Why am I writing about this film? Because I watched it last night and because I grew up in Los Angeles, frequently driving by, and occasionally on Mullholland. Many of the shots of LA brought back long-ago memories for me.As for the film, I cannot believe that it was lauded by critics. Lynch knows how to make beautiful and seductive images, but since I hold to the old fashioned notion that art is to communicate with – otherwise, why bother looking at it – I think this film is garbage. Lynch may know what it means to him, but he is unable, or unconcerned with communicating that to us. Typical comments about the film include this sort of thing:
Audiences at Cannes (where Lynch shared best director honors with Joel Coen) were aroused on all levels. Harring recalls, “Journalists were like, ‘Does the lady represent the ego? And is the box the mind? And does silencio mean silencing the mind?’” Lynch`s explanation that the film was simply “a love story in the city of dreams” didn`t help clarify. But audiences weren`t the only ones flummoxed. “David absolutely wouldn`t tell us what any of it means,” says Watts, who admits that she even tried to bluff him at times by pretending she had it all figured out. “He`d just sit back and delight in our frustration.”
Some people are too intelligent for their own good. The Ego, indeed!? Why BOTHER to figure it out if Lynch won’t bother to sort out his ideas. It’s just his daydream, and a pretty sexy one too. The love scene with the two female stars is among the most erotic I’ve ever seen on film, and the fact that it is a lesbian encounter probably accounts for the excitement of the Cannes attendees.
Then we have this:
The film interprets itself, like the Sega Dreamcast - “it’s thinking”, Mulholland Drive does just that, Lynch allows you to understand the film, only at the subconscious level while the film begins to “think” on it’s own level. The images you see on the tube are nothing but a hoax and the meaning behind “nothing but lights and magic” underline David Lynch’s way of thinking for this film.
Yes, the film thinks and inteprets itself, which is another way of saying that the artist didn’t think all that much. “I’ll just throw all this cool stuff together and hope it stays put…” So many fans, so in love with the flickering image are so willing to do the work of the artist for him. In this sense, film truly is a mass-art form.
Read a good book lately?
