mulholland drive- help me-john cole-anybody

[Ray Zee]

i watched it last night. what is wrong with me. i couldnt figure out what went on here. what did i miss. the movie kept my attention all the way thru with me tryiong to get the drift of what was really happening. i failed. i kinda feel like spm in his basement.

[Glenn]

For those who haven't see it, if you don't understand this movie as a whole it is still good to watch because it is interesting even in pieces. It is very visual, and there is hot lesbian action. I've only seen it twice. I bought the DVD but my player broke so I haven't been able to watch it in a while but I will try to tell you what I can remember. First of all there are two distinct planes of existance in the movie, one is "real" and the other is a dream state. There are small hints dropped as to which one you are in at a given time. For instance, I remember something about a clock that was shown in both states and in the dream state is was distorted-looking. The other thing is that time is obviously not linear. I guess if you watch it enough you can figure it out. It seemed almost circular. These are the two main ideas I got out of it. I have heard that if you watch it over and over it will make more sense every time, who knows. I still like it because it certainly keeps your interest even though it is confusing. One thing that kind of made me mad was that the DVD has no scene selection so there is no easy way to go to certain scene to figure these things out. It seems almost as if the movie is layered and each time you figure something out you will see it on another level. I am fairly sure, however that there are not as many of these layers as some movie overanalysts would have you believe.

-Glenn

[andyfox]

David Lynch movie, no? Most of them are incomprehensible. I saw one a couple of months ago, with Bill Pullman and Robert Blake, impossible to understand what was going on.

I sure liked Blue Velvet, although mostly because of Dennis Hopper, and I absolutely loved The Elephant Man.

[John Cole]

Ray,

I take it you mean that feeling like SPM in his basement is a bad thing?

I've only watched it once, a few months ago, and with Lynch you always feel like you're watching a dream unfolding anyway. Perhaps it's really not a bad thing to be in SPM's basement. Lynch seems to play with the notions of fluid identities in much of his work; that is, identity, rather than fixed and stable is, instead, changeable and inherently unstable. I also enjoy the way Lynch plays with the conventions of the film-noir movies of the 40's, using California's sunshine instead of rain-soaked streets. One of the keys to the movie, I think, occurs during the scene in which Roy Orbison's "Crying" is performed in Spanish--and lip-synched as well. It's all an illusion, but it's a powerful one. (I also read once that "Crying" is about Orbison's dead wife appearing to him in a dream.)

Lynch reminds me of Hitchcock but with an important difference. Hitchcock wants to show us that something terrifying exists beneath the surface appearance of normalcy, especially in Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a Train. Lynch often shows us that the normal itself is terrifying on its surface.

The best testimony to Lynch's best films are the power they have to captivate us even if we don't grasp them easily--if at all. And I doubt whether Lynch cares much if we do understand.

John

[J_V]

Roger Ebert taught a whole class on the movie at the University of Chicago.

[M2d]

Ray,
caught it last night on cable, and didn't know what was happening. I have to agree that it is the most confusing movie I've ever been riveted to. I didn't know what was going on, but was still glued to the screen.
That said, I looked on the internet and found some interesting discussion about the movie. some of the theories are wacked, but some are plausible, given that the director is nuts.
The best fit I've found so far is that the second part of the movie (from the lesbian breakup to the suicide) is real, while the rest is a dreamlike thing that goes on in Diana's head between the gunshot and death. sort of a reflection of her life's events fit into the model that she wanted her life to be.