Exploring Consciousness and UFOs | 7min snip from Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

Speaker 1
He had it coming. He was a son of a bitch. And now he's finally free. He lost out
Speaker 3
to the biggest son of a bitch. Yeah. Okay, I actually wanted to ask about Father Elvido and that kind of final scene between him and Blackthorn.
Speaker 2
It's always been a very enigmatic scene
Speaker 3
to me. And I was wondering what your take is on these two characters and their relationship now at the end of the story. And also the sacrifice that Maricos obviously made for Blackthorn. I think
Speaker 1
to me what's clear in the last two scenes between Evito and Blackthorn is that, first of all, in his own way, Elvido loved Maricos just as much as Blackthorn did. It may have been spiritual love. It may have been more than spiritual love, I don't know. But certainly his feelings for her were strong enough that he would make a promise to her and keep that promise to her, even if it meant sparing the life of a man who his own church and faith tells him must die. You know, so much of Blackthorn's fate relies on this central unseen twist moment between Elvido and Maricos, where Maricos negotiated a deal to spare Blackthorn's life in exchange for giving access to and allowing for the destruction of the Erasmus. Blackthorn's ship and the principal weapon that could be used against the church. So in other words, save the man but take the weapon out of his hands, maybe then try to find a way to kill him some other day. But for Elvido, I think the act of keeping that promise in Ozaka where he could have been killed in those woods and no one would have ever known, but Maricos would have known and Elvido wouldn't let that happen. So I think it speaks to the depth of his love for Maricos that that's what he was willing to do. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 3
very curious to find out if there's going to be any contingent of online fan who was just shipping Elvido and Maricos really, really hard. I know they'll be out there. Blackthorn's
Speaker 2
fate is
Speaker 3
so interesting. And like you say, totally unexpected. People are going to see in it what they want to see because there's a lot of ways you can read it as somehow worse than death. It's like a purgatory of some sort. And then there's a way in which you can read it as like a life of devotion to something beyond him, which has sort of been something that's been a struggle for him. How
Speaker 1
do you view Blackthorn's fate? I think Blackthorn's journey in this episode to the place where it lands in such a beautiful and powerful scene between Blackthorn and Toranaga on that hill where he offers up his own life is the journey that I hope all of us who are trying to kind of understand how we interact with cultures we don't understand how we want to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to have able to be able to be able to have able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to looking back, it was actually the dream of a young man looking forward to one possible version of his life, a version of his life that he has to draw to an end by killing that path. What Blackthorn is trying to kill there is not himself, it's the version of himself that he's always been. And when Tornaga knocks that knife out of his hand and then looks down at him, he's looking at a man reborn now to a completely different life.
Speaker 3
He kind of does have almost this psychic break in it. He's in shock almost because he's walked so close to death and then drawn away from it and he kind of comes out of it reborn. But yeah, it does feel like if he doesn't reach that by the end of the story then what is it all for, you just have to find the right place
Speaker 1
to put it. Yeah, and find the right way to express it that feels persuasive because I don't think in this modern era, one even has to be Japanese to understand that that's not quite right, that it doesn't quite make sense for someone to just appropriate a custom that they understand very little. And then suddenly gain acceptance by a whole other community by means of doing it. That's not how life works. But what is powerful is the idea of a man spiritually finally letting go. And this is something that we talked about from the very beginning, Cosmo and I is that this whole story for Blackthorn is really just a story of a man learning to let go.
Speaker 3
This was all shot chronologically. So presumably you're kind of on the beach out there filming that scene that we've been talking about for forever. And it's there in front of you. I mean, that must have been an incredibly emotional and huge moment.
Speaker 1
We were except for one thing that the last scene that we shot was actually the very first scene of the whole series. But this is a pointed kind of coda to the conversation was the last day of production was me in costume playing a corpse of a sailor that Omi steps over in the very beginning of the show when they first board the Erasmus, which is always how I like to play it is eventually I will cast myself as a corpse in a show because it's just sort of how you're left spiritually feeling at the end of what was a very long and challenging and ultimately fruitful and rewarding shoot. And I think in a certain respect, all of us as Westerners participating in the production of this show felt a lot like Blackthorn on that beach at the end. And I think back to us in the writers room together in the very early days with all of our ambitions culturally for what we could do with this story that to tell a grand epic through a different lens that's still a grand epic that's not trying to be an indictment of grand epics or anything else it is. It's a great classic swashbuckling throwback story, but to simply involve a cast of characters who we haven't really seen elevated to this point. We went into that and then I think we learned so many things along the way, including the thing that's most important for Blackthorn in this story, which is that at some point you kind of have to let go of your own agency too as Westerners in this process. And part of what was so great about that collaboration was you could see it at every moment every department had at some point realized is that you know this is not our show just as Westerners that this show belongs to the Japanese filmmakers and cast and crew who we were working with. And that means relinquishing some version of control every single day until you finally kind of leave yourself like Blackthorn on the beach realizing that you're free, that you're not this prisoner of your own creative ambition that you've hopefully I hope successfully pulled off what we tried to do on the very first day of the writer's room, which is to say like let's do something that feels truly intersectional in a certain way, you know, as we approach what would otherwise be a very traditional epic, but approach it through a very different door in the house. Was it hard to figure out a place to end the story? It was always going to end on a close up between Blackthorn and Toranaga and the way they would just look at each other in that final moment is Blackthorn stood on the beach in the kind of reborn purpose that he's been given without realizing that this purpose is all for nothing, but it doesn't matter that it's all for nothing because that's the point he's happy, you know, he's found something again, then he's found a community too of these peasants who are helping him pull the ship out. These are, this is his new crew, you know, in a certain respect, his new
Speaker 3
buddies. Him and Buntar are the new buddy comedy, the most unexpected, buddy comedy I'm going forward.
Speaker 1
You know, that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Speaker 2
There's no question. John Blackthorn went through a journey, both physically and spiritually, but where exactly he's going after this is a little harder to pinpoint. I never
Speaker 5
thought the Blackthorn had a traditional, slowly progressing episodically cohesive story arc.
Speaker 2
Once again, we're with actor Cosmo Jarvis. Cosmo spoke to me about how Blackthorn came to reach his own kind of piece.
Speaker 5
I always thought that he sort of stays vaguely the same throughout a huge portion of the series, being that he's fairly selfish and he has a very narrow realm of interest and a great ambition, which is ultimately rooted in his own fickle ego. When we first meet him, he's totally obsessed with the possibility of control. But after a month of trying to achieve something significant in Japan with regard to his English persona and position in English society and being sort of subdued by the people around him, some aspect of the country and its customers and the peripheral sense of greater honor and duty and the impermanence of life and the futility of fighting fate and the possibility of meaningful death allowed into him by Mariko's death and the destruction of his ship. In episode 10, he, for the first time, is compelled to attempt something that is objectively purposeful in an honorable sense and totally selfless and has nothing to do with his long established aims. So I don't think he saw his arc coming, but he does arrive at one. He's sort of liberated by being forced into a situation where he no longer has anything that he is attached to. And when that happens, he is then capable of trying something else. So he does.
Speaker 3
That must have been such an intense scene to shoot, especially at the end of all of this, that's a puku scene. How do you think he understands his actions in that moment? And is it sapuku in the Japanese sense or is it his own kind of? I don't think it's sapuku in the Japanese sense. I
Speaker 5
think he knows that. I think that he knows that the demonstration or the act itself has the potential to have tremendous significance and is a language that is recognized by these people. The thing that still makes it meaningful for him is that it's sincere and he is prepared to do it. I think there's a sort of a Western bias to his sapuku in a way because he's kind of like, all right, you know, you want to take all this blood, you want to kill all these people in the village if you want to, you seem intent on destroying the people of Aduro. And he's just kind of like, well, just kill me instead. If it means stopping that because the people of Aduro seem like a nice people. And by this time, Blackthorn is somewhat of a villager himself. And ultimately, he is fully responsible for any fate that may be put on them by Toranago. So yeah, and
Speaker 3
it's sort of a clear-eyedness about his
Speaker 2
position here. And it's not quite so clear to him still in
Speaker 3
episode five with the whole situation in the pheasant. He's still figuring out how his actions have consequences in this world. And I think he has a much clearer idea of it at the end of the story.
Speaker 5
Yes. And it happens to coincide with a moment where he's also realizing that his lack of sincerity throughout, since we met him on every occasion, I mean, it's easy to be blinded by the sort of endearing quality of Blackthorn and the kind of, even when he is being a car salesman, he seems like he has a plan. And he seems like he has some notion of honor.
Speaker 3
But I was always pretty sure that everything that came before this moment was, you know, yeah, he can have a nice moment with Maraka on a horse learning Japanese, as long as it's just not getting him killed. And he's getting one step closer to getting the fleet he wants and building trade relations with Japan and with one day being knighted by his queen for setting that up. Yeah, I mean, even when him and Yabushi Gay are sailing back to Ajino, and even in this moment, Yabu is bargaining and trying to figure out a way for himself to survive. And like, it's his ride to Blackthorn. And they both are kind of united in this survival of me above all else and, you know, trying to scrounge something out of it. And in that moment, I almost feel like Blackthorn sees Yabushi Gay a little like he's a little bit separate from him at that moment. Like he kind of sees him as, oh, no, like, I
Speaker 2
can't be this guy anymore. Yeah. That's what
Speaker 5
I meant about the destruction of the ship and also seeing Marikos demise as well. It kind of forces him into a position where he has to sort of sit with himself and sit with who he is left with in the absence of those two entities being the ship and her. He's kind of, there's nobody else to kind of talk to. There's no hope of sailing back. And so when Yabushi Gay is asking him those things, he's not the man to ask anymore. And I think that's why Blackthorn's kind of like just pull yourself together because he doesn't know who he is necessarily, but he's not that guy anymore.

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