The Cinematologists Podcast

<p>The final regular episode of the podcast, not just for the season, but yes, for good, is a doozy. Writer Violet Lucca returns to the podcast for the first time since 2017 and for her first full, solo conversation, to discuss her incredible book on David Cronenberg, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.abramsbooks.com/product/david-cronenberg-clinical-trials_9781419771910/"><em>Clinical Trials</em></a><em> </em>(2024, Abrams). I talk to Violet about her process of writing the book, wit in criticism, sex and identity, and the politics of the time the films were made and what they say now, the emotional impact of rewatching films and the transformative power of writing about cinema, amongst other topics. And of course we explore specific titles in the Cronenburg filmography, in particular <em>Crash </em>(1996), <em>Existenz </em>(1999) and his most recent release <em>The Shrouds</em> (2024).</p><p>After my conversation with Violet, we delve into the complexities of Cronenberg’s work, particularly regarding sexuality and identity, and wrap up with a few thoughts looking ahead to the final episode of the pod.</p><p>Other topics in the episode include reflections on the writing of year-end film lists ahead of our final, upcoming episode, the importance of micro cinemas to film exhibition culture, and highlight former guest Pat Kelman’s <a target="_blank" href="https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/606-cornish-films-deserve-to-be-seen">crowdfunding campaign</a> to aid film distribution in Cornwall, and for Cornish filmmakers in particular. Following (NF)</p><p>———</p><p>Visit our Patreon at <a target="_blank" href="http://www.patreon.com/cinematologists">www.patreon.com/cinematologists</a></p><p>For the full podcast archive: <a target="_blank" href="https://dariollinares.substack.com/s/the-cinematologists-newsletter-archive">https://dariollinares.substack.com/s/the-cinematologists-newsletter-archive</a></p><p>———</p><p>Music Credits:</p><p>‘Theme from The Cinematologists’</p><p>Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.</p><p></p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://dariollinares.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_2">dariollinares.substack.com/subscribe</a>

<p>Welcome, friends.</p><p>I have to admit that I’ve experienced a questionable amount of pleasure in researching for this latest episode of The Cinematologists Podcast. When I say “research”, I basically mean that every evening for the past two weeks I’ve been guiltlessly revelling in the violence, glamour and moral ambiguity of the cinema’s greatest hitmen (and women), assassins, and lone killers.</p><p>It’s the question of these pleasures - of watching such characters move silently through the modern milieu we share: restaurants, banks, hotels, airports - and of their status as avatars for the commodity fetishism we’re socialised to desire, whether it’s clothes, cars, exotic locations or, indeed, guns, that we take as the starting point.</p><p>These pleasures are aesthetic, to be sure, and a core line of our conversation explores the visual and sonic mechanisms filmmakers use to make the lone killer look impossibly cool.</p><p>But on a deeper level, there are myriad symbolic pleasures to unpack, primarily derived from the assassin’s fundamental essence as a professional arbiter of death. By “symbolic pleasures” I mean the fantasies we get to borrow and try on at a safe distance. Cinema has always trafficked in these kinds of projected desires and anxieties, that’s what genres, stars and archetypes are for. But the lone killer amplifies this function, condensing into a single figure our contradictory longing for total freedom and autonomy, yet within the familiar framework of modernist culture, politics, and economics.</p><p>We outline the dimensions of these symbolic pleasures. Total agency without negotiation or compromise, for instance. The killer embodies absolute decision-making and self-determination. In a culture of soft coercions, bureaucracy, b******t meetings, and interminable incompetence, the killer taps into a dark form of detached liberation. Although this notion is itself confounded to comic effect in Andrew Dominik’s brilliant <em>Killing Them Softly (2012).</em></p><p>The lone killer also exudes the romance of the outsider. The shadowy loner, an anti-citizen manipulating the system from the margins, carries a sense of mystery that endures, particularly in a time when sharing every aspect of our lives has become something of a default performative practice. Indeed, it’s fascinating to consider the lone killer as a symbol of alienation. They’re what a certain kind of loneliness looks like when it becomes active rather than depressive: isolation turned into method, detachment honed into a way of being in the world.</p><p>For some killers, sexual desire is absolutely central to the mythos. Bond is the clearest prototype here, because scholarship has long framed him as a figure where violence is packaged with aspirational consumption and sexual charisma, all intertwined. And then there’s the sexual charge, which often isn’t “romance” so much as mobility: sex as another form of non-attachment, a proof that the killer can pass through bodies and spaces without being pinned down by them. Yet Bond films (and to an extent the character himself) have been read through a queer lens – breaking down the heteromasculine fantasy the films seem to promote (an aspect we discuss in some depth on this episode of the podcast: <a target="_blank" href="https://open.substack.com/pub/dariollinares/p/licence-to-queer-w-david-lowbridge-5f0?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&#38;utm_medium=web">License to Queer</a>).</p><p>The real hook, though, is the fantasy of having no responsibilities to other humans. Or, more accurately, the fantasy of <em>choosing</em> your responsibilities. These protagonists often keep one small “human” attachment in a sealed container while everyone else becomes abstraction: targets, obstacles, and collateral damage. That compartmentalisation is the emotional technology that allows the lifestyle to function.</p><p>Sexuality reads differently, of course, when the lone killer is a woman. The adoption of the femme fatale persona becomes both a weapon and a trap: seduction as tactical performance, but also as a ready-made framework through which her violence is contained, coded and often punished. The female lone killer frequently has to navigate the double bind of being hyper-visible as an object of desire while trying to claim the same cool detachment and professional focus afforded to her male counterparts.</p><p>Then there’s competence as seduction. So many of these films function as “craft porn”: extended sequences of planning, surveillance, weapon prep, logistics, timing. We’re invited to admire mastery long before we’re asked to consider the consequences. That emphasis on hyper-competence often feeds into another recurring strand of lone-killer characterisation: a kind of obsessive, compulsive pathology. There is frequently an implicit, and sometimes explicit, suggestion that the killer is an outsider not just because of what they do, but because of how they are wired – uncomfortable with ordinary social interaction, more at home with systems and routines than with people. Being “out of sync” with the social world is then reframed as the superpower that underwrites their cold precision and attention to detail. It’s a trope that, to put it mildly, comes with its own problems around how neurodivergence and emotional detachment are conflated and aestheticised.</p><p>Perhaps most importantly of all, though, the hitman/assassin symbolises the pleasure of circumventing – even actively challenging – the contradictions of the moral frameworks we’re all supposedly compelled by. On one level, it’s straightforward: breaking the laws of modern society to “get the job done” is stylised into an art form. But for many of these characters, especially those who aren’t simply nihilistic or coldly driven by money, there’s also a kind of ersatz morality at play. They possess a code, an ethos that operates as a moral alibi. Their relativist ethics become a way to expose the contingency, compromise, and hypocrisy of our broader systems of justice and citizenship. In watching them, we get to flirt with the fantasy of stepping outside that contradiction altogether.</p><p>dariollinares.substack.com</p><p>www.cinematologists.com</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://dariollinares.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_2">dariollinares.substack.com/subscribe</a>

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit <a href="https://dariollinares.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_7">dariollinares.substack.com</a><br/><br/><p>The notion of <strong>the cinematic</strong> is an oft-floated term: a kind of critical get-out clause for when a writer (or speaker) wants to register approval without getting pinned down. It lets you gesture beyond the prosaic, narrative, structure, even aesthetics (too easily reduced to “mere beauty”), towards something supposedly larger and more complex to define.</p><p><em>Ci…</em></p>

<p>Gwenno, on the set of her short film, <em>Tresor </em>(2022) [Copyright: Bosena / Alex Fish]</p><p>We have the perfect theme song for our podcast, courtesy of the musician, artist and writer Gwenno. In Bristol in September, for the Encounters film festival, Neil took some time to chat to Gwenno at length about culture, social media, memory, capitalism and community, to put on [tape] some shared thoughts about life and art, before the podcast winds down. </p><p>Even before writing and recording the theme tune to the Cinematologists - available to purchase and stream <a target="_blank" href="https://music.apple.com/gb/album/theme-from-the-cinematologists-single/1533935226">here</a> - Gwenno was a friend of the show, and Neil wanted to give listeners the chance to hear from someone whose ideas and approaches to the making and absorbing of art have come to inspire and challenge his own. He also just really likes talking to her, and wanted podcast listeners to experience that pleasure also. </p><p>Around that central conversation, inspired by it, Neil and Dario get into it about intersections of art and culture as they frequently do, plus challenges faced by contemporary youth, the critical engagement of students with the film industry, the quest for artistic authenticity, and the evolving nature of countercultures in the digital age. The conversation also touches on the impact of technology on creativity, the role of education in fostering cultural exploration, and reflections on historical subcultures like rave culture. </p><p>Thanks to Maddie at Watershed in Bristol for providing a space to record during the Encounters Film Festival. </p><p>Gwenno is currently touring and if she’s near you, you should go and see her, she’s an incredible live performer. This episode also features her songs ‘Tresor’<em>, </em>from the album and film of the same name, from 2022, and available to buy <a target="_blank" href="https://gwenno.bandcamp.com/album/tresor">here</a>, and ‘St Ives New School’<em>, </em>from this year’s brilliant record <em>Utopia, </em>which you can buy <a target="_blank" href="https://gwenno.bandcamp.com/album/utopia">here</a>. </p><p>———</p><p>Visit our Patreon at <a target="_blank" href="http://www.patreon.com/cinematologists">www.patreon.com/cinematologists</a></p><p>———</p><p>You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: <a target="_blank" href="https://podfollow.com/the-cinematologists-podcast">click here to follow</a>.</p><p>We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we’ll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast, so please do that if you enjoy the show.</p><p>———</p><p>Music Credits:</p><p>‘Theme from The Cinematologists’</p><p>Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p> </p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://dariollinares.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_2">dariollinares.substack.com/subscribe</a>

<p>As always on The Cinematologists podcast, we like to address topics of salience, but in our own way and in our own time. The death of David Lynch left an irreplaceable hole in the fabric of cinema and, rightly, prompted immediate tributes from collaborators, as well as countless reflections on his status as an artist and filmmaker.</p><p>The spectre of his influence has found its way into many episodes over the years: Scott Tanner Jones discussing Lynch’s impact in <a target="_blank" href="https://open.substack.com/pub/dariollinares/p/thinking-through-physical-media-wscott-eea?r=1phduq&#38;utm_campaign=post&#38;utm_medium=web&#38;showWelcomeOnShare=false">this episode on Physical Media</a>, also in <a target="_blank" href="https://open.substack.com/pub/dariollinares/p/the-beast-wwriter-director-bertrand-a35?r=1phduq&#38;utm_campaign=post&#38;utm_medium=web&#38;showWelcomeOnShare=false">Neil’s conversation with Bertrand Bonello on </a><a target="_blank" href="https://open.substack.com/pub/dariollinares/p/the-beast-wwriter-director-bertrand-a35?r=1phduq&#38;utm_campaign=post&#38;utm_medium=web&#38;showWelcomeOnShare=false"><em>The Beast</em></a>, and in <a target="_blank" href="https://open.substack.com/pub/dariollinares/p/michel-chion-in-conversation-part-215?r=1phduq&#38;utm_campaign=post&#38;utm_medium=web&#38;showWelcomeOnShare=false">my conversation with Michel Chion</a>, and has been referenced in numerous others. This was the third screening in Mark’s unofficial L.A. trilogy with us, following <em>Big Wednesday</em> and <em>The Doors</em>.</p><p><em>Lost Highway</em> has always existed at the edge of even Lynch’s already strange filmography. Critically dismissed at the time and commercially ignored (like most of Lynch’s work), it is now seen by many as the beginning of his late “L.A. Trilogy,” preceding <em>Mulholland Drive</em> and <em>Inland Empire</em>. For both Neil and Mark, this film is personal, formative, and endlessly rewatchable—precisely because it resists resolution.</p><p>Set in a murky Los Angeles that exists halfway between industrial hellscape and erotic fever dream, <em>Lost Highway</em> is a Möbius strip of a movie, beginning where it ends, and unravelling its characters and its viewers alike. It conjures its mood not just through narrative but through textures: light, shadow, analogue tape, blown-out industrial soundscapes, and those unnameable feelings that reverberate long after the final frame.</p><p>The conversation is as engaging and in-depth as you’d expect, with Mark, Neil and the audience at Newlyn in top form. <strong>Key themes discussed include:</strong></p><p>* <strong>Lynch and memory’s strange register:</strong>Mark reflects on how Lynch’s films live in a different kind of memory register than most; more a series of fleeting snapshots than the coherence of active recall. Because of that, every viewing reveals new aspects; haunting fragments displace and rearrange entire subplots that had taken hold in the subconscious. In that sense, we consider Lynch’s cinema as a form of recursive hauntology.</p><p>* <strong>The loop as trap (road to road):</strong>From the very first shot of that endless road to the repetition of sounds and visuals at the film’s end, Mark explores <em>Lost Highway</em> as a recursive loop that traps its characters in a fugue state of guilt, desire, and dissociation.</p><p>* <strong>Structural ouroboros and influence:</strong>This structural ouroboros recalls the severed ear in <em>Blue Velvet</em>, or the rabbit-hole narrative of <em>Mulholland Drive</em>. For Mark, as a filmmaker, this formal approach is profoundly influential to his own sense of cinematic composition, time and narrative fracture.</p><p>* <strong>Sexual jealousy and the violence of looking:</strong>The film’s narrative is anchored in the protagonist’s feelings of inadequacy, paranoia, and desire. The Mystery Man, played with uncanny chill by Robert Blake, becomes a vessel for projecting disowned guilt and dissociation.</p><p>* <strong>Hollywood as a transformation machine:</strong>Patricia Arquette’s double role, and the thematic through-line of transformation (from Fred to Pete; from brunette to blonde), prompt a reading of the film as a noir dream of Hollywood, where people are consumed, remade, and destroyed by the gaze.</p><p>* <strong>Sound as cinema:</strong>A recurring motif across the discussion is Lynch’s sonic world-building. Angelo Badalamenti’s score, Barry Adamson’s textures, and contributions from Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein, David Bowie, and Marilyn Manson shape the film’s contours. It’s a work felt not just through images but through air movement and industrial pressure waves.</p><p>* <strong>A sense of closure:</strong>Neil and Mark discuss the finality of Lynch’s oeuvre. “Everything is set now,” Mark says of the filmography. “There will be no more work from him. You watch it now in the context of a finished body of work, rather than imagining what he might do next.” Neil ends the episode quoting from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s reflections on the Long Take in Cinema and Life, which felt apt.</p><p>Neil and I continue the conversation around the central tension of the episode: how—or even whether—we’re supposed to “understand” <em>Lost Highway</em>. I reference <a target="_blank" href="https://film3410.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/buckland-making-sense-of-lost-highway.pdf">Warren Buckland’s analysis of the film as a “puzzle film”</a>: one whose clues scramble narrative logic and deny classical causality. Viewers are caught between “flaunted gaps” (overt mysteries like the videotapes) and “suppressed gaps” (dream sequences that promise meaning but deliver obfuscation).</p><p><em>Lost Highway</em> confronts you with the truth that “nothing makes sense.” Its refusal to resolve mirrors a deeper psychological or existential unease—a thematic throughline that aligns with other so-called “vibes films” we mention, such as <em>Inherent Vice</em>, <em>Under the Silver Lake</em>, and even Cronenberg’s recent <em>The Shrouds</em>—an interesting counterpoint in grief, surveillance, and ambience. A good engagement with this idea and Lynch’s career can be found in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n16/ruby-hamilton/things-go-kerflooey">Ruby’s Hamilton’s recent piece for the London Review of Books.</a></p><p>We talk about the character-swap device as Lynch tapping into a pathology of being unable to reconcile the self and the other. Lynch doesn’t just show identity breakdown; he renders it as form. The Fred–Pete body swap isn’t a mere plot twist—it’s an allegory of dissociation, repression, and the unassimilated parts of the psyche. A psychoanalytic reading points to how Lynch dramatises the internal exile of our “dark sides,” now returned as spectres, doubles, and avatars.</p><p>Another key point of discussion is the brilliance of Patricia Arquette—mesmerising in a mode that adopts and then reverses the power dynamics of the gaze. Rather than being simply the object of the male gaze, Arquette’s character weaponises it—using sexuality and performative presence to manipulate, dominate, and escape. It’s arguably an apposite post-feminist staging of power inside patriarchal mechanics. As Neil reflects, Lynch’s women are never merely passive; they are agents, even in systems built to consume them.</p><p>These are just some of the strands of discussion, but there’s much more to get your cinematic teeth into—including an ongoing bit about the appearance of <em>’Allo ’Allo!</em> actor Guy Siner. (American listeners, you may need to google that one.)</p><p>———</p><p>Visit our Patreon at <a target="_blank" href="http://www.patreon.com/cinematologists">www.patreon.com/cinematologists</a></p><p>———</p><p>You can listen to The Cinematologists for free, wherever you listen to podcasts: <a target="_blank" href="https://podfollow.com/the-cinematologists-podcast">click here to follow</a>.</p><p>We really appreciate any reviews you might write (please send us what you have written and we’ll mention it) and sharing on Social Media is the lifeblood of the podcast, so please do that if you enjoy the show.</p><p>———</p><p>Music Credits:</p><p>‘Theme from The Cinematologists’</p><p>Written and produced by Gwenno Saunders. Mixed by Rhys Edwards. Drums, bass & guitar by Rhys Edwards. All synths by Gwenno Saunders. Published by Downtown Music Publishing.</p> <br/><br/>This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit <a href="https://dariollinares.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&#38;utm_campaign=CTA_2">dariollinares.substack.com/subscribe</a>