I loved Mulholland Drive, but I much preferred Inland Empire as far as Lynch goes. My vote for best film of 2000s would be No Country For Old Men.
Rumplesink, No Country was my other contender.
Inland Empire, on the other hand, was so ‘Lynch-esque’ as to reach the level of self-parody.
I’m with Rumplesink – No Country For Old Men is my vote for the 2000s (with City of God and Michael Clayton not far behind). I think in fifty years, people will still be talking about the Coens’ masterpiece.
As for Mulholland Drive, I liked it better than Inland Empire
…which isn’t saying much since I wanted to commit suicide after watching Inland Empire.
I’m a big Lynch fan, and I believe Inland Empire is as close as you can get to seeing what’s going on inside Lynch’s head. It doesn’t necessarily make a whole lot of sense but it’s powerful stuff and Laura Dern was fantastic. It struck me like a very powerful and hypnotic dream that you’re not sure whether you want to wake up from or not.
Liked No Country, but Im going to have to go with a runner up best picture: There Will Be Blood. Love PTA, DDL superb, inventive score, beautifully shot. Great Film
I agree that Mulholland Dr. is a masterpiece. It rewards multiple viewings and is truly evidence of a mastery of cinema as art.
I’d also like to mention Punch-Drunk Love and Before Sunset as other great films that might be overlooked because they are romance-oriented.
Beer,
There Will Be Blood was a revelation — all in all, 2007 was a fabulous year for movies!
There Will Be Blood or, yeah, Mulholland Dr.
I don’t now if the best, but is exelent, maybe in my rankin could be 3th, talking about 2000
There Will Be Blood…is really up there, and no country for old men too, but i think we will be talking about There will be blood more than no country for old men…
I have already begun to work on a top ten list for the decade. I have been frantically re-watching all of my favourites, as well as catching up on films I missed. I think Mulholland Drive is an excellent choice and will be appreciated more and more in the coming years. It was indeed pure cinema. I do think, however, that it was outdone by Synecdoche, New York.
We can also hope that we are treated to another masterpiece or two before year’s end.
@Adam – we will be treated to one more masterpiece before the year’s end….
…and that masterpiece is Where The Wild Things Are.
Rumplesink,
Couple of more thought on Inland vs. Mulholland:
1. Parts of Inland were really unsettling for me. And I mean truly paranoid discomfort. It was excellent in this regard.
2. But, the reason I love Mulholland so much more than Inland is that Mulholland is a fundamentally logical film. As confusing and ‘upside-down’ as it all seems, everything in Mulholland Drive actually makes sense to me. I couldn’t say the same for Inland. The symbolism is just too esoteric in that one. There is no way I could decode Inland in the same, satisfying way as I could Mulholland.
@Fredo
Have you heard whether or not the theatrical cut will be Jonze’s intended cut? I never heard a final say on this ever since there were rumours about reshooting.
@Ganselmi
The satisfaction of decoding Mulholland Dr. is wonderful. Decoding Inland is fun too but not as satisfying.
@Adam – I haven’t heard anything one way or the other about that. I know Spike was fighting with the studio about having it be a more serious film and not just a light kid’s movie and that’s why it’s taken so long for it be released. But as far as the status of the final cut, I don’t know if he’s content with it. I feel like if he was unhappy with it, we would have heard about it by now?
Wow, we have consensus around three films as representing the best of the 2000s (in alphabetical order):
Mulholland Drive
No Country for Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Interestingly, all three are American films (although I think Mulholland is an American-French co-production).
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would be in the mix as well, for me atleast.
I’d put MULHOLLAND DR. as one of the worst films of the decade, myself. Really useless nonsense, an inane puzzle movie that isn’t worth the solving. And then INLAND EMPIRE which just felt like more of the same. And NO COUNTRY, please.
My list—
THERE WILL BE BLOOD
ZODIAC
SWEENEY TODD
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
HAPPY-GO-LUCKY
ETERNAL SUNSHINE
SUMMER HOURS
CHILDREN OF MEN
GOMORRAH
BRAND UPON THE BRAIN
I’m sure I’ll think of others as soon as I click Post Reply.
Roscoe,
It sounds like I won’t be able to chane your mind on Mulholland Drive. I’m with you on Gomorrah though.
Cache is the end of the discussion for me. Brilliant, and I think the film world will eventually rank it among the best ever made.
Inland Empire is close, though. Mulholland Drive feeds into Inland Empire, and they make a nice pair, but you can still feel the claws of the studio on MD, and the distinct lack of those same claws on IE – so many scenes that reminded me of the power of cinema to stir up genuine awe.
I can’t help but think people like Mulholland Dr. for the wrong reasons, because of Naomi Watts’ sympathetic, attractive performance or the film’s glossiness… especially if they then say they don’t like Inland Empire, which is pure, unfettered Lynch and one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen. Watts really isn’t that sympathetic, deep down — a goody-two-shoes in the dream, and a psychopath in the real life section. But there is more of a sense of order in Mulholland, unlike Inland, which really challenges every assumption you could have. Just when you think Inland is the story of Nicky or Susan cheating on her husband, it turns out to be about her husband cheating on her and having a second family in Poland. Partway through, the rich characters become trailer trash. Why? We may never know. The whole film seems to mock people’s need for security, and to render the whole idea of security invalid. And ultimately, Dern is a better “Lynchian actress” in that she recites Lynch’s dialogue with the unreal, far-fetched rhythm it’s supposed to have. Plus, she really gets dirty.
Ganselmi,
My patience for the kind of puzzle gimmick film that MULHOLLAND DR. epitomizes ran out with, in fact, MULHOLLAND DR. Yeah, I could see it over and over again and get to the bottom of it, but the puzzle didn’t seem worth solving, the secrets can just stay buried for all I care. Folks love MULHOLLAND and INLAND, more power to them, I don’t care if I never see them again. I think my Lynch phase is pretty well over. I’ll still treasure ERASERHEAD.
Tom and, to some extent, Justin,
I wonder if the studio’s claws on Lynch and its ‘glossiness’ are actually responsible for lending Mulholland Drive just enough narrative discipline to make it a good movie, rather than an unrestrained series of troubling episodes — even if those episodes themselves are really interesting?
Edit: by the way, I don’t really care that much about Naomi Watts’ performance. It’s great, but doesn’t really form the basis of my appreciation for the film.
Ganselmi & Roscoe:
I think the studio’s claws are responsible for that bare minimum of narrative structure, but that Lynch doesn’t necessarily want that, or at least it isn’t his primary concern. It’s not a puzzle to be figured out. There’s no gimmick. He’s not trying to play with the viewer in that way. He just isn’t. Listen to him talk. That’s not his goal. The point is being confused, unseated, provoked, whatever you want to call it – brought away from the innate need to order things and make connections where none exist in order to feel safe. His comments on the filmmaking industry are comments on life-living, too.
I also agree that Dern is much, much better in a Lynch movie than Watts. She’s too pretty. Too precious. And though I’d never realized it before, her cadence does match (or is more capable of matching) Lynch’s Pacific Northwest backwater way of speaking pretty well. She gets the point of every word. I also think Theroux was incredible in his few scenes in IE.
But Tom, MD does have a ‘solution’ or set of solutions (as moronic as that sounds). In the first half, Lynch treats us to a subjective discourse whose purpose it is to distort a particular reality. In the second half, that particular reality punctures the glossy surface of the subjective discourse. This is the film’s basic — and, indeed, quite obvious — structure, i.e. the transition from dream to reality. What makes MD so powerful is precisely the way each of the memes in Naomi Watts’ dream world corresponds to something in the ‘real’ world, i.e. what you could call its ‘puzzle’ pieces. It is the gap between each of these signifiers and their corresponding signifieds which creates the unsettling, traumatic feel which permeates the film.
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is probably the best movie I’ve seen this decade. George Washington would be up there.
What a great suggestion, Shotzi! I always forget about The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which is a fantastic film (they need to release this on Blu-Ray).
Mulholland Dr.
Eternal Sunshine of A Spotless Mind
No Country For Old Men
here’s one that no one mentions, WALL·E. I enjoyed myself thoroughly seeing that film, even amongst children. There should be more WALL·E love.
Glad you like MULHOLLAND DR., Tom. Enjoy. Not my cup of tea.
ganselmi
The ’What’s Your Top 10?’ post got me thinking: which of the film released in the 2000s will be admired to the same extent as the truly classic, ‘great films’ of decades past, e.g. 2001, The Seventh Seal, etc.? I could only name a handful, and of those, I picked David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.
Mulholland Drive is, first of all, pure cinema — it’s neither a filmed play nor a didactic meditation on this or that social problem as so many of our award-winning films are. Mulholland Drive fully embraces the medium, its strengths and limitations. It’s also a genre film, really a who-dunnit wrapped around — or, really, distorted by — the dreaming unconscious as only David Lynch can capture it. And while many films have been devoted to dreams, which of them has managed to immerse the audience in a dream world the same way Mulholland Drive does.
Simply put, Mulholland Drive is the best movie of the 2000s so far.