RIP thread

[Arthur Crabtree]

Norman Wisdom in Albania!

I saw Full Monty as bracing social realism and a political protest film rather than a fun film about male strippers. Masterpiece is overstating it though. Bicycle Thieves is a masterpiece.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Mulholland Drive is number 8 in the 1922 Sight and Sound critics top 100.

Blue Velvet at 85.

In the directors list Mulholland Drive is 22.

Eraserhead is 52, Blue Velvet is 72.

[Durhamfootman]

Joan Plowright, 95

[Arthur Crabtree]

Doesn't seem to have been in Harry Potter...

[Arthur Crabtree]

Best known to me for Enchanted April, which is a big favourite of mine. And as the daughter of Olivier in The Entertainer who she met during the play run and married the year after the film. More famous for the stage, but I'll remember her particularly for the latter in support of one of the great film lead performances.

It's a long way from Brigg, Lincs to the Old Vic.

[sussexpob]

For what its worth, I dug this out the depth of my Google Drive. My original, unreleased, review I wrote for my worst films list that I never finished....

22. Mulholland Drive (2001)- David Lynch

Many films that I consider to be very good are "vibe" films - they have no great narrative plot, or can be about nothing in particular- they exist merely as a portal into a world of visual splendour, or an invitation to indulge in the chemistry or dialogue between its characters. Ask me for instance what Lost in Translation is about, and I couldn't give you much more of an explanation than - "its about two people who meet and talk to one another" - nothing really happens past that, the plot merely creating the situations where they bump into one another to do exactly that.

Mulholland Drive is a cinematic paradox; a "vibes" film stuffed with deep narrative complexity. Lynch achieves this paradox by making the narrative so meaningless, so impenetrably undecipherable that we have no choice but to strap in for the ride and avoid attempting to analyse it- we have no choice but to sit there and watch it unfold, without judgement, without question, without understanding - trying to decode what's going on is akin to trying to read a dictionary in a language you don't understand.

Maybe Lynch is operating on a higher plane than I give him credit for - maybe his intention is to create so much complexity, we have no choice but to focus our gaze on the elements he wants us to concentrate on, with everything else being a diversion that takes us to this place naturally - more like being forced to read a page from foreign dictionary with one definition written in English, one that is important and then sticks out in the babble. At the very least though, that is still inviting me to disregard pretty much all of the film. The end result is at best 10% comprehension in a wasteland of nothingness.

The best way to explain it is to use the previous example - Lost in Translation works as a film where nothing really important happens - but it would not work as a film if the "two people meet and talk" vibe part was set to something unrealistically complex. Scarlett Johansson starts the film being fired out of a cannon and arrives in Tokyo, where she meets Bill Murray, a man teleported from an Alienspace ship passing Earth to find out what life was like down there. They meet at the Grand Hyatt at Tokyo and form a bond.... and then the film never mentions the fact Bill is really an Alien, or Scarlett just flew 10,000 miles in the air or why she got in a cannon in the first place. Just forget about that. Someone specifically chose to put those details there, but then specifically chose for them to be meaningless..... but then, I cannot disregard that. I cannot ignore that choice. Its too nihilistic for me to comprehend. Surely these choices are for reasons? People don't just create narrative for no reason? Or to be so unimportant? Absence is fine, but the choice here is conscious.

In the end, this is the type of art that I hate. Well crafted enough to suggest it can't be that vacuous, but in reality it probably is - the sort of art that allows critics to assign it meaning, but cannot speak for itself. That vague, nothingness that only becomes something during a debate between turtle neck wearing, cigar smoking critics trying to out clever each other with their interpretations while sipping brandy and verbally masturbating.

This is Tracey Emin in film..... it's just a bed....

[sussexpob]

Dune would be in my worst 500.

Thing this is the example that proves the rule. Taking on a project with an established narrative universe that people understood, Lynch couldn't get away with creating something so indecipherably him. People know the book, and could reference it when critiquing the film - the result was a historical disaster. Lynch coudn't just make a film where all its failures or weaknesses are interpreted as art....

[Arthur Crabtree]

Lost in Translation is about trying to make a Wong Kar-Wai film.

For me, the great merit of MD is Naomi Watts scenes when she reads out the film script and then repeats it with an actor. That was a big wow moment for me. Though Christine Keener does something similar in Living in Oblivion six years earlier.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Obviously we all see different things. Some people love elusive complexity. The head movie. Look at the popularity of the Blade Runner sequel and Chris Nolan films. For me, a great (arthouse) film maker (in the modern period) is Kieslowski (or Wong Kar-Wei) who can communicate something intuitive with great simplicity. But who is to say that puzzling over obscure motifs in MD is lesser in any way? It's just another way of responding. Some people are good at maths and others can draw. Many people feel enriched by MD. And in a decade when Hollywood focused on the gross out comedy, at least it was ambitious.

7/10. Mainly for Watts, and the neo-noir photography.

[sussexpob]

Obviously we all see different things. Some people love elusive complexity. The head movie. Look at the popularity of the Blade Runner sequel and Chris Nolan films

The element of interpretative elusiveness in art is obviously a fundamental reason why many things are enjoyable - the most famous piece of art in history for instance, the Mona Lisa, is famous for the reason that it divides people on what emotion the subject is expressing, and there can never be an answer, and nor should there ever be an answer - its why the painting resonates with people.

But I separate Mulholland Drive from that type of analysis. Lynch isn't giving is a cohesive option to form any opinion on - its like he has painted over Mona Lisa's face with a jet black hole, and then asks "so, is she smiling, disinterested or sad? Well, she doesn't have a face, so how can I even begin to answer that question? Its totally mute. The work is totally meaningless.

And that's what I alluded to in my review. I don't like art like that. I struggle to see where the creativity is from the artist - its the viewer who has to input the creativity. To find meaning, its me who has to be creative, that has to pluck out something from thin air. And at that point, anything becomes art if you want to take it that far. If its limitless, and anything "elusive" becomes a canvas for interpretation. For me, the artist has to at the very least create something that loans itself to that. I find art like this is a total cop out. It operates on pretentious ideals where people enjoy being clever in creating ideas.

Only the other day I was watching a thing on TV where a comedian took some worthless item to an art critic gathering, and watched as loads of critics said how beautiful it was, etc etc... must have been made in 14th century Italy by some craftsman, blah blah.... was bought in Action for 1 Euro. People looking hard enough will find false meaning in anything they want.

[sussexpob]

For the record, I think Inception is arguably the greatest blockbuster film ever made.

[Arthur Crabtree]

Well... MD is not a film I like particularly, so I'm not going to defend it anymore! And I probably couldn't without seeing it again. Which I don't want to...

[Arthur Crabtree]

The Guardian ranks Lynch's films (& tv). It's got one worse than Dune!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/j ... ows-ranked

[sussexpob]

The Guardian ranks Lynch's films. It's got one worse than Dune!

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/j ... ows-ranked

Been a long time since I seen Blue Velvet - I remember it being very, very weird, but nothing else.

A had a friend who studied Media said yesterday on our whatsapp group that 3 people dropped out a film study module after being forced to watch it.

[Arthur Crabtree]

That's what those kinds of films are. They are not widely popular and they appeal to a small hardcore of enthusiasts. They divide opinion. They are personal and idiosyncratic and are hard to get made. It's encouraging that these kinds of people are out there, looking for different ways. They tend to appeal to critics... but not all critics.

I'm not a fan of DL, but there are other film makers who are also going their own way that I do like. I think that's how arthouse cinema works.