Filmy bits (was: mulholland drive)

[John Bailey]

Mulholland Drive isn't released here (and won't be till 2002!) but I've had 
ambivalent reactions to Lynch's stuff. Loved Eraserhead, Elephant Man, Twin 
Peaks & Lost Highway. Couldn't stand Wild At Heart, Fire Walk with Me. Very 
very mixed reactions to Blue Velvet, but I will admit it is a brilliant 
film. Lost Highway suddenly made total sense when I heard someone involved 
in the film (can't remember who) describe it as an attempt to show a 
psychotic episode from the inside, and I think that it possesses a very 
measured and definable logic in this regard, and does an excellent job at 
tracing certain workings of psychosis. When I look at it from this angle, 
the disjointed, contradictory, circular nature of the film doesn't seem as 
arbitrary or even, well, wanky as it could have.

As for Pynchonian films, it depends, doesn't it, on how you define 
Pynchonian? I reckon I could even put a good case forward for Sleepless in 
Seattle, if you want. But seriously, though I know plenty of people here 
would disagree vehemently, Magnolia always recreates in me some of the same 
reactions I have when reading Pynchon stuff, mainly due to the multiple 
storylines, heap of references (some quite obscure), excessive characters 
and overall empathy for the fucked-over in this world, as well as this 
desperate nostalgia and a yearning to find a way out of the mud that doesn't 
require a transcendant and exclusory salvation.

I'd also recommend Chris Marker's Level 5, Raul Ruiz' Les Trois Couronnes du 
Matelot, I think if I go on I'll just start listing films that I like, so I 
won't. But I will say that I found no redeeming features in Buckaroo Banzai.


>From: "peter culley" <pjculley at home.com>
>To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: mulholland drive
>Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2001 10:13:41 -0700
>
>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


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp