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Sunday, 4:17 pm in Archive

Well, Mulholland Drive was definatley better to watch than Lost Highway, the fact that the ‘twist’ in the plot was so painfully obvious I noticed it when Betty was leaving the airport aside. Okay, I didn’t get it entierly correct; I figured the scenes with the girls were part of the movie/TV series the other scenes in the film were portraying the ‘real life’ story to (for some reason Ed, the guy who gets killed with the Black Book, came across to me as a series writer; talking about the car crash as if it was some plot twist they had hacked together to write in/out a character). But, yanno, I was pretty close (though originally I thought ‘Betty’ was a delusion of ‘Rita’s, in that ‘Rita’ was the ‘real’ ‘Betty’ and ‘Betty’ was the person ‘Rita’ wished she was; which was actually kind of close to the generally accepted theory of what’s going on).

But (and there’s always a but), I think Mulholland Drive still suffers from Lynch’s seemingly pathological (mysogynistic) ‘blame the victim’ mentality, which he slavishly gorges on in Twin Peaks. Sexual women in Lynch’s universes are always dynfunctional, sluts, temptresses and – ultimatley – doomed to a death they ‘deserved’. Fire Walk With Me (which I quite liked otherwise, same with Twin Peaks) is particularly painful in this regard, and Mulholland Drive also suffers from it if you buy the theory that Diane was abused. Lynch has absolutley appalling feamle characters in everything of his I’ve watched (including Dune, but okay I can’t really blame him for those since he didn’t write it), and I find it weird that he’s always described as ‘erotic’, since I’ve never seen anything in a Lynch film I would consider ‘erotic’. His sex scenes and romances in general are bland, violent, pornographic, vouyeristic and painful; never have I felt anything but revulsion towards any of them. I suppose often I think this is supposed to be the point, but sometimes I think it’s not (for example the Rita/Betty scene, which I think was supposed to be heart-wrenching and romantic, but just came off like cheap male-made lesbo porn). I think Lynch has about as much of a clue about female erotiscism and sexuality as the Pope (whose two great female role models are the Virgin Mother and Mary Magdeline the Whore) does, and it’s this element that always turns me right off to any of his works, especially something like Mulholland Drive which – at the base of it – is a unrequited-love/revenge story between two women.

No, I haven’t seen Blue Velvet. In case you were just about to ask.

Oh, and the one other thing is Lynch’s seeming occasionally contempt for his audience, such as when Betty and Rita go to the theatre and the Magician is screaming out “all is illusion!” Well, no shit Sherlock. Want to ram it down our throats some more? Or, in fact, the scene with Adam and the Cowboy; I really hate cheap nonsensical moralising like that. (Yeah yeah, no comments from you, Mr. Peanut Gallery.) Sometimes I wonder whether Lynch is really just a ham-fisted hack with not half the talent people attribute to him. Maybe he’s just lucky that his fans read so much shit into his films; kinda like the Bible Code and that guy from Pi who says that as soon as you become obsessed looking for something you’re likely to find it everywhere.

Anyway, the last movie on my stack is Ed Wood, which you likely won’t hear anything about because I guess it’s pretty straightforward. For the record, I own Plan Nine From Outer Space (it was the second DVD I ever bought after Beetlejuice)  and didn’t think it was nearly as hilariously bad as people make out; it actually sent me to sleep. Maybe it’s better to watch with other people for the mocking value…

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