Knygatin Wrote:
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> I think not I have the energy, or ability, to go
> into a deeper artistic discussion about Mulholland
> Drive. But I think I may very well re-watch it on
> a later occasion, after it has sunk in more. I
> think I remember the sequences pretty well, but I
> can't for all of me remember there was a gunshot
> at the beginning!
>
>
> --Roshomon-like--are the idealized story versus
> the realistic story. The tension between the
> idealized and the realistic caused the suicide.
> Realizing this can generate a load of pathos in
> the viewer afterward.
>
> Much so. Thinking about it specifically, I feel
> the pathos very strongly. At the start of the
> film, I didn't think I would muster up much
> empathy for that cheerful young actress arriving
> in Hollywood, but the failings of her alter ego
> played out in her parallel identity is so
> devastatingly dark and depressing.
>
Quote:Sawfish:
Lynch, always attuned to how to give the audience
something they want that is very easy to digest
and provides immediate gratification, so as to get
the audience to stick around long enough to view
the next complex sequence, gives us lesbian sex
between two very attractive females.
>
> I did not see it that way at all.
Well, I think that we're not talking about mutually exclusive attributes, here. It's possible to feature a lesbian sex scene with two attractive actresses--which is guaranteed to generate a certain sort of interest--AND for the fact of this encounter to generate pathos, on consideration of what it means in the narrative.
All this means is that it's arguably not entirely gratuitous, included solely to titillate the audience.
> I found those
> lesbian scenes annoying, and sadly disturbing. Yet
> another example of the unpleasant downhill
> Hollywood lifestyle (either Lynch fell for that
> lure, or he deliberately used it to heighten the
> focus on decadence; I believe the latter. It may
> also have been orders from the producers, which I
> think Lynch has been subjected to like most other
> directors in Hollywood).
And it's not for nothing that I listed at least two other instances of Lynch employing this device (nudity, and/or the sex act) in other films, and by god, having Patricia Arquette perform fellatio on a Mafioso, at gunpoint, topless, sure seemed gratuitous to me. I couldn't see where it advanced the plot, or character development, at all.
But yep, I watched it all right. All 6 times that I watched the film... ;^)
So yeah, I'll stick with the idea that Lynch cheerfully uses sex as a component of his films, often, and for no other reason than he knows that people respond to it, if indeed they are capable of any response, at all.
Now, *that's* cynical...
I mean, Kubrick also did this, at least twice. Opening of Clockwork Orange, and the ritual and subsequent extended orgy in Eyes Wide Shut.
Look what's there, right in front of your eyes. Are not the emperor's new clothes truly fine? ;^)
> I feel that the naive
> young actress was seduced into that by the much
> more experienced local actress who was used to the
> decadent nihilist polygamy lifestyle of Hollywood.
> Not a very good way to start off her budding film
> career; and the realistic story version shows the
> fatal consequences.
>
> Maybe, but I don't see him as moralistic AT ALL.
> He is in a sense a cheerful amoral cynic.
>
> That might not be you? :)
> I agree that Lynch is probably not a Moralist. But
> still, he undoubtedly sees the darkness in
> Hollywood, and portrays it.
--Sawfish
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"The food at the new restaurant is awful, but at least the portions are large."
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