David Lynch has re-made Eraserhead

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 2001)

Here's my purely subjective take on the latest entry into the Lynch oeuvre. Plot details are included:
OK, David Lynch is one of my favorite directors and I am a big admirer of his visual style and almost autistic obsession with rhythmic sounds and dream-like imagery. I count "Eraserhead" as one of the seminal films of the past 50 years, followed closely by "Blue Velvet".
However, many of his films have the same images and scenes that repeat themselves, and Mulholland Drive seems to collect them all into one package, in case we missed them in the last several films. Some directors virtually make the same film over and over again (Terry Gilliam, Hitchcock, Woody Allen, etc). Each one is good in its own right, but it's often the same themes wrapped up in an only slightly different packaging. Lynch seems to be succumbing to this "one more time" pattern.
Compare the images in Mulholland Drive to the images in Eraserhead, Lost Highway, and Twin Peaks: The car driving at night with the headlights illuminating the passing lines of the center divider. The empty stage with a single microphone standing in the spotlight. The old people smiling for no apparent reason. The scary deformed face lurking in the shadows. The room with the red curtains and the weird little man that seems to control events. The character of the squeaky-clean blonde singing happy songs in a bizarre environment.
We've seen most of this before. This has new elements like little tiny people crawling under the door and lesbians who travel through time and reverse characters two-thirds of the way through the plot.
But I can't help but think that I'm just watching Lynch's nightmares put to film. I know that we're not supposed to try to analyze the film rationally, but instead approach it like the images in a dream. The final line of the film by the blue-haired woman, "Silencio", is probably Lynch's statement to his rational mind: silence any questions and just succumb to the images. Very Zen.
Fair enough, and well done, but it's been done by Lynch several times by now. I think the scene with the blonde masturbating on the couch is probably a bit autobiographical, symbolizing Lynch obsessing over his own dreams.
Unlike Roger Ebert, who liked the film, I have to give the film a "thumbs down", only because I found it to be little more than a re-packaging of the same images he's portrayed so well before. Rent "Eraserhead" and "Blue Velvet" to see his nightmares in their original forms.
Just $0.02 from one of Lynch's biggest fans...