So Mullholland Dr was a stunningly beautiful and dark movie that confused the crap out of me until I decided to just let it go and enjoy the ride rather than thnk too hard about what my eyes and ears were taking in. So in that way it is alot like Last year at Marienbad and even to some extent like the Daren films we checked out. Lynch was very, very clearly an artsy person and Mullholland makes much more sense to me as a mysterious moving painting than a narrative Hollywood movie.
So once I got my head to stop saying "WTF mates?," it was alot more fun.
So what were the images and sounds I enjoyed? The creepiness that comes up in the strangest places. Like when "Rita"/"Camilla" is stumbling around the city at night with no memory of who she is and she is just staggering around under these looming ominous palm trees, I was like whoa thats so weird. Those trees are normally used to show how fun and sunny and nice California is, and yet here they are so menacing. Same thing when the two gentlemen leave Winkies to go investigate the alleyway out back, there is something freaky going on and the viewer isnt even sure why they are on edge, but they are. The way the camera and the music work together, it transforms the simple act of walking in the street into a really on edge sequence. How does he make so much tension just moving around and pointing the camera at harmless things like a pay phone or a cappucino? Pretty great film making. And thats just the tip of the ice berg, because the ENTIRE movie works this way, subtle yet powerful emotions being conveyed through what are normally simple images or scenarios. Even when we cant be sure of anything that we are actually seeing and there are eighteen different weird and apparently disconnected things happening, we still get completely submerged in the film and the atmospheres that Lynch creates.
This sort of ties in with what really struck me from the reading and our class discussion, and that is the power of Hollywood and of film to affect people and create these dream worlds. I think we called Hollywood the "Dream Factory" at one point, which is so fitting because not only does it give people all these allusions that we love to latch onto (even when they make no sense *see above paragraph lol*) but it also represents a place where peoples dreams can come true or turn into nightmares. For the actress Betty, it was the land of perfect dreams where she instantly is recognized as stunning and wonderful and has no problems at all save for a thrilling mystery/love affair with an amnesiac. Thats a good dream. Not so much for the actress Diane, whose trip to Hollywood is quite literally a nightmare that only ends in terrible silencio. So, Hollywood, as a character, clearly has an immmmmeennnnse amount of power. The reading talks about this as being a reason for its rejection from ABC as a television program because it is a pretty ugly picture of the town with all of this absolute power over peoples lives. Heres the quote to show you what I mean....
" the contempt he heaps on its ludicrous power structure conveys the
heinous absurdity of the entire entertainment industry,
and with such vigor, that it is no wonder that ABC,
seeing its face in this dark mirror, pulled away from it"
The funny thing to me is that this is a movie. Its an Illusion. There is no band. Lynch is using this power of the dreams of Hollywood to show the power of the dreams of Hollywood. Kinda cool, sort of ties to postmodernism like we were talking about.
So yea, good movie. Wanna check out more Lynch now. Is Twin Peaks good? Worth checking out or will my head definitely explode after that?
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ReplyDeleteYes, Twin Peaks is totally worth checking out.
Lynch has this really creepy way about making the audience feel uncomfortable with the simplest of images. For me, it's the way that he composes the images. We're either really close and all up in the character's grill or we're too far away where we don't know exactly who the characters are and what they are doing.
ReplyDeleteHe also uses this abundance of ambient sound that really gets you uptight and uneasy. I've watched his entire body of work and in everything film there is always this really creepy noise in the background that makes everything tense.
Twin Peaks is totally worth checking out. Everything you're describing about what you like about MD is there--especially his way of making seemingly pleasant or innocent things really scary and menacing, just with sound distortions and the other odd things he does.
ReplyDeleteNice entry this, by the way.