THE ART HOUSE ESSENTIAL
Mulholland Drive — Rent or buy from Apple TV +
Perhaps no other film since Lynch’s spiritual predecessor Luis Buñuel’s 1972 surrealist masterpiece The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie has relied so confidently on the logic of dreams for its chilling and unnerving overall effect than 2001’s Mulholland Drive.
A neo-noir whose mystery remains purposefully unsolvable and interpretation elusively endless, it’s perhaps the most Lynchian of Lynch films. It’s packed with memorably dark images and set pieces, all working to lead you into a world that terrifies, provokes and scratches incessantly at your brain from the inside.
Ostensibly it’s the story of a mysterious, dark-haired, classic-film beauty Rita (Laura Elena Harring), who wakes up with no memory in the passenger seat of a smashed-up limousine on LA’s iconic Mulholland Drive. Crawling out of the wreckage, bruised and disoriented, Rita straggles down the hill and manages to drag herself to her Aunt Ruth’s apartment where she’s having a shower, when she’s surprised by the arrival of young, naïf blonde Betty (Naomi Watts).
Together the two women embark on a journey whose purpose is not, in the 1950s Nancy-Drew-style it first appears, to find answers but rather to lead us deeper into a dreamscape world of dark fascination, fragmented focus with a mesmerising collection of convoluted images and sequences.
Emotionally devastating, completely absorbing and quite unlike anything else in American movies, Mulholland Drive is perhaps the most clearly executed vision of Lynch’s singularly uneasy fascination with what lurks beneath the surface. It’s an expert examination into what remains unknown but certainly unforgettable.
TRAILER:
Celebrating the legacy of master director David Lynch in three films
These offer the best of the worst of human nature and obsession that Lynch has left behind
Image: Courtesy of Janus Films
The acclaim and appreciation for maverick, surreal master director David Lynch has been universal since his death last week at the age of 78. In a career spanning five decades, Lynch crafted a dark vision of the terrors and psychologically traumatic nightmares lurking beneath the seemingly picture-perfect façade of American life that earned him his own adjective and made him one of the most recognisably individual directors in cinema history.
Though his last feature film, Inland Empire, had been released in 2006 and his entire career encompassed only a modest 11 features, Lynch was always creating — whether in the feature film, advert, short film or music video arenas. The films that he left remain some of the most uniquely arresting and psychologically provocative in the medium.
Here, in celebration of a man who in person was a genuinely nice, pleasant kook — far from the terrifying characters he put on screen — are three films that offer the best of the worst of human nature and obsession that Lynch has left behind.
Inspirations of a bad day
THE ART HOUSE ESSENTIAL
Mulholland Drive — Rent or buy from Apple TV +
Perhaps no other film since Lynch’s spiritual predecessor Luis Buñuel’s 1972 surrealist masterpiece The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie has relied so confidently on the logic of dreams for its chilling and unnerving overall effect than 2001’s Mulholland Drive.
A neo-noir whose mystery remains purposefully unsolvable and interpretation elusively endless, it’s perhaps the most Lynchian of Lynch films. It’s packed with memorably dark images and set pieces, all working to lead you into a world that terrifies, provokes and scratches incessantly at your brain from the inside.
Ostensibly it’s the story of a mysterious, dark-haired, classic-film beauty Rita (Laura Elena Harring), who wakes up with no memory in the passenger seat of a smashed-up limousine on LA’s iconic Mulholland Drive. Crawling out of the wreckage, bruised and disoriented, Rita straggles down the hill and manages to drag herself to her Aunt Ruth’s apartment where she’s having a shower, when she’s surprised by the arrival of young, naïf blonde Betty (Naomi Watts).
Together the two women embark on a journey whose purpose is not, in the 1950s Nancy-Drew-style it first appears, to find answers but rather to lead us deeper into a dreamscape world of dark fascination, fragmented focus with a mesmerising collection of convoluted images and sequences.
Emotionally devastating, completely absorbing and quite unlike anything else in American movies, Mulholland Drive is perhaps the most clearly executed vision of Lynch’s singularly uneasy fascination with what lurks beneath the surface. It’s an expert examination into what remains unknown but certainly unforgettable.
TRAILER:
THE STONE-COLD CLASSIC
Blue Velvet — Prime Video
Lynch’s fourth feature from 1987 remains one of his post most poured over, analysed, darkly erotic and unnerving creations.
Starring Kyle McLachlan as Jeffrey, a seemingly ordinary small-town US college kid who, after his father dies from a stroke in the film’s iconic opening scene, returns home to find that beneath the manicured lawns, carefully tended gardens and picket fences of his hometown, lurks another world full of strange misfits and dangerous obsessions. In the character of Dennis Hopper’s Frank is a psychotic force that threatens to suck up anything good in its furious wake.
Deeply uncomfortable to watch in many places, completely impossible to ignore and messily violent and picture-perfect peaceful in other places, it sets up many of the preoccupations and techniques that Lynch would continue to use to increasingly mind-boggling effect in later works. The film offers conclusions to a plot that you can follow out of any of the works that have come to carry the Lynchian label.
In 1987 there was nothing quite like it anywhere in the cinematic universe and almost 40 years later, the only films that you could compare it to were all made by David Lynch.
TRAILER:
THE DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
What Did Jack Do? — Netflix
A tantalisingly uncompleted glimpse perhaps, of a larger idea that we will never see realised, Lynch’s absurdist short from 2020 remains a distinctively odd peek into the strange world and obsessions of its creator.
Lynch himself takes lead acting duties here as a detective who’s interrogating Jack Cruz, a capuchin monkey accused of murder who the detective has managed to track down.
He has a chance at getting his answers because Jack is a talking monkey with a deep-faked mouth and a croaky voice that’s provided by Lynch.
What follows is a solid 17-minute piece of absurdist comedy filled with non sequiturs, darkly humorous wisdom all shot in a scratchy black and white that harks back to the director’s ‘70s debut breakthrough feature, Eraserhead.
What it all means is anyone’s guess but it certainly remains an exercise in style that only Lynch could pull off.
TRAILER:
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