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Topic: David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive"
| Author | Message |
| GrOoVaL!c!OuS | Posted – 8/2/2007 12:50:16 PM | show profile I've seen it twice and I still have no earthly idea what it's about. I was enthralled, though. The acting is superb. And the Silencio scene with the chick singing "Crying" in Spanish is probably one of the best singing scenes in film. (What happened to this singer, btw?) But the BIG question for me is a nagging one: what is this movie really about? Theories anyone? |
| Mag Girl | Posted – 8/2/2007 1:10:37 PM | show profile I have no clue and have always wondered myself. Probably some theme along the lines of we never really know who other people truly are. I dunno. |
| Stanley_Milgram | Posted – 8/2/2007 1:26:25 PM | show profile er, how big name directors can get big budgets to put their lesbian fantasies on screen? |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 8/2/2007 1:41:40 PM | show profile I think I saw this (or maybe it was another Lynch film) and I hated it. It seemed to me this guy was making some kind of random film while on acid or something. |
| sue ellen mischke | Posted – 8/2/2007 1:54:16 PM | show profile Guys I used to work with were obsessed with this movie. And every time one of them would bring it up, they would all just kind of stare into space and say: "Yeah...what a good movie." And it was so obvious that they were day dreaming about the gratuitous lesbian scenes... I hate that movie. |
| questoo1 | Posted – 8/2/2007 4:20:28 PM | show profile Funny..I saw that movie years ago just after smoking a, um, funny cigarette. Wasn't sure if it was me of the movie that made no sense. I just googled it and there are ton's of interpretations online you can read for yourself. All seem to point towards the movie being split up into two parts: fantasy, making up about 95% of the film, and reality making up the last 20 minutes. |
| ignatz | Posted – 8/2/2007 5:40:44 PM | show profile I loved this movie and have had this discussion many times. It doesn't have a traditional narrative approach but it can be interpreted by the themes it addresses and the feelings it evokes. It's definitely in part at least about the schizophrenic nature of Los Angeles' identity and identity in general. Two opposing archetypes and what happens when they meet. On one hand the sunny, optimistic LA where people come to be discovered is represented by the blond (who arrives during the day) meets the the darker film Noir side of Los Angeles represented by the brunette. (who arrives at night) they're sorta on a collision course and when the meet all hell breaks loose. Sorta like when matter meets anti-matter |
| jjones | Posted – 8/2/2007 5:55:58 PM | show profile Someone smarter than me explained it like this... ...and you'll have to forgive me because this was many years ago. The girl was murdered and this film is her dying brain shutting down over a period of time. Which is why it gets more and more inexplicable the closer you get to the end. |
| valentine | Posted – 8/2/2007 6:05:05 PM | show profile I.Hate.This.Movie I feel the bile rising in my thoat just reading the name of it. I'm glad to see some interpretations of it, but yet and still it does nada for me. What was up with the monster-man behind the dumpster? |
| GrOoVaL!c!OuS | Posted – 8/3/2007 8:42:53 AM | show profile Yes, yes! What was up with the teeny tiny man behind the dumpster? Makes no sense to me at all. I'm willing to suspend belief quite a bit for film. This movie stretches that limit. |
| chucho | Posted – 8/3/2007 10:59:18 AM | show profile Thumbs down. I've wanted to like David Lynch since Blue Velvet, but he's very disappointing. I think a lot of times there is no connection whatsoever (the little man behind the dumpster is just that) and what he's doing is subverting the act of interpreting film. I just saw an exhibit of his, and I'd say 90% of it was complete garbage and 10% was really interesting (namely: he has a while bunch of black and white photos of real snowmen, and apparently he's kept every single cocktail napkin and matchbook cover he's ever scrawled upon). My theory that there is nothing to interpret comes from watching a series of short films he did, all awful, where he seems to be telling people to not seek reward -- to watch a film without dividend -- ie, if he's filming himself riding around in a boat (which he does in one) there is no symbolism in it: it's a guy in a boat saying poetry, and it's just that. His transcendental meditation kick seems to validate this theory a bit: he wants America's kids to slow down, to not seek constant media input and immediate reward. His earlier stuff seemed to be a bit more interesting, and "interpret-able" but I think he rejects all of that now and just messes with the audience for the sake of doing so and hammering home the point that some things have no symbolism and are just, as somebody suggested, electrical discharges of a dying brain. |
| ignatz | Posted – 8/3/2007 1:58:45 PM | show profile Slowing down the "read" and messing with structure is definitely part of his strategy. Structualism is a contemporary art strategy which David Lynch is very aware of. It usually doesnt make it this far into the mainstream so people unfamiliar sorta think of it as a trick. Although in this case he combines it with alot of traditional narrative structure which is why it can be viewed and released as a "movie" there are plenty of videos where the traditional content really is completly emptied that you would really hate even more if you hated this movie. There's also all kinds arguments in the art world about "intent", "narrative" and whether its possible to eliminate narritive. The argument bassically goes like this: He picked all the images and situations with an awareness of the significance they have in our culture and some of the possible interpretations that can be brought to them AND "reading" a movie is as much a product of the viewers interpretation (again influenced by shared culture) who after all was presented with a communication in the form of in this case a semi structuralist movie. sorry I teach art so I'm compelled to post on this subject |
| sue ellen mischke | Posted – 8/3/2007 2:50:10 PM | show profile Structuralist theory was born around 1850...not a new technique or mode of critical analysis. Deconstruction is newer, which I believe is more relevant to this movie. |
| chucho | Posted – 8/3/2007 3:05:42 PM | show profile Well, I definitely am intrigued by the concept, and this is just going to be an individual aesthetic choice. The thing that I don't like about it is that I think it's too much like real life -- real life is a series of events that have no real symbolic value. (It take a work of art to turn real life events into metaphors, for example -- those metaphors don't exist, IMO. A cigar is a cigar until somebody says it's a penis. David Lynch creates things that look like metaphors but -- I think -- aren't, which is kinda like real life, but in a very manipulative way that's interesting one time, but not interesting when it becomes your shtick. TO me art is by definition making narrative and symbolic connections, and subverting it is, in itself, a narrative that validates boring old narrative art. If David Lynch expects me to sit through a 17-minute film of him driving around a lake in his vintage watercraft talking about finding nighttime, I'd like to have a more interesting and thought-provoking message than "ha-ha, you were expecting this oat ride to be more than it is." If Mullholland Drive is about a person dying in a car crash -- and that everything in it is a dream like state of consciousness as the person dies -- then that's the equivalent of "and then he woke up!" at the end of a novel. I don't really like that. |
| ignatz | Posted – 8/3/2007 3:29:09 PM | show profile The germanation for structualism started in the later part of the 19th century It didn't really become a popular approach for the arts til the 1950's and it really wasn't a part of viual art startegies til the 60's and seventies when it reached its height. Deconstruction is a furthering of structuralist ideas and is still essentaily structuralist because they both recognize structure as more imprtant than narrative. deconstruction is a major break from structuralism in that deconstruction recognizes that meaning cant be understood soley by the thing thats being read, book, art movie or whatever because people bring their own biases cultural and personal. |
| ignatz | Posted – 8/3/2007 3:29:13 PM | show profile The germanation for structualism started in the later part of the 19th century It didn't really become a popular approach for the arts til the 1950's and it really wasn't a part of viual art startegies til the 60's and seventies when it reached its height. Deconstruction is a furthering of structuralist ideas and is still essentaily structuralist because they both recognize structure as more imprtant than narrative. deconstruction is a major break from structuralism in that deconstruction recognizes that meaning cant be understood soley by the thing thats being read, book, art movie or whatever because people bring their own biases cultural and personal. |
| sue ellen mischke | Posted – 8/3/2007 5:05:48 PM | show profile I actually have an MA in English literature and have studied in great grueling detail critical literary analysis, and structuralism was dying out as a means of critical analysis by 1950. Deconstruction is a cousin of structuralism, but if you ever met a true structuralist (and two of my professors were of this camp...and they were stodgy old white men with Oxford backgrounds), he would argue against every fiber of deconstructionalist logic. |
| UGoGirl | Posted – 8/3/2007 11:19:50 PM | show profile Lost Highway I just realized the move I saw was Lost Highway and not Mulholland Drive. I hated Lost Highway, and I think I'd hate Mulholland Drive. And he gets paid for doing that? |
| ignatz | Posted – 8/4/2007 2:33:57 AM | show profile hey Angela I have an MFA in fine art and now teach where i went to school. I also have an art gallery. I can tell you in art it wasn't a stratgey that was picked up on in a big way til the 60's and 70's and that Structuralism and Post Structuralism is still taught. The notion of addressing structures (the legacy of structuralism) is still very much influencing contemporary artists. I don't advise students subscribe to any ism though that's not really why i think as an artist its important to understand them. |
| foodlit | Posted – 8/4/2007 9:37:11 AM | show profile I felt kind of stupid after seeing this movie. Like I was the only one who was completely clueless about what the story was. If there was a story? Nice to see it wasn't just me. Very odd movie. I did enjoy the experience of watching it, but felt frustrated at the end because it didn't connect at all. |
| GrOoVaL!c!OuS | Posted – 8/4/2007 1:52:27 PM | show profile foodlit, I'm with you on this. I didn't understand the movie after seeing it the first time and I really wanted to (hence my watching it again). Most of the people I've asked about the movie go on and on about how wonderful it is...the symbolism and all that other esoteric blah blah blah. I feel like the kid at the back of the class who doesn't understand fractions. But reading other people's reactions here make me feel better. |
| sue ellen mischke | Posted – 8/4/2007 9:13:06 PM | show profile ignatz, MFA and MA in Eng Lit are two completely different modes of study (I've done both). In fact, most MFA professors I've had weren't even aware of the many means of critical literary analysis. And sure, structuralism is still taught. It has to be because some canonical work can only be valued through a structuralist lens (Pope for instance). What is taught most today (what's really a hot button) is queer theory, feminist perspective and culture analysis (I have a published chapter on this) which borders on some issues of pop culture/subversiveness. And although I agree with you regarding the ineffectiveness of choosing one critical theory to apply to all/some literature, the academic world chooses in waves select anaysis motifs and becomes obsessed, publishing papers and books and lecturing at MLA conferences until the buzz enters campuses everywhere. That's just how it is and has been for the past two centuries. Also, perhaps I was wrong getting into it with you over this regarding structuralism in film/art versus structuralism in literature because it may be viewed differently in those venues. Structuralism in literature heavily relies on language primarily and form secondarily. I don't know how that translates into visual art or film. I was just commenting that this film seems more like a deconstructionist perspective rather than a structuralist perspective based on my studies of critical analysis as it relates to literature. I feel death is being deconstructed. I don't know of a pure structuralist who would take a subject apart rather than center in on it and add to it to present its significance to the reader. |
| clare04 | Posted – 8/5/2007 1:35:26 AM | show profile remember that cowboy scene ? I felt the film was about the ambition of young women. When I saw it I just had one reaction, wow a film that's really about how women are today. I loved it. I think it's worth noting that Naomi Watts in the movie was chosen for the role because it was a bit autobiographical of her own life. She spent about 10 years in Hollywood some of it living in poverty trying to make it before she was picked for Mulholland Drive. When you hear about Lana Clarkson's life story today it sounds a lot like that movie but there's something about Lana Clarkson that is just insane, too. Another topic! |
| wineaux | Posted – 8/9/2007 3:35:50 PM | show profile What a weird coincidence. I bought that movie in a bargain bin and when I finally got around to watching it I was really baffled by it. My interpretation, for what it's worth. I could be completely off base, however. I've never been good about a film that plays like a riddle: I thought that the squeaky clean image of the blond (Watts)was a figment of her imagination, while in reality she was the obsessed poor whitetrash druggy girlfriend of the brunette, who is actually bisexual but leans more towards men to further her career. Watts character kills herself in the end, and I thought the images of her staying w/ her aunt and being a successful actress, and of the brunette being vulnerable and hiding out were fantasies of Watt's character while she was dying. Or, like someone said earlier about her dying brain shutting down. I don't get the monster thing either, and really sometimes wonder what the hell goes on in Lynch's head. |
| wineaux | Posted – 8/9/2007 3:44:28 PM | show profile I forgot to mention what the coincidence was. duh I watched it ages ago and dropped it into a shopping bag of dvd duds that I let visiting people rifle through and take. Somehow the bag got dumped over and the dvds were strewn on my floor. I stomped on it yesterday and laughed out loud when I saw what my foot had pinned down, since I had been following this post in hopes of figuring out what the movie really was about. |
