Monstrous Love - a Like Minds Valentine's Day Web Weave
[Like Minds Aesthetic Masterpost]
Card 1 - Enemy: Pierre Corneille - The Cid // Hélène Cixous - “The Perjured City” // Charles Baudelaire - Les Fleurs du Mal // Louise Glück - Timor Mortis // Khalil Gibran - The Forerunner
Photo 1: Agustín Gómez Arcos - The Carnivorous Lamb
Card 2 - Love: Leigh Bardugo - Rule of Wolves // Marie Howe - The Addiction // William Golding - The Lord of the Flies // Micah Nemerever - These Violent Delights // Crimson Peak
Photo 2: Steve Kowit - Eurydice
Card 3 - Violence: Elaine Kahn - Romance // unknown // Frank Iero And The Future Violents - Violence // Schuyler Peck - Horoscope for the heartbroken // Madeline Miller - Circe
Photo 3: tr. Andrew Miller - Paulos // Anne Sexton - The Papa and Mama Dance
Card 4 - God: Emery Allen - Holy Things in This World // George Seferis - Stratis the Sailor among the Agapathi // Andrew Joseph White - Hell Followed With Us // Rilke - // Charles Wright - Clear Night // Saniyya Saleh - A Million Women Are Your Mother
Photo 4: Tumblr user normal-horoscopes
Card 5 - Heart: Blythe Baird - If My Body Could Speak // Natalie Diaz - Wolf OR-7 // Richard Siken - Dirty Valentine // Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World
Photo 5: Mary Shelley - Frankenstein
Card 6 - Monster: Fortesa Latifi - ? // Maguerite Duras - ? // Natalie Diaz - Postcolonial Love Poem // Ocean Vuong - On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous // Rumi
Photo 6: Victoria Chang - Obit // Florence + the Machine – I'm Not Calling You a Liar
Card 7 - Devotion: Margaret Atwood - Hesitations Outside the Door // Robert Louis Stevenson - Olalla // unknown // Madeline Miller - Song of Achilles // Leah Horlick - For Your Own Good
Yes, you can find parts of this DVD extra on Youtube, in varying levels of quality. I have it for you here, from my undisclosed source, in downloadable form. I only have 6 segments, and unfortunately the intro isn't one of them.
BTS Part 1 - Casting
BTS Part 2 - Pre-Production
BTS Part 4 - Yorkshire 1
BTS Part 5 - Yorkshire 2
BTS Part 6 - Music
Per the Behind the Scenes video from the Like Minds DVD, the scene where Josh is buried was filmed at Haworth Cemetery in the village of Haworth in West Yorkshire. The town's primary claim to fame is its connection to the Brontë sisters, who lived at the Haworth Parsonage while their father was the parson. They wrote most of their novels here, including Wuthering Heights.
This cemetery was created after the original Haworth graveyard was deemed too full (there are reportedly around 40,000 people buried there, obviously by reusing graves). It's located on a hillside, overlooking the Yorkshire moors.
The choice to film the movie partly in Yorkshire is particularly appropriate given the region's connection to Gothic literature both in terms of history and due to the nature of the landscape itself.
The scene itself was filmed near the center of the cemetery marked by a cluster of trees, and near the middle of the slope. As we can see on the drone image below, the bottom of the slope is marked by a line of trees, and a paved access road bisects the slope. Given the distances of the tree line and the cars parked in the shot, that places the scene at approximately the red X in the overhead view. The arrow indicates approximate direction of the camera in this shot.
There's an open area that would have allowed them to dig a faux grave without disturbing any of the actual graves, and there are plenty of headstones to fill the foreground of the long shot. It's difficult to tell exactly where the grave is placed because of the way camera depth of field can distort distance perception between the characters and the background.
Alex and Dr. Forbes are standing with their backs to the central cluster of trees. Nigel and John Colbie are standing on the opposite side of the grave, with the tree border in the distance behind them. Raj seems to be standing on the downslope, at the "head" of the grave (probably thinking about the bullet he dodged).
Zooming in, we can see the obelisk shaped headstone highlighted in the screenshot above. The photo below also shows the same headstone, from the opposite (bottom) corner of the area.
The stunning backdrop of the desolate moors is used as the perfect accompaniment to Alex's emotional state in this scene.
[Like Minds Masterpost]
[Filming Locations: Secret Rendezvous]
[Filming Locations: The Old Astra]
Is Alex your favourite, would you say? Out of the two boys?
GREG: I like them both just as much. I find them both intriguing characters. They both try to manipulate and control each other. I find Alex and Nigel really interesting, so I wouldn't say I had a favourite.
Is there a definitive time frame between their first meeting and Nigel's death?
GREG: It's about nine months. They meet at the beginning of the year and the death is around October, but I was not basing it on any terms of a real school year. I wanted to create this kind of period of time that went from summer to winter back to summer, because I wanted the weather, including the cold snow fields to reflect the emotional state of the characters. It's almost symbolic, it's not true seasons so to speak. So when the seasons change, things change.
Remembering this is the retelling of a story from someone who's speaking to a forensic psychologist. So the puzzle is - what's true?
That's the question that's sort of stuck with everyone, really.
GREG: The weather is to give the essence of the psychological state, because what we are seeing is a retell. Hence the film’s winter in the middle of the calendar year is actually summer in the UK.
With the chronology, and this sort of theme of having winter sets when it SHOULD besummer, things like that. Do you think that contributes to the thematic idea that Alex is not telling the truth?
GREG: That's the puzzle. I was just mixing it up. In the Southern Hemisphere, they wouldn't think too much about that – our schools run on a calendar year, it's the middle of winter in July so you can see my thinking as an Australian. The only indication of location is by the characters’ accents which are from London, up to Leeds. But yes, as for a time period, it's over nine months – beginning of the year to close to the end.
As does the weather play on the characters, so do the rooms and the world they inhabit. So when you look at the rooms – if it's a big, wide shot, it’s more cold and bleak. Or if they're close up, like when they grabbed Nigel from his bed - when they chloroformed and kidnapped him. That shot just started on his face, just his sheets and his face, then the doorknob, it’s more intimate and just one shot.
Also, the world is split, it's a bit like two universes. You have the safe haven of the school, which is almost like the womb. The train is the umbilical cord that travels between the school and the outside brutal world where bad things happen.
That actually leads me to something I'm personally curious about through my own watching of the film, and my constant change in opinion every time I watch it. Alex seems to be an unreliable narrator, to whatever scale that might be. But as the person who created them, do you think Nigel is a complete sort of evil? Or is he a person we should feel some level of empathy for? Is he literally just a foil to Alex, or a person we should feel sorry for? Because I do.
GREG: Good question. But I would like to ask you what do you think?
I do feel sorry for him. I've had my own experience with bullies like Alex, picking on the quiet kids. And then the interactions we see between Nigel and his parents. I get the vibe there is a lot of pressure on him because of who his father is, and the reputation Nigel has got for great academic scores. I do feel a lot of empathy for him.
GREG: Well I'm glad that you do. I think you're right. A lot of people don't see that, because they want to see the evil person being evil, which is a trope that happens again and again in films, and I don't like it. I think, why can't the bad person be a victim too? That doesn't mean what they did was right, but why did they fire? Why did they trigger? Are they born evil? It's that old thing about psychopathic behaviour. Is it learned? Is it nature or nurture? I understand it can be nature, but really it's nurture just as much. For me, it's the nature/nurture side of Nigel I have a lot of empathy for. I think it's very sad that he started doing what he did. Even his taxidermy. His behaviours are things that are common in people who are haunted, taunted. But he's also not quite 100% right, in respect to his psychological state. I feel that he was bullied by Alex and it was, as you say, he unfortunately triggered on the train.
I love Alex, but I do have a soft spot for Nigel. When I watch the film, I have very specific ideas about him, why he's like that, which I want to bring to you.
GREG: I understand. I write characters so they can evolve, grow and learn. I allow the audience to have their own interpretation, I don't think I should be forcing it down their throats. I like the idea of writing characters that can be interpreted in different ways. So you and your friends having differing positions is exactly the debate that I want to see happen. It opens up conversation and makes the film a lot more interesting. And it also means that you start to see things in the character that relate to you and your own learnings, while other people will see it in a different way. That's what we all do. Tell me your interpretation and I'll see how close you are to what I had originally envisioned.
Well in my mind, he's.. like I said. He's quiet, you wouldn't want to sit with him. But he's not a problem. Just a bit weird. When he has that moment of snapping on the train and finally sort of deciding to give as good as he's getting, there's almost a kind of desperation there. Nigel's taunting, the way he approaches Alex in the chapel. It's almost like a kind of relief. These thoughts Nigel has always had in the back of his mind but never acted on. It's a sort of desperate invitation for Alex to be part of this world, a world he already thought Alex lived in because of the horrible things Alex had been doing to him - dragging him out of his bed and stuff. In Nigel I personally see someone who's abused in terms of his home life - emotional, whatever kind of bullying he's facing from his dad. Because clearly John Colbie is somebody who jumps to violence very quickly. He's very quick to grab that gun. But also the uncomfortable relationship with his mother. I know Nigel sees her as his Maraclea, this missing piece of him becoming who he was always meant to be. But it always strikes me as really uncomfortable.
GREG: There is no indication in the story that there is actually anything going on between
Helen and Nigel. So the thing is, you're completely right in everything you said. Nigel would be aware of his mother’s emotional state. She's searching for love and affection, but I don't think it's sexual. I think the photos that were taken were taken without her knowledge. Nigel set it up, that's how the images ended up over at the brotherhood. And with Nigel sitting in bed with his mother, it doesn't necessarily mean anything. However this is up for interpretation.
Of course, yeah.
GREG: But at the same time, even though I think all the emotional traits you're talking about are correct, I didn't want to push it as far as a physical relationship. I don't think they are in one. I think Helen is not getting any kind of emotional intimacy from her husband. Her son is showing affection to her in a way where he's at least communicating with her, and sitting with her and talking to her. Nigel may well be manipulating her, but I also think he wants her unconditional motherly love. She's the only person he truly feels connected to. It's that balancing point, isn't it? So when I wrote the script, I was cautious about saying that they're having a physical relationship as well as a psychological relationship. It's a cry for help from him, and from her, because of the father. Also it is important to reiterate that we are seeing this thread through Alex's retelling.
Now, you called Alex an unreliable narrator. He is reliable, just very, very selective as to what he says and when. Alex is putting up with the drudgery of school life only as a means to an end whereas Nigel is kind of numb to his very existence. It's almost like Nigel's living in a void, he needs to take control in order to help him understand his purpose. Deep down he wants to have connection to people, he craves it. I do feel it's something he feels he doesn't have. To Nigel his life is void of true love. He certainly doesn't get it from his dad. He's by himself, he's a very lonely character. And it's sad that people can be like that.
That's definitely how I feel. Especially the scene where he brings Alex to his little crawl space, the sort of childlike eagerness within him. That Alex is the first person he's brought down there. So many times throughout the film, I just wanted to hug him, I just felt really bad.
GREG: Well, that's right. And Nigel’s parents knew nothing about it. They wouldn't even have known he was missing. He built that place, it's his secret place, his own little capsule of escape. Because no one really understands him. But you understand him, which is really beautiful because that's what you've taken away with the film.
Well I'm glad I'm not being completely overly emotional when I watch it and I'm just thinking, oh I just want to tell him everything is going to be okay.
GREG: Empathy. As I have said, different people will interpret Like Minds in different ways. I think if you're an empathetic type of person, you'd read it that way. If you're not, you won't. Believe me, I've had people watch this film that didn't get it at all. I had some critics watch the film who totally missed the point. I think they didn’t want to dig any deeper than they had to. This is not an easy film.
I think of Nigel as a very complex character, and he decides he will live on in eternity through someone else, which is very sad.
Could you then say that in terms of Nigel's ending, that was always going to happen? As in, Nigel taking his own life.
GREG: It wouldn't have happened if he hadn't come into contact with someone like Alex. He would have continued on. I don't think he was suicidal in that regard, Nigel got caught up in this Gestalt relationship with Alex, he believed they had created something between them so much bigger than themselves. Suddenly he was excited. He was living this different kind of life, seeing through the eyes of the monster, which to him was exhilarating.
And he wasn't alone.
GREG: Yeah, he wasn't alone anymore. And when he realised that everything was going to be taken away from him, he didn't want it to stop. He wanted it to go on forever. And he thought he could have such an effect on this person that he could almost embody himself in them through this psychological bond. For Nigel, this became more important than life itself.
I'm meant to be asking professional questions that my friends have given me, instead I'm sitting here being maternal towards Nigel Colbie.
GREG: Yes, you are. But for the right reasons. That's fine, that's absolutely fine.
💬 0 🔁 0 ❤️ 0 · 20 Years On - part 4 ·
Do you have a favourite scene that either was or wasn't included in the final film?
GREG: Hard
A BIG thanks to @neuroticspiral, who obtained this article through uni library access. And let this be a reminder that if you are still in uni, you have access to so much published material that is locked away behind paywalls for the rest of us. You will miss that availability when you graduate, so enjoy it while you can! Obviously, these articles are under copyright, but today you are all my students and we are here for academic purposes.
This author make a few good points (keep reading for the bit about Eddie and Tom's eyes), but he also, I think, missed the point a few times. Full text of the article after the cut.
Double Trouble: Like Minds
17-YEAR-OLD ALEX FORBES (EDDIE REDMAYNE) SITS IN A POLICE INTERVIEW ROOM CALMLY. HE RADIATES A SUBTLE INTELLIGENCE, INDICATING THAT HE IS IN CONTROL OF THE SITUATION. NOT AT ALL THE REACTION OF A BOY WHO HAS JUST BEEN ARRESTED FOR THE MURDER OF HIS BEST FRIEND.
BY RJURIK DAVIDSON
What could have driven this innocent-looking youth to murder, or is he, as he claims, innocent? This is the question that forensic psychologist Sally Rowe (toni Collette) must answer. The interview process, together with Rowe’s own investigation, forms the first storyline of Like Minds. The second storyline, which is the heart of the narrative, is intercut with the first. It is Alex's retelling of the macabre and disturbing events that led to the murder of Nigel (Tom Sturridge).
In this story, Nigel arrives at a prestigious boarding school and becomes Alex's new roommate. Nigel is brooding and quiet. He spends his time alone, dissecting animals and writing in voluminous notebooks. He is, to the other boys, a freak. But he’s a freak who slowly draws Alex into his fantasy world, a world dominated by the history of the Knights Templar, the murder of the heretical Christians known as the Cathars, and the Templar myth of Maraclea. According to this myth, Maraclea was the true love of one of the Knights Templar. Before they could be married, she died tragically. Devastated, he dug up her dead body and made love to it. Nine months later, the knight was summoned to the grave, and on opening the coffin found that the body’s head had been moved beneath its hips and its thigh bones crossed, (the origin of the sign of the skull and crossbones, Nigel tells us). This myth becomes central to Nigel’s gradual entrapment of Alex, and a ghoulish replay of the myth brings the story to a climax.
But it is more than a question of entrapment, for it seems that Alex himself has awakened these dark fantasies in Nigel: they have entered into a Gestalt relationship, in which ‘the whole is more important than the sum of its parts’. Gestalt psychology is the true and central subject
of Like Minds. Alex cannot help being dragged into Nigel’s fantasy world. He finds himself agreeing to secret rendezvous, reading Nigel’s histories of the Templars and the Cathars, and taking on his friend’s obsessions. It is as if Nigel is in his mind and can read his thoughts. As
writer-director Gregory Read explains:
There is a big misconception about psychopaths. The majority of psychopaths are not killers at all. They are out there functioning in society, maybe in a very dysfunctional way but still, they are not necessarily dangerous. I thought, what happens if we put two potentially ‘normal’ psychopaths together in a close environment? Could they trigger something in each other?’
Filmed alternately in Yorkshire (the boarding school scenes), Adelaide (the police interview scenes), and New South Wales (the train scenes), the film is a macabre psychological thriller whose interest in Gestalt psychology is mirrored in its very structure, in which both storylines
resonate with each other. At times the complexity of Like Minds strains and even ruptures its own bounds. There are moments when the sheer amount of conceptual information threatens to overwhelm the viewer. What, we ask, is the relationship of all this – the Templars, the myth of Maraclea, Gestalt psychology, the fact that almost all the adult males belong to a club apparently descended from the templars – to the story of the two boys? But if this is a weakness it is also a redeeming feature: better a film be too complicated than thin and empty. Read’s aim was to:
... think of it more in terms of a psychological puzzle, one which the audience can piece together. With this in mind it was imperative that all the pieces were carefully defined, allowing the audience to read the clues through the story, and draw their own conclusion in retrospect.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t quite hold together. The adult male club, for example, sits in the background threatening but never actually coming into play. Nor is it exactly clear, by the film’s end, of what happened, and more importantly, what the motivations of the characters were. The viewer is left to backtrack through the scenes to try to reassess. The script also sometimes falls into the awkward error of transmitting chunks of information through dialogue. Some of these moments form the film’s low points, as characters become mere mouthpieces for information or discourses about history. The film is thus reminiscent of adaptations of novels for the screen, which so often fall into the same difficulties.
The history of Knights Templar is, in the wake of The Da Vinci Code, not exactly original material (though the myth of Maraclea and the history of the Cathars chart more original territory). Neither is the boarding-school psychological thriller exactly unfamiliar. Notions of half-forgotten histories, of secret clubs and the power of mythology, are common in the literature of the macabre, and at moments the film suffers from a disconcerting sense of déja vu. What originality it shows lies in its combination of these elements.
Like Minds is distinguished by strong direction with great attention to the mise-en-scène. The film makes great use of the brooding Yorkshire landscape with its muted light and bleak weather. Director of Photography Nigel Bluck says:
The Yorkshire scenery was great. The starkness of the leafless trees and the muted colours, the soft low English light, the classical stone architecture and the atmosphere of the snow were perfect for the mood we were trying to create in the film.
Adding to this is a nicely underplayed and moody score by Carlo Giacco, which works well with the direction. Giacco composed the music so that there were:
... no cues where the music heralds what’s going to happen. It follows rather than flags what is occurring dramatically. The element of surprise works to great effect in the film throughout and it was important not to pre-empt that musically.
Without doubt there are some strong performances, most notably those of Eddie Redmayne and Toni Collette. Redmayne is a young actor to watch. Though this is only his first feature film, he captures the character of Alex with subtle verisimilitude. Director Read claims that ‘I wanted to find someone who had the eyes. The casting was all about the eyes.’ This, however, proves to be truer of Tom Sturridge’s portrayal of Nigel. Rather, Eddie Redmayne’s facial expressions as a whole carry his performance. Indeed, this is no easy task considering the occasionally clunky dialogue, yet it is one he carries off with aplomb. Collette, meanwhile creates a consummately professional performance from rather thin material, while Richard Roxburgh is less convincing as police officer Martin McKenzie, though the part offers probably the least potential for dramatic variation. Here again, the film suffers from over-complexity. Roxburgh and Collette’s characters have apparently once had some kind of romantic relationship, a fact referred to only once or twice. In this, as in various other elements, Read might have done better to strip out a character or two and simplify the film. A 110-minute feature can only bear so many ingredients.
Like Minds is not, in the end, a ground-breaking film. Its key concerns – what is psychopathology? What makes a psychopath? – will be familiar to most viewers. Its interest in medieval history likewise has the touch of the familiar about it, even if some of the specifics are original. For a part-Australian film it does chart some new territory, delving into the sub-genre of the psychological thriller where recent Australian staples have been comedies or relationship dramas. Never boring, what carries the film is its satisfying pace, strong direction, well-planned mise-en-scène and strong performances. It’s a film that shows that Gregory Read has talent, which should develop beyond this promising but unremarkable first feature.
Rjurik Davidson is a freelance writer and editor. He has taught at Victoria University, RMIT and La Trobe University.
For additional reading, please see:
[Like Minds Masterpost - Main]
This article appeared in the same magazine issue as the previously posted "Macabre Myths and Psychological Puzzles."
1) these two look like they're on a bashful date and that's fucking adorable also Dream x Cluracan kinda shippable in a slut x different type of slut way.
2) Rarely before seen crystal clear absolutely gorgeous pattern on Dreams big coat!!!
dededos
kianamaiart
turnnoffyourmind
baratheonpilled
areudirty
romaincrisis
snowghoul
