Alright, well, I'm back. I probably should be packing (as I haven't done that yet... and we leave early tomorrow morning) and Morgan (my friend who's coming with us) should be here any minute (he's sleeping over), but I just felt like I needed to describe Mulholland Drive.
Haha, I wrote that late the night before we left for Bonnaroo and then Morgan arrived, right after I wrote that. But I feel like writing now, the night before I leave for camp, and don't feel in the mood to write about Bonnaroo (or the time - that's gonna be much longer). So, I thought I'd talk about the film Mulholland Drive.....
Two nights before we left for Bonnaroo, at about 11:00 p.m. I decided to watch Mulholland Drive, as I wasn't tired yet and I figured I'd finish it in the morning. Plus, I had been anticipating it and wanting to see it for quite some time now, so I was eager to watch it. I put it in and from that point on, I was put in a trance. It was one of the weirdest, if not the weirdest, experience I've ever had watching a movie, but to call Mulholland Drive just a movie would be to undermine it's affect: Mulholland Drive is an experience, and it transcends movies. Now, I'm not saying that Mulholland Drive is the best movie ever made, or my favorite, but it is like no other movie I've ever seen. It was my first David Lynch film (and from what I've read afterwards, supposedly Lost Highway and Inland Empire are even weirder), so that may play into it. I knew about David Lynch; namely that he was just another director, but that his films were really, really weird - but that doesn't even begin to describe it. We all have our own connotations for the word 'weird' and you have to set those aside when you're calling a David Lynch film 'weird' because though there's no other word to describe it, and it certainly is weird, it's not weird like anything else is weird.
Okay, I know I'm talking in really broad terms here, and making pretty grand statements, but I don't want to spoil the experience, because going into Mulholland Drive, you have to know nothing about it. I had seen the trailer for it, but it didn't seem to make any sense to me (even though watching it now, it seems like it has way more of a straight forward plot than it actually does), and all I really knew was that it was highly praised. So I put it in, having no idea what I was getting myself into, and suddenly two and a half hours passed. I hadn't moved an inch the entire time, stuck in position, entranced by this movie - I wasn't able to stop watching, take my eyes off, or go to bed. Now it was 1:30 in the morning and I sat there staring at the TV screen and whispered to myself: "What the fuck did I just watch?"
See, Mulholland Drive, well, made no fucking sense. In the film, random things just happen and are never explained. Characters pop up in beginning scenes and then never appear again, and many scenes play out, later seeming to have no relevance to anything whatsoever. The film is a mystery. Okay, well, that's the beginning of the film, but for some reason you can't stop watching - it's not bad, as in 'This doesn't even make sense! This is so stupid! I'm turning this off!' - and it's not laughable how it doesn't make sense, it just is. In reality, it's actually quite good, and the way David Lynch directs it you're drawn in, even though you don't understand it. And the direction is really, really good - that's something you can certainly admire. As the film goes on, though, it seems to start making more sense; there's more of a central plot that you're following and think you understand - weird stuff still happens, but you get the feeling that by the end, it'll all start making sense and trying itself up again. However, the opposite ends up being true, and if anything, David Lynch starts to put the ribbon on the box before letting it loose again causing the box to fall, open, and spill all over the place. In the last half hour, things get really weird and really don't start making sense and you don't get what's going on, but you're still left with the feeling that this wasn't poorly made; in fact, it was amazing and revolutionary. I know what you're thinking, it's revolutionary only because it doesn't follow the rules of storytelling, when in actuality anyone could make a film that doesn't make any sense and things happen for no reason. And although anyone could make that story, only David Lynch can make it work. Even though it didn't make the traditional sort of 'sense,' I actually did feel as if I understood it in a way, my own way I guess. It made a strange sort of sense, without giving all, or any, of the answers. And it's almost as if David Lynch is saying "Why do films have to have a plot?" This seemed to be all about tone and mood, and even though you weren't sure what it all meant, you certainly got a feeling, and that feeling is what it means. You can't deny, even if you like your films to be more cohesive, that it gave a strange feeling like nothing else. And as I imagine David Lynch would say "Why do films have to be cohesive? Can't films be left up to the viewer's interpretation of things and events?" He merely provides the outline; we determine how the story unfolds. And after reading other's interpretations of the film, as well as trying to develop my own, I have a pretty good idea of what I think happened, or what it means to me. I found it baffling when I read one post on IMDb, acting as if two widely agreed interpretations were set-in-stone fact, when those are just two interpretations like any others, though they may be shared by more people. And there are parts of some theories that I agree with and others that I don't, and I still haven't made sense of what it all means and every detail/scene in the film, but I don't think I'm meant to know. David Lynch has kept all the answers to himself.
To me, Mulholland Drive is kind of like Taoism. Once you've made sense of all of Mulholland Drive, like finding the Tao, you keep it to yourself and don't share it with others, because what it means, or finding the Tao, is all relative and depends on the person and.... oh my God, I think I just discovered the Tao myself. I guess that means I have to delete my post, because I'm not supposed to share it with others. Oh, fuck it, I'm not a Taoist. But I've read people who claim they finally understand what it all means, but don't post it, because it's about the journey finding the answers, not what the answers are themselves. One guy watched it like 300 times in a row consecutively, without any outside help from the internet or other people, and developed his own theory (which happens to not agree with the widely believed theory) about what it means.
The movie's also pretty creepy. Really creepy tone and some scary moments and I was watching it at 11 - 1:30 at night, all alone, with all the lights off, and suffice to say, I got kinda freaked/creeped out. I showed about the first hour to Morgan (who analyzes everything) and he didn't think it made sense, though he got tired and fell asleep. When we got back from Bonnaroo, I showed it to Nathan, who really enjoyed it, but didn't understand it either, but just loved how weird and random it was. Oh and there's a really hot lesbian sex scene. I mean, I always understood why guys like lesbian sex scenes (I mean, it's two girls), but I never really understood it until I saw this. Anyways, you should watch it. Seriously.
