Hello. How are you? I am fine. My name is Jerry.

My life is rated PG.
What is your life rated?

Okay...I hate to bring this up again but I have to, I'm sorry.

It is a rare moment in history for me to not enjoy a movie. On average I would say I enjoy 98% of all the films I see in a year. The only movie I recall seeing in the theater and not liking was a super hero movie called Mystery Men. Over the past several weeks we have been watching a series of David Lynch films. Did I like them? Yes and no. All of the David Lynch films shown were not ordinary every day films. They were not examples of popcorn cinema. They are contemporary examples of what film can do. Contemporary cinema offers many examples of unusual screen narratives, and David Lynch movies are no exception. While most contemporary films have narratives that are original and complex while at the same time being possible to follow, David Lynch movies are complex and jarring at the expense of the enjoyment of the film by the audience. To prove my point I will discuss contemporary cinema I have witnessed, as well as Lynch’s Lost Highway and Mullholland Drive.

The first Lynch film we watched that was art at the sake of the audience was Lost Highway. The film starts out normal enough, even if it seems like the acting is poor and the story going nowhere. However, it quickly spirals out of control, changing the main character, setting, and tone of the film. I could someone next to me say ‘what’ while sitting there utterly confused. While I could still follow it—every film should make sense if you pay attention to it—it was not helping the story. It was almost like different parts of the film were conceived separately.

On the one hand, you have Bill Pullman’s side of the story. A man who seems to work too hard and be the protagonist, yet he appears to have a suspicious side to him. The acting in this part of the movie seems poor at first, and I could only deduce that it is intentionally that way. Added to that is the element of the creepy video tapes and the pale man. Before we can even begin to figure out who he is and what is going on, his wife ends up dead in his arms and he is charged with murder. What? This is where the movie started to mess with me. I could still follow it, but it was mixing it up to the point where the film started to stop being enjoyable, if it was to begin with.

Then we entered the second portion of the film with Balthazar Getty’s character. We get similar themes from him as from the Bill Pullman character, but I liked this character more at first. It felt like Bill Pullman, who seemed an innocent if suspicious character, was let off the hook for his alleged crime, and we are supposed to like it when good things happen to the protagonist. This is my favorite part of the movie, but it slips down in my opinion with the introduction of the blonde female character. It seemed like it was going so well; you get this amusing, nice, rich gangster type character who likes our protagonist. Our protagonist works for Richard Pryor for crying out loud, what is there not to like? And then the blonde woman comes in and ruins everything for him. His headaches resume, he starts doing bad things, he ignores his girlfriend, and he makes the scary gangster guy get suspicious! From this point on the movie is no longer fun or interesting, and no longer worth my time.

Lynch then tries to cover this with what I call ‘clever editing.’ He sticks you out in the middle of nowhere, replaces actors, kills people and makes and loops back to the beginning of the film such as bringing back the creepy videographer, playing film in reverse, showing us the highway from the opening credits and finally bringing us to the opening scene. The story continues to lose my interest as it complicates itself. The film becomes intentionally sophomoric in a vain attempt to make it more interesting. I believe this is an attempt by the film makers to shock the audience into thinking they have something, when all they have is a big mess.

A movie I really enjoy a lot is a film called Fight Club. In fight club you have a story that is unconventional and original, with several elements outside of the norm, and could even be seen as confusing if you do not pay attention. Yet it worked, it kept your attention, it was not jarring, it was acted beautifully. So you can have movies that are different, original and compelling yet are not art for the sake of being art. There is a reason art is put in museums, because it does not really belong in the mainstream world. I believe it is the same with David Lynch movies. They do have some value to them but they should not be sold as entertainment.

Movies do not have to be perfect narrative stories to be sold as entertainment though. With movies like Jafar Panahi’s The Circle, which was far from anything like a Hollywood movie, it was still easy to follow and better than Lost Highway. Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World had a lot of symbolism and subtleties hidden in it, but it was still presented in a way that was entertaining. George Lucas’s THX 1138 was totally wacky and crazy when it came to story, but the story was still told in a better and more coherent way than Lost Highway. I think Roger Ebert said it best when he said in his excellent review, “David Lynch's Lost Highway is like kissing a mirror: You like what you see, but it's not much fun, and kind of cold.” (Ebert, 1997)

Why would Lynch go through all the trouble of making a film that has nothing to do with anything, and has no real purpose or plot, scenes that do not go anywhere and wastes everyone’s time, and then go right back and do it again? Four years after Lost Highway, he makes Mulholland Drive, another example of sophomoric film making. It felt like it was art just to be art and that it hurt the story, if there even was a story to begin with. While the movie had little in the way of story, it still managed to waste time with a lot of meaningless scenes, and tedious horrible acting. It was like Lynch wrote the movie as if it were stereo instructions or an advanced physics text book on what not to do if you want to entertain your audience. Throwing in a lesbian love scene after the discovery of a dead body for no apparent reason, adding a subplot with a hit man that goes nowhere.

The film’s one saving moment was the turning point when the two women go to a late night magic show, telling them and the audience that none of it is real, that it is all on tape. Leading us to believe that the entire first half of the movie is not real, and that the film makers have wasted an hour of my life I am never going to get back. And then Naomi Watts’ character becomes the dead body from before. What? This is where the movie really started to mess with me. It was bad enough that the beginning of the film had nothing to do with anything and bad acting and slow pacing, but then they toss us into this alternate reality where we have painful masturbation and jealousy.

The weirdest part about Mulholland Drive is that it seems to be critically acclaimed. For example, Roger Ebert really did not like Lost Highway, yet he gave Mulholland Drive four stars, when it seems to have many of the same gimmicks and faults. I can not see the major difference in film making techniques, yet this film is four star material. Lost Highway is “a shaggy ghost story, an exercise in style, a film made with a certain breezy contempt for audiences,” where of Mulholland Drive, “the less sense it makes, the more we can't stop watching it.”

The saddest part is that David Lynch knows how to make movies that are not insane. With The Straight Story, Lynch was able to tell a good story without resorting to chopping harsh editing or twisted story elements. With The Elephant Man, Lynch was able to tell the story and let the audience actually pay attention to it at the same time. With Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, Lynch appears to have dropped the ball in so many ways. I can not imagine either one of those movies making their money back. At the expense of his audience, David Lynch has created a piece of cinema that is more technique than cinema. I hope the next movie he makes will at least be worth the celluloid it is printed on.

Works Cited

Ebert, Roger . Roger Ebert Reviews: Lost Highway. 27 Feb. 1997. Chicago Sun Times.

8 Dec. 2004

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19970227/REVIEWS/702270304/1023

Ebert, Roger. Roger Ebert Reviews: Mulholland Drive. 12 Oct. 2001. Chicago Sun Times. 8 Dec. 2004

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20011012/REVIEWS/110120304/1023

I need some serious writing to be done here...wish me luck.

Things to do this week:

• Write the damn film analysis paper!!!!!
• Write the damn biology assignment due on the day of the final.
• Go to The Class Schedule and figure out schedule for next semester.