It¡¯s weird to see
people leaving the theater
laughing directly after the final, breakneck 30 minutes of David Lynch¡¯s
latest dream noir, Mulholland Drive. It¡¯s especially strange when
you consider that those final moments were packed with the most violent imagery,
frightening occurrences, and harrowing cinema we¡¯ve possibly seen from the
eclectic visionary since his prequel to another failed television
revolution, Twin Peaks. Maybe it was the elderly couple crawling
beneath the door to terrorize the film¡¯s protagonist into what may have
been her inevitable, self-imposed destruction. Or maybe it was the
Bob-like demon in the alley.
Either way, I was glued to the back of my chair during the end of
Mulholland Drive as forcefully as I was slouching in it near the
film¡¯s beginning.
As much as people still decry Lynch¡¯s extensive use of what have come
to be known as Lynchian archetypes ¡ª the fair-skinned innocent filled with
aw-shucks naivet¨¦; the dark-haired femme fatale with an even darker
secret; nicely dressed crime fighters speaking in clipped, sometimes
pointless dialogue; dark-arts villainy and an unnamable evil presence;
flickering lights and lascivious flesh-baring;
feminine depression/sexualization and masculine oppression/impotence,
among others ¡ª they are just the colors on the palette that his
self-styled film paintings usually require to run their nonlinear (unless
you consider the infinity symbol linear, that is) course to doom,
alienation, and deferral. Those and other archetypes belong to Lynch as
much as the in-over-his-head (usually Italian
or Italian-American) dreamer belongs to Scorsese,
the dysfunctional family/corporation belongs to Coppola, the hardy
impotent belongs to Hitchcock,
or the deranged or deteriorating moralist belongs to Kubrick.
Each artist has his tools, and to fault Lynch for his possibly
obsessive ruminations on female sexuality ¡ª Freud called it the "dark
continent" ¡ª is to ignore the cinematic gifts he¡¯s given us, the
professional and artistic risks he continually takes, or the daring twists
he¡¯s made on convention of all stripes. Without his invention ¡ª
specifically that found in Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin
Peaks (the television show and the film), and now Mulholland
Drive ¡ª cinema and television would simply not be as sophisticated and
as brave as it is today.
That might sound like a mouthful, but you don¡¯t have to look far to
find those who have benefited directly or indirectly from the pioneer
steps Lynch and his circle of actors, sound engineers, co-producers,
editors, and writers have taken. In film, he upped the ante of visual
storytelling from his first film, Eraserhead, on, paving the way for the
likes of David Fincher, Jeunet and Caro, Tarsem, Kasi Lemmons, and even
Guy Ritchie; his narrative risks, like those presented in Wild at Heart and Blue Velvet have fueled the careers of plenty more. In
television, well, it gets easier there. Just as so-called reality
television is demarcated by the introduction of Survivor, adult
dramedy is measured by its occurrence relative to the introduction of Twin Peaks, which blazed trails the likes of which
Northern
Exposure, Six Feet Under, The X-Files, and more have all shared at
some point.
To forget the impact Lynch has had on the artistic media he¡¯s worked in
is to avoid the nearly obvious in favor of the reductive point-and-grunt
criticism that so much of his work has been subjected to after Twin
Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. "It¡¯s just Lynch being Lynch," someone said
as I wobbled out of Mulholland Drive.
I thought that was supposed to be a good thing.
"We'll Be
Watching For You On the Big Screen"
No matter what you
may think of Lynch, there is hardly any doubt that you¡¯ll see another
movie as bizarre yet bizarrely familiar the rest of this year. Mulholland Drive shares an affinity with other recent L.A. noir films, such
as the fascinating Memento, in that it is hardly in the dark. In
fact, the Hollywood that Lynch parodies and paraphrases is sometimes a
sun-streaked world full of optimism, power, and power plays, as well; that
much we have seen before. So it doesn¡¯t seem to jar our sensibilities when
Rita, the aforementioned femme fatale (Laura Elena Harring) is stopped by
her chauffeurs at gunpoint and forced out of the car in the film¡¯s
beginning. Nor is it strange when an automotive accident releases her dark
secret ¡ª a la Cloris Leachman¡¯s Christina Bailey in Robert
Aldrich¡¯s equally twisted noir masterpiece Kiss Me Deadly ¡ª
into the world, particularly into the life of a doe-eyed naïf named Betty
(Naomi Watts in a virtuoso performance).
Unable to remember her life before
her accident on Mulholland Drive, Rita accepts the intrigue-hungry
help of Betty ¡ª who finds both Rita and her secret life fascinating. At
once, the film looses these two feminine detectives ¡ª the first of their
kind unless my cinematic memory fails me ¡ª into the wild side of Los
Angeles, including a shadowy entertainment multinational run by a
wheelchair-ridden mogul ¡ª Michael Anderson, the backwards-speaking,
dancing Man in the Red Suit from Twin Peaks ¡ª and members of the
underworld, two-bit hustlers
who kill for money and black books with the phone numbers of every player
in Hollywood, black magic soothsayers and washed-up
divas, and after-hours art installations of indeterminate spiritual
value.
And that¡¯s just for starters.
Like Lynch¡¯s Los Angeles prequel to this latest flirtation with dream
noir, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive takes its time setting
everything up ¡ª scenes drag on seconds longer than you think they should,
conversations seem to take more time than they normally would, revelations
come to you before they come to the characters. Unlike Lost
Highway, however, you don¡¯t have to suffer as much through this method
¡ª the unfamiliarity of these new faces put more emphasis on the
machinations behind the words. Indeed, in Lynch¡¯s films, the near
anonymity of the actors seems to
have the biggest payoff for the audience, a point that many who have
criticized the lack of depth in his characters may agree with.
One of the other reasons that the movie may start slow is because, as
most people are aware by now, Mulholland Drive was initially
envisioned and shot as a television program; the relationships between all
of the characters ¡ª who are indeed connected across the matrix of the film
together ¡ª don¡¯t ever become utterly clear, whether by design or default.
The only early glimpses of a rationale behind this madness is when Betty
is bid goodbye at LAX by an elderly couple whose incessant grinning and
cackling recalls that of the devious presence Bob from Twin Peaks.
And that¡¯s if you¡¯re a LynchHead. If you¡¯re a newcomer to his strangeness,
the early stages of the film and character development may very well seem
strained.
"Now I¡¯m in This
Dream Place"
But by the time Rita
and Betty stumble onto the first casualty of their investigation lying
dead next to pieces of her own brain, the film leaps into hyperdrive and
out of its narrative vein, doubling back onto itself and out into
storylines unseen. Expanding on the "fugue state" psychosis Lynch and
co-writer Barry Gifford employed for their protagonist in Lost
Highway, Mulholland Drive¡¯s second act detaches characters and
story arcs, sending the film into a frenzied rush of imagery, events, and
faces, all of which seem to work their way back to the film¡¯s beginning.
Or middle. Oh hell, or end.
This is where it gets fun.
When I got lucky enough to meet Lynch and proffer some long, drawn-out
theorization masquerading as a key to the mystery of his oeuvre, he
answered my ramblings with a flat, "No." It was a tough lesson ¡ª
especially since he publicly rebuffed me in a room full of around 200
people ¡ª but one well learned. He qualified his abrupt statement
explaining, "Sometimes the intellect can get in the way, sometimes you
just have to turn it off and let everything come out." And I think this is
the only productive way to get at what he does when, in situations like
those that occur in the fractured parts of Mulholland Drive, he
irrupts convention in favor of complexity, linearity in favor of the
webbing that most of his characters seem to get caught up in.
When Mulholland Drive turns on a dime into this netherworld of
mystery and violence, it really careens. Betty takes over the role of
Diane Selwin, the woman who Rita thought she might be, only to find
herself on the outside of a collapsed love triangle and at the mercy of
her own frustrated desire for Rita, who has become someone named Camilla.
That might seem like a serious detour, but it¡¯s just a minor taste of the
twists Lynch conjures up, especially in the imagery department. Playing
with shadow and noise, he hitches his audience to Betty¡¯s shoulder as she
is jerked from one event to the next, all stops and starts, rewinds and
fast forwards, until she is placed on the mirror side of Betty¡¯s
narrative. Only this time, instead of being aided by the elderly couple
who can¡¯t wait to see her on the silver screen, she is hunted by them into
screaming darkness and the blunt end of a pistol.
And this uncompromising savagery is Lynch¡¯s finest attribute ¡ª who else
could take the sweet and kind elderly and make them his barking demons?
For all the protest that the film¡¯s egregious violence and brutal sexuality will
possibly engender from gays and
lesbians ¡ª much less your run-of-the-mill, KPAX-watching straights ¡ª
Lynch¡¯s fascination with the body in pain reinscribes the real cost of the
mythmaking machine of Hollywood. As we watch Camilla and Diane come apart
in the end of the film as quickly as Betty and Rita come together in its
beginning, we return inevitably to the border that the actual Mulholland Drive represents ¡ª the difference between Hollywood, the
geographical area and the symbolic term, and the rest of the world. "The
director didn¡¯t take too kindly to me," Diane squeaks as she breaks down
watching said director and her ex-lover Camilla tongue each other across
the table, words which speak volumes about the cost involved in any sort
of emotional investment in the world of Mulholland Drive.
Which is the film¡¯s ultimate and refreshing gift. Where there have been
a slew of films since the beginning that have lampooned or criticized its
apparatus ¡ª The Player, Sunset Boulevard, Get Shorty, among others
¡ª none have taken their time beating it into a bloody pulp as much as Mulholland Drive has. Lynch has laid bare the culture of the
image¡¯s fever dream more capably than any of his predecessors, a thought
that didn¡¯t hit me until the late hours of my second night after viewing
the film, his frightening and meaning-laden visuals bouncing around my
mind and out onto the pillow. Kind of like that piece of gray matter Mulholland Drive¡¯s nameless evil figure ¡ª huddled around a campfire
in a back alley behind Winkie¡¯s burger joint ¡ª stuffed into a wrinkled
paper bag along with a puzzle box that held the answers to the mysteries
of Rita¡¯s past, Betty¡¯s future and why those kindly elderly are really
possessed by malice and brutality.
So give it to Lynch ¡ª his films stick with you that way, if you let
them. If you think you know everything about narrative convention,
character development and story arcs ¡ª to the point that you¡¯ve developed
the endlessly criticized "formula" common to most entertainment ¡ª then he
was probably skewering you when he dreamt up this latest fugue state. But
if you still go to films to see something new, even new to Lynch, then Mulholland Drive is the latest installment in what has so far been
a truly innovative, daring, and original bending of the rules from a
director who always wanted to be a world-famous painter.
Does that make sense?
From Bright Lights Film
Journal
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