Mulholland Drive (2001)

Still unconvinced it’s the masterpiece so many say it is but “not a masterpiece” is hardly strong criticism. Most everything I said last time I watched it (https://marthamarcynashandyoung.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/mulholland-dr-2001/) still applies. I get it in my head, but I don’t feel it in my heart. Most of my interest comes from the way that Lynch gave himself an incredibly difficult obstacle in retrofitting a feature film onto a television pilot, and how he totally rose to the task. There are worlds of difference between Mulholland Drive and the feature film version of the Twin Peaks pilot, and the very act of recontextualization is often the most compelling part of any given scene.

Which is why I finally understand Lynch’s structure. Before I was always unhappy that the Rosetta Stone section of the film, the last 20 minutes that make sense of everything, came only at the very end. It makes it impossible to know which parts of the film are vital and which parts aren’t*, so to properly decode it you’d have to watch it twice in fairly quick succession, which I would just never do. But the upside of this approach is that in watching it twice, with two different understandings of what you’re watching, gives the subtext a life of it’s own and makes the themes of Hollywood, dreams (both the aspirational and REM kind), broken hearts, etc. really come alive. Part of what makes scenes like the audition and Rebekah Del Rio’s performance so effective is that they’re crazy sucker-punches of emotion that seem inexplicable. Appreciating on that raw level, free of interpretation or expectations, is important and some of the stronger proof that Lynch’s raw talents as a filmmaker are at times without equal.

I seem to have a love it (Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Elephant Man, Twin Peaks) or hate it (Wild At Heart, Lost Highway, Fire Walk With Me) relationship with most Lynch films, but this falls into it’s own third category: Respect It.

*And there’s honestly a fair amount of this film that feels non-vital. The downside to this being a pilot-turned-feature is that one of the chief techniques of a pilot episode of a show (and certainly a David Lynch show) is that a lot of interesting threads are dangled, with the promise of being resolved in the future. “You will see me one more time if you do good. You will see me two more times if you do bad” is a lot more effective if you don’t know that it will be resolved in the next two hours. In general there are a few characters (the hitman, the detectives, Michael J. Anderson’s weird God character) and threads that feel a quite a bit clumsier reading the film as a character’s subconscious handling her guilt than reading it as the start of a series. B

Mulholland Drive: The Pilot Cut (1999)

It’s not hard to guess what the general shape of this is. Just take the first 70 or so minutes of Mulholland Drive, remove some of the more digressive stuff (which sadly includes Patrick Fischler’s amazing scene at Winkies), add one of the hitmen scenes from the last 30 minutes, and end it at Rita dying her hair. It certainly doesn’t compare to the pilot of Twin Peaks (which is maybe the best pilot of any TV show ever? I’m open to hearing arguments) but I certainly would have loved to have seen the show this would have spawned. If for nothing else than to see what would have come of the bizarre and great relationship Robert Forrester’s detective character has with his partner. As part of a television pilot his inclusion feels like a great setup, while in the movie proper it’s always weird and distracting.

It’d make a great show probably but that audition scene is already one of the sexiest and creepiest scenes in any movie ever, let alone television, so it does not surprise me Disney balked at this, even without the weirdness and lesbionics that were later attached to it.

The retrofitted last 30 or so minutes of Mulholland Drive have always been obvious, and that obviousness has always been essential to it’s structure (or so I am told, because I’ve rarely gotten anything out of it personally) so seeing this wasn’t the revelation I thought it’d be. Also, bootlegs are bootlegs and they look like bootlegs. Don’t waste too much time and money tracking this down, unless you don’t care about horrible VHS quality. B-

What Lies Beneath (2000)

Not even Michelle Pfeiffer’s legitimately terrific performance can save this schizophrenic movie. The script feels like 4 different thrillers mashed together into a weird pulp in which the only consistency is the dreary and subdued tone. Oddly, the film is most compelling in it’s first 30 minutes, before you could claim anything interesting is actually happening, because Zemeckis does such a great job establishing character, setting, and tone. It’s because of this strength that the rest of the film feels like such a betrayal. What Lies Beneath can’t decide if it’s a Poltergeist rip-off, a Fatal Attraction rip-off, a Rear Window rip-off, a Gaslight rip-off…plot points are set up and abandoned with such fickleness it’s hard to keep your interest around the third time it happens.

Which isn’t to say it’s entirely ineffective. As I mentioned, Pfeiffer is really terrific, somehow crafting a three-dimensional character out of the lousy script. And there’s a sequence involving a bathtub (one of many) that is way more tense and scary than anything in Diabolique. But it’s in service of nothing. For me, it’s most interesting as one last throwback to the days when a film like this could be one of the top ten successful films of the year C-