Michael Reuben
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- Michael Reuben
After playing the New York Film Festival, David Lynch's Mulholland Drive opened in local commercial theaters today (technically, last night). It expands to general distribution this weekend, though I doubt you'll see this one on 3000 screens (or even 2000).
It's been a long wait. MD was originally conceived and shot as a pilot for an ABC television series. After much back and forth, editing, reshoots, ABC decided to drop the hot potato. Lynch then redid MD as a feature-length film and took it to Cannes, where it got him the 2001 best director award (shared with Joel Coen). Now it can finally be seen by audiences.
I'm not sure how to review this film. If you're a Lynch fan, the turf is familiar and so are the motifs: the languorous pacing, the moody Angelo Badalamenti score, the distinctive sound design, the fascination with decay and putrefaction, the flickering lights and red drapes, the Roy Orbison songs in strange contexts. What it all means here isn't something I'm prepared to try to express on a single viewing. As I was walking out of the theater, I overheard one person who kept insisting to his companion that the whole thing was just a dream. I wanted to turn around and say: "So is every Lynch film!" That's why they're hard to analyze on an initial viewing; you just have to let yourself be carried along.
For most of the first two hours, MD focuses on two women: Rita, who has amnesia from a car accident, and Betty, a fresh-faced ingenue newly arrived in Los Angeles with all the stereotypical hopes of becoming an actress. There is an elaborate subplot about a director whose film is in trouble and whose wife is unfaithful, and as is often the case with Lynch, there appears to be a shadowy criminal conspiracy doing a bunch of nefarious things that are never quite clear. In the last half hour, these events (and other subplots too numerous to list) begin to fragment and combine in ways that are probably impossible to explain logically but somehow feel like they make sense. In other words, dream logic.
I still think of Blue Velvet as Lynch's most fully realized film, primarily because it never breaks the illusion of a traditional narrative, even as the "plot" (such as it is) becomes more and more irrelevant and subordinate to the dream logic. MD falls somewhere between Blue Velvet and Lost Highway -- it has more traditional narrative than the latter, but much less than the former. And there are parts that don't seem to belong in the film at all. (An elaborate setup with "Mr. Roque", who appears to run the studio financing the director's film, seems to have been included just so Lynch could once again cast Michael Anderson, who played The Dwarf in Twin Peaks.)
From comments Lynch has made to interviewers, I think the film makes most sense as an interplay between the eternal hope and endless possibility that Los Angeles seems to offer to those newly arrived there and the numerous ways that the possibilities are eliminated and the hopes betrayed. But that's only based on one viewing. The film could easily play very differently the next time I see it.
A word of caution: As usual, Lynch designed the soundmix himself. IMO, it's wholly unsuited to today's multiplexes because it relies heavily on silence. At times you may think the theater's volume level has been turned down, but it hasn't. It's just that the full dynamic range is utilized in only a few brief scenes. Otherwise, the soundtrack tends to be quiet, dominated by dialogue (often spoken softly) and distant ghostly echoes. It's a lovely mix, but one not likely to stand up against the coughing, wheezing, rustling, coming and going, popcorn crunching and cellophane crumbling that are an inescapable part of modern movie-going. I saw MD with a serious, opening-day audience, and even then the ambient noise from the crowd was a major distraction. I can't begin to imagine what it might be like with a typical Saturday-night crowd. My advice: Sit toward the front of the auditorium. The soundtrack is almost all in the front.
As a matter of principal, I never give ratings or stars. With a film like MD, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone who wasn't already a Lynch fan.
M.
[Edited last by Michael Reuben on October 08, 2001 at 11:52 PM]
It's been a long wait. MD was originally conceived and shot as a pilot for an ABC television series. After much back and forth, editing, reshoots, ABC decided to drop the hot potato. Lynch then redid MD as a feature-length film and took it to Cannes, where it got him the 2001 best director award (shared with Joel Coen). Now it can finally be seen by audiences.
I'm not sure how to review this film. If you're a Lynch fan, the turf is familiar and so are the motifs: the languorous pacing, the moody Angelo Badalamenti score, the distinctive sound design, the fascination with decay and putrefaction, the flickering lights and red drapes, the Roy Orbison songs in strange contexts. What it all means here isn't something I'm prepared to try to express on a single viewing. As I was walking out of the theater, I overheard one person who kept insisting to his companion that the whole thing was just a dream. I wanted to turn around and say: "So is every Lynch film!" That's why they're hard to analyze on an initial viewing; you just have to let yourself be carried along.
For most of the first two hours, MD focuses on two women: Rita, who has amnesia from a car accident, and Betty, a fresh-faced ingenue newly arrived in Los Angeles with all the stereotypical hopes of becoming an actress. There is an elaborate subplot about a director whose film is in trouble and whose wife is unfaithful, and as is often the case with Lynch, there appears to be a shadowy criminal conspiracy doing a bunch of nefarious things that are never quite clear. In the last half hour, these events (and other subplots too numerous to list) begin to fragment and combine in ways that are probably impossible to explain logically but somehow feel like they make sense. In other words, dream logic.
I still think of Blue Velvet as Lynch's most fully realized film, primarily because it never breaks the illusion of a traditional narrative, even as the "plot" (such as it is) becomes more and more irrelevant and subordinate to the dream logic. MD falls somewhere between Blue Velvet and Lost Highway -- it has more traditional narrative than the latter, but much less than the former. And there are parts that don't seem to belong in the film at all. (An elaborate setup with "Mr. Roque", who appears to run the studio financing the director's film, seems to have been included just so Lynch could once again cast Michael Anderson, who played The Dwarf in Twin Peaks.)
From comments Lynch has made to interviewers, I think the film makes most sense as an interplay between the eternal hope and endless possibility that Los Angeles seems to offer to those newly arrived there and the numerous ways that the possibilities are eliminated and the hopes betrayed. But that's only based on one viewing. The film could easily play very differently the next time I see it.
A word of caution: As usual, Lynch designed the soundmix himself. IMO, it's wholly unsuited to today's multiplexes because it relies heavily on silence. At times you may think the theater's volume level has been turned down, but it hasn't. It's just that the full dynamic range is utilized in only a few brief scenes. Otherwise, the soundtrack tends to be quiet, dominated by dialogue (often spoken softly) and distant ghostly echoes. It's a lovely mix, but one not likely to stand up against the coughing, wheezing, rustling, coming and going, popcorn crunching and cellophane crumbling that are an inescapable part of modern movie-going. I saw MD with a serious, opening-day audience, and even then the ambient noise from the crowd was a major distraction. I can't begin to imagine what it might be like with a typical Saturday-night crowd. My advice: Sit toward the front of the auditorium. The soundtrack is almost all in the front.
As a matter of principal, I never give ratings or stars. With a film like MD, I wouldn't even know where to begin. I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone who wasn't already a Lynch fan.
M.
[Edited last by Michael Reuben on October 08, 2001 at 11:52 PM]
