I think Justin Theroux said something very similar – that the more experience you have the more you find you can understand lynch’s films. that was pretty much the way it worked out for most of his films for me but particularly eraserhead, fire walk with me and lost highway.
Is it a matter of salvaging cinematic geek cred, or something?
Yes, I think that exactly where threads like this come from.
My friend is a big fan of David Lynch and lent me his copy of Inland Empire. When I watched it the first time, I gradually became lost and bored. However, I tried to watch it a second time and give it another chance. There are some interesting things going on in this film such as the rabbits, the morphing face, but for the most part I felt that scenes went on too long and I didn’t seem to understand it completely. I guess the Polish story, the story told on the movie set about some incident involving lovers, the way the Laura Dern’s character interacts with all this might work together in some sense but I got tired out fairly quickly and was just waiting for it to end. Eraserhead is one of my favorite movies and I think Mulholland Drive is a great picture. Blue Velvet is pretty good too. However, I didn’t seem to get this film. Sometimes, I guess the theories explaining a movie like this might help in making people understand it better, but still it doesn’t seem to change my chance of viewing this movie again. Maybe at some point, I will be able to get through a movie like this, but I have no idea when. By seeing what people have left on this thread here and another one related to the same film, I think it’s allright to love it or not love it. As for me, for the moment, I mostly cannot stand this film. It seems indulgent and incredibly slow. Not that a film can’t be indulgent or incredibly slow, like Beware of a Holy Whore or Barry Lyndon, but the indulgence and slowness that I find within this film seem to not work for it’s advantage. Still, perhaps by studying the various theories, one could appreciate viewing this film.
Inland Empire was ideas (badly) filmed and warped into nightmares, my experience with it, worsened (bettered depending on what Lynch was going for) as the only seat available was front front, and had to strain my neck up, being A uncomfortable B exhausted and C exposed to nightmarish visions for hours on end, 10/10 in terms of feeling truly disturbed!
I saw this movie recently and I really believe I witnessed something great. I really believe that if David Lynch doesn’t turn out to be one of the most influential artists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, then it would be a travesty.
Some people have mentioned in this thread that it seems Lynch has descended into self-parody with this movie. That may be true to some extent, because I think there was a comment in there about what it is like to make a movie with Lynch. Notice how drained Dern’s character is at the end after she gets stabbed and the camera pulls back to reveal another camera. David Lynch is one who takes his actors to extremes. I imagine Werner Herzog is too, but I doubt he would ever make a film this self aware (would he? perhaps “My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done” is heading in that direction. It is produced by Lynch, after all.). Of course, it may not be so much a comment on himself as it is the nature of great performances in general (I believe it has been noted, if not here then in another thread about this movie, that performance is a common theme in Lynch’s films).
Some people have also stated that they believe there is no meaning to the film. Really, now, what is the meaning of Michelangelo’s “David” or a Jackson Pollock painting? Are they really there to be anything more than beautiful? I can only speak for myself, but from the moment I saw that opening scene with the two people whose faces are blurred beyond recognition, I knew I was going to see a great work of art whose reaction could only visceral and not intellectual. The way Lynch cuts up his movie with scenes that seem incomplete and without context and without any kind of linear order brings to mind a certain kind of feeling. Particularly, it is a feeling closely related to despair and hopelessness. “Synecdoche, New York” was also able to create that same feeling through disjointedness. If done well, (which I believe both Lynch and Kaufman have done — how Kaufman will create something to equal “Synecdoche” again remains to be seen) it is a masterwork that recalls the paintings of Edvard Munch and Picasso and Pollock.
I’ve gone into great detail in this thread on the “meaning” of the film as well as its beauty. Your point is taken but I would argue, as would the artists, no doubt, that there IS meaning in Michealangelo’s David as well as Pollack’s Lavender Mist. These were artists, like Lynch, who were “doing something” with their art, and beauty is only a subjective by-product of their art.
Bytheway, I LOVE this thread.
A movie is no masterpiece if it is only realized after reading another person’s analysis.
“A movie is no masterpiece if it is only realized after reading another person’s analysis.”
The title of this very site is based on writings by insightful critics who opened up what many people consider masterpieces for a lot of people. I don’t think films have to exist in a vacuum.
J.R.: I don’t want to hijack the thread, but your comment mentioning Pollock got me thinking. By meaning, as far as his work anyway, do you mean something like a mood or sensation that is created by the use of certain colors and their arrangement on the canvas?
Josh Ryan: My point is mainly that art doesn’t have to have meaning to be great. But I guess I take “meaning” to be that it has a moral or something that, in particular, can be written about. I know that Lynch is looking for a place beyond words with his cinema and that’s what I’m thinking of, too. You can give it all the analysis you want, but in the end, all that matters is that it makes you feel and possibly what it does that makes you feel the way you do, which I think is really the only part you can actually use words to describe. All that stuff about subtexts and gender and performance are just kind of window dressing, though interesting nonetheless.
(I’d say I probably tend to use a bit of a loose definition for beauty — I call something beautiful if it moves me.)
////….art doesn’t have to have meaning to be great ….all that matters is that it makes you feel and possibly what it does that makes you feel the way you do….\\\
Porno?
art without meaning isnt art. its something else.
The meaning behind abstract expressionism was to move visual thinking away from illusion – closer to sensation.
Porno is illusionary sensation
dp
S: I mean that, yes, but more importantly the historical significance of the piece as well as the artist’s intent. There’s no doubt more I’m not thinking of, but essentially I agree with what Bobby said above.
J.R.: I think I somewhat agree with Bobby’s comment too, but it’s hard to draw the line between what does and does not have meaning.
Well, cite an example of something meaningless and let’s discuss.
J.R.: That’s mainly my concern, I can’t think of anything I find ‘meaningless’ so I’m wondering what others consider meaningless art.
If you can’t think of one, how can it be difficult to “draw the line between what does and does not have meaning”?
J.R.: Well I didn’t phrase that exactly as I meant to. I guess what I was trying to say, in response to Bobby’s comment, is that how can anything that is or can be possibly considered art be meaningless?
Ah. I guess it’s Bobby who should cite an example of “something else” that his criteria would apply to. I agree with him intuitively, but I haven’t yet thought up an example to prove the point.
J.R.: Yeah that’s the thing, I agree only ‘cause I can’t think of any meaningless art. Even stuff that’s usually considered ‘meaningless’ like Warhol or even maybe Rockwell [depending on your tastes of course]
But even those are banal, not meaningless.
J.R.: That’s pretty much my point.
Though I wouldn’t describe Rockwell as banal, but then he’s one of my favorites.
I didn’t like the experience of Inland Empire, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good or bad film.
The clown face literally scared me, though. I don’t think I can recall a movie since I was a kid that actually, for split second, made me afraid for my life.
Rome: That’s pretty powerful.
hell no! i dont need to cite examples of “something else.” i already said theres no such thing as meaningless art. im not the one who said its hard to draw the line between what has meaning and what doesnt. haha! do your own homework!
If a wall-artist intentionally made a Baudrillardian simulacra, it would be meaningless as viewed ( i.e. there is no manifesto to explain it)
Bobby: ‘im not the one who said its hard to draw the line between what has meaning and what doesnt. haha! do your own homework!’
Hey! Don’t point the finger at me, I already said that I phrased my thought wrong. :D
No you didn’t say there’s meaningless art, but your comment seemed to imply that maybe there’s something that others could consider art but that you don’t ’cause you see meaning or something to that effect.
JAEGER INKMAN
Mike, dear Mike, enough with plagiarizing Greg X’s quote already :)