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E8. #FreeMarcellus
20 Plays7 days ago
Join us this month to discuss Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt.
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Transcript
Reunion & Podcast Beginnings
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Speaker
Two nerds went to college and found each other in the English department basement and became instant friends. Eight years and three degrees later, they're reunited.
00:00:12
Speaker
You're listening to Book Club, the movie, the podcast.
00:00:39
Speaker
Hello
Introducing 'Remarkably Bright Creatures'
00:00:40
Speaker
everyone and welcome to Book Club the Movie the Podcast where we read, watch, and discuss books and their film adaptations. I'm your host Jen. And I'm your other host Em. We hope you read the book. But if you didn't, here's the summary.
00:00:56
Speaker
Remarkably Bright
Book Setting & Plot Overview
00:00:57
Speaker
Creatures, authored by Shelby Van Pelt, takes place in the fictional small Pacific Northwest town of Sol Bay. 30 years after the disappearance and assumed death of her teenage son, and shortly after the death of her husband, Tova Sullivan finds a job working nights at the local aquarium as an after hours cleaner.
00:01:16
Speaker
It is at this job that she forms a friendship with an aging giant Pacific octopus named Marcellus, and later a young man named Cameron. Marcellus
Anecdote & Themes
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Speaker
uses his intellect and keen eye to lead Tova closer to the truth of her son's death and the true nature of her relationship to Cameron.
00:01:37
Speaker
So, Em, have you ever had like a weird, deep connection with a wild animal? I know I haven't, but have you? So I really, really wanted to. i tried very hard to make this happen as a child. um There was once a baby deer that was, he was a big baby deer, but still a baby deer that me and my dad and a couple of my siblings found. out by the lake where we lived and i was like cool we're gonna take this home and we're gonna raise it and and he's gonna change my life this baby deer unfortunately um i do not live in a book so it didn't work we really only had him for the afternoon and then one of my dad's friends who raises white-tailed deer was like you should let him go so we did life was not yeah life was not changed but I sure tried
00:02:33
Speaker
Going for like a Bambi thing there. Either Bambi or whatever the one, i oh, there was another, The Yearling, that's the book I'm thinking of.
00:02:44
Speaker
This is, yeah, this is a book podcast, I should mention the book. Oh, Bambi's also a book though. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, sure. Bambi or The Yearling, which might have also been made into a movie.
00:02:55
Speaker
I don't know. i think it's a sad movie. Yeah. It's a really sad book. Right up there with Old Yeller. but It's up there. Yeah. But I tried. Did not work.
00:03:06
Speaker
It was just a very short afternoon with me and my baby deer.
Film Adaptation Insights
00:03:11
Speaker
He was covered in ticks. Ugh.
00:03:20
Speaker
So, fun facts. Remarkably Bright Creatures is the third feature film directed by Olivia Newman, who previously directed First Match in 2018 and the 2022 film adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing.
00:03:36
Speaker
Oh, we should do that one. We should read that one sometime. i I've actually never read it. I think that one, that book came out a while ago, didn't it? Yeah, I think the book came out in like the late 2010s, teens. um And I haven't read it either. i think it's kind of like a Southern Gothic noir vibe.
00:03:56
Speaker
That type of thing. If it's the person I'm thinking of, there's like some dark, not so happy things about the author, but whatever. If we cover it, I guess we can talk about it then. Yeah.
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All
Film & Book Character Dynamics
00:04:09
Speaker
right. So yeah, the book begins with Marcellus, aka the giant Pacific octopus. He's in his tank at the aquarium. The very first chapter is titled Day 1299 of my Captivity. And I listened to the audio book. So the drama was there. It was thick, thick with drama. Loved, loved, the voice actor of the audio book. Oh, yeah. Great. Yeah, too. He was fantastic. um And then we also see Topa, um our main female protagonist, who is preparing for battle, a.k.a. cleaning the aquarium. She's the cleaning the evening, night cleaning lady. um And then about 25 pages into the book, we meet Cameron Casmore, um which is kind of a third primary main character. um And Cameron is on his way to help his aunt Jean.
00:05:00
Speaker
Yeah, she had like... alleged snakes in her bushes or something like that. Clematis. Yeah. In her clematis, whatever that is. um i don't know.
00:05:11
Speaker
That actually, that bit was kind of where I struggled in the book though. um i was really enjoying Marcellus quite a bit. I'm always one for like sentient animals, always have been on board with that. Tova was great. yeah.
00:05:27
Speaker
But then as I was reading, suddenly there's this Cameron guy and I wasn't sure why I should care about him or his Aunt Jean, who seemed really kooky, at least. There wasn't enough Aunt Jean either. um But I couldn't think of any connection between those three individuals so far.
00:05:45
Speaker
I really I kind of did like zero research before I started reading the book. I had no idea what was going to happen other than there's an octopus in there somewhere. Yeah. But I don't think I really cared that much for Cameron ever. Yeah.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah. i was there for Yeah, i was I was there. Yeah, Tova and Marcellus. I liked them. Cameron. Not a fan. Yeah. Yeah. I came around to Cameron eventually. I agree that kind of introducing him was a little a little rocky. Maybe it should have come earlier in the book. um But I will say that compared to the movie, which begins with Marcellus, who's voiced by Alfred Molina, Marcellus is remembering the ocean and he talks about missing the peace and quiet of home. Right, yeah. I was watching this on my laptop and i saw all of the ah the different like ocean critters and the water and the kelp and just everything out in the ocean and it was gorgeous and Alfred Molina's voiceover was perfect. And I was like, ooh, I should pause and turn this on the big TV and watch it on there because it's gonna be really cinematic, right? um But I didn't.
00:07:03
Speaker
I finished it on my laptop and watched it a second time on my phone. Nice. Yeah, I actually also watched this on my laptop, but I agree. Those opening scenes were highly cinematic. And then from those, we get a series of lovely transitions. First from Marcellus's tank.
00:07:20
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um It kind of like zooms out of the tank and shows like a bunch of children peering in at him. um And they licking in the glass. Licking the glass.
00:07:31
Speaker
And the movie actually starts with day 1,401 of my captivity, of Marcellus' captivity. Hashtag free Marcellus.
00:07:42
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um and then And then from there we get an introduction to Tova, who's played by Sally Field, in a montage of her cleaning the aquarium, complete with scraping disgusting gum off the ground, like is in the book,
00:07:55
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um And then ah maybe like 10-15 minutes into the movie, we get a really cool transition where Tova's driving down a two-lane highway and Cameron's beat-up ah camper van is going the opposite direction. So Cameron's on Tova and then as Cameron passes...
00:08:13
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ah The camera is on Tova and then as Cameron passes in his RV, it switches switch follows him to Cameron who's played by Louis Pullman. And then we see Cameron sputter into Ethan's shop and the rest is history.
00:08:31
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Yeah, i I did really enjoy the film transitions at the beginning. They were perfect and they really allowed us to move between the three POVs in a way that the book didn't do for me, at least. um I think the movie did a way better job at the transition between the three POVs. It did a better job than the book.
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I think the the scenes were really cool. I really enjoyed those transitions. Yeah.
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Speaker
All right,
Themes of Identity & Grief
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Speaker
I want to talk about Marcellus. So in the book, he functions as like a catalyst character. He triggers change and revelations, and he connects otherwise isolated characters, aka Tova and Cameron.
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Speaker
And I don't know, as I was reading, I realized that he's basically the book's emotional and informational bridge. And he's kind of like... Maybe our all-in-one literary device, right? Right, yeah. He also functions as like a temporal container, so his lifespan really creates a sense of urgency and it it moves the story along. We have ah a timeline of when things need to happen before it's too late.
00:09:42
Speaker
Right. then he also has a really interesting point of view. He observes humans through the glass of his tank and he's incredibly perceptive. And I always, I thought that that was interesting and how it kind of flips the human centric point of view where like of aquariums where humans are there to peer in at animals in or appear in at aquatic life into their tanks. Yeah.
00:10:08
Speaker
Yeah, it flipped it. So I wonder if the many times that me and Jason go to the aquarium nearby, are they looking at me? Are they considering my life?
00:10:19
Speaker
I don't know. Anyway, i I did really enjoy Marcellus's POV the most. um I wish that there was more of him somehow in the book. i I don't know. I think that any more of him and it might have been too much and then maybe my opinion would change, but He was the best part. Fun fact, Alfred Molina, he actually played Dr. Octavius, also called Dr. Octopus or Doc Ock, in 2004's Spider-Man 2. That's hilarious. Imagine being typecast as an octopus.
00:10:52
Speaker
Whenever I was reading about this and doing like my research and stuff, ah one article said ah Alfred Molina returns to his roots.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah, okay, so like back to Marcellus. um So we talked about how he how he operates in the book, and I i thought that in the movie, um he mostly primarily just functioned like a narrator. um His voiceover isn't always confined to the aquarium, but he doesn't he's not always speaking through the outer world scenes, and so I felt like we lost a little bit of that all-in-one literary device that we had in the book.
00:11:31
Speaker
Right, kind of. i mean, i think that we could have had a little bit more of him narrating. What do you think? More or less of Alfred Molina speaking. and I mean, I really like Alfred Molina so more. So the book explores grief as identity through our main characters, which would be Tova, Marcellus, and Cameron.
00:11:51
Speaker
But the way this identity is expressed between the three of them is completely different from one another. Yeah, we see Tova, who's grieving her son, her husband, and more recently her brother Lars, who's left out of the movie.
00:12:04
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And we see that her grief is more of this like external identity. It's the people in Tova's life who act to reaffirm her identity as a grieving woman.
00:12:16
Speaker
Like they just won't let her forget even for a minute that that she's lost everyone, right? And so she should be sad. Right, and one of the instances that we see of this is with her knitting group, the Knitwits, which is the perfect name for them. um They like to tell her all of the things that she is doing wrong with her life as she ages. um For example, like how she shouldn't be working anymore or how she should consider dating Ethan from the grocery store. But they don't really have any solutions for her.
00:12:51
Speaker
Just, you know, she she's only being told what she's doing wrong. There's no, like, legitimate suggestions for how to fix her life in a way that they would see fit. um All of their logic is really based on the fact that they have families themselves that can care for them as they age.
00:13:09
Speaker
And I guess Tova did have a brother named Lars, but... He isn't in much of the book and they don't really have a relationship for some unnamed reason. I tried to find it. um I think there was even a sentence or two that was just like, I don't know, we don't, which I would have liked a little bit of information um or better reading comprehension skills if it's in there somewhere. i don't know. um But his character really only seemed to exist to put the retirement home onto Tova's radar. Yeah. Yeah, I can totally see that. I think the book kind of went into like she and Lars just grew distant. And then I think it just like turned into estrangement or something. And maybe his he had a previous wife. I don't think they were married when he died. I think they got divorced, but it seemed like maybe the wife was
00:13:55
Speaker
a little bit of a problem there too but that we also see so we you know we have the nitwits we have we have how they interact with tova but then we also see the people of the town like ethan who's a gossip um he is you know he just is always feeling bad for tova um and then we even get the realtor jessica who's supposed to be helping tova sell her house and in the movie She has this line. The line is something to the effect of like you have to like get this professionally clean to remove any traces of past, um what word did she use?
00:14:31
Speaker
um Tragedies. any past Any past tragedies like Tova you're sad right? I'm a realtor we don't have a relationship right kind of thing. If a realtor ever talked to me like that I'd drop him be like you're not getting my commission.
00:14:46
Speaker
Rude. The movie did show more of Tova's grief, but kind of in a different way. um Like we were saying, like whenever she's going through a her son's bedroom looking for any sign of who Daphne might be, there are these flashbacks to Eric drowning in the ocean. um No like flashback to what got him there, just his body in the ocean, which was pretty traumatic. um It's almost like Tova was having a PTSD flashback, even though
00:15:18
Speaker
It was to something that she didn't witness herself. um But it added more depth to the pain that she was feeling compared to the book. The movie, I mean, there was no answer at the end either of how he ended up in the water. Just this is what she was imagining. Yeah, I definitely think that was like a grief shock, right? For sure. Your imagination can can run wild.
00:15:41
Speaker
um Yeah, and then juxtaposed to Tova, we have Cameron, um who whose identity as a grieving person is kind of more internally enforced rather than externally. He's also experiencing grief. You know, his character arrives in town immediately. in search of his long-lost father, who he believes has abandoned him. And through a string of both bad luck and then a less-than-stellar work ethic, he finds himself in his pea-stained RV, camped out in Ethan's driveway, bumbling through this new temporary life. And he kind of takes every opportunity to remind people that his mother abandoned him and that he doesn't know his father and that he doesn't really have anybody, then people feel sorry for him. Right. They do feel sorry for him, but the people in his life are also pushing him to better himself.
00:16:33
Speaker
um A few of them even mentioned like, hey, you're a smart dude. How about going to college? um Which he's not interested in at the beginning of the book at least he really struggles to take responsibility for his actions and actually make something of himself then we also have marcellus and he's grieving his freedom in the ocean which i think is a little bit easier to like kind of see he talks about it blatantly he is still trying to sneak out of his tank at night and he's resigned himself to dying in the aquarium yeah real quickly want to respond to cameron i think in the book we get
00:17:09
Speaker
People in his life, his friends, the married couple who's expecting a baby, his Aunt Jean. We get those people who are like, hey, man, you can do better. you know In the movie, since we don't see those people and he's not really interacting with them, i think the movie, he doesn't really have anyone except for maybe Tova through their working relationship who's trying to encourage him to like,
00:17:32
Speaker
grow up and improve himself and stuff. so Quick aside with Tova teaching him things, I think one of my, I didn't think that the movie or the book was like particularly funny. It wasn't that kind of story, but the the going back and forth in the cleaning montage whenever she's just trying to get him to scrape the gum off the floor. And his ah response was like, no, this is like a divot. I think it'll be more noticeable if I scrape it up. And she's like, in the time that it has taken you to complain about it, you could have scraped it up right now. That was funny.
00:18:03
Speaker
I enjoyed that. But yeah, no, I agree. She definitely was leading the charge on all of
Significance of Older Protagonists
00:18:08
Speaker
that. We didn't see a lot of the background stuff with him. And also, I didn't see a lot of the arguments from him in the book for why he is the way that he is that made me like him less.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, and then Marcellus is absolutely grieving his freedom, but in kind of a hilarious, sarcastic way. He's so sassy. So sassy. And obviously that has to be like an internal identity.
00:18:34
Speaker
Like it stems from an internal source because there's, you know, the the eels aren't looking at Marcellus and like, yeah, man, you're trapped. Yeah. You know, the mous mollusks aren't like, yeah, sucks to be you. It really sucks that they rescued from the ocean. you would have died as a juvenile if they hadn't. Well, I'm sure the mollusks to do wish that he hadn't been rescued because he kept- Kept eating them.
00:19:02
Speaker
Yeah. It's rare to see an older female protagonist in mainstream fiction or movies, and I think that Tova is a really remarkable exception in that way. I personally don't want to raise kids myself like she did. I'm happy with my dogs and my free time, but I still found her really relatable. I'd kind of like to see more old people as main characters, so I have more to look forward to, don't you? Yeah, especially older ladies, right? Because hopefully we'll get to be old ladies someday. And we also have mothers and grandmothers. And at least for me, my grandmother is 93 and still lives at home and would still climb a ladder if we let her which we don't. So Tova reminds me of the older women um who've been examples in my life, right, for how to age in place and age well and how to
00:19:53
Speaker
age and still maintain your independence. I met your grandma at your wedding. She doesn't look 93 or talk or walk like a 93 year old. Not like you would imagine at least. Right. I'll tell you tell her you said that.
00:20:06
Speaker
You should. She was cool. She was great. I once walked into my grandparents' house and found my grandma just standing on her bathroom counter painting the walls. Not like a crazy person. Like they needed to be painted. And it was just like nothing to her. Like it was just such a well, duh, how else am I going to do it kind of situation. Right.
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah. Tova hurts her ankle early on in the story, and that kind of serves as a reminder that she is getting older and will at some point have limited mobility. And the nitwits...
00:20:41
Speaker
will not stop reminding her that she has nobody to care for her and she needs to be more careful, cetera. But I don't know, personally, I would rather die alone in her awesome house than go anywhere else.
00:20:53
Speaker
It is a pretty sweet house, especially in the movie. But yeah, that ankle injury and like how her friends react to it those Those things also function as a catalyst for her pursuing a move to Charter Village, which the nitwits then freak out about when they find out she's planning to sell her house. Tova also takes a lot of pride in her work cleaning the aquarium, because even though her ankle is busted, she still shows up late at night to either supervise or help out ah Cameron with his work. So...
00:21:22
Speaker
Do you think that it's just pride or something else? Like, does she feel a need to serve others? Or do you think she's just really depressed and needs to stay busy? I'm not sure if it the need to stay busy stems from depression necessarily, but its I see it definitely as she needs to keep moving. I mean, early on in the book, we get her um like internal monologue thoughts, um kind of looking at the sharks and feeling empathy for them because she understands what it means to keep moving or you'll die.
00:21:57
Speaker
um So I think she very much wants to keep herself busy, probably it's like more based on distraction. Distraction or the need to stay busy, maybe she just has something to prove to herself and to everyone else. Like, see I did hurt my ankle, or even before she hurt her ankle, just look, see I'm still able to scrape gum off the floor.
00:22:20
Speaker
and and clean this whole aquarium by myself. I can still do it, so I'm fine. The situation is fine. Yeah, and in the movie, we see Tova being so focused on trying not to be a burden that she ends up not being a very good friend, and her friend Mary Ann actually calls her out on this. I don't think she felt the need to be a good friend because she was, like, on her way out, quote-unquote. Like, she had already decided that she was going to move to the retirement home and and leave her town behind, right? So...
00:22:50
Speaker
I don't know, her friends were a little bit clueless and like super obnoxious, but it was still really nice that they forced her to be somewhat included in their stuff. yeah um i don't Yeah. I don't know if she felt like she was on her way out with her friend group or what, but I kind of saw it more as she's like... She was just so focused on making sure that she could take care of herself alone that she just didn't have the bandwidth. She didn't have capacity to care for the friends in her life in like a similar way. And she doesn't even realize that she's doing it. all right, I want to spend some time discussing the turning point in the book versus the movie. So
Plot Tension & Character Connections
00:23:26
Speaker
in the chapter titled Day 1329 of my Captivity,
00:23:32
Speaker
AKA page 186 in my book. At this point, Marcellus realizes Tova and Cameron are related and makes it his goal to help them realize it too, before it's too late.
00:23:42
Speaker
Too late meaning either Marcellus' death or when Tova moves to charter village or when Cameron leaves to go back to California. which I don't think Marcellus actually knows Cameron is planning to do that. But still, the reader knows. and And of course, we know that when Tova moves and Cameron leaves, they would likely never see each other again. So, you know, it really creates this some tension. And I enjoyed how as the readers, we were in on it with Marcellus and we knew more than Tova and Cameron. So we could kind of like
00:24:14
Speaker
observe and watch it play out and you know of course that created a sense of urgency and a lot of tension but i thought it was well executed i had the same thought that we are in on it and we now know that they're related and i unfortunately was driving eight hours in the car on a road trip while listening to this and was very very tired And I have a post-it note on page 186 because I had to go back and look where Marcellus says, oh, he's a direct descendant of Tova. And my very first thought was, oh, my God, her son's not dead. Oh, like he's the son. Yeah. And then 30 minutes later, I know that's what I said. And then 30 minutes later, I'm like, Emily, that's stupid. You're just driving through Oklahoma and you're tired.
00:25:05
Speaker
Her son, who's like ah supposed to be almost 50 Yeah, I know, and I was like, oh my gosh How are they going to explain this away? Was he kidnapped as a child? as an 18-year-old child? Was it amnesia? What? it It didn't take long for me to get back on track And I'm like, okay, no, that's stupid, never mind In the movie, ah going along with the whole Marcellus having these realizations He doesn't really say anything that would like point in the direction of them being related just that they have something in common he doesn't talk about a shared dimple or a shared walk or or anything like he does in the book yeah um I think Marcellus did mention in the movie that they shared a similar kind of sadness but it definitely wasn't enough
00:25:52
Speaker
Not enough. That is too subtle. um All kinds of people share similar sadnesses. We've all lost somebody. When I first saw the trailer, I hadn't gotten halfway through the book yet, and I thought the story was just going to be about friendship.
00:26:05
Speaker
I mean, on that note, I wonder what it was like for people who saw the movie before reading the book. Or like, you know, maybe they're listening to this now and they've seen the movie on Netflix, but they haven't read the book yet. um And I wonder if they knew Tova and Cameron were related based on just this like limited information from Marcellus. I wondered the same thing, and I spend a little bit too much time on the internet. So I searched on Reddit, and the user named Softdrink Enjoyer said that they figured out the twist ending by reading the movie summary like on Netflix.
00:26:42
Speaker
So I guess if you clicked play without reading anything, it might be a fun little twist. And then somebody commented underneath that, the user advice request account, they responded saying, yeah, she's his mom and the octopus is his dad. Pretty obvious if you aren't stupid.
00:26:59
Speaker
Could you imagine? hu Well, I mean, I thought that her son had gone through like some oceanic time warp to still be 30 and appearing 30 years later. i don't know. But I don't know. I'm not really sure. um yeah I don't know.
00:27:17
Speaker
i didn't i had no idea. And it was literally and like spelled out for me in the book. And I
Influence of Absent Characters
00:27:22
Speaker
still had a good 30 minute window of being just confused and stuck in a car. Okay, so Marcella's realizing this and telling the the reader, right? But not Tova or Cameron yet. Yeah. can't actually talk.
00:27:37
Speaker
that's the turning point in the book yes so then what do you think the movie one could be yeah I wasn't totally sure but I do wonder if in the movie the turning point is when Tova learns there was a girl and that happens about like an hour and 10 minutes into the film so that feels kind of like we're a little bit past the halfway point you know that's where it really gets going yeah I kind of wonder, because that's thematically close to where Tova would learn in the book, like if you held the two up to each other like a mirror, that's pretty close to it. And I mean, it was also a super frantic spot in the movie, I already mentioned it once, that Tova's imagining Eric fighting for his life in the water. and I mean, that that sounds like a collapse of everything that she knew. So that's that's a real turning point.
00:28:28
Speaker
I think you're right. Okay, so let's talk about Cameron's mother, Daphne, for a second. She was addicted to drugs. I don't think we ever learned which ones. And she abandoned Cameron when he was nine, leaving him to be raised by his Aunt Jean, who's pretty much erased from the movie.
00:28:43
Speaker
So like Daphne's not really a character, but she's still a very like still very much an integral part to the story. I agree.
00:28:55
Speaker
She also wasn't in a ton of the book. She wasn't in a ton of the book and then really much of the movie either. But anyway, Daphne was at least a name that connected Tova's son to Cameron.
00:29:07
Speaker
um i do kind of wish that Daphne was covered differently in both the book and the movie, because at the end of the book, we just learned that Aunt Jean is looking for her and Cameron seems a little bit bummed out by that, but then just immediately moves on.
00:29:21
Speaker
The movie straight up kills her off from the get go and we get zero Aunt Jean. Yeah, and like talk about the camper, you know, was Daphne's like death scene. That was inheritance.
00:29:34
Speaker
It's where she, yeah, it was, I mean, it's not like this movie is Sunshine and Rainbows, but that's that's pretty dark. That's dark. This is my inheritance, the RV where my died? This is my inheritance, yeah. At least in the book, it just, it was a cheap camper that he could afford and it smells like pee and that's about as bad as it gets. Yeah.
00:29:54
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And so, yeah, going back to Daphne. Back to Daphne. She, so she never really appears in either the book or the movie, but I just thought it's so interesting that it's like her life choices from early in Cameron's life or like after he was conceived. Yeah. All of those snowball into his insecurity, his instability, his fear of abandonment. And not to mention that Daphne choosing to keep Cameron's father's identity a secret, just like that prevented Cameron from building relationships with his grandparents from an early age.
00:30:30
Speaker
I think this kind of proves that Daphne as a character doesn't actually need any ah page time to be a really controlling part of the story. Her absence is a major like power to the engine that is Cameron's emotional arc. And I think that's something that we definitely need to look at and appreciate as readers, but also as writers.
00:30:53
Speaker
She made a big impact and it was her Her not making it on the page was still such an important part of the story and shaped all of the other characters around her.
00:31:05
Speaker
I think that's pretty cool that that it all came together that way. Yeah, I mean, it's cool to think about as a writer, like what you can do in kind of like negative space. Yeah. And that's where like Daphne...
00:31:19
Speaker
occupies negative space but negative space is a good way of explaining it I learned that in my art class this last year yeah yeah it's all coming together
00:31:35
Speaker
let's talk about endings there are some definite spoilers ahead so keep listening at your own risk Yeah, I think we've kind of spoiled it from the beginning. We sure did. Lightly, lightly. We didn't well we
Conclusion & Character Growth
00:31:50
Speaker
didn't explain we didn't explain how the ending came to be.
00:31:54
Speaker
Right, yeah. Okay, so a lot happens at the end of the book. Marcellus is liberated and returned to the sea by Tova. Cameron's identity is revealed to all characters via his father's class ring.
00:32:07
Speaker
We understand Eric's fate a little better after a conversation between Tova and Cameron's sort of girlfriend, Avery. And at the very end of the book, we see Tova and Cameron building a real connection as they're gearing up to beat each other in a routine game of Scrabble.
00:32:24
Speaker
But on an emotional level, we get to see Tova decide to actively participate in her life instead of simply enduring it. And I thought that was really beautiful. It was a little bit cheesy, but yeah, it was pretty. It was nice.
00:32:39
Speaker
I guess it was nice. It's not like Tova stopped grieving Eric, though. Nothing like that. She definitely hasn't moved on in some like grand way, but the book does show her integrating her grief into her life a little bit better, despite adding you know another loss of of Marcellus, but that was going to happen. There was nothing we could do about it.
00:33:02
Speaker
i think Tova feels the loss of Marcellus, but I also think she has some reassurance that he at least went like went out in the best possible way because she was able to return him to the sea via Mott Bucket. um And he was able to live out his final few days in the world that he loved and missed so much.
00:33:21
Speaker
Yeah, and I think the movie wraps up the story in much the same way. you know, also may be a little bit too neat, but at its core, I think we're still sticking to the emotional truth of Tova's journey to being more at peace with her grief and opening herself up to love.
00:33:38
Speaker
Aww. Mm-hmm.
00:33:45
Speaker
All right, now we get to nitpick. Pick those nits. Let's pick those nits. So first time first up, we've got chapter names in this book. And this is a positive nitpick. I thoroughly enjoyed having chapter names. I thought they were great. Every single one, I was like, oh, so good. um And I will say that I don't know who decided it was like gauche or something to have chapter names.
00:34:14
Speaker
Or maybe people just got lazy and so it's just chapter one. No. Bring back chapter names. I kind of think that I stopped seeing chapter names after like middle grade books maybe.
00:34:25
Speaker
Yeah, i don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I liked them. I was honestly like pretty excited to have the chapter names because I was like, great. This is going to make note taking so easy because the chapter name has something to kind of do with what happens in the chapter. I'm going to be able to make those connections in my brain. I'm going to be able to quickly look at the table of contents that doesn't exist and then go to the page. where the chapter starts and find my notes. So that's my complaint is that there's no table of contents.
00:34:54
Speaker
You don't get to know when the chapters start and the chapters don't have numbers on them. Yeah. Yeah. yeah give Give and take. There was some give and take.
00:35:05
Speaker
Right. Yeah. One thing that I took issue with was that the movie starts on day 1401 of Marcellus's captivity, hashtag free Marcellus. And the final one is day 1431. So the movie only covers 30 days of his life and observation in the tank, etc. And then from the book, we know that giant Pacific octopuses only live for 1,460 days. So the movie really takes the whole storyline to like the very end of his life.
00:35:36
Speaker
And I was like, ah what are you guys doing? Right. Yeah. It just... Couldn't he have had like a good six months in the ocean or something? like Just a little bit more time to like have some good snacks while he's down there. The book starts with day 1299 and then his final day So that's days plus an indetermined amount of days until tover returns him to the sea which I don't know, i felt like it was on the same day or maybe the next day. I don't know. Not not a ton of time. It's soon after his last check-in. It's very, very soon after his last last check-in, correct. Yeah, so the movie definitely created a much tighter timeline, ah much smaller time container, but I don't know.
00:36:23
Speaker
What other issues did you see with that? Yeah, I don't know. that That much tighter time container that we had in the movie made it harder for me to believe that so much happened between Cameron and Tova in just a month rather than like two months.
00:36:39
Speaker
Which I don't think that two months was enough time either. I think it needed to be... ah a little bit, I don't know, like six months, maybe. It just, I don't know. I don't think there was enough time in all of them meeting each other in a sense to get to that end.
00:36:56
Speaker
And I guess we also don't know exactly how much time uh happened before they all met up and we got the scrabble scene so maybe that was a little bit of extra time too now that i think about it in the book kind of like the montage at the end it's like yeah like it's like thanksgiving so okay yeah i remember thanksgiving came up Like two, three months at least have passed since kind of like late August when Tova and Cameron realized their relation to one another.
00:37:26
Speaker
So not enough time. The montage montage at the end, I think makes sense. But the, i guess yeah, but I will say with, um,
00:37:37
Speaker
Marcellus being returned to the sea at about like 1,360 days, then he gets like 100 days in the ocean until the end of his lifespan. Maybe more. Maybe less if he got eaten by something. Maybe less if he got eaten by a wolf eel. Yeah.
00:37:52
Speaker
One other really small thing. The movie erased Spokane from the story. How dare they? Right. Marianne, who's one of the nitwits, like she's moving in with her daughter, Laura. And in the book, Laura lives in Spokane. Cool. Cool.
00:38:07
Speaker
Great. We love it. We love to see Spokane represented. But the movie changed it to Portland. Why? They had to keep it weird. ah In both the movie and the book, Cameron kind of came across as a great big man child who would steal from his grandmother. That was just my immediate feelings of it. Like, I know that he went through a lot in his life. I don't want to downplay that at all.
00:38:33
Speaker
We've all been through something, but I did not trust him. i especially because his whole goal for a lot of the book was just to shake down some money from a guy who may or may not be his dad um in unpaid child support, like 18 years worth of unpaid child support. His goals had nothing to do with his music. He didn't care for a relationship with anybody.
00:38:59
Speaker
He just needed to get some money. And I think I had two different post-it notes in my copy that just said, I hate this man in all caps. Yeah, I didn't like him that much either. and I definitely hated how little responsibility he took for his actions and just like how emotionally immature he was for most of the book. Like he's 31 for crying out loud.
00:39:22
Speaker
But like we kind of already talked about, i did come around to him by the end of the book because I kind of saw him mature just a little bit and kind of came around to that. One of my last major nitpicks is I really didn't like how the movie made Tova and Eric fight before he disappeared slash died.
00:39:44
Speaker
I think it added a lot of guilt to her grief in a way that just doesn't feel true to the story from the book. I kind of agree. ah Yeah, Eric and Tova fight in the movie, but but, but, but, there's still the really sweet moment where Eric is like secretly fixing the dollar horse that he broke.
00:40:02
Speaker
um I think in the movie, we see him like secretly working in his room while she's like hollering at him from the other side of the door. And in the in the book, she doesn't find out about it until they look under a floorboard and then find, oh, the dollar horse that was missing, Eric must have been fixing it. That's sweet. So he was still like sweet and everything, but you know, 18 year olds kind of suck.
00:40:26
Speaker
um They're fighting before his death, definitely different from the book, but it felt realistic to me in the movie. So I wonder if in the book, Tova was maybe remembering their relationship as a little bit more perfect and sweet than it was in reality.
00:40:40
Speaker
I don't know. Did they ever fight in the book? I don't remember. and don't think they did. don't think they ever fought in the book. Nothing's sticking out to me. And of course, you know he's 18. He's a teenager. He's going to do dumb stuff that irritates his mom or whatever, and they're going to get into tiffs.
00:40:57
Speaker
But like that's very different from like, we had a major fight right before you disappeared. This is going to weigh on my conscience for the rest of my days. which is kind of what the movie made it seem like that wasn't in the book.
00:41:13
Speaker
um I don't know. Grief is can be really complex, especially when you add guilt to it. Right. And I kind of think that that's just an issue that Hollywood does, where they know that in the script, something really awful needs to happen. And I guess her only child dying wasn't sad enough. So they just had to pile on.
00:41:33
Speaker
I did not like the book ending. Mostly how Cameron's attitude was kind of magically fixed through him finding his grandmother. Like suddenly he was able to hold down a job and had plans on going to school for engineering. And that was all it took was ah was a grandma or i don't know, maybe it was just the knowledge that his father didn't abandon him after all. And that was enough to kind of jumpstart his adulthood.
00:42:01
Speaker
for me just wrapped up a little bit too nicely, which makes no sense because I'm an overly sentimental person. This opinion, dumb, but it was just really saccharine and like sicky sweet and just not really for me.
00:42:14
Speaker
But I honestly also don't know how else it could have ended. right? We don't have a whole lot of happy endings like this in movies or books. Yeah, I do agree. It was a little neat and tidy.
00:42:27
Speaker
um But at the same time, i think the ending still succeeds because the story isn't about like the mystery of Eric's death or the mystery of Cameron's identity, but it's more about the relationships between our main characters, like especially Tova and Marcellus. And we do get a really satisfying kind of like conclusion to those relationships that feels like emotionally true.
00:42:54
Speaker
i guess. I just not, it's just not for me personally.
00:43:03
Speaker
So
Book vs. Movie Preferences
00:43:04
Speaker
are you a book nerd or a movie buff? This was a really hard one for me because I really liked the movie that just the cinematic angles. I love Sally Field. I think she did a phenomenal job. I read her memoir last year, which broke my goddamn heart. But at the end of the day, this was the second time I read through the book and I still really loved it.
00:43:28
Speaker
And it's like, I might read it again. I don't really reread stuff because time is a finite resource for this lady. So think I'm gonna have to go book. What about, what about you, Em? Okay, so I also really love Sally Field. I'm almost done reading her memoir. Really liking that quite a bit.
00:43:45
Speaker
um And I really liked her in the movie. She made the movie. Like, we talked about Alfred Molina, but she was what made the movie. If anybody else had been cast as Tova, it would have sucked, to be honest.
00:43:58
Speaker
I... Have to go with movie though, because I was unfortunately really bored with this book. I know, i know, I saw your eyeballs widen. I know, i was so bored, which shocked me because the very first chapter is Marcellus and I'm like, hell yeah, talking octopus, let's do this.
00:44:17
Speaker
And then I just just got bored, i don't know. man. I think it's, I don't know. It's either like a- am shooketh. Are you? i don't know.
00:44:29
Speaker
It's just not for me. Wow, we're split. That doesn't happen very often. No, no it doesn't. Well, because we've picked some real duds one way or the other in the past.
00:44:40
Speaker
Em,
Next Book Announcement
00:44:41
Speaker
speaking of what we've read in the past, what are we reading next month? So it's not a dud. I'm halfway through it already and I'm really enjoying it. Make sure to join us next month on Thursday, June 18th, when we discuss identity, performance, race, repression, and social tension with passing by Nella Larson. We are going to do a whole bunch of research. It's going to be a great episode. I'm excited to finish the book.
00:45:10
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Book Club, the movie, the podcast. Watch for new episodes out the third Thursday each month. You can find us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.
00:45:21
Speaker
Follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Book Club, the movie. You can also find us on Patreon, Facebook, or on our website, bookclubthemovie.com. This podcast was created and produced by Jen Moyer and M. Lord.
00:45:35
Speaker
Our music and mixing is by Jason Lord of Studio Topaz. Voice acted by Ethan Gallardo. And we just want to give a big thank you to our friends and family for your love and support.
00:45:47
Speaker
And thank you, dear listener, for joining our book club. See
Closing Remarks
00:45:50
Speaker
you next time, nerds. And buffs. Bye!
00:45:59
Speaker
And then it's a clap, right? Yeah, literally just like... that should work or you can say bumper. We can try both because I don't know how well it's going to work, but that's just what other people have done. So
00:46:18
Speaker
one you did has a really long line and mine is just like a little, it looks like when I talk and I'm like, what? Okay, let me try that again. Okay. Sorry.
00:46:33
Speaker
Gotta get a little more slappy with it. Okay.
00:46:42
Speaker
That one has a really long line. Good, good, good, good. I think it'll work. Great. yeah Do you have any guesses of what our stupid post credit points would be yeah be?
00:46:54
Speaker
Let me clap it.
00:46:57
Speaker
absolutely Okay, I'm gonna do another one. No, no, no, it's okay, yeah, fine. To mark this. Okay, yeah, okay, let me take off my headphone. Hold on, okay, go.