MC Decade Consensus - 1980s

[MadMan]

I guess I don't feel as strongly about David Lynch as others do. Also, Eraserhead is a movie that defies numerical or letter ratings. Either you hate it, are meh on it, like it, or love it. I'm in the like it category.

[Milky Joe]

I guess I don't feel as strongly about David Lynch as others do. Also, Eraserhead is a movie that defies numerical or letter ratings. Either you hate it, are meh on it, like it, or love it. I'm in the like it category.

...so, you give it ***?

[Irish]

OK, seriously. Just stop. You're embarrassing yourself.
Using hyperbole to make the point. C'mon.

[Yxklyx]

When one brings up The Elephant Man and The Straight Story one has to remember these aren't truly Lynchian films. Sure, he directs them but he's not the main writer of either of these films. He's more like a director for hire.

[B-side]

I don't understand at all why you think he's not playing fair with his audience. None of his films is nonsense as far as I can tell: they're all very pointed and emotional, and he makes them that via his atmosphere of the odd and dreamlike. (Here are my thoughts on what they point at, in the case of Blue Velvet (http://melvillian.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/blue-velvet-lynch-1986/) and Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr., and Inland Empire (http://melvillian.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/a-lynchian-trilogy-lost-highway-mulholland-dr-and-inland-empire/).) Do you dismiss all avant garde films as nonsense, or do you dislike Lynch's films because they use an unusual form while focusing on traditional elements of story and characters, rather than being outright non-narrative?

I'm really curious what Irish has to say in response to this.

[Dillard]

I'm sure y'all know this but netflix at the moment is running quite a few of Lynch's films on instant watch, including Blue Velvet, if anyone, you know, wants to hone their arguments on the pro/con Lynch discussion, which, as Raiders generously offered, could continue in the '70s thread. Now I'm going to give The Grandmother a go.

[Ezee E]

I'm sure y'all know this but netflix at the moment is running quite a few of Lynch's films on instant watch, including Blue Velvet, if anyone, you know, wants to hone their arguments on the pro/con Lynch discussion, which, as Raiders generously offered, could continue in the '70s thread. Now I'm going to give The Grandmother a go.
Nice. Been wanting to see Blue Velvet again.

[MadMan]

...so, you give it ***?I slapped an 80 point something rating on it, but I'm not even sure that was what I actually thought of the movie. So really, I have no idea.

I loved that TCM showed Blue Velvet at one point for TCM Underground. Fantastic.

[Derek]

Either you hate it, are meh on it, like it, or love it. I'm in the like it category.

Yeah, it's totally one of those love it, hate it, sorta liked it, disliked it but didn't hate it, meh, can't decide either way kinda films.

[Boner M]

Yeah, it's totally one of those love it, hate it, sorta liked it, disliked it but didn't hate it, meh, can't decide either way kinda films.
Vintage Madman.

[Qrazy]

Well .. I don't want Lynch to be anybody but Lynch. But then I also want him to stop taking cheap shortcuts. (To put it another way: Where's the guy who made The Elephant Man? It seems like that part of him just died after his experience with Dune).

I think you can introduce a certain amount of chaos and surrealism into a picture, but there's got to be boundries, there's got to be a sense of limits or else you're not playing fair with the audience and your story becomes just nonsense.

Luis Bunel was great at that sort of thing -- neither spoon feeding his meaning nor going on the nose -- continually injecting his movies with surrealism and a sense of the absurb.

Parts of Blue Velvet, on the other hand, play like a You Tube mash up of Irreversible and Pleasantville.


Get back to me if & when you manage to move from ad hominems to an actual, critical argument.

You have to admit though, Lynch's ability to time travel into the future, watch Irreversible and Pleasantville and then go back in time to create Blue Velvet is a pretty impressive feat in and of itself.

[Qrazy]

Anyway, I think Lynch excels at atmosphere and I applaud his approach to and use of surrealism. However my primary complaint about the man is I simply don't find his films particularly visually interesting (with a couple of exceptions) from a mise-en-scene/composition point of view. He's decent with lights though and exceptional with sound design.

[endingcredits]

Get back to me if & when you manage to move from ad hominems to an actual, critical argument.

Sorry, all I got is ad hominems, fallacies, snarky but essentially vapid and meaningless comments, and a quick reflex for hurling images from the bowels of the internet at random forum pedestrians.

[BuffaloWilder]

The lack of George Miller love in this thread is astounding.

I am also greatly confused as to why anyone would consider Joss Whedon a better writer or filmmaker than David Lynch, even now in his less narratively-focused period. Stop that nonsense, please.

[MadMan]

Vintage Madman.Unlike fine wine, I don't age well :P

And of course Derek completely missed the point of my previous post. Hurray!

Buffalo The Road Warrior is a great movie, but it not awesome enough to crack my list.

[Derek]

And of course Derek completely missed the point of my previous post. Hurray!

I thought your point was that it was a divisive film, in which case it'd be love it or hate it. I mean, my reaction to almost any film can be boiled down to "hate it, meh on it, like it, or love it." Hence, my post. :)


The lack of George Miller love in this thread is astounding.

I think people assume it's unnecessary to praise Miller, since you'll do it for us every chance you get. ;)

I love The Road Warrior though - one of the all-time great action films.

[BuffaloWilder]

Yeah, but you guys have to fill in for me when I'm on the run from the police, though.

:pritch::pritch:

[Irish]

I don't understand at all why you think he's not playing fair with his audience. None of his films is nonsense as far as I can tell: they're all very pointed and emotional, and he makes them that via his atmosphere of the odd and dreamlike. (Here are my thoughts on what they point at, in the case of Blue Velvet (http://melvillian.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/blue-velvet-lynch-1986/) and Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr., and Inland Empire (http://melvillian.wordpress.com/2010/01/20/a-lynchian-trilogy-lost-highway-mulholland-dr-and-inland-empire/).)
The term 'dreamlike' is troublesome, because any time its invoked it usually means lower dramatic stakes. The writer can take everything back in 5 seconds, introduce new rules late in the game, or pull deus ex machina out of his ass because 'it was all a dream.' Otherwise good movie have been ruined by this (see: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inception).

I don't think Lynch plays fair because he's either jerking the audience around with an uneven tone (delivering stark, brutal reality in one scene and then retreating behind 'satire' next in Blue Velvet) or never giving them firm ground to stand on (Mulholland Drive).

Lynch finds it easier these days to keep raising questions and introducing bizarre, surreal elements that are grounded in nothing than, say, write an honest-to-God dramatic scene between two adults.


Do you dismiss all avant garde films as nonsense, or do you dislike Lynch's films because they use an unusual form while focusing on traditional elements of story and characters, rather than being outright non-narrative?
Well, to be honest I don't consider Lynch an avant garde filmmaker, mostly because his audience is too large. If you're getting good size releases and your stuff shows up at the suburban multiplexes opening weekend, you're not really working at the fringe of the art.


I am also greatly confused as to why anyone would consider Joss Whedon a better writer or filmmaker than David Lynch, even now in his less narratively-focused period. Stop that nonsense, please.
Splitting hairs, but: Never said Whedon was a better filmmaker (whatever that is, these days).

Whedon and Weiner have managed to do things in their roles as writer/producers that Lynch either can't or won't do.

[MadMan]

I thought your point was that it was a divisive film, in which case it'd be love it or hate it. I mean, my reaction to almost any film can be boiled down to "hate it, meh on it, like it, or love it." Hence, my post. :)I thought I mentioned that one could be inbetween about it. But yeah, I agree, for the most part. Now that I think about it, *** would be a good rating. The **** system seems to be something I'm thinking about trying, as I'm getting tired of slapping random number ratings on movies.


Yeah, but you guys have to fill in for me when I'm on the run from the police, though.Oh. In that case, Mad Max (1979)=classic! :pritch:

[Spinal]

No one is as meticulous and sophisticated about the construction of their films as David Lynch. To suggest that he employs a fundamental arbitrariness in putting his film together demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of the work.

[Milky Joe]

Good god, what nonsense.

.

Also, in what suburban multiplexes did Inland Empire show up on opening weekend?

[Irish]

.

Also, in what suburban multiplexes did Inland Empire show up on opening weekend?

I was flat out wrong on that one -- for some reason, I thought this guy was getting wide releases.

Turns out stuff like Inland Empire played in 15 theaters. :lol:

[Kurosawa Fan]

I was flat out wrong on that one

Buddy, no offense, but you've been flat out wrong on this entire conversation. :lol:

[Irish]

Buddy, no offense, but you've been flat out wrong on this entire conversation. :lol:

:lol: Hey, that's fine if people don't agree. I have less respect, though, for people who resort to "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I" kind of statements or simply state I'm dead wrong without articulating why.

/shrug

[Russ]

I respect Ebert for having the good sense to critique Lynch on a film-by-film basis as opposed to being foolish enough to critique an entire period of the man's career.

[Spinal]

:lol: Hey, that's fine if people don't agree. I have less respect, though, for people who resort to "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I" kind of statements or simply state I'm dead wrong without articulating why.

/shrug

You're wrong because you're asserting things that have no factual basis. You're saying that Lynch can't do conventional drama. You're wrong. He can. He's done it. You're saying he's not being fair with his audience. You're wrong. He offers his audience a deep, captivating experience because the clues he leaves have integrity and purpose. The characters he creates are vivid. The performances he elicits are extraordinary. You're saying he's hiding behind weirdness and absurdity. You're wrong. The films can be and have been analyzed and interpreted because there are consistent themes. The films have an internal integrity that rewards careful examination. You're claiming the construction of the films are arbitrary. You're wrong. The films are carefully and meticulously constructed. Despite his reputation, he is not a filmmaker who just puts random strangeness in for it's own sake. It always connects. It always conveys something that relates to the whole.

To summarize my post in brief: you're wrong.

[endingcredits]

:lol: Hey, that's fine if people don't agree. I have less respect, though, for people who resort to "I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I" kind of statements or simply state I'm dead wrong without articulating why.

/shrug
Frankly, I am getting sick of this tomfoolery.
Many people presented several well thought arguments for Lynch and Melville even linked to article giving insight into Lynch's trilogy in terms of a progression from Hegelian to Kierkegaardian thought to which you replied with very same sort of cloddish arguments you're criticizing above as childish.

EDIT: you failed to even make comment on the link.

[Boner M]

Meanwhile, Irish was found the next day after his row with match-cut.

http://passionforcinema.com/wp-content/uploads/blue-velvet-blog.jpg

[Irish]

Meanwhile, Irish was found the next day after his row with match-cut.

:lol: Damn, I'm all out of rep today, so I owe you. This made me laugh out loud.

[Spinal]

Wrapped in plastic.

[Irish]

You're wrong because you're asserting things that have no factual basis.
Well, no.

I'm asserting my opinion and my interpretation of this guy's work. "Facts" don't really enter into it.

Just like stating "you're wrong" and "the films are carefully and meticulously constructed" doesn't make them true, or hell, even a valid argument in an of themselves.

Case in point:


In an interview with Joe Huang at the AFI Dallas Film Festival, David Lynch stated that "Inland Empire" wasn't originally intended to be a feature film. He would simply come up with an idea and - utilizing the versatility and ease of using DV cameras - would film it, creating a series of seemingly unrelated scenes; the first scene filmed was Laura Dern's monologue to the silent psychiatrist. As time progressed, he began to see how the stories were connected, and continued filming scenes for it until he had what we see now. Rumors that Lynch began filming without a script are more or less incorrect, as he would write a short scene and film it, without having the intention of making feature length film.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460829/trivia?tr0718798

Now, that sure as hell doesn't sound like meticulous craftsmanship to me. It sounds like a guy pulling story threads out of his ass as he goes along.

You may, and I'm sure you do, have a different interpretation.

[Spinal]

You're confusing the generation of the material with the final product. There is something in between called editing. This is where he is meticulous. I'm sure you're a nice person, but you continue to demonstrate your lack of understanding on this topic.

[endingcredits]

Meanwhile, Irish was found the next day after his row with match-cut.


+1 internets for you my friend

http://i827.photobucket.com/albums/zz192/endingcredits1/1266115440546.jpg?t=1289869268

[Melville]

The term 'dreamlike' is troublesome, because any time its invoked it usually means lower dramatic stakes. The writer can take everything back in 5 seconds, introduce new rules late in the game, or pull deus ex machina out of his ass because 'it was all a dream.'
As I was using it, 'dreamlike' describes an atmosphere more than anything. Anyway, I fail to see how your criticism is relevant. Lynch isn't constructing objective narratives in which events are linked by physical causality—he's constructing emotional and thematic narratives (in Mulholland Dr., Lost Highway, and Inland Empire, and to some extent Eraserhead at least; his other movies are mostly straightforward objective narratives, though in odd and stylized worlds). He doesn't introduce new rules willy nilly in these narratives: everything is connected by atmosphere, emotion, and the characters, ideas, and types of experiences he's exploring.

What do you mean by lower dramatic stakes? Eraserhead presents a devastating portrait of fear of sexuality and reproduction, and the burden of parenthood, marriage, and life in general. Lost Highway and Mulholland Dr. present the most devastating portraits of scorned love that I've ever seen. His movies are full of emotional devastation, always in terms of definite characters. What more stakes do you want? To say you want objective, 'real world' stakes in terms of an objective narrative is to address the films on terms that are irrelevant to them.

And I notice you didn't even address my reviews. Admittedly they focus on the philosophical ideas in the films rather than the way the ideas are explored (primarily because I wrote them on here as posts responding to other people's specific criticisms), but Lynch explores those ideas by going to the essence of them, rather than trying to embed them within objective narratives.


Otherwise good movie have been ruined by this (see: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inception).
wtf? Neither of those movies is dreamlike, and they establish the rules of their dream/memory scenes within their 'real world' scenes. Unless you're criticizing the whispered "Meet me in Montauk" in ESotSM and the ambiguous ending of Inception (neither of which break any rules or are deus ex machina or resort to 'it was all a dream'), then I have no idea what you're talking about.


I don't think Lynch plays fair because he's either jerking the audience around with an uneven tone (delivering stark, brutal reality in one scene and then retreating behind 'satire' next in Blue Velvet) or never giving them firm ground to stand on (Mulholland Drive).
I think all Lynch fans will agree that his ambiguous tone is one of the most entertaining, engrossing, interesting aspects of his films. In the case of Blue Velvet, its balance between absurd humor, brutality, artifice and realism, is an essential part of the film's world and the ideas explored via that world (as described in my review).

Nuts to firm ground. Mulholland Dr. has a clear emotional and philosophical core around which everything is constructed. Its freedom from 'firm ground' allows it to explore that core in the most powerful, illuminating way. No other film explores the relationship between scorned love and the disjunction between real and ideal as effectively and emotionally.


Well, to be honest I don't consider Lynch an avant garde filmmaker, mostly because his audience is too large. If you're getting good size releases and your stuff shows up at the suburban multiplexes opening weekend, you're not really working at the fringe of the art.
That ignores the question I asked.


Whedon and Weiner have managed to do things in their roles as writer/producers that Lynch either can't or won't do.
Baffling.

[Irish]

You're confusing the generation of the material with the final product. There is something in between called editing. This is where he is meticulous. I'm sure you're a nice person, but you continue to demonstrate your lack of understanding on this topic.

Nooooo .. the page is where everything lives. If it doesn't play on the page it sure as hell isn't going to play in the editing room or on the screen. And I don't understand how you can label that guy as "meticulous" when he plays fast and loose with one end of development and production but not the other.

If this guy is one of your favorite of favorites, then I apologize for offending you with -- what I honestly thought -- were innocuous comments about his work.

Part of my hubris here is thinking that, since I don't take Lynch seriously at all, I don't expect anyone else to either.

[Boner M]

You're confusing the generation of the material with the final product. There is something in between called editing. This is where he is meticulous.
Exactly. Mulholland Dr, for instance, is a persuasive argument that films should only be conceived from aborted TV pilots.

[Boner M]

And I don't understand how you can label that guy as "meticulous" when he plays fast and loose with one end of development and production but not the other.


...editing. This is where he is meticulous.
.

[Spinal]

Nooooo .. the page is where everything lives.

This explains a lot.

[Milky Joe]

I'm curious to know old Irish is.

[endingcredits]

Nooooo .. the page is where everything lives. If it doesn't play on the page it sure as hell isn't going to play in the editing room or on the screen.

Emphasis on editing should not preclude the finished product from being a quality film. Take, for example, the case of Eisenstein and montage, where innovative editing led to advancement in film.

[Melville]

Nooooo .. the page is where everything lives. If it doesn't play on the page it sure as hell isn't going to play in the editing room or on the screen.
Not a Bruce Conner fan, I take it?

[Dillard]

Nooooo .. the page is where everything lives. If it doesn't play on the page it sure as hell isn't going to play in the editing room or on the screen.It sounds like you have an impoverished view of film and film's cinematic possibilities separate from "the page." The screenplay is but one small part of what makes a film.

[Melville]

It sounds like you have an impoverished view of film and film's cinematic possibilities separate from "the page." The screenplay is but one small part of what makes a film.
As I implied with my Bruce Conner comment, it needn't even be a part of a film at all. What's on the screen (and audio track, but that doesn't have the same ring to it) is what's relevant.

[Chac Mool]

On the Lynch/meticulous/dreamlike debate: I've always found that a better way to describe Lynch's film is "instinctive". It's not so much that it feels like everything is a dream, but rather that everything happens for a reason, but we don't always know what the reason is. It's this unknown that makes it works.

[soitgoes...]

An alternate 80's Top 10 (No Lynch here! Now with more Asian substitute!):


A Time to Liva and a Time to Die (Hou)
Where Is the Friend's Home (Kiarostami)
Muddy River (Oguri)
Violent Cop (Kitano)
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (Schrader)
Black Rain (Imamura)
A Summer at Grandpa's (Hou)
City of Sadness (Hou)
Story of Women (Chabrol)
Yellow Earth (Chen)


Yeah, all but one are Asian. I could easily include another Hou who was a beast in the 80's.

[Grouchy]

My alternate:

1. The Terminator
2. Hellraiser
3. The Killer
4. Sid & Nancy
5. Big Trouble in Little China
6. Enemy Mine
7. Scarface
8. The Toxic Avenger
9. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
10. The Ball

Pretty great.

[Irish]

As I was using it, 'dreamlike' describes an atmosphere more than anything. Anyway, I fail to see how your criticism is relevant. Lynch isn't constructing objective narratives in which events are linked by physical causality—he's constructing emotional and thematic narratives.
First: Great post. Intelligent & insightful. The way you talk about these movies, you make me want to sit down and watch them again.

Lynch might trying to "construct emotional and thematic narratives," but that's not how they play on screen.

Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet are initially set up -- and play for a great deal of their runtime -- as more or less traditional mysteries.

Except Lynch doesn't have the sack to do that straight, so instead he piles on weird characters and hyper stylized situations. (Mullholland is something like 2:25 minutes long, and 1:50 takes place in a dream world.)

If you accept Lynch's proposition from the get go -- and there's no reason why you wouldn't -- you end up suckered, because not only does he not resolve the little mysteries he's set up, he changes gears and takes the entire movie in a different direction with no warning whatsoever.

People in this thread have talked about his supposedly deep emotions and vivid characters, but I don't see it. Especially in something like MD, where, my god, the whole point seems to be to make everyone as artificial as possible. With intentionally cartoonish characters there's no chance for real drama or human emotion. Instead, there's a bunch of unfortunate actors stuck mimicking situations to the obscure delight of David Lynch.

When you talk about thematic narratives, it makes me thing of Fellini. 8 1/2 and La Dolce Vita have varying degrees of artificiality and surrealism in them, but the difference is that those movies are never inauthentic and never betray audience expections for no reason.


What do you mean by lower dramatic stakes?
Outside the Matrix -- where they very pointedly tell the audience that death is death -- what happens in a dream world has zero effect on the real world.

So if you create a dream sequence, it's got no dramatic weight to it at all. The audience knows that, in plain terms, it doesn't count and they're eventually going to get hit with a "do over."

I'd go into specific problems with Eternal Sunshine & Inception .. but honestly I'd rather stay on Lynch in this thread. :P


I think all Lynch fans will agree that his ambiguous tone is one of the most entertaining, engrossing, interesting aspects of his films.
Yeah. Lots of folks seem to get off on that. I think there's a difference between purposeful ambiguity and out right deception, though.


Nuts to firm ground. Mulholland Dr. has a clear emotional and philosophical core around which everything is constructed. Its freedom from 'firm ground' allows it to explore that core in the most powerful, illuminating way. No other film explores the relationship between scorned love and the disjunction between real and ideal as effectively and emotionally.
I have to violently disagree. You keep talking about the emotions, but the emotions of whom? You can't mean the walking cartoons that populate Lynch's movies. As for "no other film," c'mon, really? Off the top of my head, Vertigo, In a Lonely Place, Gilda, and That Obscure Object of Desire all deal very effectively with scorned love and the "disjunction between real and ideal."


That ignores the question I asked.
I know. I dodged it intentionally. Given the general disdain my opinions have been met with in this thread, I wasn't in the mood for another drubbing over my opinions on avant garde film. :lol:

But to your point about Bruce Conner -- he's a different beast entirely. I think there's a different rulebook when you're going for the highest of high arts as opposed to making commercial films.

Anyway, thanks for your post. That was a good read and gave me lots of good stuff to think about.

[B-side]

I'm having an incredibly difficult time comprehending what it is that you so fervently oppose in Lynch's less straightforward work, Irish. They've never claimed to abide by real world logic, but they most assuredly use real world emotions bouncing off scenes of filtered subjectivity. They're real people living in nightmare worlds.

[Qrazy]

So if you create a dream sequence, it's got no dramatic weight to it at all. The audience knows that, in plain terms, it doesn't count and they're eventually going to get hit with a "do over."


Nah.

[Izzy Black]

What's really baffling about Irish's stance, and this thread in general, is how dismissive everyone is of it. I am sympathetic to some of his criticism, and even if I weren't, I am confident I would find it at the very least valid.

In any case, I will be back a little later to post some of my thoughts on Lynch. Although I share some of Irish's concerns with Lynch, I think Irish misses a great deal of value in Lynch on the very same score that he dismisses him.

Also, some interesting stuff from both sides, despite all the negativity.

More to come later.

[B-side]

What's really baffling about Irish's stance, and this thread in general, is how dismissive everyone is of it. I am sympathetic to some of his criticism, and even if I weren't, I am confident I would find it at the very least valid.

In any case, I will be back a little later to post some of my thoughts on Lynch. Although I share some of Irish's concerns with Lynch, I think Irish misses a great deal of value in Lynch on the very same score that he dismisses him.

Also, some interesting stuff from both sides, despite all the negativity.

More to come later.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't tear my one response apart. My ego is fragile enough as is.:D

[Melville]

Lynch might trying to "construct emotional and thematic narratives," but that's not how they play on screen.
Well, I'm describing the films, not Lynch's intentions.


Mullholland is something like 2:25 minutes long, and 1:50 takes place in a dream world.
Not that it's relevant to the discussion, but I think Mulholland Dr. would be much improved by reducing its 'dream world' portion.


If you accept Lynch's proposition from the get go -- and there's no reason why you wouldn't -- you end up suckered, because not only does he not resolve the little mysteries he's set up, he changes gears and takes the entire movie in a different direction with no warning whatsoever.
There's plenty of warning in Mulholland Dr. It opens with figures jitterbugging in a purple void. It has surreal scenes scattered throughout. Right from the get-go, Betty's quaint dream world is destabilized by the (hilariously) evilly grinning old couple, and the film builds gradually from there to the world's complete rupture. Anyway, radical tonal shifts are all good. They keep things unsteady and spontaneous; they offer a way into the sublime by suddenly breaking free of established norms.


With intentionally cartoonish characters there's no chance for real drama or human emotion. Instead, there's a bunch of unfortunate actors stuck mimicking situations to the obscure delight of David Lynch.
Naomi Watts gives one of the best performances ever, and she, together with the film's structure and style, creates not just her character, but the entire subjective experience of her character. No look of absolute love is as overwhelmingly poignant as her look up at Camilla as they ascend the hill to her existential demise. And the subsequent party scene, with its sudden shift in music and jarring editing, is one of the most intensely anxious pictures of public misery I've seen. Her picturing herself weeping for Camilla hits like a hammer to the heart—it's painfully real, raw self-loathing. Her ultimate unbearable regret, despair, and suicide in the final scene are intensely emotional, with the close up on her eye, the screaming, and old people, impish representatives of her false dreams, crawling under her door. But the weight of all these scenes is founded in the preceding 'dream' portion of the film. That portion of the film showed us what she wished for, what she desperately yearned to be true, the pure, ethereal, transcendent love and innocent self that underlay her view of the world but was always at an awful distance from it.


Outside the Matrix -- where they very pointedly tell the audience that death is death -- what happens in a dream world has zero effect on the real world.
Wait, are you suggesting the Matrix has a good approach to...anything? :|


So if you create a dream sequence, it's got no dramatic weight to it at all. The audience knows that, in plain terms, it doesn't count and they're eventually going to get hit with a "do over."
But the purpose of the 'dream' in Mulholland Dr is to develop the character's interior world, her ideal picture of the world. That is its weight.


Yeah. Lots of folks seem to get off on that. I think there's a difference between purposeful ambiguity and out right deception, though.
Of course there is.


I have to violently disagree. You keep talking about the emotions, but the emotions of whom? You can't mean the walking cartoons that populate Lynch's movies.
First, the emotions don't have to belong to anyone. A film can convey emotion through image and sound without it belonging to an on-screen character. And Lynch does that a lot. Also, a film can develop its characters via its atmosphere, rather than its dialogue, character interactions, etc. I think that actually gives a much fuller, truer phenomenological depiction of human reality than objective narratives do, since the latter are abstracted from experience into an objective realm, rather than representing the form of the experience itself. And to a large extent, this is how Lynch develops his characters: by developing the world and atmosphere in which they exist. In Mulholland Dr., as I've discussed above, Diane's character is developed via the overarching duality in the film's structure and tone. Her character is developed by showing us how she experiences her real and ideal.


As for "no other film," c'mon, really? Off the top of my head, Vertigo, In a Lonely Place, Gilda, and That Obscure Object of Desire all deal very effectively with scorned love and the "disjunction between real and ideal."
The love in Vertigo and In a Lonely place isn't really scorned. Gilda is bland all over, except the 'Put the Blame on Mame' scene. I haven't seen That Obscure Object of Desire, but haven't cared for any Bunuel films I've seen other than Un Chien Andalou. Anyway, none of those movies address the subject as directly. In Lynch's films, the real and ideal are represented directly on film. They show us, vividly and literally, what the real and ideal consist of for their protagonists, rather than implying them within an objective narrative. Obviously it's a matter of taste whether or not you care for that, but it's silly to say it's jerking the audience around.


But to your point about Bruce Conner -- he's a different beast entirely. I think there's a different rulebook when you're going for the highest of high arts as opposed to making commercial films.
Why should their release format dictate which rulebook they follow? Why should they follow a rulebook at all? Out the window with rulebooks, I say.

[Spinal]

What's really baffling about Irish's stance, and this thread in general, is how dismissive everyone is of it.

Is it really all that baffling considering the quality of the argument? I think you have to do better than "Lynch is being weird just to be weird." That's kind of a lame take at this point in his career.

[Kurosawa Fan]

But to your point about Bruce Conner -- he's a different beast entirely. I think there's a different rulebook when you're going for the highest of high arts as opposed to making commercial films.


David Lynch makes commercial films?

[baby doll]

David Lynch makes commercial films?All of them have been offered up for commercial distribution.

[Dillard]

RE: Israfel

Bring it.

[Kurosawa Fan]

All of them have been offered up for commercial distribution.

That wasn't really my question. To say Lynch films are commercial is a bit disingenuous. The connotation is usually that "commercial" films are those being made with profits as their first concern. This would certainly not include Lynch films.

[Irish]

I'm having an incredibly difficult time comprehending what it is that you so fervently oppose in Lynch's less straightforward work, Irish. They've never claimed to abide by real world logic, but they most assuredly use real world emotions bouncing off scenes of filtered subjectivity. They're real people living in nightmare worlds.

I think that's almost true of something like Blue Velvet but not at all true of Mulholland Drive.

The problem with "Velvet" is that the real people aren't real. Going back to Ebert's point, every character and every line of dialogue in daylight is played as if these people are refugees from Leave it to Beaver and Donna Reed.

Every time Lynch shows you something starkly brutal, he backs away from it with a little visual joke. Every time he raises an interesting question -- that Dorothy Valens is a rape victim and a sexual masochist, that Jeffrey is just as awful and depraved as Frank -- he fails to follow up.

Mulholland Drive is ridiculously artificial. Betty is about as far removed from being a 'real' person as you can get, and I assume that's the point. The only reason her character changes at all -- about halfway through she becomes super-inquisitive -- is to drive what little plot there is forward.

[Irish]

That wasn't really my question. To say Lynch films are commercial is a bit disingenuous. The connotation is usually that "commercial" films are those being made with profits as their first concern. This would certainly not include Lynch films.

Regardless of what these guys -- Lynch, Scorcese, Allen, etc -- think of themselves, they are all commercial filmmakers going for a wide audience.

Lynch might have higher aspirations -- I hope he does -- but in some sense, he's definitely playing for money. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

My point was more about how you don't judge something like Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire or Neuromancer or The Help by the same standards that you might judge Infinite Jest, even though they're all novels and can be fitted into the same general category. The audiences and the intentions are clearly different.

To put it another way, you don't critique Marina Abramovic the same way you would a street performer, even though their performances might be similar on a technical level.

[Qrazy]

I think that's almost true of something like Blue Velvet but not at all true of Mulholland Drive.

The problem with "Velvet" is that the real people aren't real. Going back to Ebert's point, every character and every line of dialogue in daylight is played as if these people are refugees from Leave it to Beaver and Donna Reed.

Every time Lynch shows you something starkly brutal, he backs away from it with a little visual joke. Every time he raises an interesting question -- that Dorothy Valens is a rape victim and a sexual masochist, that Jeffrey is just as awful and depraved as Frank -- he fails to follow up.

Mulholland Drive is ridiculously artificial. Betty is about as far removed from being a 'real' person as you can get, and I assume that's the point. The only reason her character changes at all -- about halfway through she becomes super-inquisitive -- is to drive what little plot there is forward.

I think that Lynch's 'point' in Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, etc is fairly fleshed out and clear. That is to say I think he 'follows up' within the context of his own films. I think the bigger issue you may be driving at and to which I agree to a certain extent is that Lynch's worldview is a bit simplistically bleak. I believe that many of his dreamscapes are atmospherically excellent but I can't really say I'm fully on board with his perspective on life. His modus operandi seems to be (I read this in an interview at some point) the desire to peel back the surface layer of humanity/americana/hollywood and expose the ugliness beneath. You can see a thread reaching across many of his films that all of us have the potential for madness and abuse on some level. That beneath the banal of the every day is this raging river of terror and pain and hate. But to be fair much of his work is essentially psychological horror so in order to create the moods he's interested in he sort of does need to stop there. Lynch has cornered the market on creepiness but I don't think he's fully nailed the intricacies of the human psyche.

[baby doll]

That wasn't really my question. To say Lynch films are commercial is a bit disingenuous. The connotation is usually that "commercial" films are those being made with profits as their first concern. This would certainly not include Lynch films.Personally, I think of commercial filmmaking as an institution, a model of making and distributing films, which all of Lynch's features between The Elephant Man and Mulholland Dr. more or less conform with. There are lots of commercial filmmakers who still want to make good movies.

[Irish]

Naomi Watts gives one of the best performances ever, and she, together with the film's structure and style, creates not just her character, but the entire subjective experience of her character.
I agree that Watts gives one hell of a performance. She's amazing. Unfortunately, Lynch must've given her horrible direction: She's required to act like a complete rube, a cardboard cliche, for over an hour and a half. It's only in a few key scenes she's given any leeway to act. Which is a damned shame. Why hire somebody of Watt's caliber and almost deliberately misuse her so?


But the weight of all these scenes is founded in the preceding 'dream' portion of the film. That portion of the film showed us what she wished for, what she desperately yearned to be true, the pure, ethereal, transcendent love and innocent self that underlay her view of the world but was always at an awful distance from it.
The kind of film you're describing is beautiful and brilliant. I just don't think MD is the film you're describing.

While the last 30 minutes are shockingly beautiful and masterfully produced, what precedes it is almost intentionally ham handed, ponderous, repetitive, uneven, and ultimately pointless.


Also, a film can develop its characters via its atmosphere, rather than its dialogue, character interactions, etc.
I'm not sure that's true, or even possible. Atmosphere can most definitely inform on character but I don't think it can take the place of actual development.

Weather and the color of the walls is no substitute for human action.


In Mulholland Dr., as I've discussed above, Diane's character is developed via the overarching duality in the film's structure and tone. Her character is developed by showing us how she experiences her real and ideal.
Part of the reason I balk at accepting your premise is because of the shoddy, haphazard way Lynch lays out his scenes. If the bulk of MD is Diane's ideal world -- which would be odd enough, because who imagines their ideal self to be a naive bumpkin? -- then why does Diane spend so much time worrying about Adam's directorial career? Why does she focus any time on a leather jacketed killer who accidentally shoots people through walls, to comic effect? Scenes like that, and other similar idiocies, don't fit well into your basic premise.

(This is also where I think Lynch's tone is almost always off: Lest the audience take him seriously, he almost always introduces rough, uneven, slapstick style humor into a scene. He does it multiple times in Blue Velvet, and repeatedly in MD).


The love in Vertigo and In a Lonely place isn't really scorned. Gilda is bland all over, except the 'Put the Blame on Mame' scene. I haven't seen That Obscure Object of Desire, but haven't cared for any Bunuel films I've seen other than Un Chien Andalou.

They're all about romantic obsession and disillusionment, and in a large sense so is MD. Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing your opinion of Obscure Object, should you ever see it.


Anyway, none of those movies address the subject as directly. In Lynch's films, the real and ideal are represented directly on film. They show us, vividly and literally, what the real and ideal consist of for their protagonists, rather than implying them within an objective narrative. Obviously it's a matter of taste whether or not you care for that, but it's silly to say it's jerking the audience around.
I get what you're saying, and I think that's a great insight into Lynch's work.

(But I still feel you're giving the guy faaaaar too much credit.)


Why should their release format dictate which rulebook they follow? Why should they follow a rulebook at all? Out the window with rulebooks, I say.
Because you need some sort of guideline in order to judge the merit of, well, anything. Given that, it wouldn't make sense to apply a single standard to an entire medium. Nobody looks at The Thing or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the same way they look at Wild Strawberries or Citizen Kane.

[Melville]

I'll respond to your response tomorrow, but for now, here's something I wrote in response to some guy's blog post six years ago (his argument was that the two parts of Mulholland Drive are equally real, an idea that I think is explored in Inland Empire, but not in MD):


I'm always surprised at how people view Mulholland Drive primarily as an intellectual mystery to be solved, rather than as one of the saddest, most emotionally devastating movies ever made. Anyway, I'll get back to that. Here are some thoughts...

As far as the two halves of the movie being equally 'real', I think that the film's structure itself prevents that interpretation: the fact that the second half comes temporally after the first immediately makes it more 'real'. Also, it's clearly Diane who falls asleep at the beginning of the movie, as her awakening before 'the second half' is clearly a counterpoint to that beginning. Taking it as a given that Diane is the 'narrator' of the first half, the interesting question, to me, is whether she is still the 'narrator' of the second half. The striking difference between the two halves is that in the first half Betty is never judged (Rita is a non-entity, which Betty/Diane can form as she will), while in the second half she is always judged—she is cast out of her 'small god' status, cast out into the world, always aware (almost exclusively) of how other people judge her. The distinction has little to do with 'sordid' versus 'sentimental', and everything to do with experiencing the world as being-for-yourself versus being-for-others (to steal Hegel and Sartre's terms). This is why the second half seems more real—because Camilla is an Other as Rita is not—Camilla can judge Diane, and Diane is always aware of herself as an object to be judged. Since Camilla's judgements seem imbued with cruelty, I think that it is still Diane who 'narrates' the second half—an omniscient narrator would not be so subjective. Which only supports your view that both halves are equally real: each half presents a picture of a mode of existence, and both modes of experiencing the world are equally real, and are interdependent.

But as I said before, the second half is more real because it comes after the first, which brings me to the movie's 'plot'. You describe it as 'one woman's disillusionment', but that strikes me as a tremendous oversimplification. It's not disillusionment, it's heartbreak—the realization that the Other whom Diane loved (i.e. whom she wanted to be an object for) has chosen another object instead. Since Diane's objectivity has been cast aside by Camilla, her place as an object in the world is unstable, and she can only view herself as the repulsive object that tried desperately to cling to the Subject (Camilla). Thus, she tries desperately to reassert her Subjectivity, by reducing the other Subject to an object—which she can only do by killing it (a drastic Eternal Sunshine procedure). And isn't this what so many people do after a breakup, when they suddenly decide they must hate that person who they loved a month or two earlier? Of course, Diane really did love Camilla, she really did view her as the ultimate Subject; so, having killed Camilla, Diane only exists through her memories of Camilla—specifically, memories of killing her. Having killed the infinite Subject, Diane has no choice but to kill herself, the finite Object.

All of which is why I think the walk up the wooded path to the party is the most stunning scene in the movie, and is filled with an almost unbearable sadness. Although the bubblegum-love-song audition scene is also pretty spectacular.

Of course, I haven't even mentioned the 'dream of Hollywood', which is the dream of being loved by the world, and so reappropriating the world by becoming the central object in it. This seems to be secondary to the love story (although of course they're similar existential stories): Betty chooses to return to Rita in the midst of the audition scene, when she clearly 'could have had it all' right then.

To which the guy responded,

But don't forget! Betty isn't nearly as "free" in her storyline as she (and you) are claiming!...I think both aspects of the film are part wish-fulfilment and part self-torture/castigation/admission of powerlessness... "This is the Other I must love" isn't so different, after all, from "this is the Other I must kill"


You're right, Betty isn't entirely free—sorry if I implied that. It's Diane, the narrator, who has the power in Betty's narrative: Betty is how Diane wishes she were, and, as such, Betty is an object for Diane. To steal some more terms from Sartre, Betty is the positional self and Diane is the non-positional self (though only in Betty's narrative). But, as far as I'm concerned, even the non-positional self, the 'pure' self isn't really free, though it has power; and this is especially true in Mulholland Drive. Diane has no control over how she views herself, either in her wishful thinking or in her self-loathing—she has no control over her own narration. The only person who has any control is the 'man in back of this place'.

I'll have to watch the Cowboy scene again to see if I agree that his speech is a judgement of Betty, but I definitely agree that it's not a vengeance upon Adam. Adam is presented as an entirely sympathetic character in Betty's narrative—it's only in Diane's narrative that Adam is portrayed as despicable. I took this to mean that Diane, in her role as narrator of Betty's narrative, had the capacity to forgive Adam, to view him as 'put upon' as she was (have you seen the Good Girl? It's great). But, as you say, the Adam she forgives is really only a part of herself, part of the story she wishes were her story. I also agree that each narrative contains some degree of the other's defining characteristic; just like experience, the different modes of narrative continually fold together, and, as you say, they also continually break apart. (It's the Hegelian dialectic depicted in movie form!)

As for loving the Other being similar to killing the Other (or at least similar compulsions), both are certainly driven by the same desire for self-unification (by trying to make oneself entirely object in the first case, entirely subject in the second case), but the way the experiences play out are certainly wildly different.
I don't agree with that last part so much anymore.

[Russ]

Unfortunately, Lynch must've given (Watts) horrible direction: She's required to act like a complete rube, a cardboard cliche, for over an hour and a half.

It’s because Diane is imagining her complete transformation (as Betty) from (the highly stylized, in Diane’s mind) naïve bumpkin from Deep River, Ontario to a successful in-demand Hollywood actress.


If the bulk of MD is Diane's ideal world -- which would be odd enough, because who imagines their ideal self to be a naive bumpkin? -- then why does Diane spend so much time worrying about Adam's directorial career?

What you see as Diane worrying about Adam’s directorial career is actually Diane rationalizing (again, as Betty) that the reason she (Diane) lost out on the lead role is because Adam is forced by shady mobsters to give the lead role in his new film to another actress (Camilla Rhodes). It’s the only way she can accept the fact that, in reality, she simply wasn’t talented enough to win it outright.


Why does she focus any time on a leather jacketed killer who accidentally shoots people through walls, to comic effect?

Because, again, Diane is trying to rationalize her own irrational thoughts and actions and/or trying to change/escape reality to suit her needs. The leather jacketed killer that Betty pictures in her dream is actually the hitman that Diane has contracted to kill Camilla. In Diane’s dream, she portrays him as bumbling and inept, someone who in all likelihood would fail at the simple task of finding and eliminating Camilla. In real life, though, Diane’s discovery of the key reveals just the opposite to be true.


This is also where I think Lynch's tone is almost always off: Lest the audience take him seriously, he almost always introduces rough, uneven, slapstick style humor into a scene. He does it multiple times in Blue Velvet, and repeatedly in MD
The tone in a Lynchian world, which you mistakenly determine to be off, is actually created by the integration of disparate elements, such as seemingly inappropriately placed comedic non-sequiturs.


While the last 30 minutes are shockingly beautiful and masterfully produced, what precedes it is almost intentionally ham handed, ponderous, repetitive, uneven, and ultimately pointless.
Since it was originally produced as a television pilot, there is a well-defined point that separates Betty’s dreamworld (the pilot) from the resolution of Diane’s reality (the new footage). It’s certainly not pointless as neither would make much sense without the other.


Because you need some sort of guideline in order to judge the merit of, well, anything. Given that, it wouldn't make sense to apply a single standard to an entire medium.

I disagree about the guideline, and in regard to applying a single standard to an entire medium, isn’t that exactly what you were attempting to do when you called Lynch out for being dishonest and not tackling issues head-on while citing other directors to whom Lynch could emulate to achieve results that you seem to desire?

[balmakboor]

Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine, 2009) / **1/2


While **1/2 isn't terrible, this is a bit disappointing to me. Every time I've watched clips, I've laughed out loud at the beautiful absurdity of it all. It's like some Freudian regression into an infantile state with Korine and Co. wallowing around in poopy diapers.

Is the problem that it all just goes on for too long? Is it a case of a decent idea for a short film wrongly stretched to feature length?

[baby doll]

While **1/2 isn't terrible, this is a bit disappointing to me. Every time I've watched clips, I've laughed out loud at the beautiful absurdity of it all. It's like some Freudian regression into an infantile state with Korine and Co. wallowing around in poopy diapers.

Is the problem that it all just goes on for too long? Is it a case of a decent idea for a short film wrongly stretched to feature length?Well, for one thing, it's obvious that these aren't real old people, but young people in old person masks. (This is especially obvious whenever they encounter an actual old person.) At first I thought this might be deliberate, but if Korine doesn't want to give us a glimpse into a certain side of American life (i.e., the disenfranchised, uneducated rural whites of Gummo), if he isn't being sincere, then what exactly is he trying to do here? And assuming that this is his goal (and I don't see anything to indicate otherwise), then the film is a failure (albeit an interesting and highly original one) because there aren't people like this in the world. Okay, maybe the film isn't supposed to be strictly realistic, but then, what the hell is Korine trying to do? Kudos to him for abandoning psychological realism almost completely (there's virtually no dialogue for long stretches and no narrative throughline, just a series of scenes, one after another Ã* la Killer of Sheep), but ultimately, the film just seems kinda pointless.

[Milky Joe]

I thought it had something to do with Korine conflating the young with the old, a comment on the youth of America seeming somehow more decrepit or hyperdecrepit as a state of mind, and inauthentic to boot. I don't know how intentional that really was but it was the idea I sorta took away from it.

And I don't see how you could think he's being even remotely realistic. The film is a DIY psychological avant-horror-comedy about people who couldn't possibly exist in our world, yet somehow do. To fault it for not being realistic enough seems absurd.

[MadMan]

This thread is never going to end, is it? I'm just amused that because of one David Lynch movie, its gathered far more discussion than the other consensus threads.

[Melville]

Why hire somebody of Watt's caliber and almost deliberately misuse her so?
It's not a misuse, though. Its artificiality is purposeful. She's meant to be a cardboard cliche. She's meant to be an unconflicted, simplistic vision of innocence, good intentions, earnestness, etc. The contrast between the two portions of the film would lose much of its impact if it wasn't such a jarring shift from candy-colored artifice to grim 'reality' (quotation marks to leave room for the broader view of artifice and reality presented in Inland Empire).


While the last 30 minutes are shockingly beautiful and masterfully produced, what precedes it is almost intentionally ham handed, ponderous, repetitive, uneven, and ultimately pointless.
Saying it's 'ultimately pointless' is factually incorrect, as I've described its purpose at great length. I do agree that it's the weaker part of the film by a large margin and veers too much into hokum in parts. But that doesn't invalidate its purpose.


I'm not sure that's true, or even possible. Atmosphere can most definitely inform on character but I don't think it can take the place of actual development.
What's 'actual development'? Showing a character's experience of the world, their state of mind, tells us more about him or her than showing us realistic interpersonal interactions or whatever. It just tells it to us in a different way: not how we get to know other people in the real world, but more how we know ourselves.


who imagines their ideal self to be a naive bumpkin?
The appeal of imagining oneself as an innocent seems fairly obvious, especially if one has killed the woman one loved. Also, what Russ said.


then why does Diane spend so much time worrying about Adam's directorial career? Why does she focus any time on a leather jacketed killer who accidentally shoots people through walls, to comic effect? Scenes like that, and other similar idiocies, don't fit well into your basic premise.
What Russ said. This makes me think you simply need to watch the movie again, because these are pretty basic narrative elements. Regarding Adam, I do think it's interesting that he's entirely a victim, if a smug one, in Diane's dream world. Diane doesn't exact her revenge on him in her dream world, but makes it such that no real people are to blame for anything—everything is due to dark mysterious external forces (and a genial Billy Ray Cyrus). And she even has a moment of fleeting connection with her dream version of him, which I think tells us a lot about Diane, as well as making her dream version of herself all the more simply loving, because the connection makes it such that she could leave Rita for Adam, as Camilla left her for him in the real world, but she immediately opts to return to Rita.


Because you need some sort of guideline in order to judge the merit of, well, anything. Given that, it wouldn't make sense to apply a single standard to an entire medium. Nobody looks at The Thing or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the same way they look at Wild Strawberries or Citizen Kane.
My guidelines are things like whether or not the film contains insights into humanity, presents interesting ideas in formally interesting ways, makes me laugh, etc. I don't see any reason to judge the merit of Lynch's films a certain way simply because they play in movie theaters rather than in art galleries. Their mix of unusual forms and traditional narrative structures is one of the things that makes them great.

[jamaul]

Jeanne Dielman is anything but boring and repetitive, but that's beside the point, as I don't think Once Upon a Time in America is either. In fact, it's as tightly structured and action-oriented as Akerman's film is painterly and meditative. I actually kind of like Leone's film (not as much as Jeanne Dielman, but that's a matter of personal preference); however, I find that it has a number of shortcomings--which perhaps isn't surprising given the film's out-sized ambitions. And among them is that the female characters are all stereotypes and cliches: the love interest, and whores. It's not as if women are missing from the film; they're ubiquitous, but in the same sense that chairs and rugs are: they're part of the scenery more than people.

Furthermore, I think you're creating a false equivalency in citing Jeanne Dielman as an example of reverse-sexism (which takes for granted that we live in a society where men and women are equal, and they're equally served by the dominant commercial cinema), but that's a whole other issue.

I was just pulling my comment out of thin air based on your avatar. Actually, the more I think about it, I can see where you're coming from regarding the portrayal of women in Leone's 'Once Upon a Time in America,' even if I don't fully agree. I think Claudia Cardinale's character in 'West' is far more rounded and interesting, especially considering that Leone's previous films (and subsequent ones) portray their narrative perspective from that of the leading males (and further, females are almost non-existent in the world of the 'Dollars' trilogy). Perhaps this narrows the scope, or dumbs down the roundedness of the world Leone is portraying, but I don't feel it is necessarily a flaw, nor do I feel it subtracts from the overall dramatic impact of the film(s). 'America' suffers from far greater problems than weak female characters.

On a side note, can you think of a film from a writer-director with male characters equal in strength and development to the female ones? Just curious about your perspective on this subject.

And as for Jeanne Dielman, I was sort of playing contrarian here. I do think it's one of the most subversive, intense and peculiar exercises I've ever seen, and as far as aesthetics go, perhaps the most stylistically consistent. If I had the opportunity to catch it on the big screen with an audience, I'd jump on it in a heartbeat.

[jamaul]

So according to Match-Cut, Lynch owns the 80's and the 00's. Of this, I think I'll join the side that says: sweeeeeeeeeeeet

[baby doll]

On a side note, can you think of a film from a writer-director with male characters equal in strength and development to the female ones? Just curious about your perspective on this subject.André Téchiné's films generally try to accommodate characters of different generations, races, and sexual orientations, as well as gender, and Les Témoins in particular seems to me one of his most successful films.

[baby doll]

So according to Match-Cut, Lynch owns the 80's and the 00's. Of this, I think I'll join the side that says: sweeeeeeeeeeeetI'm okay with Lynch owning the 2000s (even if he only made two features, they're both incredible), but I'm not so keen on Lynch in the '80s, during which he seemed to be struggling to strike a balance between doing his thing (with regards to sound and image) and the constraints of having to tell a linear story, which tended to yield mixed results. Personally I'm less keen on The Elephant Man and more enthusiastic about Dune than most folks, but either way you dice it, both films and even Blue Velvet (his most successful film from this period) are several notches below a truly great Lynch movie like Eraserhead.

[Dillard]

Too bad Israfel didn't show to expound on his views. Quick, Israfel, this is your cue!

[Qrazy]

André Téchiné's films generally try to accommodate characters of different generations, races, and sexual orientations, as well as gender, and Les Témoins in particular seems to me one of his most successful films.

Funnily enough I just watched Wild Reeds. I found it to be incredibly bland.

[baby doll]

Funnily enough I just watched Wild Reeds. I found it to be incredibly bland.I'm shaking my head in disappointment.