Mulholland Drive

[nfotxn]

So I just watched Mulholland Drive. Now, I think my head has just stopped spinning so I can sorta put my thoughts to text.

First things first I'm gonna get my condescending gay male feminist on and say that the huge amounts of lip-stick lesbian erotica was pretty chauvenistic. Some would argue that it's recognition of gay women.

Pshaw, as if.

It's not that gay woman have really fought for their right to be potrayed in the pop zeitgeist and won. Oh no. It's that men love hot girl-on-girl action even in acid-trip/waking dream psychological thrillers like David Lynch films.

As an aside I dream for the day that women liberate themselves further and start demanding hot guy-on-guy action in their films. Likely won't happen as generally unless desperate and lonely I find women don't objectify men's bodies as much as men. Personal experience as a well seasoned fag hag AND guy's guy. Alas I can still dream in this cruel, cruel world, can't I?

So, the movie. I think what's most important to realize is that there is NO concrete underlying narrative. This is a hallmark of Lynch's style, get used to it. What this film does do is take the concept of an acid trip/waking dream and renders the gamut of visceral human feelings. The characters potray so many different feelings towards eachother in all the different situations they're put in. I believe the lack of long term plot coherance directs the viewers attention to the feelings these characters have towards eachother and how much they slowly contrast from scene to scene.

The magic is that towards the end of the movie the characters are quite literally totally different people and the means towards that end is still intriguing enough to make a 2+1/2hr movie not seem like it.

Comments

Yeah but those sex scenes were hot.

[plaidninja.livejournal.com]

I'll admit the first lesbian love scene is a little bit ...glossy. (Weird thing though. In the copy I have at home when Rita opens up the robe she's wearing and bares it all, her genitals have been aribrushed out. What's up with that?) But was it chauvenist?
There's a lot of ways you can interpert this movie, but there is a lot of suggestion that the first half of the film is a fantasy world of sorts, that Niomi Watts is either trapped in (or perhaps she has paid to live in it?).
Note how as Niomi Watts changes from a Perky atta-girl-Nancy Drew-wannabe to the washed up loser she plays in the second half the sexual tension between her and Rita becomes more grim and twisted. Sure some of the sex apears to pander to the audience, but that scene where Watts is masturbating; that's just fucking brutal. It's in no way erotic and is probably meant to deliberately contrast with the dream world sex scenes.

Re: Yeah but those sex scenes were hot.

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

God damn it, you beat me to it. Yes, those scenes were way fucking hot. And, frankly, they seemed to fit in along with the rest of the narrative, and were hardly chauvinist or a gratuitous exploitation of women's bodies. You want to see tasteless straight male porn cheese, go rent Bound.

As far as there not being a narrative, well, I'd of course argue that there certainly is. It's kind of like Pynchon's Lot 49 (at least to my eyes) as there seems to be a split between objective reality and the reality the main character is constructing for herself along the way. Really great stuff IMHO.

Now, ask me about the time Dan and I went to see it in LA, surrounded by an audience of elderly Jews who had wanted to go see some new Jewish movie that had sold out. I've never seen a more hostile audience - they were laughing out loud, and about fell out of their chairs the first time someone said "Silencio!". Ewwww.

Re: Yeah but those sex scenes were hot.

[nfotxn.livejournal.com]

Ah, very good points. I'd have to totally agree.

Ya know, I really gotta stop being so.. passionate.. when I write. I sorta get stuck inside my initial ideas and don't really escape their boundaries. When I reflect on my writing it comes off as very immature.

I loved the "atta-girl-Nancy Drew-wannabe". I thought more of Poly Anna.. but Nancy Drew conjures up a more hilarious and culturally relevant image.

Re: Yeah but those sex scenes were hot.

[plaidninja.livejournal.com]

Don't ever stop being passionate.

Re: Yeah but those sex scenes were hot.

[(Anonymous)]

I think everyone's right here.

Yes the sex scenes worked. Even to the extent where the women trying to solve Rita's mystery themselves become the answer. A real plot device to be sure, I like Lynch because he's good enough a director not to waste Lesbian sex. Because of how he used it, no it's not schlock.

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean that the reason were seeing it isn't because of the "Lesbians are cool" popular culture idiom that we have seem to adopted. Brodie, you've hit the nail on the head with identifying why this is accepted in mainstream film, and that is bad in the sence that people don't realize how they are being subtly manipulated (trying to see social action where there is none). Would we feel the same way about the actions of the charecters if it centered around two actors trying to make thier why? Probably not. Perhaps Lynch is just operating within those rules culturally layed out for him (If layed out by porno's influence rather than the feminist movement, but operate well he did!

-Aaron

[gusmacroy.livejournal.com]

There's totally a narrative. The dead blond girl pays the thug money for her revenge fantasy to come true, for which she receives the key. She loved the dark haired woman, but was spurned for the director. The dark-haired woman is to be killed in the limo just like the dead blonde girl was humiliated in the limo. But something goes wrong, the car accident prevents the dark-haried girl from being killed. Meanwhile, the blonde girl's fantasy is coming true, she's arriving in Hollywood with the success and connections she only could have dreamed of. Meanwhile, the director is being punished for his part in the dead blonde girl's humiliation. The blonde girl also wishes for innocence, and so has no knowledge of her previous self or her wish.

But the good blonde girl of course wants love to go with her success, and that's when she finds the dark-haired girl who should have been killed, erased even, but wasn't. Together they unravel the secret of the dead blonde girl's wish, and so unravel the fabric of the wish. Love is the thing we want most that destroys everything else we work or wish for. It's just that simple.

[gusmacroy.livejournal.com]

And of course, it's a TV-series pilot made into a movie, so many story threads are dropped and don't lead anywhere, and some just don't make sense, on top of the already very abstract story telling. It's not a perfect film, but it's not just an acid trip either.