Letters to the Editor
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Angels in America...
was horrendous. I'd need ten cups of fair-trade organic coffee to sit through that nonsense again.
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Inland Empire
Jesus, you movie critics don't realize how lucky you are. I'd be willing to forfeit my right to see all the rest of this year's big movies, starting with "The Departed" this weekend, for a chance to see this movie.
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the blossoming of maximo oliveros
i believe that this column which is meant to expose readers to films outside the mainstream should devote some space to this little philippine movie which I think is now showing in art houses in new york and l.a.,"the blossoming of maximo oliveros". while garnering acclaim in european festivals (it has the strange distinction of winning the best gay film and the best children's film in berlin!), it received no press coverage when it was shown in sundance and MOMA. at least, the coverage that comes from someone like andrew and his supposedly indie-loving ilk.tsk,tsk,tsk
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That Mulholland Drive "explainer"
...was a masterpiece interpretation and was also the article that got me to subscribe to Salon for good. No magazine, online or print, attempted such a bold examination of one of my favorite directors.
Those rabbits, by the way, might be a carry over from Lynch's online sitcom. You have to pay for it but I think it's worth it if you're a Lynch fan.
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Perhaps the First Reviewer To Get It
Andrew O'Hehir may be the first reviewer to "get" Lynch. For a long time now, I too have suspected that Lynch's films are about their images and their sounds, about the emotions--both in the characters and in the audience. They are about the moment we are going through right now and not knowing where the next will lead us. I'm glad someone finally agrees!
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Rabbits
Them's bunnies, all right. Though I haven't had the pleasure of seeing "Inland Empire" yet, (I'll be there day one), the descriptions I've read of the rabbit-sitcom-inserts - giant bunny heads, scrambled sitcom dialog and situations, discontinuous laugh track apropos of nothing on the screen - describe Lynch's webisode "Rabbits" to a tee. If I understand his modus operandi correctly, he wrote a series of more-or-less standard half-hour TV scripts, then cut them up and rearranged them, mostly randomly (shades of WSB) and threw in laughter here and there. Taken at a gulp, rather than in small rabbit-bites, it's thoroughly unnerving and discombobulating.
Sort of reminds one of the way he took the failed TV series "Mulholland Drive," cut it up, rearranged it, added new stuff, and popped out an absurdist masterpiece. David Lynch - master media repurposer?
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Inland Empires
I definitely agree with TL that Lynch's films are mostly to be understood on an intuitive, emotional level, but I also have to point out that there is always just enough clues to form a cogent narrative. The issue is that there aren't enough to form a "definitive" narrative, which is most of the fun in my opinion.(I loved the Mulholland Dr. piece, but even that didn't even begin to scratch the surface of the many interpretations that I've read) That being said, many fans make the mistake of obsessesing over every throwaway detail and line in the hopes that they "get" what's REALLY going on.
From what we know about Lynch's directorial and artistic style, this can't be done, because most of the time Lynch doesn't really know what he's trying to get across. He started out as an abstract painter, and approaches movies in much the same way, by creating a richly textured canvas of light, color, and sound that hints at a something much deeper, more primal, more subconscious, that may not even be fully understand even by the artist. That's why I was so intrigued by the title "Inland Empire", and Mr. O'Hehir points out, that it refers to the repeating themes of the dark and uncharted realms of dreams and memories, and that dwell in all of us. No one is better at Lynch at hinting at or representing the terrifying inner life of the mind. Almost all his fimls deal with the repression of some heinous act/s, and the characters' futile struggle to realize or deal with what they have done/what has been done to them. The tragedy is that as humans we are doomed to repeat our own degradation/repression--see Mulholland Dr. and Lost Highway--the best part about Lynch is he is just enough of a storyteller that he never fully delves into total abstraction. He has a unique sense of mystery and character that make his films all the more enjoyable. I can't wait for "Inland Empire", it sounds like quite an experience.
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inland empire
located directly east of los angeles, not southeast. southeast leads one to the 'orange curtain' a.k.a. the OC
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Correction - Not shot on HD
It was shot on DV with a Sony PD150
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a worthy point
Bubbleboy is right to observe that film critics are in a highly privileged position, invited to see movies that paying customers, including the director's core fans, might not get to see for months or even years. I hope most of us remember that it really is an exquisite privilege, and not just a hassle or a responsibility, but it's useful to be reminded.
It's an odd job, though. (I am definitely not asking for sympathy here.) I was eager to see "Inland Empire" too, as more or less a Lynch fan. But then I had to get up early on a rainy Sunday morning and haul my ass to Lincoln Center for a 9 AM screening of a dark, weird movie, when like anybody else I'd basically rather have slept late, had a lazy breakfast and played with my kids. It's not an ideal circumstance to see a movie like that or any other, and those of us who do it have to try to clear the early-morning junk out of our heads and get into "movie space." If there was ever a film for late-late-night consumption, this is it.
I sometimes wonder how the often-strange circumstances of consumption affect me, and other critics. The press screenings at Cannes started at 8:30 AM, and you need to get there early, so I had to catch the 7:40 train from two towns away. I know, poor me. My only point is that it's a strange thing to get up at commuter hours, take the commuter train, and go see a movie. Sometimes I think it's the acid test: "Volver" was still wonderful in the breakfast hour, but Richard Kelly's "Southland Tales" was possibly even more unbearable than it would have been at night. You just don't forgive flabbiness and long-windedness the same way, I suspect. I would have found "Marie Antoinette" to be a pretty, vacant spectacle at any hour, but it seemed especially and progressively trivial as it went on, and as I concentrated more & more on getting out of 18th century France and back to the 21st century version, where I could eat a fucking croissant and have some of that delicious burned-tasting coffee. All the pastries Marie and her pals in the film just added insult to injury.
Whatever. Speaking of coffee, I didn't do a great job on "Black Gold" this week. There was too much other stuff. Check it out if you can. It's funny and intriguing and doesn't lecture you. It goes not just to Ethiopia but also Italy and Seattle and London. Plus it has lots of random facts about the international coffee trade, and I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff.