Now, the people are demanding the grand political thesis around this movie.

I'm sure you have one.

Can I ask what it is?

Well, I think I have the same reading, regardless of which events from start to finish in the film, we ultimately decide are real or fake.

I mean, it sounds like for Hoven himself wanted to leave ambiguity in that regard, but he has a slight preference for, you know,

the final shot is that's a dream. Because I think, you know, for him that has more

disturbing implications. As well as I think he sees a certain romance to the ephemorality of it all.

Yes. And I think ephemorality is kind of what I'm coming to here. Because I think it ultimately

doesn't really matter.

I think for me, the film's thesis is the same regardless of what's real and what's fake.

Quato has a kind of little didactic line before he's shot where he says to Hauser,

you are what you do.

A man is defined by his actions, not his memory.

And so that to me evokes the fact that this

film is constantly erasing, you know, whatever reality came before it. With every new twist,

the arc of the main character changes, the nature of this universe changes. And during the first

act of the movie, when I didn't know any of these twists were coming, you know, knowing, knowing a bit

about Paul Verhoeven, when he first discovers that, hey, you know, this is a, this is a fake,

you know, he's got a fake wife and a fake marriage and, you know, et cetera, you know, I thought,

well, there's the political reading right there, right? This is a movie about how he has this kind

of prescribed identity. He has a sense of self and a social role that has just been kind of bequeathed to him or

imposed on him. And I think my reading of the movie is still rooted in something similar, but I would

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