You Should Watch

Mulholland Drive

I've been blogging a lot lately on the sculpture I helped to install, but now I'm going to get back into more of a routine and start up some of my daily themed posts and try not to talk about the sculpture.

So when were were staying up in Birch Bay while installing the sculpture we found ways to pass the time each night. We usually just drank, but a few nights we decided to watch a movie. One night Gregg and I decided to introduce Annie and Daniel to the Arnold Schwarzenegger cinematic masterpiece which is The Running Man. There were mixed reviews. Another night we decided to watch Mulholland Drive, a movie I had watched once before when I was I think 18 so I hardly remembered it.

Now I'm not going to go into any detail and try at all to explain what goes on in the film, mostly because the film does not make any sense. What you basically need to know about the film is that it is a dream, and it's really hard to explain. Being so confusing can leave some people lost and they might spend the whole movie trying to figure out what the hell is going on when all you really need to do is enjoy what is going on. This movie contains some of the greatest scenes ever, and none of them really relate to the other. It is as if David Lynch had a notebook full of amazingly thought out scenes that he hoped to one day fit into a movie but then devided to make a movie out of all of his great scene ideas.

There is also a strong undertone of resentment towards the whole movie industry throughout the film that David Lynch is trying to point out. There are a lot of insights to the shady underbelly of the movie industry. This clip is one of the great scenes in the movie, and again is one of those moments when you wonder just what the hell is going on.

One of the strongest and most powerful scenes in the film incorporates one of the larger themes of this film, it does not exist. There is a club they go to in which all that you see is not real, club Silencio. There is no band, yet you hear a band, it is all an illusion. It gets into a deeper theme of Hollywood as a whole, there are these very moving moments you watch on film that are not actually real. They are fabricated illusions, yet we watch and take them in as if they are real. Even knowing they are not real does not seem to matter, sometimes we may hold those things that are not real over the things that actually do exist. Movies are so great in creating that illusion because they are able to take the time and set up the conditions to make that scene then also to take multiple takes of the same scene until everything is perfect. Where as live stage performers have that one chance every night in order to get it right. Seeing a live stage performer, either actor of musician, pull off that perfect performance seems to be more powerful then seeing someone perform something equally powerful in film. It may be that live stage performers have the advantage of the atmosphere of the moment which influences the audience. You then could say it would be possible for someone to direct a live performance in which the illusions are timed perfectly with the actors in a way to fabricate the illusion and create that perfect scene. Broadway does this all the time with stagecraft, but it much harder to pull off with out seeing some slight outside action from strings of other noticeable back stage actions. You also have the problem of only having that one shot and if one thing messes up your illusion is ruined. I'm not sure if any of that I just wrote makes sense but I'm building up to what I think is the greatest scene in Mulholland Drive.

It's on netflix instant view, so go check it out. Just don't try and follow the plot, because there is none.