Mulholland Drive - theories please.

this is by far the best explanation i've heard.

+ the old folks are her parents!

It's all about failure, jealousy and what what might have been, innit?

Salon did the same kind of shite for Memento.

i thought it was completely soulless. the complete antithesis of everything that Mulholland Drive is in every way.

It always seemed to me that the only people who thought Memento was revolutionary and grand were the people who hadn't seen anything done by the French for the last 50 years and somehow missed Tarantino aping that in the 90's.

http://americasfuture.org/doublethink/fall2003/dt_fall03.pdf

Okay, thanks.

btw, slb, 'americasfuture.org'?? i raise my middle finger to that.

yeah, so maybe you're right. maybe it had no reason to be in the movie. no reason except it is funny!!!!

diner-monster scene: dream-state travesty of the easy logic of 'man faces fear, sees its ridiculousness, is healed' >> 'man faces fear, ridiculously real; is killed.'

and yes Memento is terrible.

*REALLY* late to the table on this, but I finally saw this film this week -- and the Winkie's scene is *STILL* creeping me out.

still enjoying my chemical romance?

that scene always reminds me of DuPar's

x-post

I saw this for the second time a few weeks ago and have now renounced my Moebius strip theory.

Remember that comedian on the Dr. Katz show who was making fun of gamers who sit in their houses all day? "How ya doin?" "Still looking for the blue key!"

Crazy how that fits with this movie.

i shouldn't say i reject the fantasy/dream vs. ugly reality interpretation. that story's obviously present & central. i don't think it's sufficient, and it bothers me that it's treated as the film's one and only meaning.

It kinda bothers me that it fits the film so well, though. I've come to prefer Inland Empire, which is much more open to multiple satisfying interpretations, imo.

still the most coherent thing I've read about tit: http://www.salon.com/2001/10/24/mulholland_drive_analysis/

obv it doesn't matter if The Parts Don't Fit Together considering the movie comprises connective material fleshing out a scrapped TV pilot.

mulholland drive is good, fuck the haters

Lost Highway is finally available to rent on Amazon instant video. I've been wanting to watch that movie for years, but it's never been available on streaming.

prepare to be disappointed

I really like it, but it has its flaws like any Lynch film.

It's near the bottom of the pile for me, just above Wild At Heart.

OTM Οὖτις, Lost Highway is the Lynch film that is guilty of everything idiots think all Lynch films are guilty of.

Lost Highway does a surprisingly good job of capturing the mood and tone of the 90s, for a work from a director that makes films that seem detached from any specific time period

went on a first date to lost highway when it was out in theaters, biiiiiiiiiiiig mistake

LH doesn't surpass its promising opening credits or Bill Pullman playing furious sax in that club. The rest is self-parody, down to Robert Blake in Dean Stockwell makeup.

stick with meshes of the afternoon, only 18 mins long -- it didn't need remaking

I can't argue either of those points. I, too, thought "wow, fake Dean Stockwell!" the last time I saw it. xp

Watched the remaster on the big screen last night for the first time since release and the film really benefits from it. Hard to see what the new print actually adds - there's a far greater distinction between the film quality in daylight/studio and low light (particularly the car driving around), but some scenes look like they were broadcast on TV, never mind filmed for it.

I hadn't paid attention before to Betty explicitly revealing the plot three times in the first phase. I've forgotten the third one but when she enters Ruth's apartment for the first time she says to Coco "It's like some kind of dream" and then when she and Rita go to phone the police about the car accident she says "We can do it. We can pretend we're other people."

Diane sees The Cowboy two times. According to his conversation with Adam, this potentially means she's "done bad".

ya not to mention her crawling into bed and falling asleep being one of the first shots of the movie

seeing this in a theater made me realize how incredible the sound editing is, so much skillful silence

These are pretty much the exact arguments re: the first 30 minutes of FWWM being Cooper's 'dream' (scare quotes because I don't think Lynch's use of dreams is straightforward enough to refer to instances like these as 'just a dream').

This is far and a way my favorite Lynch film. It's his funniest, most suspenseful, most affectionate, most purely entertaining movie—every scene is just a joy, even the ones that barely connect to the other ones. I remember wanting to clap when I first saw it in theaters and the cowboy instructed us to count how many times we saw him. So fun.

Very much enjoying the new TP season because it feels structurally similar. Just a succession of disconnected scenes that are so good on their own I don't even care how they all fit together.

Saw it in a theater a couple weeks ago and I was blown away. Last saw it in 2007 right before Inland Empire. So much better than I remember.

I don't want to jinx it somehow, but yeah, new TP is closer to Mulholland Drive as a reference point than nearly anything else

Very much enjoying the new TP season because it feels structurally similar. Just a succession of disconnected scenes that are so good on their own I don't even care how they all fit together.

yeah, and since the disconnected scenes end up sorta making sense in retrospect, it rewards close and repeated viewings - i think that'll be the case with the new TP as well

glad i rewatched this right before the new twin peaks, it prepared me for the mood way more than fwwm did. incredible film incidentally

i watched inland empire again a few weeks ago and had the same feeling. MD+IE+Eraserhead+his early short films seem like the biggest influences on new twin peaks. oh yeah, and old twin peaks too obv :)

Yeah I think that's part of why Mulholland Drive has aged so well. The more you watch it the more it makes sense, but it'll never make complete sense. Even when you think you've cracked its logic, it still seems kinda scrambled. There are still pieces that don't fit. And there's something addictive about that sense that order is always just out of reach.

The original Twin Peaks had that, too, a fairly linear structure and interpretation with some untidy ends to keep you guessing, but Mulholland Drive and the new Twin Peaks are packed so much denser. There's a lot more to chew on.

Lost Highway and IE made it too easy to dismiss certain scenes as "oh he's just being weird," but Mulholland Drive and the new Twin Peaks deny you that shortcut.

IE is too long and my memory too short to get into into specific scenes, but i think a lot of the parts that people dismiss as lynch being a weirdo could conceivably have something to do with the plot. i read a really, really long analysis/theory of IE once (published in the classic 1998 internet style) that covered everything in exhaustive detail.

i need to watch lost highway again soon, it's been too long!

but yeah, i get your point about IE making it really easy to make those dismissals, which is too bad. lynch almost seems to be begging people to be confused at certain parts of it, whereas MD kind of dangles the mystery just out of reach at all times.

I haven't seen Lost Highway recently enough to defend it, but Inland Empire is less oblique than Mulholland Drive imo.

Wild at Heart is the one I'd call out for being intentionally obtuse and weird for its own sake. I already kinda felt that way but the deleted and extended scenes in the Lime Green set (which made clear the extent to which Lynch intentionally edited a lot of clarity out of the film) cemented that notion.

xxp Yeah, exactly. To be sure, I don't doubt that each scene in IE had meaning and significance. But a general interpretation was so far out of reach on that one that the message became "don't even bother." That movie loses the audience before it even earns one.

But you compare that to Mulholland Drive, which immediately draws you into mysteries... car crashes, amnesia, movie casting intrigue, romance... there was so much to cling to there, your mind is engaged the whole time. By the time the twist hits in the final act you're too vested in the movie to just throw your hands up

xp Old Lunch that is the most contrarian thing I have read online in a while. You really think so?

Maybe he does that more often than I realize (thinking just now of the scene in the Missing Pieces that makes Laura's 'I am the muffin' line in FWWM just a little less out of left field).

WaH is his worst film

xp Old Lunch that is the most contrarian thing I have read online in a while. You really think so?

― Evan R, Tuesday, May 23, 2017 10:55 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Which, about IE being more straightforward than MD? If so, then yeah. I was able to shake out the general thrust of IE's 'narrative' after seeing it twice. MD took a few more viewings.

WaH is his worst film

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, May 23, 2017 10:57 AM (forty-nine seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

100% agreed. I think I even prefer Dune.

Gifford was a poor choice of collaborators

xp yes

Mulholland Drive is a movie about a jaded, struggling actress who takes out a hit on her ex-girlfriend then finds a happy fantasy land where everything is magical just after she kills herself.

Inland Empire is a movie about... honestly I have no idea. Like, literally no idea.

It's about what happens to brilliant actresses who have career making roles in movies like Mulholland Drive and then no one wants them anymore

I mean, I guess reduced to a logline (Modern-day actress must take on the role and retrace the journey of a dead actress in order to set her soul free!), IE is a little more high-concept than MD but its presentation is more straightforward.

Inland Empire is a movie about the cursed production of a film. the modern film is a remake of another film that was attempted many years ago and left unfinished. the act of at of the modern production opens some sort of portal that connects the timelines.

i'm sure when he explained this to the financiers it was like that one scene in MD!

the act of at of the modern production opens some sort of portal that connects the timelines.

word barf, by me, zs

i just meant that when they go about filming the remake it awakens the curse and the timelines connect

i don't actually know that it's a curse, but the point is that bad things happened during the old filming, and now bad things are happening again

yeah I would think that's fairly straightforward...? there are of course a number of scenes that don't seem to connect but whatever

i'll stop talking about IE on the MD thread but i think it's a really really rewarding movie to watch multiple times, especially within a few weeks of each other when you can remember the details and see things near the beginning of the movie the second time around that you would not have took notice of before. but since it's 3 hours long and incredibly scary and bleak for so many of those minutes, it's bound to be unseen. it's a bit challopsy but it's my favorite thing by DL

I don't think that op is at all chall. MD, IE, and Eraserhead all vie for first with me depending on my mood.

(And The Grandmother.)

now THAT is challopsy, although the grandmother is definitely the best of his early work. :)

i live about a five minute walk from the Mulholland Drive cottage apartments. no rotting corpses on the premises as far as i know.

http://www.seeing-stars.com/Images/ScenesFromMovies/MulhollandDrive4.jpg

just seeing that pic creeps me out

the sound design & mixing in MD is incredible... that distorted jet engine sound that comes in right when Betty and the oldies pop up out of focus and overexposed in front of the jitterbug dance...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MLMLvSqT6g