Fantastic...mostly

Rating: Null/10 (17 May 2004)

It is said a great work of art can be seen as a great work of art even it is damaged or incomplete. Here is an example in movie making.
This movie is famous for the fact that it was originally meant to be a one hour pilot for a television series. The pilot and the series were cancelled, so instead it was made into a feature length movie.
This is a fantastic, compelling, suspenseful movie, where the nature of reality is questioned without anything more than the use of the camera, music and the way the actors say their lines.
Then it all goes crazy in a very David Lynch way.
But for me the last part looks tacked on. For pseudo-intellectuals it is just a chance to talk about the great ability of Lynch to go flying of on completely different tangents. For me I could see what happens at the end actually meant to happen over 10 or more episodes of a Television series.
The genius of Lynch is his subtly. See "The straight story" or "The elephant man". The subtle beauty of the first part is ruined by the obvious abstraction of the last part. Remembering of course the genius of "Blue velvet" involved the audience being slapped in the face for the whole movie (and freakin' loving it too)