09:12.300 And so this whole movie,
00:09:17.740 even though it's about Soviet Russia,
00:09:19.680 part of it really feels like it's about the modern day.
00:09:23.720 So I strongly recommend this.
00:09:26.200 It has themes of boyhood, manhood,
00:09:29.940 what is it that makes a man,
00:09:31.320 how are we supposed to survive in a low-trust society,
00:09:34.360 and about how people that do get scammed
00:09:38.220 on some level ultimately want to get scammed.
00:09:41.500 They make themselves into the victims
00:09:44.000 before the scam artist even arrives.
00:09:47.240 So with that, please check out this movie.
00:09:50.360 It's bloody excellent.
00:09:51.660 I am DB Link down there below.
00:09:54.540 And next time we're going to talk about the movie itself
00:09:58.300 and a character analysis of everybody that appears.
00:10:02.700 For now, Irini out.
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