Bag of tricks

Rating: Null/10 (16 February 2003)

It's interesting to me how great directors are often revered for their worst work. Mulholland Dr. is David Lynch up to his usual tricks. In fact, it is beyond formulaic... It is Lynch imitating Lynch. If you've seen "Eraserhead", "Blue Velvet", "Wild at Heart" and the "Twin Peaks" series, you can skip this one. It's really more of the same: Eerie, noirish surrealism over a narrative that doesn't tie up neatly. If the cinematography was such that the images carried the film, I'd recommend it, but it's one of the weakest in this regard among the director's oeuvre. In my head, I can recall dozens of stills from "Eraserhead", and it's been many years since I've seen it. I can't think of but one or two interesting moments in this movie.
I'd like to put forth another thought. With the exception of his mainstream works (i.e., "The Elephant Man", "The Straight Story", etc.), Lynch favors the use of underdeveloped characters that are interesting in their inexplicable idiosyncrasies. His women are often the flimsiest of his characters, and they're particularly two-dimensional here. Female characters aren't just chess pieces; they're completely interchangeable. If you think back over most of the director's work, you'll find very few well-developed women. That's nothing new to great cinema... take, for example, Jean-Pierre Melville's women as typical of "art house" male directors... but it is interesting to note.
I'd like to believe that Lynch is having a good laugh at his audience's expense. If he is, it's a brilliant cinematic installation of sorts... a film deliberately designed to confuse viewers into thinking that there's something more to the story, into trying to make sense out of surreal senselessness... where the audience is part of the piece. The "lesbian sex," then, might be the director's "funning" us into enjoying a stupid piece of manipulation. He might as well have thrown Shannon Tweed in the middle to the wolf-whistling delight of the groundlings. Somehow, I don't take Lynch as the Frank Zappa of the silver screen. From hearing him interviewed and seeing his other films, he seems to sincere for such a daring stunt.
I'll take Mulholland Dr. at face value and give it a 6/10... most of the 6 owing to the fact that I WANT to like Lynch's output at all costs.