--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Angela Mailander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > The appropriate point of this work was that the artist does not care whether he is portraying beautiful life or ugly life. It is all worthy of his attention, his talent, and his inspiration. > > No art critic would call a work of art "crap" just because the subject matter is something a psychologist would only visit with his most disturbed clients. Whether or not it is crap does not depend on the subject matter, but on the way he portrays it.
Great points Angela. I must out myself that I saw Mulholland Drive 2 or 3 times and really liked it. I liked it because its mysterious not just a sraight forward story, most of which you can calculate yourself, and I liked it for the imagery. For example, right after the lesbian scene, when they go to the magic theater, the whole thing is full of spiritual meaning. The artists perform obviously singing, but as one singer faints, you see that the voice is coming from a tape. So everything is just an illusion, a theater play, the artists seemingly playing are just lip-synchronising to a recording. I think this is a very adapt spiritual analogy. The club is called 'silencio' and silence is a key-phrase in that scene. the whole performance is in silence, the music coming from a tape. During that scene the whole story skips, the two girls go through a magic cube into a different space, this being the past or simply an alternate reading of reality, or the actual reality, while the beginning was simply a dream. There are many subplots, many symbolic hints. For example there is a bum in the film, who secretly holds all the strings, the persons in power obviously just being puppets in the hands of a strange being, obviously powerless in the ordinary sense. I got reminded of the Avadhuts, who live on streets, careless about their outer appearance but thoroughly enlightened. In this film things are not as they seem to be, there are layers of reality, one persons dream is another persons reality and vice versa. In the second half of the film, the two girls, Betty and Rita basically swap roles. Betty being the succesfull and Rita the shy one in the first half, in the second half Rita has the success and Betty is depressed. The whole film can also be seen as commenting on the illussiory glamour and the shallowness of Hollywood. So, yes, I liked this grap, and I am aware that I'm one of the few ones, in my immediate surrounding and obviously here. But I don't care, I see deep meaning in it, and its just not this predictable story you usually get. I think he David Lynch is a genius, and I liked the way he dealt with this situation in Berlin, which was truely horrible, with this ego-maniac Schiffgens. That he is in a leading position in the movement gives me hope.
