Mulholland Drive - theories please.

To what extent is this film about the fractal nature of film?

i don't know if lynch would use the word fractal, but yeah i think the answer is "to a large extent." i'd say something more vague and holistic like, it's about how movies work -- which encompasses everything from the technical to the diegetic. the way something "real" -- real enough to convey emotion and to affect the viewer -- is constructed out of raw materials all built on artifice and make believe. the two thesis statements are the watts audition scene and the nightclub scene, but a lot of the movie either explicitly or implicitly draws on those ideas.

and like i said above LJ - at the points where the movie really seems to rupture, emotionally, the film itself literally breaks and goes off the gate... which kind of sez it all

the nightclub scene is like a magician's grand reveal - a tear was forming in my eye at exactly the moment the singer falls to the floor - it is timed and shot devastatingly, almost preternaturally well. and i didn't see it coming, but of course when it happens the whole thing is blown wide open and you've been there at the silencio too and you've understood a fundamental truth about cinema which lynch has put better than most

oh is this such a scene? it is isn't it

(needless to say, when the singer falls, it becomes twice as affecting, for a reason i can't fully pin down, but involves one's relationship to the cinema within one's own life)

(and needless to say, the PERFORMANCE of the song, aided by the shots of our two leads, is convincingly tearjerking, in the same way that watts' performance with everett is convincingly earth-shattering. and it's NOT smoke and mirrors. at least, it doesn't seem it, even if it is. in this way, the film is miraculous, in that it pulls such performances out when it has to, because the brilliance of those performances lends the film meaning. do we feel them to be more brilliant than they are for this reason? however presmptuous the film is, it pulls it off)

we need to believe that empathy is real in order to survive

we need to believe in roy orbison

Hey pretty girl - time to wake up

funny he made such an impression on me in his short scene in MD that when he showed up in LOST i was like.. THAT GUY

i did that when i saw him in Idiocracy!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2090/2117420816_ee98d8467f.jpg
http://i423.photobucket.com/albums/pp314/pauly_cy/rolf20muppet.jpg

In muppet babies there is a closet to the door of imagination so maybe this is some weird lynchian shoutout to his muppet homies.

relationship between weird mystic madwoman 'louise' and alley monster: DISCUSS

in this way, the film is miraculous, in that it pulls such performances out when it has to

otm. if the movie itself wasn't great art, its commentary on the construction of art would just be self-indulgent and even self-defeating -- a mediocre magician giving away tricks he can't actually perform. but because it shows rather than tells (or shows even as it tells), it leaves you with the marvel that i think is lynch's own sort of sense of wonder at how it all works.

"it" being the human experience moreso than just cinema

aye. cinema as metaphor/workshop for the construction of meaning.

:D yeah exactly! exactly what i was thinking, but given breath.

film crit is fun!

the magician guy saying 'eet eez a tape recorder' could so easily be kitsch and silly but he's actually terrifying, riveting and realistic. again, not sure how lynch does this, or whether we're only too happy to succumb, but it's one of the film's many interventions onto our own consciousness, and it perfects the 'show and tell' thing you describe

Do you guys believe Lynch when he says he writes all his movies by just meditating and writing down ideas on 3x5 cards when he gets them, then assembling them when he amasses a certain amount?
Because it seems inappropriate in that case to ascribe to him the sort of overt/conscious statements such as "cinema as metaphor/workshop for the construction of meaning" rather than "his POV as a filmmaker appears to have shaped his subconscious daydreams"

Is Lynch lying to us about his process?

this ^^^ makes me question how many lynch movies have you seen?

you are lying to yourself about the way meaning is constructed

i think in all art-making there is a certain extent to which ppl r just winging it and seeing where shit sticks, even in the processes of ppl who seemingly have really refined sensibilities

s1ocki otm

also how is this: Do you guys believe Lynch when he says he writes all his movies by just meditating and writing down ideas on 3x5 cards when he gets them, then assembling them when he amasses a certain amount? really that different from any other creative writing process. "I sit there until I get ideas, then I write them down, and when it feels finished its done" = every writer ever.

like, i think relying on the director to validate the explanation is a bit of a dead end on some levels

Lynch is particularly forthcoming about erasing any conscious intent from his approach, which I think distinguishes him from most other films.

He isn't a film

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_fallacy

You guys are operating on the idea that Lynch's film is particularly an expression of Lynch, right?

no

You guys are operating on the idea that Mulholland Drive is really in L.A.?

it's an ensemble performance, held on the loosest of leashes by a man whose vision is both mercurial and lissom

Would you at least agree that he gobbles up his actors and spits out performances in a particularly Lynchian way (Winkie guy's stamina for carrying this weirdness to numerous non-Lynch roles notwithstanding)?

Mostly, but Richard Farnsworth emerges unscathed. The reverse happened; Lynch tapped into the actor's Farnsworthiness.

No disrespect to Farnsworth (Anne of Green Gables reprasent!), but isn't that more due to Lynch's not writing the script to that one?

Lara Herring hinted today that there is a sequel in the works.

"I'm very sure it's coming, it's being born," she said. "I cannot really tell you how I know."

http://www.nbcmiami.com/blogs/popcornbiz/Mulholland-Drive-Star-Believes-a-David-Lynch-Follow-Up-Is-Being-Born-90248057.html

^^^ sounds like Lynch dialogue.

We'll see two more sequels if we do bad.

Let's hope he uses better digital cameras than on IE.

let's hope it's a shot-for-shot remake of The Room

well i assume he had some (relatively) long running story arc for these characters

that's good news

I'd kill for a TV series

I thought "Rabbits" was the sequel.

Britishers: The Observer gave away the DVD free today, and you can follow their liveblog of the film here

how quaint

David Lynch will open a Mulholland Drive-themed nightclub in Paris

lol at sophisticated nerve comments.

So long as there's nothing behind the dumpster, I'm okay with this...

pish idea.

good idea would be make another film.

I just saw a 35mm print of this and holy shit I never realized how clever and brilliant the sound editing is!!! Also, hearing "Llorando" booming soooooo loudly throughout the half-empty theater within the film and the half-empty theater in which I was watching the film was REALLY REALLY FUCKING INTESNE

Like when Weirdo Dude is at Winkie's talking w/ his shrink there is absolutely no background/ambient noise. There is a lot of silence in this film!

"Sum'n bit me BAD!"

― queen frostine (Eric H.), Monday, January 4, 2010

I have to say it just occurred to me the other day how Adam Kesher in MD almost plays the viewer in the sense that he is like totally weirded out by how bizarre his circumstances are, partic w/ the Cowboy; he seems to echo the audience's sentiment of "what the fuck is going on here" when everyone else in the film is kind of acting like it's all normal

Does any other Lynch character sort of break the 4th wall in this regard?

― EMA Sumac (Stevie D(eux)), Monday, 22 September 2014 16:25 (two years ago) Permalink

wow i have no recollection of writing this but i am impressed w/ past stevie's observation