We Don't Stop Here.

Ok, so in moments of tiredness and laziness I tend to fall back on ol' favs. Hence returning to R + J just recently. I also went back to one of my favourite films of the noughties, Mulholland Drive.


David Lynch is a genius. Let's just get it out there. And Mulholloand Drive is, quite obviously, the work of a genius at the peak of his nutcase powers. I am yet to see Inland Empire (bad me), but I understand it is also quite cray cray, so I'm going to assume that he's still at his peak. And Blue Velvet and Lost Highway were damn fine pieces of cinema, so he's been at the peak for, what, pretty much his entire career. We all love Twin Peaks. Sure there have been some minor misfires (we all remember what I thought of Wild At Heart), but in general I pick up a David Lynch film I know I'm at the very least going to be in for a wild ride. (On that note, I simply MUST check out The Straight Story, because it just sounds too different to miss.)

Meanwhile. Mulholland Drive. It started out as a pilot for a new television series, which wasn't picked up, but some people chucked some more money at him and asked him to make a film out of it. That film I saw back in the break between high school and uni in 2001/02 (it was late one year or early the next - I forget which.) I remember the film ending, and me turning to the two friends I was with and saying 'I have no idea what that was about, but I know that it was brilliant.' A number of years and many viewings later, I think I have some idea, but I don't know how much I will go into it for fear of ruining the experience for anyone who may stumble across here without having experienced the full magnificence of the film.


Naomi Watts scored her breakout role here as Betty/Diana. As the film begins, she is a young ingenue in from the mid-West, staying at her aunt's house in Hollywood while her aunt is out of town shooting a picture. Randomly, one evening, Rita/Camilla (Laura Elena Harring) is in a horrible car accident on Mulholland Drive and stumbles down to collapse, concussed, in the front yard of the aunt's building. The next morning, she wakes to find the aunt leaving - what a coincidence, she manages to sneak into the apartment that Betty shall soon occupy. Betty's good nature means that she only wants to help Rita, and the two become friends, even though Rita is not her real name and she has no idea who she is or what happened to her. So begins a long and twisted tormented journey into what may or may not be really going on - is the reality of the beginning a fiction brought on by Diana's own failings and jealousy at Camilla's success? The lesbian undertones are alluded to with the addition of director Adam (Justin Theroux), a presumably talented man who sells his soul to get his film made. Cowboys, man speaking care of tubes and spat out espressos are all too common in this fable about Hollywood, and anything is possible in a world where Ann Miller is the landlady of an apartment complex that once housed a prized boxing kangaroo. Hell, even Billy Ray Cyrus pops up.


This is an absolute tour de force. The mind that came up with it (that would be our dear friend Mr Lynch) should probably be hospitalised, but that would be such a waste to all of us waiting with bated breath for his next move. Watts' performance made her a star, literally overnight. Her audition scene, going from sweet and naive to sultry and malicious was and remains stunning, an incredible indication of the turning point that will send the movie spiraling into insanity (or reality.) And the Spanish performance of Roy Orbison's 'Crying' by Rebekah del Rio never fails to move me to tears in its power, beauty and the trick of falsity.


There is so little to say about the film outside of the fact that it will go down as one of the most unique pieces of truly compelling filmmaking in the history of cinema. Watching it goes past a must. 5 stars.

You Got Me Hotter Than Georgia Asphalt.

I'm a big David Lynch fan. Mulholland Drive is one of my favourite films. Twin Peaks is one of my favourite television shows. Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man - love 'em.


So it was with a great deal of expectation that I approached his Wild At Heart, his 1990 picture that brought him home the Palme d'Or. And... maybe my expectation did bad things. It just didn't really do it for me.

Sure, it was filled with Lynchian moments, but even they seemed a bit dulled down. Yes, it was over the top, the performances were extreme and caricatured in his distinctively twisted way. But it didn't have the through-line I wanted, it didn't leave me gasping with want for clarity, it didn't seem to have everything and anything going on below the surface. It seemed, in a way, to almost be a straight story told in a kooky way. And David, you're better than that.


Nicholas Cage plays Sailor, a con released back into the arms of his lover Lula (Laura Dern.) Very much against the wishes of Lula's nymphomaniac alcoholic mother Marietta (Diane Ladd) the two run off to California, trailed by private investigator Johnnie (Harry Dean Stanton), who has been in love with Lula for a long time, and gangster Marcelles Santos (J.E. Freeman), both hired independently by Marietta. En route, Sailor and Lula come across the aftermath of a car accident, with the lone survivor dying in front of them, which Lula sees as a bad omen and begs to stop at a town called Big Tuna in Texas to rest up for a bit - she's also become quite ill, strangely mostly in the morning...


While there, Sailor drops in on an old friend Perdita (Isabella Rossellini), as he's strapped for cash and hoping to make some more. He also meets Bobby Peru (Willem Dafoe), an intriguing character working with Perdita who asks him to go in on a simple feed store job for some quick cash. After Bobby blows away the two clerks unnecessarily, he announces that he's been hired to kill Sailor before being shot by sheriff officers who have turned up at the scene, then accidentally (and quite graphically) blowing his own head off. Sailor is arrested and spends another five years in jail whilst his young son with Lula grows up. Lula and child meet Sailor at the train station on his release, and Sailor quickly realises that he is not what they need now, before being beaten up by a street gang, discovering with a Wizard Of Oz hallucination that he is wrong, and runs over car roofs back to Lula, singing to her as the credits roll.


You see? It just doesn't quite sound crazy enough. And it plays so straight as well. Cage is fine as Sailor, playing an early installment of the same character he will riff off for a long time, while Dern is similarly acceptable as Lula, though somewhat over the top to the extent where any semblance of truth in her character kind of drowns (except for the late scene at the train station, which I found strangely moving.) The real highlights were Ladd as the mother (netting an Oscar nomination) and Dafoe as Bobby, beautifully chilling, seedy, sleazy and memorable.


Other than that, though, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot to say about the film. It's just not particularly memorable, really. Muddles its way through without a great deal of remarkability. 2.5 stars.