Seraphita, The Straight Story is IMO wonderful and atypical Lynch. Elephant Man I found very moving and more typical of his work I think.
________________________________ From: "s3raph...@yahoo.com" <s3raph...@yahoo.com> To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, October 4, 2013 9:36 AM Subject: [FairfieldLife] RE: Charlie Lutes and David Lynch Re "Have you considered the possibility that Lynch's films aren't really "about" ANYTHING?": Indeed, I've been driven to the same conclusion. The first time I saw Lost Highway I was quite taken by its shifting moods and flashy exterior; the second (and last) time I just thought that Lynch was taking the piss and found it pretty tiresome. If you're going to construct a movie that mimics a detective story but then can't tie up all the loose ends it's just a glorified shaggy dog story. I still like Mulholland Drive though and I really enjoyed Inland Empire. The last one I saw on DVD and split the viewing over two evenings. I'd hate to have had to sit through 180 minutes at a cinema. ---In fairfieldlife@yahoogroups.com, <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote: s3raphita sez: > >> When I first watched Mulholland Drive I enjoyed the >> whole surreal, glossy surface but couldn't make head >> or tail of what the movie was about (ditto Lost >> Highway, etc. ). > >Have you considered the possibility that Lynch's films aren't really "about" ANYTHING? Certainly a number of critics (many of them French, who otherwise tend to adore Lynch because they have a tendency to adore *anything* pretentious that they can't understand) have considered this and discussed it. I agree with them. I don't think Lynch *does* have anything he's "trying to say" in his movies. I think he's just filming dream images (in his case nightmare images) that *he* doesn't understand, either. In other words, I think Lynch's films exemplify the same solipsism and narcissism that we see in so many other long-term TMers. "If it's happening in my head, it must be important and meaningful."