The chances are, then, that you will know – or knew – what to expect when you sit / sat down to watch Mulholland Drive.
If more mainstream common or garden Tinseltown fare is your bag, the chances are also that you won’t much enjoy Lynch’s film, or at least what you managed to sit through without throwing in the towel and wondering: ‘What’s it all about man, it was confusing. What does it all mean?’
Ah ‘meaning’, that bane of many a filmmaker, jazz musician, painter and writer. ‘It was OK, but you know, I didn’t quite understand it.’
Well, that’s odd: you want understanding? If you have just eaten an expensive meal out, food exquisitely well-prepared and something you have not tried before and you liked it, would it really make much sense then to remark: ‘Well, I really did like that – but I didn’t quite understand it all. What does it mean?’
And, of course, it meant nothing: the chef isn’t in the business of purveying ‘meaning’ – he cooks and prepares interesting food, and I suspect – I must be careful here because I’m not chef – he would be quite happy if you
How often have you heard someone comment ‘well, don’t get me wrong, I quite like some jazz, but I just don’t really understand it. What’s it supposed to mean?’
Come again? Isn’t music, whether by Beethoven, Miles Davis, Guy Clark, Bach, Taylor Swift, Afrobeat, Django Reinhardt, Steve Reich or anyone else you care to name essentially made to be listened to (or danced to)?
Are Taylor Swift, Dua Lupa and The Weeknd all about ‘meaning’? I bloody well hope not, because if so, it does all pass me by.
Isn’t it essentially all about sound – ‘noise’ in its most basic form – and what the composer and players are doing with it and how the produce and manipulate it, which is core to their artistry?
Yes, pretentious cooks and jazzers and for all I know modern plumbers might then come back with ‘there is an intellectual dimension to what I compose / play the pipes I install, matey!’ Well OK, if you say so, who am I to argue?
But being more of an uncouth philistine, I would then probably politely and as unobtrusively as possible leave the conversation to drink in another bar and in different company.
Meaning? When folk bring up ‘meaning’ when talking of films, I am reminded of Sam Goldwyn’s response to a writer who complained – and there are many different versions of this anecdote – that Goldwyn’s edit had ‘ruined the message’.
‘You want to send a message,’ Goldwyn advised him, ‘ring Western Union.’
The good Lord and Lynch will know what he intended when he made Mulholland Drive, what ‘effect’ – a word used here in its broadest possible sense – he was hoping to achieve, his ‘message’ if that’s your bag. And being of a liberal persuasion, I happily concede as much and wish good luck to Lynch. Me, I’m not too bothered at all to ‘know’ what the film ‘means’.
I’m far more content to enjoy – in fact ‘experience’ would be a better word – a film which I found interesting, engaging, intriguing and above all entertaining, and not least one which held my attention from beginning to end: frankly that is the acid test.
Many a cliché-ridden blockbuster slavishly observing all the usual blockbuster conventions, one larded with wooden dialogue and lines you have heard over and over again, has often lost my interest and attention quite soon.
OK, you might insist ‘it’s not the joke but how you tell it’ – or some variation thereof – but all too often ‘the joke’ is an old one, a tired and threadbare joke – you always know the Tom Cruise clone will get the girl and end up triumphant (and there would be a riot if he didn’t – the punters want what they want).
As for Mulholland Drive, many, I’ve heard, declare breathlessly that it is ‘a masterpiece’ and ‘brilliant’, and they proclaim it as one of the ‘top twenty best films of all time’ (a list which must thus surely include all the films made many centuries ago in Ancient Greece and by the Arab Islamists when their culture was producing all the top philosophers, mathematicians, surgeons and scientists).
Let’s calm down a little. As in jazz when a ‘wrong note’ is rarely detected because the canny jazzer who played it wisely chooses to repeat that ‘wrong note’ several times to persuade the more gullible ‘that this is jazz, man, that’s what we do’, any ‘inconsistencies’ in Lynch’s film, any ‘non–sequiturs’, any puzzling ‘plot holes’ or aspect of it you don’t quite ‘get’ get a pass: Lynch ‘meant’ them, the cineaste will assure me. The film is, after all, ‘a masterpiece’ and ‘brilliant’.
And I will assure you that I don’t care – overall the film does it for me and in spades, I loved every minute of it, even those minutes where I had not a clue what might be going on. But let’s stay sane and grounded.
Mulholland Drive has the common Lynch theme of ‘innocence’ corrupted, but I’m far more interested in the method rather than the substance – how well ‘the joke is told’ rather than the joke itself.
There are – thank the Lord – no ‘rules’ that artists of all disciplines are obliged to observe, and they tend to make their own rules. But in some ways Lynch’s film doesn’t always quite get there. For example, I felt the final third of the film oddly a little rushed.
The director Billy Wilder once said ‘Don't be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also’. Immodestly, I think I know what Wilder as getting at means, and Lynch might have taken note. But at the end of the day such judgments are matters of opinion, not fact.
The cineastes and ‘film buffs’ who know the star sign of every ‘significant’ director and what they usually ate for breakfast might disagree and insist Mulholland Drive is ‘a masterpiece’, but I would not get quite as excited. If you like Lynch’s work, take a gander at this. If you don’t, why not track down the latest Tom Cruise bollock-buster?
Isn’t it essentially all about sound – ‘noise’ in its most basic form – and what the composer and players are doing with it and how the produce and manipulate it, which is core to their artistry?
Yes, pretentious cooks and jazzers and for all I know modern plumbers might then come back with ‘there is an intellectual dimension to what I compose / play the pipes I install, matey!’ Well OK, if you say so, who am I to argue?
But being more of an uncouth philistine, I would then probably politely and as unobtrusively as possible leave the conversation to drink in another bar and in different company.
Meaning? When folk bring up ‘meaning’ when talking of films, I am reminded of Sam Goldwyn’s response to a writer who complained – and there are many different versions of this anecdote – that Goldwyn’s edit had ‘ruined the message’.
‘You want to send a message,’ Goldwyn advised him, ‘ring Western Union.’
The good Lord and Lynch will know what he intended when he made Mulholland Drive, what ‘effect’ – a word used here in its broadest possible sense – he was hoping to achieve, his ‘message’ if that’s your bag. And being of a liberal persuasion, I happily concede as much and wish good luck to Lynch. Me, I’m not too bothered at all to ‘know’ what the film ‘means’.
I’m far more content to enjoy – in fact ‘experience’ would be a better word – a film which I found interesting, engaging, intriguing and above all entertaining, and not least one which held my attention from beginning to end: frankly that is the acid test.
Many a cliché-ridden blockbuster slavishly observing all the usual blockbuster conventions, one larded with wooden dialogue and lines you have heard over and over again, has often lost my interest and attention quite soon.
OK, you might insist ‘it’s not the joke but how you tell it’ – or some variation thereof – but all too often ‘the joke’ is an old one, a tired and threadbare joke – you always know the Tom Cruise clone will get the girl and end up triumphant (and there would be a riot if he didn’t – the punters want what they want).
As for Mulholland Drive, many, I’ve heard, declare breathlessly that it is ‘a masterpiece’ and ‘brilliant’, and they proclaim it as one of the ‘top twenty best films of all time’ (a list which must thus surely include all the films made many centuries ago in Ancient Greece and by the Arab Islamists when their culture was producing all the top philosophers, mathematicians, surgeons and scientists).
Let’s calm down a little. As in jazz when a ‘wrong note’ is rarely detected because the canny jazzer who played it wisely chooses to repeat that ‘wrong note’ several times to persuade the more gullible ‘that this is jazz, man, that’s what we do’, any ‘inconsistencies’ in Lynch’s film, any ‘non–sequiturs’, any puzzling ‘plot holes’ or aspect of it you don’t quite ‘get’ get a pass: Lynch ‘meant’ them, the cineaste will assure me. The film is, after all, ‘a masterpiece’ and ‘brilliant’.
And I will assure you that I don’t care – overall the film does it for me and in spades, I loved every minute of it, even those minutes where I had not a clue what might be going on. But let’s stay sane and grounded.
Mulholland Drive has the common Lynch theme of ‘innocence’ corrupted, but I’m far more interested in the method rather than the substance – how well ‘the joke is told’ rather than the joke itself.
There are – thank the Lord – no ‘rules’ that artists of all disciplines are obliged to observe, and they tend to make their own rules. But in some ways Lynch’s film doesn’t always quite get there. For example, I felt the final third of the film oddly a little rushed.
The director Billy Wilder once said ‘Don't be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also’. Immodestly, I think I know what Wilder as getting at means, and Lynch might have taken note. But at the end of the day such judgments are matters of opinion, not fact.
The cineastes and ‘film buffs’ who know the star sign of every ‘significant’ director and what they usually ate for breakfast might disagree and insist Mulholland Drive is ‘a masterpiece’, but I would not get quite as excited. If you like Lynch’s work, take a gander at this. If you don’t, why not track down the latest Tom Cruise bollock-buster?
No comments:
Post a Comment