Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Mulholland Dr. / France / USA / 2001

This is a wonderfully atmospheric film, but several factors inhibit my praise. Specifically, it’s the less-intoxicating experience alongside Lost Highway (the film it most closely resembles in Lynch’s oeuvre), and it is somewhat spoiled by knowledge of its production history. It feels like a rejected television pilot with obvious postmortem additions. Nonetheless, I wish this sort of scrutiny was applied to Lynch’s earlier films.

by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Universal DVD
21 Dec 2005 10:18 AM | Comments (2)

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1. leo / 21 December 2005 / 11:35 AM / URL

   I much prefer the latter film, even though the first ten minutes of Lost Highway are probably the most well-crafted of any film in Lynch’s catalogue. Though it’s been a little while since I saw the film, on whole I remember it to be less intoxicating than brutal and repulsive, with an ending that, for me, falls rather flat. And the presence of Bill Pullman doesn’t aid the intoxication any.

   No, my vote goes to the later film, which — visually and aurally — is as dazzling to me as Vertigo (a film which it mirrors in important ways). And in spite of a handful of (pleasantly baffling) unintegrated sequence, it’s never felt much like a TV pilot to me. Even post-Peaks, it’s never been clear to me how Lynch thought he would get this on prime-time.

   And since I’m already babbling, I will confess that I find that website interesting but a touch too programmatic. I simply (perhaps willfully) refuse to believe that Lynch put that much thought into the name “Diane Selwyn.”

2. Rumsey / 21 December 2005 / 12:06 PM / URL

   My preference for Lost Highway – although I agree that it is brutal and repulsive (but decidedly so) – is due to some somewhat sentimental (that’s right) reasons, but it’s also the more cohesive film. And I know “cohesive” has little utility in describing anything David Lynch has ever said, but I maintain that Mulholland Drive is noticeably disjointed, and that’s not complimentary. It’s a one-hour-and-forty-minute film with a finale – which is virtuosic in and of itself – that’s a piece jammed erroneously into the puzzle. I do quite admire the film; only in comparing it to Lynch’s earlier works will my nitpicks be apparent. But, please, it’s no Vertigo.

   And that site is a little too clinical in applying interpretations to the film, but that’s the fun, I think. At least, “Ray Wolfe’s [now defunct] Online Guide to Eraserhead” influenced my appreciation for that film. And I love the analogy between the Cowboy’s prophecy and the results of a pregnancy test.