Doppelgangers and Dreamscapes: The Cinema of David Lynch (Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive) By Jen Johans |
LYNCH on LYNCH (Quotes from IMDb) Lynch on MEANING: “[My films] mean different things to different people. Some mean more or less the same things to a large number of people. It’s okay. Just as long as there’s not one message, spoon-fed. That’s what films by committee end up being, and it’s a real bummer to me. Life is very, very complicated, and so films should be allowed to be, too.” Lynch on HUMANITY: “I don’t think that people accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.” Lynch on FILMMAKING: “To give a sense of place, to me, is a thrilling thing. And a sense of place is made up of details. And so the details are incredibly important. It they’re wrong, then it throws you out of the mood. And so the sound and music and color and shape and texture, if all those things are correct and a woman looks a certain way with a certain kind of light and says the right word, you’re gone, you’re in heaven. But it’s all the little details.” *Note: Contains Plot Spoilers* David Lynch is one of those unforgettable directors whose bravery, daring, passion, love of surrealist mystery, single-mindedness of vision and expressionistic qualities make him one-of-a-kind. This being said, he is also one of the most disturbing filmmakers of our time and one whose work, for me, goes to the extremes in my reaction from hatred to reverence, with only a few of his pictures being in the middle of the scale. I first became acquainted with Lynch as a child sneaking in to the family room while my parents watched Twin Peaks on television. To this day, the opening bars of Angelo Badalementi’s score from the show and the image of Kyle Machlachlan still send shivers down my spine. I was fascinated, frightened and curious to learn more about Lynch, but after reading enough about him to grow wary, decided to view his films when I was a bit older and began, of course, with the film that is nearly synonymous with his name. In the nightmarish and perverse Blue Velvet—Lynch made a dangerously kinky exploration of the dark side of suburbia that was so risky to most studios that producer Dino DeLaurentis “had to set up his own distribution company D.E.G., in order to get the film into theatres,” (IMDb). Blue Velvet helped put Lynch back on the map after his first cult film Eraserhead led him to exciting opportunities such as making The Elephant Man for Mel Brooks and being offered but turning down a chance to helm Return of the Jedi for Star Wars series creator and Lynch fan George Lucas. The excess of his sci-fi epic Dune threatened to ruin his reputation and label him a one hit wonder until he concocted a tale about a young man (Machlachan) and woman (Laura Dern after Molly Ringwald’s mother objected to her daughter starring in such a graphic film) who uncover a mystery in a small American town that resembles television shows of the 1950’s. However as Tim Dirks writes on Filmsite.org, “beneath the familiar, peaceful, ‘American-dream’ cleanliness of the daytime scenes lurks the sleaziness, prostitution, unrestrained violence, and perversity— powerful and potentially—dangerous sexual forces that may be unleashed if not contained.” The mystery the two kids uncover leads them to becoming involved in the plight of a beautiful, troubled lounge singer (Isabella Rossellini in a role that launched her) who has been forced to become the sexual slave of a sadistic madman (played by Dennis Hopper— who else?) who is holding her husband and child hostage. Although many actors declined the role of Hopper’s Frank, it has been reported to IMDb that Hopper himself said, “I’ve got to play Frank. Because I am Frank!” Frank’s actions in the film are so repulsive and terrifying—especially in his sexually violent behavior towards Rossellini that some critics balked at the film, most notably Roger Ebert who objected to the violence against women. In his review he notes:
she’s publicly embarrassed by being dumped naked on the lawn of the police detective. In others, she is asked to portray emotions that I imagine most actresses would rather not touch. She is degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera. And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film." He ends the review with an accusation lashed at Lynch (who after filming became Rossellini’s lover for a number of years): “What’s worse? Slapping somebody around, or standing back and finding the whole thing funny?” In the footage from his television show with Gene Siskel, that is included on the Blue Velvet DVD by MGM, Siskel answers Ebert’s attacks by saying she’s a woman and actress who made the choice and he’s sure she’s fine. When he suggests that Lynch is using Rossellini like Hitchcock did with Janet Leigh in Psycho—playing with his audience like a piano, Ebert says he’d only be willing to be played like a piano if the song is worth listening to. I admit that I did struggle greatly with the scenes involving Rossellini as well, but agree that like Siskel noted, she did make a choice to star in the film but I do think it’s a dark and dangerous work and not nearly worthy of all the cult-like praise that has been heaped onto it over the years. Despite that, I do admire it for its craftsmanship and haunting qualities—one can see the way that Lynch used some of the ideas from the film (such as allusions to the Lincoln assassination, the highway at night, etc.) in his later works… and we would have to wait until the new millennium for his masterpiece, Mulholland Drive. However, the film is a fascinating case study—a “surrealistic, psychosexual film… a throwback to art films, 50’s B-movies and teenage romances, film noir, and the mystery-suspense genre,” (Filmsite.org). David Lynch is fascinated by doubles—throughout his career, his films are full of alter egos, doppelgangers, opposites, contradictions and usually these doubles take the form of two women (one with blonde hair as Dern in Blue Velvet with Rosselini’s dark haired vixen). In Mulholland Drive, he gets the opportunity to explore doubles and opposites in countless ways. The film is undoubtedly his masterwork and the one that made me appreciate all his earlier films a bit more as, like Ebert said in his review, Drive seems to be the film he was heading towards all his career. The film stars Naomi Watts as a perky blonde aspiring actress who arrives fresh-faced and optimistic in Hollywood. She meets a mysterious dark haired beauty played by Laura Elena Harring, who escapes near death twice as the film begins but suffers from amnesia and allusions to Rita Hayworth and the film Gilda are made early on in order to pay homage to its noir roots. In my research I uncovered that a deceased young actress and former Lynch assistant named Jennifer Syme, (to whom the film is dedicated), inspired Harring and Watts’s characters. Syme, a former girlfriend during the 90’s of Keanu Reeves (and tragically the mother of his stillborn child in 1999) died in a horrific car accident when her Jeep crashed into a row of parked cars in Los Angeles. Not much is known about Syme but it’s clearly a labor of love to the actress who died after Lynch had begun working on it. As Mulholland Drive continues, we’re thrust into a nightmarish mystery of surrealism, fantasy, and it’s an extraordinary puzzle to behold. The film earned Lynch the Best Director title at the Cannes Film Festival (he shared his award with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There) and proved to be an inspiring success story of never giving up in Hollywood. Originally filmed for ABC as a television series that they ultimately abandoned, the French film company Studio Canal bailed Lynch out by giving him seven million dollars to finish his dream project and release it as a film. The breathtakingly visual opus salutes Lynch’s early training as a painter and art student. It is truly one-of-a- kind as we follow along on the journey, confused but basically understanding Lynch’s ideas until the last thirty minutes of the work inexplicably changes course and sets everything against what had proceeded. Roger Ebert explains: “The movie is hypnotic; we’re drawn along as if one thing leads to another—but nothing leads anywhere, and that’s even before the characters start to fracture and recombine like flesh caught in a kaleidoscope.” The film is confusing to say the least but its rewards are rich—it does well to watch it with a friend or someone to bounce ideas off of, although there’s a number of great explanations available online (Salon.com is the best one but Buckland’s book Teaching Film Studies breaks it down even simpler). Although, like Lynch shared, we’re not really supposed to have one conclusion to come to at the end—are the women the same, different, and what has happened? He offers ten clues to unlocking the secrets that are listed inside the DVD and online for fans. However, like Ebert shares, “this is a movie to surrender yourself to.” He continues: If you require logic, see something else. Mulholland Drive works directly on the emotions, like music. Individual scenes play well by themselves, as they do in dreams, but they don’t connect in a way that makes sense—again, like dreams. The way you know the movie is over is that it ends. And then you tell a friend, “I saw the weirdest movie last night.” Just like you tell them you had the weirdest dream. |