You're Obviously A Product
[My first impression of the film Mulholland Drive. My second impression was that it was amazing, because you can't watch it as you'd watch a typical film. This is the results of such. Watch it with your third eye; becomes slightly more illuminating then]
The general critical reaction to this film is that if you wish to have some sort of fashionable intellectual credibility, you need to see this film, like it, understand it, and rave about it to all your friends. But I'd be surprised if anyone in this small community does. I walked out of it in a rage with director David Lynch - sure, his films are all sensual, artistic, thoughtful and intuitive - hooray that he doesn't give much of a damn about linearity or any notions at all of narrative sense, even the most basic, intuitive ones like cause-and-effect, et al. And I cannot forget to praise him for his use of (usually) sparse dialogue which puts a sort of Buddhistic spin on his trademark interest in inter-personal relationships. But this is just a bunch of silly rhetoric. This film asks too much of one. Well, too much of me. I shall gladly break down and admit my utter noncomprehension of a film (like Donnie Darko, the real FF gem) if it's for a worthy cause. Mulholland Drive didn't seem worthy. It seemed like a film with - t'be sure - artistic merit and justification. But, personally, this came at the cost of any enjoyability the film may have had.
Lynch's trademark (anyone seen Twin Peaks?) is to present a nice, stable (ableit pretty strange) soap-operaish world, and then destroy it with weirdness. This worked in Twin Peaks. It doesn't in Mulholland. The plot is thus: Betty is your typical-blonde-aw-shucks-naive-actress-chick who flies to Hollywood all excited because she's gonna be a Star! Meanwhile, Rita, film actress, was about to be shot by her chauffer, but was saved in a convenient car accident in which she loses her memory. She breaks into a nearby apartment, which happens to be the one Betty's aunt has rented her neice. And so they meet, and because Betty is so sweet and down-home (save the accent), she befriends this mysterious woman instead of calling the cops. It's all very emotional, and there's the side plot of the pretentious director who is blackmailed by very, very strange people in suits to cast Betty in his next film - much to his upsetness.
It's dull. It's cliched and silly and drawnout - except for the aforementioned cast of corporate weirdoes. After about an hour, I remember thinking half-jokingly "oh, enough with this silly pseudo-intellectual bollocks! bring on the inevitable lesbian scene!". Less than half an hour later, I got the lesbian scene. Lesbian scenes are nice and all, but it was too predictable. And lesbian??!! In the recent film "Bandits", why is it that Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton don't engage in a bit of friendly buggery to really convey to the audience the depth of their friendship? Well, I can think of why - and suppose I've already answered my own debate.
It all goes to hell soon after. Everything is reversed - all that made sense does not, and will not. However: if you do, for some reason, decide that you do want to see this film, read the following possible interpretation. Or don't, if you're scared of spoilers. After I've read it, and thought about it a little, I reckon that I like the film a little more now. But not much - the fact that the madness had a point was obvious - it was too well constructed to not have one - and while it's nice to actually have something to work with, ultimately, it doesn't matter. It's still pretentious, and it still doesn't really work too well. I can think of film's that were much better - film's that deserved to get Best Film at Cannes more than this. David Lynch is fine and talented and all, but I think this is just a bit of a failure. Entertaining in parts. Dull in most others.
The general critical reaction to this film is that if you wish to have some sort of fashionable intellectual credibility, you need to see this film, like it, understand it, and rave about it to all your friends. But I'd be surprised if anyone in this small community does. I walked out of it in a rage with director David Lynch - sure, his films are all sensual, artistic, thoughtful and intuitive - hooray that he doesn't give much of a damn about linearity or any notions at all of narrative sense, even the most basic, intuitive ones like cause-and-effect, et al. And I cannot forget to praise him for his use of (usually) sparse dialogue which puts a sort of Buddhistic spin on his trademark interest in inter-personal relationships. But this is just a bunch of silly rhetoric. This film asks too much of one. Well, too much of me. I shall gladly break down and admit my utter noncomprehension of a film (like Donnie Darko, the real FF gem) if it's for a worthy cause. Mulholland Drive didn't seem worthy. It seemed like a film with - t'be sure - artistic merit and justification. But, personally, this came at the cost of any enjoyability the film may have had.
Lynch's trademark (anyone seen Twin Peaks?) is to present a nice, stable (ableit pretty strange) soap-operaish world, and then destroy it with weirdness. This worked in Twin Peaks. It doesn't in Mulholland. The plot is thus: Betty is your typical-blonde-aw-shucks-naive-actress-chick who flies to Hollywood all excited because she's gonna be a Star! Meanwhile, Rita, film actress, was about to be shot by her chauffer, but was saved in a convenient car accident in which she loses her memory. She breaks into a nearby apartment, which happens to be the one Betty's aunt has rented her neice. And so they meet, and because Betty is so sweet and down-home (save the accent), she befriends this mysterious woman instead of calling the cops. It's all very emotional, and there's the side plot of the pretentious director who is blackmailed by very, very strange people in suits to cast Betty in his next film - much to his upsetness.
It's dull. It's cliched and silly and drawnout - except for the aforementioned cast of corporate weirdoes. After about an hour, I remember thinking half-jokingly "oh, enough with this silly pseudo-intellectual bollocks! bring on the inevitable lesbian scene!". Less than half an hour later, I got the lesbian scene. Lesbian scenes are nice and all, but it was too predictable. And lesbian??!! In the recent film "Bandits", why is it that Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton don't engage in a bit of friendly buggery to really convey to the audience the depth of their friendship? Well, I can think of why - and suppose I've already answered my own debate.
It all goes to hell soon after. Everything is reversed - all that made sense does not, and will not. However: if you do, for some reason, decide that you do want to see this film, read the following possible interpretation. Or don't, if you're scared of spoilers. After I've read it, and thought about it a little, I reckon that I like the film a little more now. But not much - the fact that the madness had a point was obvious - it was too well constructed to not have one - and while it's nice to actually have something to work with, ultimately, it doesn't matter. It's still pretentious, and it still doesn't really work too well. I can think of film's that were much better - film's that deserved to get Best Film at Cannes more than this. David Lynch is fine and talented and all, but I think this is just a bit of a failure. Entertaining in parts. Dull in most others.