just rewatched MD

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dud
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just rewatched MD

Post by dud »

for the fourth time...wow, personally this is my favorite lynch work.

questions for y'all this time around:

1. why do you think betty disappears right before rita opens the blue box?

2. how do you guys explain some of the more tangential scenes like the hitman screw up sequence / pool cleaner stuff in the context of the most commonly agreed upon theory that the first 2 hours-ish is diane's idealized dream?

3. is it known exactly which scenes were filmed for the pilot and which were filmed when they returned to finish it as a feature film? i know the aunt and uncle in the cab was filmed in the latter production of the film. is there anything else pre-blue box opening ('awakening') that was filmed after lynched concocted the 'dream' idea to tie it all together? or was pretty much everything pre-blue box opening filmed for the pilot and then recontexualized once he filmed the rest of it?

thanks for any answers! very curious. totally loved season 3 of twin peaks but i can't say with completely honestly that it reached the brilliance of mulholland drive, at least not consistently. it was such a pleasure revisiting this work of art
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Cappy
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Re: just rewatched MD

Post by Cappy »

dud wrote:for the fourth time...wow, personally this is my favorite lynch work.

questions for y'all this time around:

1. why do you think betty disappears right before rita opens the blue box?

2. how do you guys explain some of the more tangential scenes like the hitman screw up sequence / pool cleaner stuff in the context of the most commonly agreed upon theory that the first 2 hours-ish is diane's idealized dream?

3. is it known exactly which scenes were filmed for the pilot and which were filmed when they returned to finish it as a feature film? i know the aunt and uncle in the cab was filmed in the latter production of the film. is there anything else pre-blue box opening ('awakening') that was filmed after lynched concocted the 'dream' idea to tie it all together? or was pretty much everything pre-blue box opening filmed for the pilot and then recontexualized once he filmed the rest of it?

thanks for any answers! very curious. totally loved season 3 of twin peaks but i can't say with completely honestly that it reached the brilliance of mulholland drive, at least not consistently. it was such a pleasure revisiting this work of art
I just rewatched MD for this first time in a few years, so I figure I'll take a crack at this. I don't know if it's my personal favorite Lynch work (Blue Velvet still has sentimental value to me), but I think I would argue it's his best.

1) I never really thought about this before. I don't know.

2) Well the behind the scenes reasoning for that stuff is that it MD was filmed as a tv pilot initially, and all of this stuff was setting up long term storylines. But I guess in terms of the world of MD, that stuff could be part of Diane's idealized dream.

I guess I never really view the first chunk of MD to be an idealized dream reality in contrast to some harsh objective reality during the film's final segment. Both parts of the film feel equally objective to me -- I think at the end of the film Diane is reborn and re-arrives in LA back at the beginning of the film. The creepy old people are somehow an agent of this death and rebirth process... The pain that Camilla/Rita wrecked on Diane/Betty drives her to suicide, but at the moment of her death she is somehow saved by their love, and gets reborn as wide-eyed Betty, led into the magical world of Hollywood by the two creepy old people who were present at her time of death. Betty/Diane is doomed to feel all the same pain and heartbreak again, but she always has that love she shared with Rita, and no matter how much it hurts her and eventually brings about her death, that same love is always what saves her and brings her back again.

Just like the creepy old people are agents of this process, the hitman character seems to be involved in it as well. Diane ordering the hit on Camilla is what causes her to get amnesia and become 'Rita' at the beginning of the film. He changes Camilla into Rita, the same way that the creepy old people transform Diane into Betty. And I think that if one takes a psychological perspective, where the first part of the film is idealized dream reality, then the hitman becomes a sort of crack or inconsistency in the fantasy that threatens to undo it all. Mostly I think his bumbling nature is funny, but he could also represent Betty's doubts, insecurity, guilt about ordering Camilla's death, etc.

On my recent re-watch I really became aware of the black book he acquires during that bungled hit ("the history of the world"). I think he has it with him during the Winkie's scene at the end of the film. I want to think it has some sort of significance to DIane's journey, like the hitman acquiring it had some symbolic relevance, but I don't know.

The stuff with Adam and Billy Ray Cyrus seems to be just funny, but it also throws a wrench into the already temporally confused work -- in the final segment of the film, Adam references the pool drama as being in the past, when at the same the time, he entire last part of the film appears to be setting up the beginning of the film (hit on Camilla). So I don't really know how to read a future/past narrative into the film, which is another reason I've settled into my view of the film as depicting a kind of mystical eternal reoccurence as opposed to something psychological. Obviously the human mind sometimes structures and restructuces events in a way the disregards linear order and favors instead emotional significance, but the film just possesses a kind of magical, otherworldly quality about it. It's beautiful and I'd hate to reduce it down to just something happening inside of someone's head.

3) This website covers that: https://www.mulholland-drive.net/studies/pilot.htm
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