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.

Last Time, Last Year - Not So Good.

I have eons of time for I Heart Huckabees. Literally, eons. Well, not literally, but eons in the sense that Vivian and Bernard might use the term considering we are all one and therefore my matter and energy shall continue forever. 

Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman) is having a crisis. He is the head of the Open Spaces Coalition, devoted to preserving open space amongst the urban sprawl in America. In doing so he gets involved with the Huckabees corporation, a large kind of K-Mart or H&M or something type company - a corporate sponsor who are responsible for a lot of the sprawl but can raise their profile and aid their own PR. To this end he becomes involved with Brad (Jude Law), a marketing exec dating the face of Huckabees Dawn (Naomi Watts.) Whilst meeting with him he finds the card for a pair of existential detectives, Vivian (Lily Tomlin) and Bernard (Dustin Hoffman), who he contacts with a view to solving a coincidence involving Stephen (Ger Duany.) However, he bites off a bit more than he can chew as they set about pulling apart his entire notion of existence. He is paired with his 'other', Tommy (Mark Wahlberg), and the two are meant to strengthen each others resolve as they attempt to realise that everything is the same, nothing is different, we are all connected. But Tommy is splitting up with his wife and getting involved with another existentialist, Caterine (Isabelle Huppert), who used to be Vivian and Bernard's best student but has gone along very opposite lines, espousing the notion that nothing is connected, everything is random, life is cruel. Hilarity ensues.


Seriously, hilarity does ensue. It's all existential waffling, notions of reality, those kind of 'hippy' ideas of togetherness, separateness and being that seem quite trite, but writer/director David O Russell's dealing of them makes them sublimely ridiculous whilst still ringing somewhat true. The writing is truly exceptional, with so many quotable lines that in the days immediately following any of my viewing it is virtually impossible to get a straight word out of me - it's all 'there's glass between us', 'infinite nature' and 'I'm in my tree, I'm talking with the Dixie Chicks and they're making me happy.' And the performances are suitably ridiculous without parodying themselves. Tomlin is crazily esoteric while Huppert (marry me) is brilliantly cold and distant, but at the same time so powerfully seductive with her rejection of anything of meaning.


There are some great cameos from the likes of Tippi Hedren and Shania Twain, and the music from Jon Brion is perfectly suited to the serious yet whimsical nature of the entire concept. It's hard to say too much without going into ramblings on various aspects, which I won't do. But if the idea of an existential comedy makes you want to chew out your own eyes, then this isn't for you. If you like the idea of a comedy that makes you think while you're holding your sides from laughter, but doesn't really make you think that much if it does make you think, but maybe you've been thinking it all along and we're all actually the same person but perhaps this is just random that you're now watching this and maybe maybe maybe you see what I mean.


It's worth YouTubing scenes that made it onto the internet of Russell abusing cast members as well. They're kind of scarily hysterical... he is seriously an asshole from the looks of them (they made it onto the net a few years back), but they make you wonder why the fantastic cast stuck around. 5 stars.