I had my doubts for a little while, but yeah, David Lynch is wacked.
Back when I was in college, David Lynch was the bee's knees. Twin Peaks was on network television, although I wondered who he had a picture of with what farm animal that made that come to pass. I didn't get it, but went along with the crowd and watched religiously anyhow. Dancing midget talking backwards. WTF?
Now, years later, thanks to Netflix I'm working my way through a long list of movies I "ought" to have seen and along comes Mulholland Drive. Surprise! I get it. Completely love it and it makes perfect sense. I see deep messages about reality versus perception buried in the non-linear telling of clichéd small-town-girl-moves-to-Hollywood-to-be-a-star morality play. I also see a perpetually open mouthed Naomi Watts (thanks,
stinguin) but hey, no movie is perfect.
"Hmmm," I think to myself. "Perhaps I just didn't have the life experience to understand his work earlier." Perhaps. But clearly I need to do a lot more livin' to understand Inland Empire.
The plot summary sounds very promising: "NIkki (Laura Dern) is a married actress who ends up in bed with her co-star (Justin Theroux), but is it an affair or just acting? When the two start calling each other by their characters' names, the faint line between fact and fiction gets even fuzzier in this David Lynch mystery. Jeremy Irons stars as Kingsley, the director of the film within the film who does little to help the characters -- or the audience -- distinguish reality from fantasy."
I assure you that no one involved in this film does much of anything to help the audience distinguish reality from fantasy. Yes, I realize that's one of Lynch's major artistic statements, but still. It's almost as if the whole movie is a word association exercise.
The film is surprisingly similar to Mulholland Drive, and I really liked it up until the plot described on the disc sleeve is completely dropped for no apparent reason. Next thing we know, Laura Dern is in some alternate reality, and her husband is running off to be an animal trainer with an Eastern European circus. Seriously.
Truly, there are messages here. I see themes of the danger of jealousy, people "acting" their lives instead of living them, actors = whores, etc. However, despite the fact that clearly there is some type of structural integrety in the story, I don't really get it. And I'm not sure I want to watch it again to try to figure anything else out. Three hours is a lot of gratuitous and pretentious wackiness.
Now, years later, thanks to Netflix I'm working my way through a long list of movies I "ought" to have seen and along comes Mulholland Drive. Surprise! I get it. Completely love it and it makes perfect sense. I see deep messages about reality versus perception buried in the non-linear telling of clichéd small-town-girl-moves-to-Hollywood-to-be-a-star morality play. I also see a perpetually open mouthed Naomi Watts (thanks,
stinguin) but hey, no movie is perfect.
"Hmmm," I think to myself. "Perhaps I just didn't have the life experience to understand his work earlier." Perhaps. But clearly I need to do a lot more livin' to understand Inland Empire.
The plot summary sounds very promising: "NIkki (Laura Dern) is a married actress who ends up in bed with her co-star (Justin Theroux), but is it an affair or just acting? When the two start calling each other by their characters' names, the faint line between fact and fiction gets even fuzzier in this David Lynch mystery. Jeremy Irons stars as Kingsley, the director of the film within the film who does little to help the characters -- or the audience -- distinguish reality from fantasy."
I assure you that no one involved in this film does much of anything to help the audience distinguish reality from fantasy. Yes, I realize that's one of Lynch's major artistic statements, but still. It's almost as if the whole movie is a word association exercise.
The film is surprisingly similar to Mulholland Drive, and I really liked it up until the plot described on the disc sleeve is completely dropped for no apparent reason. Next thing we know, Laura Dern is in some alternate reality, and her husband is running off to be an animal trainer with an Eastern European circus. Seriously.
Truly, there are messages here. I see themes of the danger of jealousy, people "acting" their lives instead of living them, actors = whores, etc. However, despite the fact that clearly there is some type of structural integrety in the story, I don't really get it. And I'm not sure I want to watch it again to try to figure anything else out. Three hours is a lot of gratuitous and pretentious wackiness.