I'm pretty much with T. on this movie and most of Lynch's stuff, although I liked Blue Velvet and Straight Story (mainly for Harry Dean Stanton's moment of wordless genius acting at the very end). I think Lynch kind of reached his apex with Blue Velvet, and then--like many others before him--determined what aspect of the movie's success was his meal ticket and proceeded to milk that over and over to the point of self-parody. The minute I determine that the director (or author, etc.) is trying to "weird me out" or shock me, I pretty much tune out. The a capella Spanish rendition of Roy Orbison's Crying, however, was worth all the other 14 hours put together. Own it on DVD!

See you next weekend.

DC

Posted by: DC on July 29, 2002 12:45 PM

She's gotta concede, tho, that Kyle McLoughlin's awfully damn cute.

(But not as cute as Cary Elwes, of course.)

Posted by: bootsy on July 29, 2002 03:12 PM

Similarly to "T", I find D.Lynch annoying, generally; that said, however, I found Mulholland Drive to be a major improvement over Lost Highway. At least I could "invent" a potential plot to explain the events onscreen (and, yes, we can debate over whether the need to do this is a weakness on my part; I say no). And once I managed to do that, I felt a sense of triumph in my own pea-brain that made the film more rewarding. Plus, some of the images were pretty cool.

Posted by: art on July 29, 2002 07:54 PM

Art, you are cordially invited to explain said solution here. I'm really curious to read your take (my response was not as negative as Theresa's, but I felt that whatever all of the trademark Lynchian surrealism was supposed to do did not, quite do it. There were good spots -- the audition, for example. And I was interested by the possibilities raised with "Betty" becoming "Diane" -- but those quickly collapsed into what seemed to me to be an unresolved set of mannered mystery-moves.)-- in any event I'd like to "know" what happened, if only in someone else's interpretation. 'Cause I don't have one of my own that I like.

Posted by: BT on July 29, 2002 10:37 PM

My take: you know how movies must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order? That's Mulholland Drive.

The first two-thirds are Diane's fantasies of how her time in Hollywood went, as imagined at the moment of her death. All her naive girlish hopes and dreams of adventure in LA, made more poignant by seeing the grim reality of her actual Hollywood experience afterwards, and not before as strict chronology would demand. Spiced up with some intense sexual jealousy, which also wouldn't have had the same impact if we'd known Betty's/Diane's sexual preferences all along.

The sub-plot of the director whose wife has an affair may or may not be real or part of Diane's fantasy; it doesn't really matter. If Theresa missed that scene where the hitman made a hash of his latest job, she really missed out!

I loved Mulholland Drive. More than Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart. And way more than Eraserhead, which I loathe. Haven't seen Lost Highway.

Posted by: Rory on July 30, 2002 07:50 AM

Thanks, Rory. I was also pointed to this article in Salon which, indeed, helps mightily with the plot issues.

After we watched it, Theresa and I both got that there was some admixture of fantasy and reality, centering on the Naomi Watts character, but remained pretty confused -- why it wasn't obvious to me that "Diane" invents or imagines the "Betty" plot seems strange to me now that I've read the explanation. But, of course, there are lots of red herrings. In my defense, I did more or less figure out Pale Fire on the first read.

I *did* like the botched hit scene, and the audition scene, and "Crying" en espanol...but although the interpretation rendered by the Salon writers renders a pleasing sense of "a-ha", I'm still not certain that I can forgive the overburdened David-Lynchiness of it all. "Silencio." Groan.

Posted by: BT on July 30, 2002 08:55 AM

note: i wrote this back in February and haven't had a chance to revisit it--art

Movie Review

I saw the new David Lynch film, Mulholland Drive, tonight. Below is my review. But first, a warning: I want to review the whole film, so if you've not seen it, you might want to wait to read my thoughts after you do. Also, I haven't read any published reviews, but felt that I should give you my uncontaminated interpretation of the film--because after all a David Lynch film is, above all things, open to interpretation. This is mine.

Mullholland Drive (2001)
directed by David Lynch.

I didn't like Lost Highway very much. I felt it was pretentiously weird for weirdness' sake. Nor did I like Fire Walk With Me (having not been much of a Twin Peaks regular, I found it tiresome and not able to stand on its own). I missed The Straight Story. So, my opinion of David Lynch is very much a mixed bag (for the record, I did like Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man; Eraserhead, is, well, Eraserhead).

I was pretty irked with the incomprehensibility of Lost Highway and so, went into this film with some reservations. I am pleased to say that my analytical mind _was_ able to make some sense of Mulholland Drive. I've simplifed it--but I do have a theory and that counts for something. Sure, there are still moments of unrepentant weirdness--but in MD they are treated with humor, more often than not (and at least in the showing I saw, people laughed). I think I was most pleased that odd bits from the beginning of the film actually tied in at the end--and the central symbols (the blue cube and the troll figure), while not entirely sensical, at least seemed to serve a metaphoric purpose. Again, I apologize to the diehard Lynchians out there for forcing this inscrutable director into my own box (small blue?).

In this film, too, Lynch has found a way to have his bizarre moments, his beauty, and still keep a throughline (i.e., some semblance of a plot). Indeed, here the oddnesses (mostly) seem like little resonances with the collective subconscious (or even a more personal one), meant to evoke ideas beyond what is depicted--whether or not Lynch knows specifically what they may evoke in each viewer. I'm being abstract on purpose--but you can think of these subconscious moments as the little "asides" used frequently by Lynch--the camera diving into the bed at the start, the two "blondes" side-by-side in the mirror, the "psychic" visitor (these may mean nothing but they are evocative). There are plenty of other examples--things aren't exactly spelled out here. But they don't feel as forced (save only perhaps for the scenes with the "movie producer" in the wheelchair--in the room from Eraserhead and/or Twin Peaks).

When I refer to "beauty", I mean that there are some masterful compositions here (the 50s style apartments of "old" Hollywood, the views of Los Angeles, the abstract headlights of cars) and some brilliant symbiotic passages of sound and vision (in particular, the walk up the hill to the final party--kudos to Badalamenti).

But really, 75% of this film has a plot--or enough of a plot for your mind to follow along, filling in gaps as it may. Naomi Watts (an Aussie actress, note the kangaroo joke) plays a young woman (Betty) who has clearly come to L.A. to capture a bit of that tinseltown magic--the stereotypic American Dream in Hollywood. Her naivite is garishly overplayed--on purpose, of course (as is everything here). When an amnesiac woman (played by someone whose name I forgot, but she calls herself Rita) winds up in her apartment, after fleeing an horrific car crash with ominous overtones, Betty sets out to solve her mystery in true Nancy Drew style. No, really--this is just like the TV show of yore; wide-eyed mystery-solving excitement.

Betty also gets to audition for films and comes into contact with a director--who has his own story in a subplot, revolving around his unwillingness to hire an actress put forth by the "mob" (my shorthand, but who knows?). He loses everything, meets a cowboy who threatens him (we do only see him once again though), and ends up hiring the required actress. Who isn't Betty--because she doesn't actually end up auditioning, preferring instead to help Rita on the search for her identity, following leads based on the faintest traces of memories.

Betty and Rita track Rita's memory to a bungalow complex where a certain Diane lives--there they find a dead body. Later, after a lesbian tryst, Rita requests Betty to join her at a late night cabaret show which revels in its prerecorded artificiality. There they find a blue cube, which seems to match a blue "key" which Rita had earlier found in her handbag (along with a whole lot of money, possibly ill-gotten).

So, there, I've described (mostly) the 75% of the movie that is straightforward. Then Rita opens the blue cube with the blue "key", despite Betty's sudden and inexplicable disappearance. The camera heads straight into the cube. And the movie changes. The same actresses are there, looking slightly different (especially Watts), but with different names and seemingly different personalities. I flashed back to the similar device used in Lost Highway (albeit with a different actor taking the character's name) and thought, oh man, the film is going to fall apart now. And for a while it seemed to.

But Lynch didn't just head off into incomprehensibility (like in Lost Highway), instead he tied things together, allowing for a theory to be constructed that fits the "facts".

OK, so Betty is now Diane, an actress who has seemingly failed somewhat in her quest for stardom. She has been having a lesbian affair with Camilla, who was Rita. Camilla has taken up with the director of the first part and they are in a hot-and-heavy romance and plan to marry. Diane is distraught, hires a hit-man to kill Camilla, and then kills herself. But not before revealing a life-story that is remarkably similar to that of Betty (Deep River, Ontario?; and her jitterbug contest win finally makes sense of the awesome and bewildering pretitle sequence). So, the characters are more than just physical doubles.

My interpretation, simplistic as it may be, is that Lynch is showing us the before and after of the Hollywood Dream. The naivite is replaced by a jaded lost feeling--Betty becomes Diane, Diane is the future Betty, whatever. The blue cube is the turning point, where the past meets the future. Rita is Camilla's escaped self, the future returning to the past, where there is no knowledge of the compromises (association with the "mob") and jadedness of the future. And in this past version of herself, she doesn't wind up dead.

Did I forget to mention the Troll man? He seems to be pulling the strings, demonically changing the faustian bargain into a shell game--one's soul for fame, nothing in return but self-loathing. The kid in Winkie's dreams of the Troll--and we know then that the Troll is his future and he is probably sitting with his agent in the beginning, full of naive dreams of stardom.

There but for the grace of God go we, backward and forward, across the threshold of the blue cube. Yeah, whatever.

Posted by: art on July 30, 2002 06:48 PM

lynch fans or foes will get a kick out of DFW's visit to the lost highway set, as recounted in one of his essays in 'a supposedly fun thing i'll never do again.'

Posted by: deb on July 31, 2002 04:37 PM

I liked it when the pretty ladies got it on.

Posted by: hackly_fracture on July 31, 2002 04:59 PM