Dissecting "Mulholland Dr."

[dusken]

The Dusken is unique.

I have a great idea. Stop popping into serious threads in the intellectual forum and posting nonsense about me being unique. If you feel the need to be hypocritical by "wasting" bandwidth and webspace, do so in General Talk.

[dusken]

His response has arrived...

Can't talk much now but you do not need twin peaks to look into my interpretation. I simply used a vocabular defined by a specific set of semantic parameters - the interpretation of MD isn't based off of twin peaks - it just draws a verbal association for illuminating themes also (but independantly) explored in TP.

All I was using was the Black Lodge White Lodge metaphore - one could just as easily use terms like "Pure Metaphysical Evil" and "Pure Metaphysical Goodness" but those words carry too much independant weight - which is why I went with pre-existing Lynch terminology.

anyway - you presuppose that there are no existing factors outside of an internal reflective fantasy in your interpretation - but for that to be true Lynch would have to be guilty of a form of filmaking I think is kind of a let-down - where you show material that couldn't the character fantasizing couldn't possibly have access too unless you just say those material moments never happened - which is far too convenient a way of dismissing narrative and thematic elements that do not appear in other areas of the film - I believe that both sections are meticulously constructed to convey a singular unit upon the audience - I can't accept the half dream half real business on this film because that would mean that too much of the film is explained away and marginalized by its percieved existence.

[dusken]

To which I responded...

I will watch it again with your interpretation in mind.

Regarding my alleged presupposition: I do not think so. I think the allegorical aspect of the film may have plenty to do with that to a capacity you may or may not agree with. Your interpretation, from what I remember, does not explain, for example, "why Mulholland Dr.?" In my interpretation, with the allegory being Hollywood as an entity, it seems to be a tool representing that which people come here to achieve because Mulholland Dr. is, after all, "the ultimate" Hollywood residential street. Also, the idea of fantasy is an expression of that which did not occur so I do not see the explanatory aspect of my interpretation as much of a stretch, especially since Lost Highway was that way. The difference between them is that Lost Highway built the fantasy out of internal stimuli and Mulholland Dr. built its respective fantasy out of external stimuli. And, I believe the length involved wih any given situation in the fantasy sequence is directly propotional to the significance of the correlating real world stimulus, whether it be positive or negative. I know what you mean when you suggest that it would not be as meticulously contstructed as you believe it is but I do believe it is meticulous. The meticulousness of the interweaving of her emotions and the representation of the real world aspects and how they mingle is what captures me about the film and makes it stand out to me as an exceptionally original way of expressing a common place feeling.

[dusken]

...............

[Me],

Your elegant expression of Mullholland Dr. (the street itself) is not in any way undermined by my outlook. Remember that my analysis begins with LA is Purgatory. Hollywood, its trops and its torturous grinding of pre-envisioned dreams into dog food is no less a part of how I view the film - I just believe that the purgatory cycle is the physical narrative - not an allegorical one.

BTW: I like your style dude

[dusken]

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Thank you very much, my friend. I must say that I also appreciate the amount of thought you put into the film and the level of intricacy that resulted. Not to mention your eloquence, of course.

I will say that I have a hard time seeing the reason that the film should not be viewed in its simplest possible form, even if that would be in altering my interpretation. The two problems I have with the idea of Purgatory are that (1) David Lynch does not subscribe to the theistic dogma that includes it as an idea (personally, my Satanic/Agnostic self would probably not make a movie about biblical incidents) and (2) because Purgatory is a temporary node between life and Heaven and I would expect that the soul in Purgatory knows they are there. Your view of the general scenario of the movie suggests not only an infinite cycle but an ignorance of that fact. However, because your interpretation is the most thoughtout and interesting one I have heard yet, I will look into it further.

[dusken]

...............

Purgatory being another unfortunate representation of our linguistic prison...another example of a word with too much baggage. Lynch may be a buddhist but he's still capable of drawing on the very theology he condemns to critique a world dominated by that self-same paradigm. Added to which, if, as I have suggested, the Blue haired lady in Club Silencio is Camilla's soul than the soul is well aware of its stint in purgatory and its the vessels that are unaware; added to which - the cycle isn't necessarily infinite - just extremely long winded...the accident - for example - may have ended it. Anyway I wish you luck in your next viewing - I enjoyed the challenge.

[Hogg]

What a great idea. Paste a thread (more of a convo between 2) from one forum to another. Is anyone actually reading all this?


How weird. The Elephant Man is on now and I just found out it's a David Lynch movie. Okay, maybe it's not that weird.

[dusken]

I posted this just to express my interpretation of the film. I posted it on two forums simultaneously. Nobody here seems to have an intellectual opinion on anything that they have not absorbed from their professors at USC and UCLA but my post in the other forum yielded a disagreement. I figured that it is only fair to post the opposing side in here. If you are not interested in "Mulholland Dr." you would not read it. So what? Not only do I not give a phuck about you and whether you survive the day and therefore give no credit to your opinion but I believe there are far worse threads, especially in General Talk, that are more deserving of criticism in terms of their usefullness.

[winoman]

Nobody here seems to have an intellectual opinion on anything that they have not absorbed from their professors at USC and UCLA but my post in the other forum yielded a disagreement.

LOL - and I can see why you say this...but they're young and impressionable...so shouldn't be too surprised..

BTW - haven't seen the film (though I picked it up on DVD several weeks ago) - been meening to watch it...have heard good things...(haven't much read this thread though...but I certainly will at some point...)

[dusken]

BTW - haven't seen the film (though I picked it up on DVD several weeks ago) - been meening to watch it...have heard good things...

It is one of the best films ever made.