Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Sorry if this is a dumb thread or in the wrong place but I found this film really disapointing. It started off mezmerizing but quickly started to feel like a tv movie on life time. Maybe it was on purpose but Naomi's character felt really campy as well as certain others but I felt almost no interest in the sections based around the two female leads (alsothe lesbian scene felt forced and like something from a softcore porn flick). Actually I was much more engaged in the parts surrounding the director. The scenes with with bim like where he caught his wife cheating or when he meets the Cowboy were pure gold ^^ That said the movie played out like a thriller with psychological elements and the main thing that kept me watching was curiosity to see how things would connect (plus i wanted to see why it was called Lynch's masterpiece). In the end though it went from being somewhat grounded in reality to an abstract mess leaving me confused and utterly unsatisfied.

Now understand I like surrealism and i dont always mind being confused but the biggest issue is I mostly felt bored and feel no motivation to rewatch this film and get a better idea on what happened and what everything meant. I much prefered Lynch's more normal film The elephant man as well as his earlier piece of nightmare fuel Eraserhead. For surrealsim I think The Holy mountain, Fear and loathing in las vegas, Possession, and The hourglass Sanitarium are better films than Mullholand dr.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Thanks for the Lynch Club Thread :)

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

I think I get what you're talking about, though ive never seen Perfect blue or Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind. Now I feel a desire to finally see The Truman Show though.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

What about Mr Ebert?

"In the end though it went from being somewhat grounded in reality to an abstract mess leaving me confused and utterly unsatisfied."

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aEtm69mLK6w/hqdefault.jpg

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Dude, check out 'Inland Empire.' You'll love it!

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Are you saying it didnt become more abstract towards the end? Maybe i worded what i wanted to say poorly but id apreciate words over images.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Ive heard its Lynchs most experimental and seems to be his most divisive. That interests me but its 3 hours long and after being disapointed here it might be a while before i make the effort.

Yeah, Cynema is a huge Lynch fan so consider that Nic Cage image his way of using the claw end of a hammer on you. :p

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Lol! I thought maybe i just worded my post poorly. Im often poor at articulating what I want to say (probably due to being autistic). I havent seen enough Lynch to judge him but The Elephant man is my favorite that ive seen though probably more because of Hurt than anything else ^^

I recommend Blue Velvet. The story is cohesive front to back and the surrealist element is still in full swing except you should be able to handle the eccentricities as just being artistic license. It's a beautiful and nasty film and in my opinion his very best work, like, ever.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Yeah that would be the next Lynch film I watch. Again I like surrealism I just feel Mulholland dr wanting to see everything tie together was the main thing that kept me invested so the abstract ending felt more like an f you than something the film was intentionally building up to. I am aware though Lynch originally concieved the film with the possibility of being a mini series. I feel that probably wouldve worked better im9.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Lynch is a cult director who makes film with his unique brand of surrealism. He is never going to be mainstream with a wide audience, but his fans love him. And I am a die hard Lynch fan. I find that Mulholland Drive is his masterpiece since it is the perfect blend of his unique surrealism with a more traditional narrative.

Also one does not watch a Lynch movie and understand it right out 100% (save the Elephant Man and The Straight Story). Everything else will require more then one viewing to truly appreciate the film. It did for me for both Mulholland Drive and Eraserhead in particular.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

I'd actually say as far as surrealist directors go hes pretty mainstream compared to say Alejandro Jodorowsky, Andrzej Żuławski, or even Luis Buñuel. Eraserhead was easy to apreciate on first viewing imo.

What do you think of Blue Velvet, and Inland Empire?

Yeah but even a surrealist director is hardly gonna be mainstream. Though I will give you Jodorwosky as another cult director (and certainly not as talked about as much as Lynch). Then again I was not a particular fan of El Topo or The Holy Mountain, though he does have his fans on this forum too.

Inland Empire was by far his most out there and surreal work.

Blue Velvet is just pure ****ing brilliance. Used to be my favorite Lynch before Mulholland Drive too that title.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

well sorry it is a dumb thread lol because its a classic film , probably will go down as the best hollywood satire in cinema history, the dreaded intriguing feeling lets u feel the misery that the characters are in, its the ultimate depiction of LA movie stars when they go away from the spotlight and the david lynch depicts the story is second to none? an absolute joy ride of a film.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

I feel urged to watch Inland Empire but im intimidated. Id hate to waste 3 hours but i could very well love it.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

I find this paragraph to be quite Lynchian in nature.

Inland should be eased into. It was actually the last Lynch film I watched. I suggest Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, and Lost Highway first.

David Lynch urges people to participate in Transcendental Meditation to be able to understand his movies, namely Mulholland Drive. So basically, sit down, relax, breathe in slowly, exhale a bit longer than you draw in, count your breaths, try to think of nothing else, set a timer on a smartphone, do this for about 30 mins every day for the rest of your life. Make sure not to eat 3 hrs before starting. Have some well ventilated area for fresh air. Good luck in understanding Mulholland. If you don't have time for TM, think of MD as a dream of guilt for the murder of a lesbian lover and the last 1/4 of the film is what happened leading up to the first 2 acts.

WTF did I just read? Makes as much sense as a Lynch movie.

Lol

Originally Posted by Joel (Post 1748408)

David Lynch urges people to participate in Transcendental Meditation to be able to understand his movies, namely Mulholland Drive. So basically, sit down, relax, breathe in slowly, exhale a bit longer than you draw in, count your breaths, try to think of nothing else, set a timer on a smartphone, do this for about 30 mins every day for the rest of your life. Make sure not to eat 3 hrs before starting. Have some well ventilated area for fresh air. Good luck in understanding Mulholland. If you don't have time for TM, think of MD as a dream of guilt for the murder of a lesbian lover and the last 1/4 of the film is what happened leading up to the first 2 acts.

That's a riot, Joel..:D Plus your concise summary has the ring of being true-- and I haven't even seen the movie!

In the avant-garde, nothing ever need be explained. As David Tudor told a student at Black Mountain College: "If you don't know, why do you ask?"

~Doc

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

I've had this movie on my list for a long time - but I'm thinking of removing it... I'm tired of unsatisfying movies.

I remember hating Wild At Heart, and Eraserhead is something I don't ever need to see again.
Yet Blue Velvet, although being weird, has a fairly followable plot - innocent guy falls for the girlfriend of a psycho and is drawn into an underworld of dangerous characters and situations. It also has tons of memorable lines & scenes. (The only thing I remember from Wild At Heart was hearing a long, deep sound from Bobby Peru.)

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Yeah Mulholland starts off with a followable plot but ditches it in the end which I think could work but in this case didnt for me.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Im fine watching The holy mountain without explanation though thats a hell of an experience

I'd recommend keeping it in the queue, Captain. It's true that it is confusing but the film making and characters are so rich that it hardly matters. I let it kind of wash over me more than once and only recently made an attempt to get to the bottom of it. Again I'll tell you if you watch it and PM me. Once you kind of snoop around, finding an explanation makes a lot of sense and then I'd imagine watching it again would be a breeze.

I would say it is a masterpiece within Lynch's universe, but not really outside of it. To be generally considered a masterpiece, a film has to be a bit more accepted by the mainstream which IMO Mulholland Dr. was not and is not. As much of a David Lynch fan that I am, I still felt it was a bit choppy. It was suppose to be a pilot for a show on ABC but they pulled a plug on it and Lynch was forced to scramble and make it into a movie. That seems very apparent to me as far as the continuity goes, but I still enjoyed it. There are other aspects of it such as the surreal elements, characters, score and depiction of Hollywood which I thought made up for it.

Thank you, Doc:p

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Laura Harring naked is a masterpiece by her own!

who told u it was not accepted by the mainstream??? or are u just judging on your own, and it doesn t need to be judged by the mainstream because simply this movie is far beyond a mainstream work.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

I think it is. After my first watch, I went right back into a second rewatch. It was just so magical and I love the entire atmosphere of the movie.

It was produced as a pilot for a TV show actually

I though it was a very good movie, it's visuals are a bit poor and it suffers from Hollywood's obsession with itself but besides that it's a great movie.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

Mulholland Drive is a really complex film that has several layers of meaning/significance but ultimately it is not compulsory to like anything.

Boiled down to it's most basic essence, it's about:

An idealized version of life seen in a woman's head as she commits suicide, after her real life has fallen apart
A commentary on the fakeness of hollywood
A deconstruction of film itself, via the club silencio scene, muddling the diegesis of the film and resulting in the disruption of the previous flow of the movie

Basically.

I like this film for the tones and feelings it elicits, making one homesick for that special place. As a story its confusing and muddled. But visually and atmospherically and stylistically its got a niche all its own.

I found today that five years before Mulholland Drive another movie starring Jennifer Connelly named Mulholland Falls was released, so personally, I wonder, why would this title be chosen when a similar one was already recently used? Now, 20+ years later, they still remain the only two movies with mulholland in the title and they are so close together. Is there a connection?

I think you'll find it unsatisfying, but it's probably still worth the watch. There are some interesting moments, a good scare, and things seem to have a deeper meaning without making any damned sense. And the general weirdness will keep things interesting, even though nothing resolves in a conventional sense.


I think the key to understanding Lynch is that he operates in a dream space. We're in our subconscious, in our fears, our jealousies, our naked desires. Our characters are lacerated by themselves in this space. It's a bad dream and we're being chased by the one monster we'll never escape, ourselves.

You make a good point about Lynch's films. Here is my commentary from a few years ago:

Mulholland Drive(2001)

I finally sat down to watch this picture after avoiding it for 20 years. There were several enjoyable elements, chiefly the superb acting of Naomi Watts in a role that demanded the use of a wide range of her acting chops; but also the production’s obvious technical achievements, such as Lynch’s use of Crayola type colors in his sets, and also the first rate cinematography by Peter Deming. The art and production designers certainly had a work out as well.

The film is basically a lesbian fantasy wrapped in an abstract and often incoherent neo-noir mystery. At times the primitive scenes are morphed into something entirely new with no explanation. The actors played against a dream-like but pretentiously incongruous or muddled narrative made it seem like someone’s graduate film school project. During other passages the action and suspense were very Hitchcockian. Yet at no time did I feel as if I were watching a great motion picture.

Some of the film is very comparable to abstract painting, as it is in other segments of Lynch’s movies: make of it what you will. There is no “right” answer, which allows endless speculation and intellectualization. The story starts as a mystery with the common noir trope of amnesia, and ends with a disquieting thud, followed by a mysterious uttered coda. The film has dream-like quality for sure, but it’s not surrealism. Some find the picture endlessly hip, while others might consider it artsy bunco. I lean toward the latter. It’s likely that Lynch has not revealed its meaning simply because it has no meaning.

The cast was enjoyable, from the brief cameos by Robert Forester and Dan Hedaya, to the smoldering sensuality of Laura Harring (in her best Rita Hayworth impersonation). Naomi Watts, who puts me in mind of a 20th Century Teresa Wright (Shadow of a Doubt), is the keystone of the movie, and she came through in spades. Justin Theroux as the director Adam Kesher was put through the hoops, and provided some of the minimal comedy. It was delightful to see the great Ann Miller as Coco, the landlady, in her last film screen role.

In the final analysis I experienced the film much the same as when listening to a great jazz solo. I enjoy it, notice several outstanding portions, but resist analyzing it any further.

Doc’s rating: 6/10

I think that the write up captures what is entrancing and frustrating about Lynch. That powerfully evocative sense of mystery paired with an utter contempt for resolving it.

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

It's a masterpiece?

Re: Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?
 

I like Mullholland Drive quite a bit. From what I understand Lynch made an earlier film, Lost HIghway, that made use of some of the same strategies to communicate and people did not get it. I have read that Mulholland drive ended up being Lynch's 2nd attempt to try something similar. I believe that theory. When you watch the movie, keep the following in mind.



1. it helps to think of both movies as mysteries, but the mystery to be solved is what is happening in this film. Once you
realize what Lynch is doing the movie makes sense.

2. Throw out any ideas of a linear plot. You are thrown into the story somewhere in the middle, and you have to find your
place to decipher the movie.

3. Lynch claims he has given you all you need to understand the movie. The key is persistence. The movie is not
meaningless. You will have to watch it two or three times to put everything together. Think of it as a puzzle to solve.
Puzzles are fun to work with so it might be challenging, but does not have to be frustrating.

Fantastic movie. Completely defies any kind of narrative you try to assign to it, forces you to accept the movie on its terms.

It hits the sweet spot.

I agree 100% with you, brother. While I don't think it's a TERRIBLE film, I certainly can't understand why it's considered one of the all-time greats.