Goose Egg Marathon Film #5Mulholland Drive(2001, David Lynch) I'll start with this line from a memorable scene in the movie:
"Just forget you ever saw it. It's better that way."Maybe for my aching cerebrum - perhaps that character is right!
Well for the first one hour and 53 minutes of this film I was having fun with this, enjoying the wierdness and stylized staginess of a Lynch film and Niaomi Watt's campy performance. Then of course my mind blew up. I have my theories that do a decent attempt to tie all this together, but I must admit I'm logged more celebral hours to Schrödinger's Cat over the last 48 hours. Just bad timing there I suppose.
This was a lot of fun. It is no doubt a unique experience - as you come to expect from Lynch. I have a term I call "DFU" - it the
Director's F-You . We've seen them throughout cinema - like the
Burning house in
Synecdoche NY, the
lunch with the Asian guy in Fargo, or the
pick really any scene in
8 1/2 where the director basically just has fun screwing with your head. Sometimes this can be the most rewarding stuff in the film and sometimes it can turn you off and make you hate the whole experience. Going into this film I expected a ton more of the latter - which was the main reason I never bother to see this up til now. I was pleasantly surprised that most of the out-there stuff was way cool. And when we get to that pivotal point I was invested enough to say ok- now what the hell just happened. But there was also stuff like the Silencio sequence. Meh. Yawn.
"It's weird to be calling myself"What was really cool about the experience of watching this was the fact that there were so many "no way - that's so stupid" moments that you have to apologize for later in the film. I think of the scene where Betty breaks into the apartment through the window. I'm like no way - that character would never do that. Or the first love scene, I'm like - ok there's been some implied flirtations but this is right out of penthouse letters. But by the end (and in particular on a rewatch) those scenes are hillarious - just great!
Upon second viewings of films I keep my ear out for sections that could be used for Masacre Theater. Scenes like these have to be just right: dialog between two people, nothing that gives it away, and kinda punch line at the end. I found like 5 scenes in this. Not sure if they done scenes from this (they haven't out of the 190 of the episodes I've heard so far)
Speaking of which, a delight finally finding out where "let's play this nice and close" comes from. Very cool
Which reminds me - there were some very cool scenes in this, the first being that audition scene. The whole sequence with the black book and the vacuum cleaner reminded me of something out of a Tarantino film!
Speaking of QT, cool homages in this! I'm not sure I spotted all of them, but I caught a few...
Um so - Naomi Watts, huh? Pretty friggin good performance. I can't see how any red blooded American male would not be totally in love with Betty after watching this! Then she gets a 1/2 hour at the end to show she's not just a pretty face. I was pretty impressed to say the least.
So as I'm typing all this I'm talking myself into liking it quite a bit!
But I must mitigate this praise a bit. Lynch's general "style" works for some people and not for others. For me it was just ok. I realize this was supposed to be a TV pilot at one point - and it kinda fealt that way. In the end, after a 2nd viewing, I found myself a little less willing to put the energy into tying all the loose ends together. Who's the old guy behind the dumpster? What's the significance of teh pearl earring. At some point you gotta figure half of the things I'm trying to find out are just DMFs and I just stop caring.
The score was a bit odd? It was like from an 80's TV drama (yeah, I realize, but STILL). I know Lynch loves to play anachronistically, but still...
Verdict:
Very cool. Still trying to figure it out. Naomi Watts is fabulous
Grade: B+