mulholland drive

[Manuel V. Cabrera Jr.]

Frankly, I can't see why anyone would have liked "The Straight Story",
nor how anyone could think of it as 'subversive'.  To my mind, all of
his most uncritically nostalgic impulses were indulged in on that film.
The characters were completely uninteresting, and its pacing seemed
completely lopsided.  I think if you watch both Mulholland Drive and
Lost Highway, you will realize the scripts are worked out in meticulous
detail.  I know I am in a minority, but to me Lost Highway represents
near formal perfection--every single shot seems to be carefully thought
out in its relation to all the others: the formal parallels and
inversions are endlessly interesting to me.  Mullholland Drive isn't
quite as formalistic as Lost Highway, but again it strikes me as another
one of those films where not a single shot is wasted, where everything
fits seamlessly together.  Perhaps this sounds odd, given that people
generally think these films are completely disjointed.  Many people
think the same of later Godard or Pynchon, while close analysis of their
work reveals highly complex organization that is passed over by the
casual spectator (who, of course, may simply not enjoy their work enough
to desire putting in that kind of effort); and I think the same thing is
going on in much of Lynch's work.  Personally, I like Blue Velvet, but
don't find it remotely as interesting as Lost Highway, Fire Walk With
Me, and now Mulholland Drive.

                    mandel cabrera


peter culley wrote:

> I am surprised by the general enthusiasm, on this list and elsewhere,
> for David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive".  Though its combination of
> anemic satire and soft porn is at least slightly more coherent than
> the dire "Lost Highway" it still seems to me that Lynch is being
> hailed simply for not being able to finish his scripts. "Mulholland
> Drive" was very clearly worked up from the remains of an abandoned TV
> show, and the seams show through in a glaringly slapdash way.  Was
> "The Straight Story"-- easily his best and most subversive film since
> "Blue Velvet"-- in which the linearity of the material held his
> mannerisms in careful check, discussed on this list in such glowing
> terms?  Any film which people urge you to see again if you hated it
> the first time automatically falls under suspicion.  Life is too
> short, and Lynch is no Jacques Rivette.  I'd be very interested,
> though, in which films (besided "Buckaroo Bonzai" list-members
> consider the most authentically Pynchonesque. pete c
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