Monday, September 19, 2011
A Detective and a Pervert
By Jonathan Pacheco
There are critics out there who have no interest in watching any film more than once, but I’ve always been of the mind that a film worth watching is worth watching twice. So while I borderline-abhorred Blue Velvet when I first watched it back in college, I always knew it was a film I’d re-visit someday. Twenty-five years ago, David Lynch created a challenging, controversial and passionate film — that much I could tell even while I found it uncomfortable and uninteresting. I’m thankful that I did indeed take a second, fresh look at Blue Velvet because now I see the film in the context of Lynch’s entire career, which, for me, helps to illuminate the film’s strengths while it also shines a bright spotlight on its flaws.
College-age Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) returns home to Lumberton, a wholesome “Anytown, U.S.A.” seemingly stuck in the 1950s, to visit his ailing father. While walking through a field on his way back from the hospital, he spots a severed human ear hidden in the grass. With no regard for his own health, he picks the thing up with his bare hands and delivers it in a bag to Detective Williams (George Dickerson), a friend of Jeffrey’s father and himself the father of Sandy (the always-dependable Laura Dern), a cherubic high school beauty and the physical representation of love, goodness and virtue in Lynch’s film. With her help and a bit of inside information, Jeffrey decides to investigate the ear-severing himself, mostly out of thrill-seeking curiosity.
His strange, erotic journey eventually leads him into the arms of Dorothy (Isabella Rossellini), a nightclub singer under the control of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), a local criminal with a knack for kidnapping, a gas inhalation addiction, a proclivity for depraved and violent sexual
abuse and a blue velvet fetish. He’s really something else. At one point, Sandy, speaking of Jeffrey almost in awe, confesses to him, “I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert.” By the end of the film, we can gather that Lynch wants us to believe he’s a bit of both, and in that sense he represents the film itself, which is simultaneously a neo-noir mystery and a twisted erotic tale. An intriguing mix, but one that Lynch can’t quite balance. Not to say that Blue Velvet is unsuccessful — seeing it again and having a better grasp of Lynch’s style and what I feel his intentions are, I “get” the director’s brand of zany humor as it comes across when mashed against visually and aurally nightmarish sequences and disturbing subject matter. When Lynch contrasts such polar opposites, when he includes jokes about “morning wood” in a film with scenes of sexual abuse, I know that it’s not to “take the edge off sex and violence” as Roger Ebert claimed in his highly unfavorable review. Instead, as we’ve seen throughout the years, Lynch works like a chemist, mixing elements at different doses, curious to see what reactions he can produce. His blend of ironic clichés with uncomfortable harshness is intentional and in no way cowardly, as Ebert implies.I feel, however, that the chemist is simply off on his measurements in this experiment. The way he juxtaposes the campy and the disturbing feels unrefined, showing promise, particularly in the opening and closing sequences, but also immaturity; just think back to some of those low-hanging radio gags. (And that’s not even getting into his awfully basic usage of color semiotics.) Compare his attempts here to, say, the two dance sequences of 2006's Inland Empire. Lynch’s intentions with that film and those sequences may not be the same as in Blue Velvet, but his success in creating moments bizarre enough to conjure his desired mix of emotions but not wacky enough to remove you from the film suggests a maturity and mastery of his now-patented approach.
And that’s the thing about watching Blue Velvet in 2011: though it contains its own triumphs — such as he funny, frightening and unreal scene at Ben’s place (a scene that does find just the right mixture of contrasting tones) or the absolutely full-throttle and deservedly iconic performance by Dennis Hopper — we’ve seen Lynch use many of the same techniques and ideas in his other films since this one, sometimes with greater success (Twin Peaks, with its comparable theme of the dark underbelly lurking beneath a wholesome society) and sometimes with similarly mixed results (the should’ve-been-brilliant Lost Highway, with its noir-ish peek into kinky sexuality and its consequential murder). Mulholland Drive, to me, represents a sort of culmination of all these attempts, and in some ways is the film that Blue Velvet perhaps could’ve been. It’s a mystery for both the characters and the viewer. It’s a romance of confusing and conflicting sexual thoughts and identities. It’s sleek, sexy, perplexing, frightening and unnerving in ways that Blue Velvet only showed the potential to be. And it all works in practically perfect harmony. I understand why Blue Velvet is considered a cult and beyond-cult classic, but seen in the context of Lynch’s greater works, it loses so much of its remarkableness, simply serving as an interesting case study in which one can see the development of the David Lynch we now know.
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Labels: 80s, Ebert, Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan, L. Dern, Lynch, Movie Tributes, Twin Peaks
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Thursday, August 19, 2010
We believe in Happy Endings
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
In 1998, after reading many positive reviews of writer-director Don Roos’ The Opposite of Sex, I purchased a VHS copy of the movie on a whim and shoved it into the player for a look-see. Though I think it was slightly overrated by quite a few critics (my main peeve of the film is that the ending doesn’t completely jibe with what took place before it) it was both a worthwhile buy and an entertaining watch; a jet black comedy starring Christina Ricci as a young nymphet who wreaks havoc for her half-brother (Martin Donovan) and his acquaintances in a small, conservative Indiana town.
Roos got his big break as a television scribe for many prime time dramatic series including Hart to Hart, Paper Dolls, The Colbys and Nightingales — and this background is evident in Sex, with Ricci’a character behaving in the manner of a teenage Alexis Colby (the role played on Dynasty by Joan Collins). He has a definite feel for strong female characters, as witnessed by his contributions to films such as Love Field (1992), Single White Female (1992), Boys on the Side (1995) and Diabolique (1996). Happily, the tradition of meaty, well-written parts for actresses continues in a smart, witty film I thought even better than Sex (if you’ll pardon the pun): 2005’s Happy Endings.
Happy Endings — a euphemism for any sexual release that occurs during a massage — tells three stories that in the tradition of multiple narratives interweave with one another throughout the film. The first tale belongs to Mamie (Lisa Kudrow), an abortion clinic counselor dating a Latino masseuse (Bobby Cannavale) who finds that a secret she’s kept under lock and key (she was supposed to abort the pregnancy that resulted from she and her stepbrother Charley’s [Steve Coogan] foray into losing their virginity, but gave the child up for adoption instead) is about to be exposed by an aspiring documentary filmmaker named Nicky (Jesse Bradford). Nicky knows the identity of Mamie’s son and offers to make available this information under the proviso that she agree to be the subject of a documentary he wants to make and submit to the American Film Institute for a student grant. Mamie and her boyfriend, Javier, have an alternate plan — they will win Nicky’s confidence by distracting him with another subject for his film…namely Javier himself.
Story No. 2 involves stepbrother Charley, who, since his assignation with Mamie has come out of the closet and enjoys a long-standing relationship with Gil (David Sutcliffe) and friendship with Gil’s best high school chum Ruth (Laura Dern) and her lover, Diane (Sarah Clarke). Ruth and Diane have a young son named Max — and at the time they were trying to conceive, they asked Gil to…well, donate to the cause…but ultimately went to a sperm bank for the father. Charley’s not so certain this is the case, however — and is obsessed with the speculation that Max just may be Gil’s son.
The third tale involves a triangle between Otis (Jason Ritter), a sexually confused youngster who works in Charley’s restaurant and moonlights in a band, a female hustler named Jude (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Otis’ father Frank (Tom Arnold). Otis has talked Jude into replacing the singer in the band (who’s doing a stint in rehab) after hearing her give out at a karaoke night and she makes herself at home at Casa del Otis — first by helping the young man lose his virginity (in a parallel of the Mamie-Charley tryst) and then moving into the pool house at father Frank’s estate. She pretends to be Otis’ girlfriend (even though Otis is gay) in order to square things between Otis and his father…but with the passage of time, she finds herself falling for the older man and, as the saying goes, the wacky complications ensue.
Although Roos’ original idea for Endings was to tell three stories about three sisters, the unchanging constant in the film’s equation was actress Kudrow, whom Roos had worked with previously in Sex (she gets most of that film’s best lines and pretty much walks off with the movie tucked under the arm). Anyone who’s only familiar with her flaky turn as Friends’ Phoebe will be genuinely surprised by her first-rate emoting as Mamie in Endings — she breathes life into a character who wins the sympathy of the audience despite her unpleasant qualities. (An onscreen title card explains Mamie’s cruelty by saying: “Don’t worry if you don’t like her — her ex-husband was a gambler, so maybe that accounts for a lot.” By the end of the film, however, if Mamie’s situation doesn’t cause you wipe away a tear then you are clearly a robot, my friend.) Mamie is an archetypal Roos creation; in fact, nearly all of the characters in his movies are unattractive people — not in a hunchbacked, dueling-scar-on-the-cheek sense but people who perform acts of ugliness despite being fundamentally decent (if incredibly flawed) human beings. And yet, after experiencing two hours of nasty goings-on with the individuals involved, the film lives up to its title and allows its protagonists the assurance that everything comes out in the wash.
In Sex, Roos used Ricci’s character as the on-screen narrator, a technique he abandons here in favor of those onscreen title cards which in many ways function as an additional participant in the film’s narrative (Roos, in an interview, compares it to Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream). While a few critics thought this a bit self-indulgent, I found myself in favor of it — particularly because the titles provide information to which the audience is not privy and it eliminates unnecessary and awkward dialogue exchanges. A good example occurs toward the end of the film, when Mamie and Charley have arranged a meeting with their son (Eric Jungmann). The card explains that although they didn’t get an invite to his wedding, they did get to see their grandchildren via e-mailed photos…which eventually come to a stop. Tom, the title card explains, married a woman who’s “much like the rest of us…nothing but opinions.”
The ensemble cast in Endings performs at the peak of their powers, particularly Kudrow and Coogan, who manage to instill likability into characters whose actions result in a great many hurt feelings and broken relationships. My best friend from high school are still engaged in spirited debate about Gyllenhaal — she doesn’t care for Mags (though she admits she may have not seen much of her work, save for Secretary and The Dark Knight) but I’m one of her biggest fans; her character of Jude probably behaves the worst of the lot (which may be why Roos allows her to disappear at the end save for a fantasy musical number) and yet is still undeniably appealing…though again, that may be my admittedly biased admiration for Gyllenhaal’s work. (Gwyneth Paltrow, who starred in Roos’ 2000 film Bounce, had originally been slated to play the part of Jude.) For me, the biggest surprise in the film is the finely subtle accomplishment of comic actor Tom Arnold — who’s normally the cinematic equivalent of nails-on-a-blackboard, but he really shines here. (If I have any nitpicks with the ensemble it's that Laura Dern’s part is woefully underwritten, a crime for such an amazingly gifted actress.)
Since the release of Happy Endings, Roos has written and directed Love and Other Impossible Pursuits (2009), a comedy-drama that re-teams him with Kudrow and also includes Natalie Portman and Lauren Ambrose in the cast. (Roos and Kudrow also collaborated on the online sitcom Web Therapy.) With the batting average that he’s maintained with Sex and Endings, I’m anticipating enjoying the film should it come my way in the near future.
Ivan G. Shreve, Jr. blogs at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, and the fact that he’s just now gotten around to seeing Happy Endings five years after its release is a testament to his obsession with the movies, television and radio of the past.
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Labels: 00s, Cannavale, Gwyneth Paltrow, L. Dern, M. Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Shakespeare, Television
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Tuesday, August 17, 2010
From the Vault: Wild at Heart
BLOGGER'S NOTE: Twenty years ago today, Wild at Heart opened. Here is the review I wrote at my college newspaper upon its opening.
When the 1990 entertainment yearbook is written, it should say that David Lynch single-handedly saved the year from being completely drowned in mediocrity. He and Mark Frost helped raised the quality of television with Twin Peaks and Lynch himself has given a boost to the movie year with Wild at Heart.
Wild at Heart tells the road story of Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage) and Lula Pace Fortune (Laura Dern), two young lovers trying to overcome the many obstacles to their love, most of which have been placed there by Lula's evil mother Marietta Fortune (Diane Ladd).
Other than that, characterizing this wickedly funny film by its story becomes a fool's errand other than to say it resembles a dark, demented version of the type of films the minds behind Airplane! make. Lynch throws in every strange and silly thing he can think of, achieving the film equivalent of a nonsequitur.
Lusciously filmed and edited, Angelo Badalamenti's score builds suspense and adds a humorous edge to some of its toughest scenes. Wild at Heart isn't designed for everyone, but it is Lynch's most successful screen venture to date. Blue Velvet grows on you, but it's overrated and never balances its abrupt shifts in tone.
With the exception of a few horrifying scenes, Wild at Heart pulls it off since it's clear that it's not meant to be taken too seriously. Cage — who seems to alternate good performances with annoying ones — submits a completely original characterization.
Ladd gets her best role in years as the malevolent mother worried more about her own fate than her daughter's happiness.
Willem Dafoe delivers an Oscar-caliber supporting turn as a frightening man named Bobby Peru. Decked in black, Dafoe perfectly balances his character's evil nature with humor.
Dern, Ladd's daughter in real life, also shines, unlike in Blue Velvet where she was one of that film's weakest elements.
Lynch's direction moves at a brisk pace, never letting the audience stop to breathe long enough to realize they are watching a 2 hour, 17 minute movie. The Elvis-like Sailor wears a snakeskin jacket which he calls "a statement on his individuality and of his belief in personal freedom." Wild at Heart serves as Lynch's cinematic snakeskin jacket.
Lynch's vision on both big and small screen is unlike anyone working today, testing the limits of what can be accepted and what is acceptable. The movie, while very violent and sexual, often borders on excess, but Lynch pulls it off because he knows exactly where he's aiming. A major motif turns out to be The Wizard of Oz, with characters constantly comparing themselves to Dorothy and the gang. If forced to place a meaning on this film, I guess it is the difficulty in finding your way home to happiness.
Looking for meaning in Wild at Heart isn't the attitude one should take into the theater. Instead, audiences should allow themselves to venture into the bizarre and disgusting world that Lynch has conjured.
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Labels: 90s, Dafoe, Elvis, L. Dern, Lynch, Nicolas Cage, Television, Twin Peaks
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Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Freaks & Geeks shall inherit the mirth
By Edward Copeland
Judd Apatow seems to defy just about everything one might hold true about certain forms of comedy. By and large, I subscribe to Jeffrey's 90-minute rule that comedies pushing their luck if they extend much past that running time, but Apatow provided a glowing exception to that rule with The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, the most I've laughed at a recent movie in ages. Then on top of that, he now seems to specialize in extremely vulgar comedies that, at their heart, hide family friendly messages: staying pure until marriage in the case of Virgin and now staying together for the sake of an unexpected baby in Knocked Up. Unfortunately, while Virgin manages to keep its momentum throughout its long running time, Knocked Up doesn't bear its extra frames as well, coming off as a bit flabby. Despite its need for some judicious trimming, it's still ends up as an entertaining way to spend your time.
One thing proving so special about Apatow's films, especially for fans of his great and short-lived TV series Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, is his penchant for bringing back his extended family time and again, making each enterprise feel as if you've been invited to the reunion as well. Seth Rogen, part of the great ensembles of both Freaks and Undeclared, gets the lead role of Ben Stone in Knocked Up, a stoner/slacker who believes that "weed cures everything" and lives off the dwindling proceeds of a postal truck accident with dreams of an Internet fortune made from a Web site that tracks nude scenes in movies.
Other Apatow alumni along for this ride include Jason Segel (also of both Freaks and Undeclared), Jay Baruchel (Undeclared), Martin Starr (Freaks), Apatow's real-life wife Leslie Mann and two who have joined his creative clan in his films, Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill. Loudon Wainwright III of Undeclared even pops up briefly and provides part of the score and Freaks alum James Franco makes a good-natured cameo as himself. Knocked Up feels as if you're being welcomed home, but that doesn't give it an automatic pass: It still must work as a movie as well and while most of it does, it doesn't quite hit all its marks.
As most should know by now, the premise involves drunken sex between Ben and the in-normal-circumstances unattainable babe Allison (Katherine Heigl), just promoted to on-air talent at E!, that results in an unexpected pregnancy. (The E! setting also provides a priceless Ryan Seacrest cameo, showing that he's got great humor about himself.) In fact, Allison's extreme denial early on prompts her sister (the great Mann) to ask if she's one of those women who won't realize she's pregnant until she's on the toilet and a baby falls out.
So, with great hesitancy, Allison shares the situation with an understandably shocked Ben. However, he then embraces the idea of a pending spawn, even though he's nowhere near ready for any responsibility. Ben seeks advice from his thrice-married dad (Harold Ramis) who tells him that he's the best thing that ever happened to him, which Ben says only makes him feel sad for him.
The rocky relationship of Allison's sister and her husband (Rudd) gives both Ben and Allison reason to pause. Mann and Rudd both deliver great comic performances laced with pain, especially Mann who plays a character similar to Laura Dern's in Year of the Dog but Mann never sinks to caricature at the expense of humor. Rudd finds marriage to be disappointing, commenting that he wishes he liked anything as much as his kids like bubbles and comparing matrimony to a tense, unfunny episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that lasts a lifetime instead of 22 minutes.
Parts of Knocked Up remain hard to swallow. Allison's decision to try to form a lasting relationship with Ben, even if she's decided to keep the baby, seems sudden and unconvincing. You believe that he'd fall in love with her, but it sounds odd when she says the same thing once she's sober.
Despite misgivings, the film does elicit a lot of hearty laughs and even some touching moments. One favorite speech gets delivered by a doorman at an exclusive nightclub.
In the interest of full disclosure, I did not have an ideal viewing experience. For some reason, an idiot couple thought that an R-rated comedy called Knocked Up, which wears its vulgarity proudly on its trailer, looked like an appropriate film to show their 3-year-old. The kid wouldn't shut up and the parents would take him out of the theater, then bring him back. Finally, I yelled in the dark, "Take the damn kid home already." Thankfully, the kid stayed pretty quiet after that. It always helps to put the fear of God – or at least angry audience members – into people.
It's also ironic, given the movie. Sorry folks: If you can't afford a baby sitter, get ready for a few years without moviegoing. You had a child, don't make the rest of the moviegoing public pay for it.
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Judd Apatow seems to defy just about everything one might hold true about certain forms of comedy. By and large, I subscribe to Jeffrey's 90-minute rule that comedies pushing their luck if they extend much past that running time, but Apatow provided a glowing exception to that rule with The 40-Year-Old-Virgin, the most I've laughed at a recent movie in ages. Then on top of that, he now seems to specialize in extremely vulgar comedies that, at their heart, hide family friendly messages: staying pure until marriage in the case of Virgin and now staying together for the sake of an unexpected baby in Knocked Up. Unfortunately, while Virgin manages to keep its momentum throughout its long running time, Knocked Up doesn't bear its extra frames as well, coming off as a bit flabby. Despite its need for some judicious trimming, it's still ends up as an entertaining way to spend your time.
One thing proving so special about Apatow's films, especially for fans of his great and short-lived TV series Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared, is his penchant for bringing back his extended family time and again, making each enterprise feel as if you've been invited to the reunion as well. Seth Rogen, part of the great ensembles of both Freaks and Undeclared, gets the lead role of Ben Stone in Knocked Up, a stoner/slacker who believes that "weed cures everything" and lives off the dwindling proceeds of a postal truck accident with dreams of an Internet fortune made from a Web site that tracks nude scenes in movies.
Other Apatow alumni along for this ride include Jason Segel (also of both Freaks and Undeclared), Jay Baruchel (Undeclared), Martin Starr (Freaks), Apatow's real-life wife Leslie Mann and two who have joined his creative clan in his films, Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill. Loudon Wainwright III of Undeclared even pops up briefly and provides part of the score and Freaks alum James Franco makes a good-natured cameo as himself. Knocked Up feels as if you're being welcomed home, but that doesn't give it an automatic pass: It still must work as a movie as well and while most of it does, it doesn't quite hit all its marks.
As most should know by now, the premise involves drunken sex between Ben and the in-normal-circumstances unattainable babe Allison (Katherine Heigl), just promoted to on-air talent at E!, that results in an unexpected pregnancy. (The E! setting also provides a priceless Ryan Seacrest cameo, showing that he's got great humor about himself.) In fact, Allison's extreme denial early on prompts her sister (the great Mann) to ask if she's one of those women who won't realize she's pregnant until she's on the toilet and a baby falls out.
So, with great hesitancy, Allison shares the situation with an understandably shocked Ben. However, he then embraces the idea of a pending spawn, even though he's nowhere near ready for any responsibility. Ben seeks advice from his thrice-married dad (Harold Ramis) who tells him that he's the best thing that ever happened to him, which Ben says only makes him feel sad for him.
The rocky relationship of Allison's sister and her husband (Rudd) gives both Ben and Allison reason to pause. Mann and Rudd both deliver great comic performances laced with pain, especially Mann who plays a character similar to Laura Dern's in Year of the Dog but Mann never sinks to caricature at the expense of humor. Rudd finds marriage to be disappointing, commenting that he wishes he liked anything as much as his kids like bubbles and comparing matrimony to a tense, unfunny episode of Everybody Loves Raymond that lasts a lifetime instead of 22 minutes.
Parts of Knocked Up remain hard to swallow. Allison's decision to try to form a lasting relationship with Ben, even if she's decided to keep the baby, seems sudden and unconvincing. You believe that he'd fall in love with her, but it sounds odd when she says the same thing once she's sober.
Despite misgivings, the film does elicit a lot of hearty laughs and even some touching moments. One favorite speech gets delivered by a doorman at an exclusive nightclub.
In the interest of full disclosure, I did not have an ideal viewing experience. For some reason, an idiot couple thought that an R-rated comedy called Knocked Up, which wears its vulgarity proudly on its trailer, looked like an appropriate film to show their 3-year-old. The kid wouldn't shut up and the parents would take him out of the theater, then bring him back. Finally, I yelled in the dark, "Take the damn kid home already." Thankfully, the kid stayed pretty quiet after that. It always helps to put the fear of God – or at least angry audience members – into people.
It's also ironic, given the movie. Sorry folks: If you can't afford a baby sitter, get ready for a few years without moviegoing. You had a child, don't make the rest of the moviegoing public pay for it.
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Labels: 00s, Apatow, Franco, Jonah Hill, L. Dern, Paul Rudd, Ramis, Seth Rogen, Television
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Film as nonsequitur
By Edward Copeland
As the lights came up and the credits began to roll at the end of INLAND EMPIRE, another audience member asked me, "Do you have any idea what that was supposed to be about?" "No," I replied, "but neither did Lynch."
Part of the fun of Lynch as a filmmaker has always been those odd moments that come out of nowhere, but usually they come with a story engine of some sort that pushes the viewer along at the same time. (For example, I recently re-watched Wild at Heart, which consists almost entirely of those sort of moments but which works because the digressions such as Crispin Glover's Cousin Dell occur within the framework of the larger story of Sailor and Lula's road trip.)
Unfortunately, INLAND EMPIRE consists only of those moments and while there are certainly great images and sequences, it ends up being a long, tedious exercise. The slim thread most of the film dangles from concerns an actress (Laura Dern) who is about to begin shooting a film called "On High in Blue Tomorrows" with a notorious lothario of a co-star (Justin Theroux) and a noted director (Jeremy Irons). Only, the filmmakers are surprised to learn that what they thought was an original script is a remake of a never-completed film, a film cut short when the leads were murdered.
Following that, the line is blurred repeatedly: Are we watching the movie, the making of the movie or Dern's real life? For me, the answer is that it just doesn't matter since none of them end up being particularly interesting. Frank N. Furter sang in Rocky Horror, "A mental mind fuck would be nice" but sometimes they are nicer than others.
INLAND EMPIRE is the first time David Lynch reminded me, of all people, of Woody Allen, though not in any literal way. It seems that Lynch, like Woody, keeps repeating himself, serving up leftovers from both his own previous works and from others. The rabbits resemble the one from Donnie Darko while they seem to exist in a strange sitcom land that reminded me of Natural Born Killers, which is never a good thing.
Lynch regular Grace Zabriskie shows up early to relay the story of a boy who went through a door, cast a reflection and created evil, which seems straight out of the Black Lodge playbook of Twin Peaks. There even are requisite shots of red curtains. Oh and lamps — lots of lamps. Extras on the DVDs of Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart both contain stories about how Lynch would suddenly run off and build a lamp for a scene and I fully expect there will be another such story on INLAND EMPIRE's eventual DVD release.
Once again, the setting of INLAND EMPIRE, as in Mulholland Dr., circles Hollywood specifically, much as Lost Highway revolved around Los Angeles. Lynch doesn't seem stuck in the land of dreams you have while you are asleep but in the land of dreammakers: "Stars make dreams, dreams make stars," William H. Macy's announcer says in an out-of-nowhere cameo. Lynch seems lost in Hollywood just as Allen keeps coming back to murder and magic.
Still, despite the tedium and pointlessness, Lynch still has the power to create striking images and moments, particularly using sound, to snap the viewer back to attention. For all the talk I'd heard about particularly muddy images in this film shot on digital video, aside from the opening, I found most of the images to be quite crisp. Just when you're ready to drift into your own thoughts, a room full of women (maybe prostitutes?) start performing Little Eva's "The Locomotion." You hear the familiar sounds of electricity and sparks only to see that in this case it's really a squirt of ketchup.
Dern bravely marches on with her performance, even though it's hard to create a character in a universe of ephemera. When one of her incarnations says that men don't always reveals themselves until later when you learn who they really are, you have to wonder if Lynch is talking about himself.
At one point, Mary Steenburgen wanders into the film and she and Dern both seem puzzled as to why she's there. (In another Woody Allen shoutout, in a bizarre way it reminded me of the black sperm in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask wondering how he got there.)
Then, there are the rabbits. One of the rabbits, keeps telling another rabbit that she's going to find out. I hope if she does, she tells me.
It's a true disappointment. I loved Mulholland Dr., but there was some sort of coherence lurking beneath the weirdness. My views on Blue Velvet change with each viewing, but I think about it. Wild at Heart really is just a bizarre riff on The Wizard of Oz, but it's fun to recall. I didn't care much for Lost Highway, but I thought about things within it afterward and wouldn't rule out watching it again. Of course, my love of Twin Peaks knows few bounds (Actually, that's not true. Don't care for Fire Walk With Me much).
With INLAND EMPIRE, it evaporates the moment you see it. Little has lingered and my only thoughts have been how you can spend three hours doing essentially nothing. After reading Lynch's book Catching the Big Fish, and learning of his intuitive nature and how he would never do DVD commentaries because he doesn't want to tell people what they've experienced, it's understandable how this lumbering time-waster earned praise. People fill in the blanks with whatever they want. I did the same and my blanks runneth over with boredom and frustration.
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As the lights came up and the credits began to roll at the end of INLAND EMPIRE, another audience member asked me, "Do you have any idea what that was supposed to be about?" "No," I replied, "but neither did Lynch."
Part of the fun of Lynch as a filmmaker has always been those odd moments that come out of nowhere, but usually they come with a story engine of some sort that pushes the viewer along at the same time. (For example, I recently re-watched Wild at Heart, which consists almost entirely of those sort of moments but which works because the digressions such as Crispin Glover's Cousin Dell occur within the framework of the larger story of Sailor and Lula's road trip.)
Unfortunately, INLAND EMPIRE consists only of those moments and while there are certainly great images and sequences, it ends up being a long, tedious exercise. The slim thread most of the film dangles from concerns an actress (Laura Dern) who is about to begin shooting a film called "On High in Blue Tomorrows" with a notorious lothario of a co-star (Justin Theroux) and a noted director (Jeremy Irons). Only, the filmmakers are surprised to learn that what they thought was an original script is a remake of a never-completed film, a film cut short when the leads were murdered.
Following that, the line is blurred repeatedly: Are we watching the movie, the making of the movie or Dern's real life? For me, the answer is that it just doesn't matter since none of them end up being particularly interesting. Frank N. Furter sang in Rocky Horror, "A mental mind fuck would be nice" but sometimes they are nicer than others.
INLAND EMPIRE is the first time David Lynch reminded me, of all people, of Woody Allen, though not in any literal way. It seems that Lynch, like Woody, keeps repeating himself, serving up leftovers from both his own previous works and from others. The rabbits resemble the one from Donnie Darko while they seem to exist in a strange sitcom land that reminded me of Natural Born Killers, which is never a good thing.
Lynch regular Grace Zabriskie shows up early to relay the story of a boy who went through a door, cast a reflection and created evil, which seems straight out of the Black Lodge playbook of Twin Peaks. There even are requisite shots of red curtains. Oh and lamps — lots of lamps. Extras on the DVDs of Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart both contain stories about how Lynch would suddenly run off and build a lamp for a scene and I fully expect there will be another such story on INLAND EMPIRE's eventual DVD release.
Once again, the setting of INLAND EMPIRE, as in Mulholland Dr., circles Hollywood specifically, much as Lost Highway revolved around Los Angeles. Lynch doesn't seem stuck in the land of dreams you have while you are asleep but in the land of dreammakers: "Stars make dreams, dreams make stars," William H. Macy's announcer says in an out-of-nowhere cameo. Lynch seems lost in Hollywood just as Allen keeps coming back to murder and magic.
Still, despite the tedium and pointlessness, Lynch still has the power to create striking images and moments, particularly using sound, to snap the viewer back to attention. For all the talk I'd heard about particularly muddy images in this film shot on digital video, aside from the opening, I found most of the images to be quite crisp. Just when you're ready to drift into your own thoughts, a room full of women (maybe prostitutes?) start performing Little Eva's "The Locomotion." You hear the familiar sounds of electricity and sparks only to see that in this case it's really a squirt of ketchup.
Dern bravely marches on with her performance, even though it's hard to create a character in a universe of ephemera. When one of her incarnations says that men don't always reveals themselves until later when you learn who they really are, you have to wonder if Lynch is talking about himself.
At one point, Mary Steenburgen wanders into the film and she and Dern both seem puzzled as to why she's there. (In another Woody Allen shoutout, in a bizarre way it reminded me of the black sperm in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask wondering how he got there.)
Then, there are the rabbits. One of the rabbits, keeps telling another rabbit that she's going to find out. I hope if she does, she tells me.
It's a true disappointment. I loved Mulholland Dr., but there was some sort of coherence lurking beneath the weirdness. My views on Blue Velvet change with each viewing, but I think about it. Wild at Heart really is just a bizarre riff on The Wizard of Oz, but it's fun to recall. I didn't care much for Lost Highway, but I thought about things within it afterward and wouldn't rule out watching it again. Of course, my love of Twin Peaks knows few bounds (Actually, that's not true. Don't care for Fire Walk With Me much).
With INLAND EMPIRE, it evaporates the moment you see it. Little has lingered and my only thoughts have been how you can spend three hours doing essentially nothing. After reading Lynch's book Catching the Big Fish, and learning of his intuitive nature and how he would never do DVD commentaries because he doesn't want to tell people what they've experienced, it's understandable how this lumbering time-waster earned praise. People fill in the blanks with whatever they want. I did the same and my blanks runneth over with boredom and frustration.
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Labels: 00s, Jeremy Irons, L. Dern, Lynch, Oliver Stone, Woody
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Monday, April 30, 2007
To err is human, to forgive canine
By Edward Copeland
Mike White dwells in the realm of the uncomfortable as a writer, from his strange sleeper Chuck and Buck to an episode of TV's Freaks and Geeks, "Kim Kelly Is My Friend," that made NBC so nervous, it refused to ever air it. He's also written more palatable fare such as the script for the fun School of Rock.
Now, White makes his directing debut with Year of the Dog, a mixed bag that's more Chuck than Rock.
Saturday Night Live alum Molly Shannon stars as Peggy and while I could always take or leave her work before, she unquestionably is the glue that holds Year of the Dog together as well as it can be.
Peggy's life revolves around her precious beagle Pencil and it is torn apart when Pencil unexpectedly dies, the victim of toxic poisoning, spinning the solitary Peggy out of control. As with most of White's writing, Year of the Dog mixes satire and the darkly comic with pathos and here, the mix doesn't quite hold together except for Shannon, who seems to be the only performer in the talented cast who grounds the entire enterprise in reality.
She's definitely a believer when animal rescue worker Newt (Peter Sarsgaard) tells her he understands her grief because animals aren't petty and they don't backstab the way people do. (I'm not one of the borderline crazy animal rights activists, but it's harder to argue with the fact that I've been fucked over far more often by humans than by animals.)
Of course, Newt is as damaged as Peggy (and most of the characters in a Mike White universe). Really, is Peggy's sister-in-law Bret (Laura Dern) any crazier in her obsession with her children's safety than others are shown in their concerns about animals? (A delousing incident isn't just tearing apart the first grade, as her husband Pier (Thomas McCarthy) says, but "the entire community," she insists.)
When Peggy gives her niece the gift of a DVD of Babe, Bret worries that it might be "too dramatic" for the child. The problem is that it's not clear what White's attitude toward his characters really is. They all seem to be being held up for ridicule, but Shannon is the only actor whose character remains consistent throughout.
Dern is shrill and silly at most points, but then is expected to be taken as a truly concerned person later. Sarsgaard suffers from the same problem. The only members of the cast who seem to create a character and stay true to it throughout are Josh Pais as Peggy's boss, John C. Reilly as her neighbor and, most especially, Regina King as Peggy's co-worker, who thinks she just needs a good lay.
Shannon's Peggy almost manages to save the entire enterprise, truly creating a sympathetic character who fills the loneliness of her life with the unconditional love of her pet while not sacrificing her character's essential instability.
It is too bad that White's entire film couldn't hold together as well as Peggy, because her tale is a touching one and could have easily managed the right recipe of laughs and tears. Instead, after it's over, you're more likely to leave scratching your head as if you've got a bad case of fleas. Then again, maybe it's that first-grade lice outbreak. Either way, Year of the Dog needs some kind of treatment.
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Mike White dwells in the realm of the uncomfortable as a writer, from his strange sleeper Chuck and Buck to an episode of TV's Freaks and Geeks, "Kim Kelly Is My Friend," that made NBC so nervous, it refused to ever air it. He's also written more palatable fare such as the script for the fun School of Rock.
Now, White makes his directing debut with Year of the Dog, a mixed bag that's more Chuck than Rock.
Saturday Night Live alum Molly Shannon stars as Peggy and while I could always take or leave her work before, she unquestionably is the glue that holds Year of the Dog together as well as it can be.
Peggy's life revolves around her precious beagle Pencil and it is torn apart when Pencil unexpectedly dies, the victim of toxic poisoning, spinning the solitary Peggy out of control. As with most of White's writing, Year of the Dog mixes satire and the darkly comic with pathos and here, the mix doesn't quite hold together except for Shannon, who seems to be the only performer in the talented cast who grounds the entire enterprise in reality.
She's definitely a believer when animal rescue worker Newt (Peter Sarsgaard) tells her he understands her grief because animals aren't petty and they don't backstab the way people do. (I'm not one of the borderline crazy animal rights activists, but it's harder to argue with the fact that I've been fucked over far more often by humans than by animals.)
Of course, Newt is as damaged as Peggy (and most of the characters in a Mike White universe). Really, is Peggy's sister-in-law Bret (Laura Dern) any crazier in her obsession with her children's safety than others are shown in their concerns about animals? (A delousing incident isn't just tearing apart the first grade, as her husband Pier (Thomas McCarthy) says, but "the entire community," she insists.)
When Peggy gives her niece the gift of a DVD of Babe, Bret worries that it might be "too dramatic" for the child. The problem is that it's not clear what White's attitude toward his characters really is. They all seem to be being held up for ridicule, but Shannon is the only actor whose character remains consistent throughout.
Dern is shrill and silly at most points, but then is expected to be taken as a truly concerned person later. Sarsgaard suffers from the same problem. The only members of the cast who seem to create a character and stay true to it throughout are Josh Pais as Peggy's boss, John C. Reilly as her neighbor and, most especially, Regina King as Peggy's co-worker, who thinks she just needs a good lay.
Shannon's Peggy almost manages to save the entire enterprise, truly creating a sympathetic character who fills the loneliness of her life with the unconditional love of her pet while not sacrificing her character's essential instability.
It is too bad that White's entire film couldn't hold together as well as Peggy, because her tale is a touching one and could have easily managed the right recipe of laughs and tears. Instead, after it's over, you're more likely to leave scratching your head as if you've got a bad case of fleas. Then again, maybe it's that first-grade lice outbreak. Either way, Year of the Dog needs some kind of treatment.
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Labels: 00s, John C. Reilly, L. Dern, Television
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Friday, April 13, 2007
Trouble until the robins come
By Edward Copeland
My relationship with Blue Velvet — and no other word than relationship accurately describes my experiences with the film — has been a long and bumpy one. When I first saw it at a midnight showing in 1986, in a bad mood and dragging Wagstaff from a school dance, my only previous David Lynch experience had been Dune. I hadn't seen Eraserhead or The Elephant Man at that point and I hated Dune. (I knew I was in trouble when I went to see that movie and they handed me a page of definitions as I went into the theater. Was I supposed to memorize them before the film began? Did they think I brought a flashlight?) My initial reaction to Blue Velvet was equally harsh. Then, a few years later, came Twin Peaks and as I fell in love with that series, it led me to reassess Blue Velvet and eventually my thoughts on the film grew kinder. This week, I revisited the film again and my reaction was different once again. It really is sort of a silly movie, though it did lay the groundwork for Lynch's later, greater successes with similar material on Twin Peaks and with Mulholland Drive.
In his recent book Catching the Big Fish, Lynch wrote about the intuitive nature of his filmmaking and I believe that really shows in Blue Velvet and all his other works. In a way, looking at the film again in the context of his book, Blue Velvet really does seem to be less a stand-alone film than one chapter of a larger Lynch work in progress. (Regretfully, I still haven't had access to see INLAND EMPIRE to see how that plays in Lynch's artistic progression.) All the elements that I loved about Twin Peaks are there: the mix of the horrific, the humorous and the downright bizarre. What I found absent from Blue Velvet in this viewing that were corrected in his later works is that the characters are not drawn as sharply and some of the dialogue comes off as tinny and ludicrous. Kyle MacLachlan was great as Cooper on Twin Peaks, but when he has to deliver lines as Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet such as "Why are there people like Frank?" in a semi-hysterical tone, it's hard to take seriously or humorously. Laura Dern finds herself similarly hampered as high school girl Sandy, daughter of a police detective and Jeffrey's partner in amateur sleuthing.
Despite the awkward moments though, Blue Velvet still retains a lot of filmmaking power. Lynch's background as a painter really comes through in the beautiful and sometimes grotesque images he puts on his cinematic canvas. Be it the fabled opening shot from the picket fence and roses down through the bugs in soil or just odd and inexplicably compelling sequences such as Dean Stockwell, bearing a resemblance to Joel Grey as the MC in Cabaret, lip-synching Roy Orbison's "In Dreams," Lynch's visual vision is striking. As for the "mystery" at the center of Blue Velvet, in a way it portends "Who killed Laura Palmer?" in that the puzzle really almost is irrelevant to the film itself. The reason it didn't get the backlash that Twin Peaks eventually endured is that the movie does wrap up its story and the villain (Dennis Hopper) is front and center. Hopper really succeeds the most at balancing the dual nature of the story, making Frank both frightening and funny, whether explaining to Jeffrey that he doesn't want to get a love letter from him because it's a "bullet from a gun" or chastising Jeffrey's preference for Heineken with "Heineken! Fuck that shit — Pabst Blue Ribbon!"
So now, 21 years after I first saw Blue Velvet, my view of the film has transformed again and I think in a way it's something that Lynch expects. In Catching the Big Fish, he writes about his refusal to do DVD commentaries because he doesn't want to color a viewer's reaction and I think he expects viewers to find something new each time. In a way, that is what make Blue Velvet and most of Lynch's works so special — they defy easy categorization and final judgments. You can't slap any sort of rating scale on his work and expect it to stand. Any review of his work, unlike the movies of just about any other filmmaker, truly capture a moment of time. Today, I find Blue Velvet more goofy than good. Who knows what I will think if I watch it again in another five or 10 years, but I'm certain that I will watch it again in the future and that probably says more about its intrinsic worth than anything else. The biggest mystery in Blue Velvet is not its story but how one film can keep evolving in a viewer's perceptions more than 20 years after it was first made.
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Labels: 80s, Dean Stockwell, Hopper, Kyle MacLachlan, L. Dern, Lynch, Movie Tributes, Twin Peaks
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