Inland Empire plot analysis

I saw Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch) at the Paramount Theater in Austin, TX twenty years ago. And have rewatched it quite often. Even posted a piece here last year. After each and every time I watched Inland Empire I have never got it. Until now. Also proud if not smug claim here I snooped around online and don’t think anyone else has tried this interpretation. And not that it matters but I have been obsessively rewatching it and taking notes and thinking about it these past couple weeks. 

All of the scenes in Poland with LOST GIRL and PHANTOM are Vier Sieben. Scenes I been calling the Sepia Polish Narrative. And as I’m sure you know Vier Sieben is the film based on a gypsy cursed Polish folk tale where both of the leads were killed which had to do with something in the script. The same script being filmed as On High in Blue Tomorrows. In Vier Sieben Lost Girl plays a character having an affair behind her husband’s back with her lover played by SMITHY. Lost Girl and her lover both intend to leave their respective spouses for each other in the film.
     Vier Sieben Lost Girl also eventually becomes a prostitute on the street. Her husband Phantom beats her up because of this. Her lover ends up killed on the street. And her lover’s wife is stabbed in the stomach murdered too. Some intriguing bits along the way are that her lover’s wife earlier says I won’t let you have her. And she mentions that she can’t have kids. All of this either can be found in the same screenplay filmed as On High in Blue Tomorrows or manifested as effects of the cursed old Polish folk tale.
     In On High in Blue Tomorrows NIKKI GRACE and DEVON BERK likewise play an adulterous couple. And Nikki’s character SUE BLUE will similarly work the street as a prostitute. Up to this point I’ve been using character names as they’re listed in the credits but me diverging from that here I’m making up my own names and want to refer to the character Julia Ormond plays instead of DORIS SIDE from here on as ORMOND.
     In both Vier Sieben and On High in Blue Tomorrows the female lead has an affair with a male character whose wife is played by ORMOND. I posit that the interrogation scene with white tee and jean shorts ORMOND with a screwdriver sticking out of her gut is in between the films Vier Sieben and On High in Blue Tomorrows. She has the gut wound she got in Vier Sieben and when she stabs street prostitute Sue it’s a scene that’s part of On High in Blue Tomorrows enacting her character’s revenge for committing adultery with her husband BILLY SIDE.
 
Another big mystery occurs when the two leads are reading the script of On High in Blue Tomorrows what happens when they see someone watching them from then disappearing inside the Smithy’s House set on their soundstage. Later revealed it was another Nikki. I see the Smithy’s House set as a locus where the curse shifts the leads between worlds.
     Nikki Grace is a rich movie star. Her husband PIOTREK is protective jealous possessive Polish. When Nikki shifts to what I like calling her Mumblecore Narrative this starts with the scene she’s cooking scrambled eggs on the stove. The beautiful thing about Inland Empire and David Lynch for that matter is that the divisions between these worlds aren’t clear cut. They’re blurry. Intuitive. Cinematic. Dreamy. I think white trash Sue Blue Axxon N monologues to the guy behind the desk is On High in Blue Tomorrows whereas Mumblecore Narrative Nikki is at the barbecue in the backyard and the guy who has the ketchup accident all over his white tee is Smithy.
     As in Smithy is married to Lost Girl and neither of them are characters in either Vier Sieben or On High in Blue Tomorrows. This couple lives in Southern California. Sometime during or after filming her role as the lead in Vier Sieben Lost Girl got trapped in that room where she has to watch tv and cry. That is until her husband Smithy finds the old Polish people with some kind of metaphysical supernatural or otherwise abstract cinematic capacity who’ve summoned him to reunite them with their son à la Blue Velvet once he delivers the pistol they give him to Mumblecore Narrative Nikki so she can kill the Phantom.
     Yet another crucial link is Lynchian violence. Lynch is a master of sound design. Consider how in Vier Sieben when the character Lost Girl plays is severely beaten by her cuck husband and when Mumblecore Narrative Smithy assaults his wife both instances take on this unsettling jarring abrasive violent static sound design that links them. This link is how the curse works. Like déjà vu or some force beyond your control pulling you into shifting you into another reality. But again speaking of sound design what happens when Nikki kills the Phantom? Peaceful. Soft.
 
Loose ends. What has to be my wildest take the way ORMOND in Vier Sieben tells her husband I’m not who you think I am. And one of the LA girls breaks the fourth wall and reiterates Who is she? Later when Mumblecore Narrative Nikki is getting attacked the aggressor says I’m not who you think I am is the result of the curse taking the linking connective possession of him. The ORMOND character in Vier Sieben curse is she is doomed to shift between Vier Sieben and On High in Blue Tomorrows. In the Smithy’s House set Piotrek is cursed to shift identities between Nikki Graces’s rich husband and Smithy the husband of Lost Girl. 
     What about that black and white scene in the beginning when the man and woman with blurred out faces go into that room with the couch and he uses her as his whore? This feels like Lost Girl submitting to sexual harassment casting couch to get a role in Vier Sieben. And this has been said before online I didn’t come up with it. A lot of people read into Mulholland Drive (2001, Lynch) a whole plethora of blue color-coded vast conspiracy systemic sexual assault quid pro quo Hollywood predator behavior and I’ve long asked myself how does this relate to the overall experience of deciphering meaning from the narrative of that film and now to an extent Inland Empire.
     I’m starting to lean a little more into it. Say Lost Girl had been taken advantage of by some predator producer is part of the curse. Say she’s trapped in that room because she’s captive held against her will forced to have sex with other men there. Say she shows this to Nikki through the silk hole. And the Lynchian exchange say Nikki Grace has distanced herself from corrupt Hollywood but gets this role even though she’s washed up has-been and Lost Girl in return experiences this as evidenced by that shot of her quoting dialogue from Sunset Boulevard (1950, Billy Wilder).
     And cringey notice those lines of dialogue when the LA girls at Smithey’s House say they let the Phantom do whatever he wants and eagerly spread their legs wide for him. This I will concede could serve dual purpose of reflecting him being a predator producer. Say the curse the VISITOR #1 tells Nikki a little boy went out to play and caused a reflection then evil was born could be read as the predator producer of Vier Sieben saw his opposite in that film. Namely him being married to Lost Girl and her cucking him. Say the Phantom’s hypnotizing manipulations is cinematic symbolism for coercing women into something they do against their will? This also presents a troubling interpretation of Smithy’s offhand remarks that he works for Phantom. But all the better to be used by the old Polacks to lure the horse to the well. I have a hunch Vier Sieben didn’t happen so long before On High in Blue Tomorrows as we may have thought.
     So ok Nikki probably drapes her blue silk robe over the chair in the theater at the end to symbolize her shedding the cloak of denial feigned ignorance of predator producer. Similarly at the end when Nikki sees rich Nikki wearing blue this could symbolize her remaining naïve in another sense. It seems too easy the way Nikki shoots Phantom. It can’t be that easy.
     But why we get an insert of Smithy taking off his green silk robe or pajama top I dare not venture to guess. I know what your thinking. But could it be that obvious? It’s not about the bunny. 
 
Closing. Ever notice how often the visual motif of movie lights occur? The title card I used to think was a lighthouse spot now makes more sense. Marilyn Levens’ Starlight Celebrity Show sequence opens with a Klieg light. The David Lynch voice cameo as BUCKY JAY that causes Irons to break character laughing all revolves around adjusting a light. You want the 2K lower boss? Try to find some more on your own have fun.

6. The End—Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks exists in a dream. The dream conveys the message that when evil corrupts good there is a suffering felt by all followed by the wish to have prevented it by some or by accepting it and seeing what we learn from it by others. When some are unable to accept the dream or attempt to actually prevent it the result is a cosmogonic catastrophe.
     In Twin Peaks (1990-91) the pilot is everything. Then at ABC Bob Iger becomes the first to break one of the two rules. 1.) Accept the dream. 2.) Don’t try to prevent the dream from occurring. Iger doesn’t accept the dream. He forces Lynch and Frost to reveal the killer. Perhaps it’s no coincidence that when Lynch is forced to give Evil in Twin Peaks a name it’s Bob. Note that in this its first iteration dream is meant in terms of a system of archetypal images drawn from the unconscious to convey a message.
     In Fire Walk with Me (1992, David Lynch) the tragedy is impacted even more so upon learning that the victim LAURA PALMER made the choice to sacrifice herself instead of allowing said evil to possess her entirely. Her catharsis is attained through angels comforting her soul in the afterlife where she rejoices over her triumph. DALE COOPER shows up in their shared dream and tries to persuade her not to take the ring though. He’s breaking rule 2 although we don’t really see the consequences in this movie. PHILLIP JEFFRIES goes looking for Judy breaks rule 1. Finds his way above the convenience store into the black lodge. Cosmogonic catastrophe. And he finds Twin Peaks exists inside a dream. Note here the iteration of dream expands to include the sense of existing in the realm of the unconscious mind and not real. And it’s truly terrifying. My guess is what Laura whispers to Dale at the end is something like Hey you know how all the fans are going to bitch about how they aren’t getting the answers closure they deserve well it’s their fault and Iger’s because remember Lynch and Mark Frost pitched this as a series we never reveal who the killer is?
     In The Return (2017, Lynch) we see what happens with the Phillip Jeffries Gordon Cole and Garland Briggs Blue Rose Task force plan to capture Judy. You guessed it. Cosmogonic catastrophe. Sitting in the black lodge the whole time Cooper re-enters the dream of Twin Peaks via astral projection. Stubbornly defiantly bent on finding Judy he now realizes in episode 17 that Twin Peaks is a dream. So he decides to wake the dreamer who dreams the dream and lives inside of it. But who is the dreamer? At first it seems like in the real world after waking Cooper and DIANE are really Richard and Linda. Richard tries to prevent the dream of Laura’s murder from occurring resulting in cosmogonic catastrophe. Then again in reality the dreamer is revealed to have been CARRIE PAGE this whole time and the proof we have of this is the 6 post electrical wires outside her trailer is the same from the one at the trailer of Bob’s first victim TERESA BANKS. Then mistake two Richard refuses to accept the dream by driving Carrie from Odessa to Twin Peaks. Carrie’s final unsettling scream when Judy calls to Laura from within the reality house is the return to where it all began. That first iteration of the dream meant in terms of a system of archetypal images drawn from the unconscious to convey a message. The final existential blackout the final cosmogonic catastrophe inevitably returned to. That’s it. Done. And. Time.

 

I never saw horror movies growing up. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I went to see Scream (1996, Wes Craven) in the theater. So by the time I was old enough to I was too old to be scared by a movie. But no wait. One night when I was in middle school I was a very naughty boy and left alone at some strange home I found this blank vhs tape and watched my first David Lynch movie Twin Peaks Fire Walk with Me (1992) and it was scary. It still is. In fact I now realize it’s the only film that has ever legitimately scared me.
     The stuff I’m talking about is specifically the old woman giving Laura the framed picture with a photograph of an open door that she takes home later and hangs in her room. And this scene where one night she enters the door and we see her in bed looking at herself going through the door in the picture. To this day that moment is the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. That and another scene towards the end in her bedroom when she’s all coked up and the framed picture of the children at the table as the guardian angel watching over them vanishes before our eyes.
     I’m like thirteen when I see this so before I had ever seen any of Twin Peaks the series. But this laid the foundation. So when I did I found there’s so much stuff that frightened me tapping into these repressed or forgotten fears. Especially when Leland Plamer remembers that a man next door to a house his parents used to live at when he was a little boy would light matches and throw them at him and say Do you want to play with fire little boy? Do you want to play with Bob?
 
Fire Walk with Me means everything to me. Of the world of Twin Peaks it’s the only film. And obviously I have a lifelong eternal strong bias in preference of film vs tv so the opening shot of the sledge destroying the white noise cathode ray tube is a language system that gets me excited.
     Fire Walk with Me is harrowing to say the least. Among anything else Lynch has done it’s by far the most unsettling scary terrifying hard to watch gorgeous sublime spiritual transcendent beautiful thing I’ve ever watched. How? Wouldn’t you have to be psycho to love this movie? LAURA PALMER is this teen prostie cokehead incest abused suicidal out of control lost sheep?
     But she’s also innocent does Meals on Wheels is magnetic darling of eveyone’s affection bubbly cute blonde adorable homecoming queen angelic force. And Sheryl Lee’s performance finds her fully capable of evoking both parts equally in perfect balance. Seriously though the standout my favorite moment is when she and BOBBY BRIGGS score those kilos and he shoots DEPUTY CLIFF the way Laura is so zonked out she keeps laughing the whole time. At first it’s spontaneously tonally contrasting and then after the third fifth time when she tells him laughing You killed Mike I laugh even harder and harder at how tense but how vital and enthralling the jawdropping hold your breath edge of your seat intensity of the whole thing is. Bobby you killed Mike.
 
The Deer Meadow procedural segment is like its own little movie. And I love it. It’s what makes Fire Walk with Me instantly the most fun rewarding rewatch out of any of Lynch’s other films for me. Timeless. The PHILLIP JEFFRIES bit is now too canon. And those are some of the other things that scared me so much when I was a kid that COOPER in the video monitor frozen image as he steps out of frame and sees it confirming a premonition he received in his dream. The fingernail letter. The lipstick script windshield Let’s Rock with foreboding sound design. This thing has some of the most unnerving sound design abstractions to be found anywhere.
     And to close I guess now grown up what chills me even more is RONETTE PULASKI’S dialogue in the train car. The Father if I die now will you see me part. And how after she says she’s sorry her angel unties her from her bondage so she can escape. The Cherubini opera. How grand it all is. Magnificent. Crescendo of torment anguish. Garmonbozia for the masses. This all sets it apart from every other thing that’s been part of Twin Peaks. It’s its own stand alone art form. It’s the final word on what Lynch is. It’s the end of Twin Peaks. The end of pointless speculation. The end of cinema.

 
 
Twin Peaks Season 3 (2017, Lynch) is in another way the most satisfying culmination of David Lynch’s style with all of his charms strengths and beauty on full display except with a somewhat lighter touch. His only work that can be considered as having been made post-net we get fan service through a sense of of course with the help of Mark Frost an awareness of all of the overwrought fanatic speculations theories and interpretations that abound.
     First of all the joy. I mean come on ow fun is this thing? I’m a sucker for saccharine. You know how you realize in Mulholland Drive (2001, Lynch) the top-heavy Betty Elms narrative is the sweetest most genuinely if not over the top wholesome innocent naïve hopeful full of bliss we’ve ever seen from Lynch? And why? Naomi Watts. Hence our treat in the DOUGIE JONES narrative. Watts playing JANEY-E makes for this perfectly idealized fantasy home life of love sex job family finances child partnership friendship couple parents little slice of paradise so pure as to never get old. But gotta mention the Mitchum Bros too. BRAD and ROD. Great stuff.
     And nowhere near as much in any other David Lynch movie have I laughed so much so often. Off the top of my head when HUTCH asks CHANTAL if she’s on her period and she ferociously instantly snaps back WHAT IF I WAS? And after coldblooded assassinating that dude using a sniper rifle who dies in front of his young son sociopath the way Hutch lightheartedly says Next stop Wendy’s. Or after BILL HASTINGS head is ripped open when GORDON COLE plainly surmises the obvious He’s dead. 
 
If you think Twin Peaks Season 3 is bleak you’re missing the whole picture. The sunny side of this thing is enormous. Okay random but I wondered what happened to how most of the original series and film were so drenched in trauma from sexual abuse? Like say notice how there’s no rape? Other than what we’re told happened between Mr. C and Diane; and the end of that phone call with Jean-Michel Renault at the Roadhouse. And what do we get along the lines of prostitution? JADE is living her best life. What happened? She’s one of the prettiest happiest characters?
     Both Janey-E and CANDIE SANDIE and MANDIE embody this whole tradwife role. But even they all seem to love it and thriving. This revisionist Las Vegas role depiction system is rad. The mafia have hearts of gold. And when that old lady gets her life back on track and reunites with her son all because of Mr. Jackpots how can you not shed a tear. When Candie is so moved because Brad and Rod really do have hearts of gold I wonder what could ever spoil this magic world.
 
The dark is pitch black though too. THE EXPERIMENT is JUDY. In New York we see that Sam and Tracey prove you can’t trap her; just as we see when the dreamer is awakened and she calls out to Laura from inside Mrs. Tremond’s house; she the experiment created at the Trinity site and summoned by Jack Parsons’ sex magik rituals is wreaking her havoc and anyways enough said about that we’re not going to talk about Judy. 
     The way Lynch stages pov shots of night driving is one of his most iconic legacies. The woodsmen. The convenience store. And what I find scary as hell on top of all that is how many entrances we get in Twin Peaks Season 3. Portals. Coordinates. How terrifying it is when Mr. C being led by that woodsman to the top of the convenience store by that staircase whose terminus is a wall with no door. Archetypal doom; the way the Dutchman’s is in that cheap motel; Cooper’s room at the Great Northern; how when Mr. C finds that the coordinates were a trap he returns to the black lodge on his own as if giving up and how we feel the chill that he was powerless this whole time.
     The most troubling aspect in Twin Peaks Season 3 compared to everything else Lynch did is how far it takes you down the rabbit hole. And how little else than an existential void is to be found. Which is the point. And its perplexity complexity. The fan service of crackpot theories it subtly acknowledges. Like how it’s also all AUDREY HORNE’S dream and she awakens from it in a white vacuum in a hospital gown like she and we are crazy from having followed it this far.
    In the black lodge when the Arm and Mike give the clues 430 two birds with one stone 253 time and time again it highlights the two rules again 1.) Accept the dream. 2.) Don’t try to prevent the dream from occurring. When Richard attempts to awaken from the dream of Twin Peaks then awaken the dreamer by breaking both rules first one and then the other Laura’s final scream and the obliteration of the real world they inhabit is the final point establishing once and for all the inevitable mistake cause of the recurring cosmogonic disaster by breaking the two rules is thus demonstrating the demise of the two birds in effect thwarting the false conviction of trying to defeat Judy.
     The answer is to look within ourselves to work on what we can. Live a better life appreciative of what we have. Look around us. Love those close to us. Feel for everyone else around us. Seek to understand the mysteries. It’s not about defeating evil or blame shifting hate or revenge it’s about embracing good. And although for what it is its meta interdimensional planes of reality are addictively pulling us into their undertow you know the whole scope of it and its clean HD digital clean episodic heft set it apart from Fire Walk with Me in that it’s not as emotionally striking or immediate. Not as terrifying in the way that film is because it’s unsettling in a different way. Existentially. 

5. Women in Trouble—David Lynch’s two Hollywood pictures

The difference between Mulholland Drive (2001, David Lynch) and the rest of the films Lynch made is that it takes us to a place where we get to experience all of the bliss exhilaration joy sweet wonder promise of everything. Particularly our first love and a creative passion we love both so intensely as if to make our lives perfectly realized. Emotional paradise. 

     And by this I mean the BETTY world. The bulk of the film. When was the last time this kind of plucky G-rated schmaltz camp was so gratifying? It’s never too much. The wide-eyed naïve excessive enthusiasm is me. An involuntary tendency I have that’s been pointed out to me. And I’m pretty sure I got it from this movie. The most exemplary instance of this has probably always been this line when Betty leaves for her audition and says And don’t drink all the Coke which I’ve always matched to an identical scene from Showgirls (1995, Paul Verhoeven) when Showgirl tells her roommate And don’t eat all the chips.
     I’d say the point in Mulholland Drive that causes me to exclaim I cannot believe how perfect amazing awesome this movie is is when Betty and RITA go to those apartments and Betty decides to break into Diane Selwyn’s apartment by climbing in through that back window. Aside from the kind of mystery we work out with our intellect this is the kind of beat in a mystery yarn that on some primal level is just so rad fun on its own. But then throw in our intellects working and we get the girl who was lured betrayed whored out ridiculed punished and humiliated by the love of her life on a dream Hardy Boys adventure with the idealized version of said love in the most romantic amateur sleuth scenario to find out the identity of a woman who we know is her and is also the one dreaming the dream we are in and at the same time has already committed suicide because of it and we have to ask ourselves when has any other movie taken us anywhere like this before?
     When cinema evokes establishes encodes and exchanges a meaning with us that is impossible to put into words we get Club Silencio. Ever since the first time I saw this when Rebekah Del Rio sings Llorando and Betty convulses in her seat I’ve always immediately recognized as getting your heart broken for the first time the hardest the most painful that moment right before the end when you realize it was all an illusion that is about to irrevocably vanish from reality and you’ll pumpkin back into life without her and I cry every time the most cathartic scary happy vulnerable messy invigorating sobs you’ll ever know. The No hay banda illusion is infatuation cinema and dreams. It’s no less than our very existence.
     But what about all of the other trauma dark abuse hidden meanings in Mulholland Drive you ask? I mean they’re there yeah. But acknowledging most of them never really seemed to add anything that significant to the whole viewing experience for me. The Lynch clues. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to answer that last one Where is Aunt Ruth? I mean all I’ve got is that after Rita drops the blue cube and we shift to what I presume is Diane Selwyn’s real world then Aunt Ruth enters her bedroom and doesn’t notice the cube on the ground yet later at the dinner party Diane says she had an aunt that died and left her some money so? Where is Aunt Ruth? I wanna say Aunt Ruth is this like fulcrum of verisimilitude in the sense she was a source for Diane Selwyn to base her fantasy Aunt Ruth on but in the real world of Mulholland Drive she has nothing to do with her. But the cube is in her room. As in this uncanny Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette) moment with a remnant of a reality beyond our own that shows up in our real world. Cinema is candy. Cinema is a mystery box.

Mumblecore folk tale collective unconscious recognition repetition. You know I’d never thought of Inland Empire (2006, David Lynch) as mumblecore before but it’s shot on prosumer MiniDV lacks a conventional narrative and the definitive proof according to my definition a scene where Laura Dern’s character makes scrambled eggs the telltale mumblecore trope. If Mulholland Drive is all about what if feels like to have your heart broken for the first time then Inland Empire is about how fun it is to play make believe.
     Also of primary importance is how David Lynch’s final film feels the most DIY creative indie low budget artistic freedom art film meta distillation culmination of his life’s work. Ironic to consider his big Hollywood film is both narratively and aesthetically in its execution anything but. And like Mulholland Drive I personally don’t go for trying too hard to figure out what all of it means more like I just know how it makes me feel and that’s enough. Come to think of it the only David Lynch film I think I really infer something significantly within its subtext is Lost Highway. 
     Inland Empire then is NIKKI GRACE entering into the folklore of Old Hollywood but at the same time her character exists in a state where time does not exist. Everything’s already happened and the past and future occur interchangeably throughout the film’s narrative. Reflection is an elastic motif that encompasses meta devices such as watching yourself in a movie watching yourself prostitute versions of actresses wives mothers and domestic triangles where someone invariably ends up getting stabbed in the stomach with an old screwdriver. Oh and probably most of it has to do with the PHANTOM. Pretty straightforward.
 
The vibe of Inland Empire is like Axxon N the longest running radio play in history most enjoyable through its serialized continuously unexpected curse it charts. Yes I said curse that isn’t a typo. I’ve always above all loved more than anything the scene with PIOTREK accidentally squirting that entire plastic squeeze bottle of Heinz ketchup all over the white t shirt his stomach he’s wearing then when he asks his wife so calmly where are the paper towels and she says right behind you on the table. And such a cool backyard then all his Polish circus friends show up ominous and that Stanley Kamel dude with the watchmen cap intensity asking where his hammer is. This is the kinda thing in general cinema is lacking in. 

     It’s the subtle little things. Like how KINGSLEY and FREDDIE after we are told they had lousy tea from the commissary when they show up on stage and have a seat look how long of a beat they hold just projecting their distaste that stuff is hilarious. And my obsessive need to match and connect is given full reign with this material like the look at me and tell me if you’ve known me before line. And the manifestations of the visitor’s vague elliptical foreboding fairy tales.
     Inland Empire is also such a fascinating incantation of make believe and how we construct our own meanings because of how it was not only Lynch’s final film but the final and grandest achievement in that short lived little trend of MiniDV features. Remember that? Shot so wonderfully by the likes of Anthony Dod Mantle and Robby Müller movies like The Celebration (1998, Thomas Vinterberg) Julien Donkey-Boy (1999, Harmony Korine) Dancer in the Dark (2000, Lars von Trier) Chuck & Buck (2000, Miguel Arteta) The Original Kings of Comedy and Bamboozled (2000, Spike Lee) 28 Days Later (2002, Danny Boyle) Personal Velocity (2002, Rebecca Miller) 24 Hour Party People (2002, Micheal Winterbottom) Visitor Q (2002, Takashi Miike) and The Girl from Monday (2003, Hal Hartley). These were a time of going back to our roots trying to reclaim the excitement of spontaneity the whole independent craze promised. The MiniDV era was a bridge between Dogma 95 and mumblecore that Lynch was at the forefront of because of not only Inland Empire but a series of content and shorts he was uploading to his website davidlynch.com at a time when the internet wasn’t near as big a thing as it became. This stuff was lo fi raw rough and amateur and Lynch was one of the proponents of embracing this kind of aesthetic as an alternative means to stale bloated mass product Hollywood brainrot garbage. And that time is gone now. And so is he. One awaits the next time we’ll see that kind of spirit make its return. It’s only a matter of time.

4. Wicked Witches and Femme Fatales—the Barry Gifford screenplays

Middle period. The way I like to remember the star persona of David Lynch during this time is avant garde rockstar. Commercial surrealist. He’s wearing all black; but still keeping that top button buttoned. He introduces his signature coif for the first time at its wildest. He’s directing the most enigmatic black and white Calvin Klein fragrance ads we’ll ever see. Sex becomes a commodity. Violence along with it. And this wins him a Palme d'Or.

A golden heart fairy tale. Lynch’s most optimistic heart on its sleeve unabashed romance. His only pure love story. SAILOR and LULA share a developing internal conflict: doubt. Midpoint is Lula grappling with Sailor having hidden from her that her mom wanted to fuck him and his refusal is the reason she hates him and likely has ordered a hit on him troubles her. Wicked Witch.

     Sailor likewise begins to lose his trust in Lula when he finds out she told BOBBY PERU she’s pregnant before telling him. In fact she doesn’t tell him at all. So Sailor’s destiny becomes two-bit hood bank robber deadbeat loser. That is until the Good Witch restores Sailor’s belief in himself thereby allowing him to acknowledge Lula’s love for him and he her so they can raise their child together and live happily ever after. Which brings us to maybe the film’s central weakness. It lacks a strong idea behind its theme. Lynch usually has some profound narrative structuring behind his content.
      But it doesn’t matter. Because Wild at Heart (1990, David Lynch) is all surface style accessible indulgent delight. It’s powerful. It stays with you. It’s at its most sublime during that scene where Lula lies on the bed forlorn looking at that little statue of a horse with Strauss’ Im Abendrot blasting. This At Sunset piece about a couple approaching dissolution and death will prove to be a bait and switch but that’s to the strength of Wild at Heart. Most of the movie we get to see this perfect couple together. And when you think about it what causes them to lose trust in each other is so petty and is experienced by each of them so simultaneously calculated it’s Hollywood fairytale implausibility makes it that much more dreamy. It’s an operatic sweeping ideal of young sexy idealistic invincible love. As far from real life as Hollywood has always been yet vigorous dangerous and modern.
     You still get Lynch’s small town Americana nostalgia. Like the gas station attendant snapping his fingers while Lula dances. And when Sailor gets the thrash metal band to play an Elvis song we have to stop and ask ourselves what world are we in? Exactly. David Lynch’s. The end credits Cage singing Love Me Tender is the best reason not to skip through the crawl ever conceived. 
     Wild at Heart like any good road trip movie is about the voyage not the destination. From North Carolina to New Orleans to Texas this thing really finds its character. The paranoia conspiracy theory borne secret society of underworld network that connects everyone. And who can forget that one MR. REINDEER scene? You know the one I’m talking about. The haunting exquisite corpse teeny bopper Sherilyn Fenn Now She Tells Me monologue. And how the loathsome Bobby Peru somehow gets more and more charming upon each subsequent rewatch.

Lost Highway (1997, David Lynch) is a crime genre film about pussy. And self-denial. Its plot is pretty straightforward. The thing is hardly any of it takes place in what we might typically think of as the real world. You know. The diegesis. And usually if I hear a movie is all a dream or all took place in someone’s head or Tyler Durden is imaginary and in hindsight I’m supposed to accept that the character played by Edward Norton beat himself up in that scene in the parking lot that kind of thing ruins the movie for me. I mean I’m generalizing here but say there were a movie and at the end we were to be told it was all a dream I’d be furious. But I also adhere to the conviction that in cinema there are no rules. There are always exceptions. And remember Wild at Heart has shown us David Lynch is quite fond of a film that happens to be one of those exceptions The Wizard of Oz.
     MYSTERY MAN is an evil demon capable of driving a man to madness induced jealous homicidal rage. Or so FRED MADISON tells himself. That way he sheds the burden of having to accept it’s he alone who goes psycho and murders his wife. According to my theory the only aspects of the premise we may be certain of are that RENEE MADISON met her friend ANDY at a place called Moke’s and some guy named DICK LAURENT is connected to some part of this somehow.
     Also due to the fact that we never actually see Fred kill Renee this builds a central mystery essential to the film’s narrative which coincides with the jury in the O.J. Simpson murder trial finding him not guilty. Let’s say the inciting incident then is the buzzer Dick Laurent is dead message. In Fred’s scheme this is the first stage in what becomes a Faustian agreement wherein in exchange for his redemption Mystery Man enlists Fred as an accomplice to execute Laurent—here the embodiment of perversion sexual violence establishing him as evil. We know this is impossible though. In Fred’s delusional fantasy he finds redemption by having the courage to vanquish evil but Mystery Man can’t really live up to paying his end of this bargain because Fred’s soul is already unequivocally damned to eternity for the murder of Renee.
     If video represents Fred’s aversion to how things really happened then Mystery Man sending the anonymous tapes to his residence points toward a defect in Fred’s design. Mystery Man breaks the terms of their agreement and begins harassing Fred and forcing him to acknowledge his role in their partnership. After that scene where Fred and then Renee embark upon their plunge into that abyss corridor we see these two shadows walking across the living room. Those two shadows are Mystery Man and Fred going in for the kill. And those lights upstairs waving all over the place before the couple return home is Mystery Man prepping the murder scene. Furthermore any time Mystery Man is in two places at once we can take as Fred struggling to reconcile the fact that this evil entity he’s summoned has control over him and a mind of its own but really comes from within himself the whole time.
 
In equal and opposite juxtaposition with Fred’s contempt for Renee is his infatuation and desperate refusal to let her go. The PETE DAYTON portion. ALICE is the perfect half of all the bliss emotions she arouses in him against the poisonous half Renee does. Alice is Fred’s wish fantasy codependent denial impulse that sex can preserve their troubled relationship. Until this dream is ruptured by him knowing better as it disintegrates into the acceptance conclusion no it can’t. 
     The scene in which Pete first sees Alice in that shop is mesmerizing. The increased frame rate of the camera along with the mismatched shutter to preserve the fluorescent tubes’ flicker shot of her getting out of the car set to Lou Reed’s cover of Magic Moment is ethereal. But nevertheless it’s still shallow and objectifying of her. The awkwardly uncomfortable scene where Alice is forced to strip at gunpoint while Pete is made uneasy upon hearing it retold to him make no mistake is also a product of the very same warped psyche of Fred this whole time. 
     Pete and Alice are projections conjured up by Fred as a means for him to reverse the imbalance of physical attraction between he and Renee in the real world. When Pete’s parents and Sheila recall a man showing up with Pete that night and when detectives Al and Ed say Pete Dayton’s prints are all over Andy’s crime scene it’s because Fred’s delusions can only go so far before such an inevitable collision. The elegiac sweeping vocal ballad of melancholy longing that precludes the coitus interruptus Pete frightfully encounters matches Fred’s erectile disfunction scene because they’re one in the same reality. Yet in Pete’s version as with everything else it’s idealized. Imbued with romantic cinematic more closely according to our own desires dramatic force as if a Greek god is accusing his desperate fuck impulse you can’t possess pussy you silly mortal how dare you even try.
 
Similarly near the end of Pete’s hardboiled femme fatale interlude when he asks to go to the bathroom and is transported to room 26 with a serious case of migraine as the black widow mercilessly taunts him with the condemnation did you want to ask me whyyyyyy his headache links to two significant matching occurrences. It’s the key. 
     In his cell when Fred’s psyche literally rips apart as headache it begins the Pete interlude. And then after Fred nabs Laurent so again Mystery Man can do the actual deed and executes him afterwards the police chase which ensues with the entire LAPD chasing Fred just like he was O.J. the headache that ends the film tells us that none of this happened and Fred is still on death row. It now makes sense when we recall that scene on the phone with Mr. Eddy when Mystery Man tells Fred about how in the Far East when a person’s sentenced to death they’re sent to a place where they can’t escape never knowing when an executioner may step up behind them and fire a bullet into the back of their head. Lost Highway uses a retro-fitted construction which foreshadows the path Fred both denies will send him to his doom and knew all along.

3. The Horny Teenager—Blue Velvet

Specifically structure. And characters. Affinity. I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert. Death and sex. Blue Velvet (1986, David Lynch) uses the mystery genre as our desire to indulge in the forbidden. Its resolution is the reconciliation between our fears our shame our guilt and the embracing of the acceptance that a carnal inferno within us may exist but lest we allow it to overcome us there is yet hope that the balance harmony beauty of nature can be restored and preserved. You know. The robins.

     FRANK BOOTH represents perversion. Both in terms of sexually and of the corruption of society. Like a fire he engulfs others and needs them to grow stronger. Take the life of DOROTHY VALLENS. We know that during sex Frank demands Dorothy to refer to him alternately as either baby or daddy—Dorothy’s child and husband are both named DON. Frank has replaced them both. Turning Dorothy from mother and wife into sex slave. Shame is expressed through Frank’s line “Don’t look at me.”
     When Dorothy tells JEFFREY BEAUMONT “Don’t look at me” this tells us she has become perversion. But with her there’s this struggle. She resists. Because even though we see her bring Jeffrey into the let’s say immoral sex acts afterwards she yearns for the feeling of safety from him that Frank lacks. Dorothy calls Jeffrey Don—trying to return to her old life. 
     And when I say immoral sex acts I don’t mean the movie cares about what your kink is and doesn’t imply there’s anything wrong with any manner of sexual tastes but on the contrary it denounces sexual assault. The destructive abusive coerced victimization of another person. That first time we see Dorothy wielding that huge kitchen knife and playing dom initiating sex between she and Jeffrey when it stops notice the way she looks at the knife in her own hand. Like she knows it’s wrong.
     The scene that stands out. The one that really sticks with me is when she asks Jeffrey to hit her and he does. The sound design anguish underwater immersing subsuming soundscape of savage wild abandon animal screeching scary abstraction. Along with the off-speed camera (or step printing? or changing the shutter angle?) jitter voracious sex when he punches her that close-up of Rossellini’s mouth smiling in ecstasy taunts us with its ambiguity. It haunts Jeffrey because he has transgressed beyond what he’s comfortable with. He has become perversion. Because once he’s gotten a taste he keeps going back night after night. And he hides it.
     The real mystery in Blue Velvet is Meadowland. When we first hear it Dorothy mentions it on the phone with presumably Frank. The joyride night when Frank kisses Jeffrey and beats the crap out of him happens at Meadowland. But there’s an elliptical cut that says a lot by not. Time cut night to day. What happened between? By the look on Jeffrey’s face something traumatic. Guessing isn’t the point. It’s what your imagination thinks happened. But remember right before all of this Frank tells Jeffrey “You’re like me” at the height of the sublime Orbison’s woeful crooning along with Alan Splet’s flapping flag storm foley awakens us into the dream that this is the meaning of cinema we are implicitly complicit as both detective and pervert for being here with them.
 
Structuring. Perversion as plague. Parasite Frank infests Dorothy—Dorothy becomes like Frank. Dorothy infests Jeffrey—Jeffrey becomes like Frank. I don’t know if you’re a detective or a pervert. When Jeffrey’s mother and aunt watch the noir footsteps scene they show interest in being detective. Although from a distance. From the safety of their own home. And advise him to stay away from Lincoln. The real life crime source. Then SANDY emerges from the dark. She eavesdrops on her detective father’s cases. She enables Jeffrey to pursue his illegal (and illicit) investigation. These women are detectives. Jeffrey is both.
     Meadowland represents each individual’s own budding sexuality. When Frank assaults Jeffrey he’s torn the boy’s libido to shreds just like that swath of blue velvet. Again because of his violent destructive nature. Blue Velvet doesn’t say there’s anything wrong or deviant with any type of sexual behavior; except again that which is forced without consent from the partner; or that which you yourself are not comfortable with. In Blue Velvet the police as the balance of law stand in for morality the balance of what is permitted sexually and what is taboo. 
     Blue Velvet is structured as a classic morality tale because when Dorothy (Jeffrey’s hidden sexual desires) shows up at Sandy’s house pleading with him to rescue her he does. He doesn’t deny their affair in front of his intended girlfriend or her mother. He owns up to it. And in that final confrontation both Jeffrey and Frank have cop walkies—they transcend the law. They make their own rules as so too do we all. Jeffrey says “I’ll let them find you on their own” meaning he wants to distance himself from Frank. Maybe because he’s still traumatized. But their final confrontation is inevitable. And Jeffrey returns to the closet—voyeuristic. Denying himself physical pleasure past his acceptable boundaries without getting rid of them entirely. Repression? Also dig how Frank Booth can’t appear in daylight without a disguise. He’s the embodiment of immorality.
 
Characters. Blue Velvet characterizes each of Jeffrey’s objects of desire through the dichotomy of the girl you fuck and the girl you marry. Stereotypically so. Broadly satisfying in its implications of traditional feminine roles dated though they may be. 
     Dorothy is a great lay. Jeffrey has to break into her house to get her. She lets Jeffrey do anything he wants. She’s available every night for him to come over. And that famous line we all know so well probably means he doesn’t have to wear a condom. So when you get something like that from a woman she also has to be a psycho. Along come things you didn’t bargain for. Like finding out she has a husband and a kid. And that ahead of you she’s fucking a homicidal drug pusher with ties inside the local police department who’s going to rape you for moving in on his woman.
     Sandy isn’t immediately available for sex. She initiates the introduction between she and Jeffrey. She’s the girl Jeffrey takes it slow with and asks out on a series of dates. He makes her laugh. Establishes trust. Meets her parents. They go to a diner and have Coca-Colas cheeseburgers and french fries. A great scene is when Jeffrey is confronted by Sandy’s boyfriend Mike. It vaguely resembles the joyride scene with Frank. And compared to the dude Jeffrey has to face because of how hot sex with Dorothy is the vanilla virgin Sandy’s boyfriend is is so non-threatening that when he chases Jeffrey down with his car Jeffrey at first thinks it’s Frank; only to find out it’s Mike and we all sigh a huge breath of relief.
     What Blue Velvet and both of these women characters convey is the wonder thrill and mystery of having sex for the first time. Relationships for the first time. Loss of innocence and the innocence of first love. That and perhaps our repressed darkest sexual perversions buried in our subconscious that like Orbison says In dreams I walk with you in dreams I talk with you. But it's cool. You know. The robins are back.

2. The Little Boy—David Lynch’s two studio films

The two studio films David Lynch directed happen to be his most enjoyable. What at first might have appeared to be making concessions adhering to commercial practices catering to the moviegoing public thereby diminishing the artistry of Lynch’s esoteric inspiration on the contrary attain an alchemy of personal pop that works better than you might have realized.

     While The Elephant Man (1980, David Lynch) takes a prestige source’ high attributes and secretly conceals a moral whereby if you buy into it you’re the real monster freak Dune (1984, Lynch) on the other hand takes a vulgar pulpy source’ low attributes and secretly conceals a moral whereby being able to acknowledge there’s no way you could buy into it with a straight face becomes exhilarating. One is Lynch’s most quiet miniature model the other his loudest behemoth. They stand apart from his other films because each is in service of a conventional plot driven narrative with the ultimate aims of a life affirming inspirational heroic portrait of its protagonist. One sees the dignity in someone trampled over by the world the other sees the base forced phoniness of admiring the thought of someone trampling over the world and subjugating it. Light and its shadow.
     The Elephant Man and Dune are also Lynch’s only period films. The past = prestige. The future = popcorn.Why are these also the only two of Lynch’s films with the male protagonist so close to and so influenced by his mother? I don’t know if there is an answer or if that question’s even worth asking but I see them as stage two in the development of Lynch as cinema artist. The little boy. 
 
Trivia section. Both The Elephant Man and Dune feature small roles for the wife of the producer of each of them. And my latest indulgence in projecting. Take this as a joke. But seriously the end of The Elephant Man the final shot is of stars in the night sky backdrop against which the center of the frame is the face of John Merrick’s mother could very well act as a bridge to his next movie Dune opening with Princess Irulan facing into the lens narration with stars in the night sky behind her. 
     Somewhat more obscure trivia section. Michael Elphick in The Elephant Man is credited as NIGHT PORTER but one scene we hear another character address him as SONNY JIM which we all know is a name he shares in common with Dougie and Janey-E’s son in Twin Peaks (2017). And in The Elephant Man John Merrick’s room has a window that looks out to a brick wall in front of it just as the same can be said for Henry in Eraserhead (1977, Lynch).
 

Nothing beats finding your own personal reading or experience or perspective of a film. One that defies the mass agreed upon consensus. Dramatic irony is a stunner. How can I put this plainly? You know how in The Elephant Man there’s that proprietor who abuses John Merrick and subjugates him to chattel? That dude’s my favorite character in the movie. The one I empathize respect and am moved by. Love him. None of the other characters really do anything for me.
     I was like everyone else. The first few times in my life when I saw The Elephant Man I cried during the scenes when Merrick lays his head on the pillow. Or when he cradles the cane in dandy finery gesturing whimsically with his hand putting on airs with the confidence found he deserved but had heretofore been denied his whole life. Thought how ugly the world is that the poor people treat this deformed innocent soul so cruel. But then something changed. The upper-class people aren’t as kind as I had first thought. Revisiting the film again this year first I noticed Anthony Hopkins performance is offputting. There’s something not right about Treves. He feels lifeless. Dispassionate. The equivalent of one in that Kubrick fatigue-fugue wandering out of orbit sociopath. Yeah yeah I know what you’re saying but he invites Merrick for tea at his private residence to meet his wife. He sheds that tsunami of a tear in that tender friendship scene with Merrick. But I don’t think this film is saying what we think it’s saying anymore. I think that that stuff is there for the other ninety-nine percent. 
     Every character in The Elephant Man who’s kind to Merrick only does so as a performative act for their own ego. Look at me I’m charitable = I’m good. I now cry because I read this film’s ending as Treves crying because he used Merrick same as everyone else and that’s the moment he realized it. His atonement. I know you must think I’m insane. When Treves gets excited because Merrick can recite Psalm 23 by heart instead of by rote it’s really because he sees it as securing a permanent residence in the London Hospital for Merrick thereby earning Treves himself greater recognition. Who’s the real monster here?
     Mothershead (Wendy Hiller) full of contempt in defiance of any perceived obligation on her part to be kind to Merrick abandons her disdain for him why? Because he wins her over or because—like in society—it becomes the popular thing to do. What about Gielgud you say? Carr Gomm seems taken with Merrick? Nope. His motives are clearly the pride he indulges in over the Queen sending her congratulatory emissary to express her support of Merrick. And could one not infer that HRH only does so after the papers knight Merrick their darling? 
     Even that famous actress KENDAL is as fakeass an influencer as Jenner betrays her true colors when reading Shakespeare with Merrick. Literally the iteration of performative kindness. She isn’t interacting with Merrick she’s reciting dialogue with Romeo. It’s subtle. But there’s a huge difference. Merrick builds St. Philip’s church because nothing is real. The Elephant Man is about being lonely. Its final image tells us heaven is dying all alone without anyone except maybe one friend and the memory of a parent who loved you.

     And were I to sink to a crude inference I'd say it's even about incels. If that's not a masturbation joke when Treves is presenting Merrick lecturing to his colleagues when he says ninety-nine percent of his body is covered in tumors deformed but his genitals are in peferct working order and his left arm works great!
 
So what about my boy BYTES? First of all I just love the actor Freddie Jones. More and more his performance every time I watch this. I don’t know what you’d call it? Maybe not quite gravitas. Maybe presence. But the dude is cool as all get out. And he’s the mythmaker. Without him this film—Merrick—would lack the art of it all. We know Merrick’s mother didn’t perish underfoot of an African elephant stampede while she was four months pregnant yet that becomes truth because it burns into our memory more savagely than truth. Compounded with Lynch opening the film with nightmare montage offspeed frame rate elephants and the unidentifiable sound design slowed underwater claustrophobic boring into our senses wailing her writhing in agony—also proof I’d like to submit to anyone brazen enough to say this isn’t really like Lynch’s other films.
     Bytes created Merrick. Then the hospital had the wherewithal to put him on the worldstage while robbing him of his livelihood. Feels like Hollywood allegory to me. And psycho me when Bytes flogs Merrick a scene that should be to everyone’s horror to me is more sincere than any other. When Bytes reprimands him where have you been what have you been doing that hits home with me with the pathos of true love desperation scorn the transitory delicate balance of it all. 
     When Bytes sneaks in with the Sonny Jim crowd he doesn’t compel those whores to taunt Merrick out of malice but as a diversionary tactic to subsequently spirit him away. And what we’re left with is the fading away of Bytes. Of a way of life. The freakshow circuit carny refuse aesthetically in Lynch’s hands is a dreamworld delight. His industrial age never better a fit for his industrial sound design. So much to enjoy. The sound design is everything from the grinding anguish ambience of elephant eardrum pounding growl to the rumbling churning alleys and hospital bowels boilers clock mechanisms all honed blended and painted by none other than you guessed it. Alan Splet. And Lynch himself. 
     Finally how visceral are the scenes incidental to the foreground plot like the machine accident victim’s skin peeled off being operated on. Or the two tarts in the hospital waiting room whose faces are torn off from clawing at each other amidst a wild mob seeming to feed off of it—as a distraction for my boy Bytes to sneak in. Man he really gravitates toward has a knack of finding the nasty. But alas light and dark. When Merrick goes to the theater that Dziga Vertov montage proves this kind of subjective childlike angel pure wonder Lynch bestows him can only come from one who knows the only answer is love. 
 

A cartoon with pustules. A maximalist space opera. Lucas went to Tunisia Lynch went to Mexico. Dune is a two hour and seventeen minute abridged condensed adaptation perhaps suitable for those who adore Lynch and don’t particularly care for Herbert Villeneuve or Timmy.

     The first seventy-five minutes are palace intrigue. World building. Again Alan Splet’s sound design is maybe the best work done in any movie ever made here. You don’t just watch Dune. You jam it. Wind roars. Sandworms roar. Mechanisms buzz and drone. Nightmares howl flames that sound like you’re right next to a flag flapping in a thousand mile an hour gale. 
     When Paul and Jessica land on Arrakis things get really fun. Plotwise there is zero conflict in Dune. Remember how Paul is torn upon hearing his father is going to die? And when his mother tells him his father is dead Paul says “I know.” And that’s it. A protagonist usually has to overcome something. Has to have skin in the game. Something to lose but why? Why not just play the Kwisatz Haderach’s ascension for all it's worth? Crush any ops. Paul doesn’t let anything get him down. That’s a hero. Specifically in movies I mean.
     Call me as sap but the Toto “Big Battle” anthem moves me to rapturous joy. Its rousing refrain gains momentum as we build to the film’s climax. Riding sandworms. Controlling the spice. Controlling the sandworms. Defeating the Harkonnens. Jackson-Tolkien energy for the art film crowd. When Alia perforates the bloated Baron and he spins out of control up and away through a hole from an explosion in the palace walls and she runs outside the look of ecstasy on her child face arms outstretched with that bloody dagger is the perfect close to this Atreides victory propaganda machine.
     Lynch doing huge battle scenes was this a dream? Lynch doing a movie where good triumphs over evil the hero saves the world and everyone lives happily ever after? Accept the mystery. Turn up the volume and immerse yourself in the deafening explosive tumultuous onslaught of all that is sandworm.

     These two movies are connected. Think about that scene in The Elephant Man that pans down that alley in London the camera motivated by tracking that English bulldog and ends on a bunch of dudes operating what I can only describe as thumpers? And how at the very beginning of Dune in that first shot in the Emperor's palace on Kaitain there's those dudes walking nine English bulldogs?

1. The Baby—Eraserhead plot analysis

Eraserhead (1977, David Lynch) is about how darkness can control you and embracing the light as a way of overcoming it. The prologue is MAN IN THE PLANET operates the controls in a shack with a hole in its roof, on a planet, in HENRY SPENCER’S head. These are dark forces within any of us. In this case, Man in the Planet releases the ANIMAL FETUS HEAD MOUNTED ON AN APPENDAGE CREATURE into a puddle. Puddles are a recurring motif in Eraserhead. 

     Back in his apartment, when Henry gets the torn in half photo of MARY X from his dresser drawer it shows that he was heartbroken and has since attempted to move on from her. Sex is mysterious in Eraserhead. In the home of Mary X, there’s a foreboding air of sex and terror. There’s something filthy about the way Mr. X has put all of the pipes in the part of town they live in; and something ominous about the way he refers to it as the hellhole it's become. There’s a depravity about him. And the repetitive squishy sounds of the man made chicken gushing ooze from its orifice as MRS X groans with her head tilted back achieves a frightening sexual tone. The shot where the subjective camera moves through the living room is Henry’s trust in Mary going out the window.
     Back at Henry’s apartment we begin to see the first of several shots of his window with the only thing visible beyond it being a brick wall. The mailbox in Henry’s lobby is significant. When he checks it and there’s that small pouch, he goes outside to open it—it’s something he doesn’t want Mary X to know about. Inside it is a small squiggle that’s his sexual desire. Oh and the Animal Fetus Head Mounted on an Appendage Creature no longer has the appendage form it did before entering our world via the metallic interdimensional puddle. It’s bandaged below the neck now. It’s not a baby. It was never meant to be thought of as a real baby. Eraserhead exists in a world where reality and dream logic have merged. So if the Animal Fetus Head Creature isn’t a baby then what is it?
     I don’t think we’re supposed to ask in the literal sense what the Animal Fetus Head Creature is. It’s a means by which Mary X and her family have coerced Henry into becoming entangled with its care. And because he can’t care for it in any proper sense of the term, then what’s it doing in his apartment? So meanwhile Henry’s put his libido squiggle in the little sack in a cabinet stash spot. It’s begun to rain outside. Mary X has left again for the night. The Animal Fetus Head Creature gets sick. Henry then goes to the stash cabinet, but doesn’t open it. Then, notice a shot of the mailbox. (The mailbox isn’t in Henry’s apartment though, it’s downstairs in the lobby. Why this shot? Because Henry’s thinking about some other form of desire or hope that could help him get away from this annoying creature.) But when Henry tries to grab his coat, the thing freaks out. So he can’t leave.
     Now we begin to see what Henry’s been watching when he props his elbows up laying on his bed like he’s watching his favorite TV show, LADY IN THE RADIATOR. She represents Henry’s option to embrace the light. She’s an escape from the darkness (Man in the Planet) controlling Henry. The proscenium arch links her with staged entertainment, an elevated art that enhances your emotions, spirit, or mind. (And take note that doors to the proscenium open similarly to the way the elevator doors in his lobby do.) The remainder of what we get in this middle part of the movie is Lady in the Radiator stomps many smaller Animal Fetus Head mounted on Appendage Creatures as she smiles at us (Henry). Then Lady in the Radiator recedes back into darkness. Next Mary X is back in Henry’s bed, the sound design emphasizing the sound of her teeth chattering in her sleep and the wet sounds of her eye socket as she sweaty writhes in cocoon of bedsheets, spilling out a litter (like the dog with the puppies in her home earlier) of newborn Animal Fetus Head mounted on Appendage Creatures that Henry throws at the wall obliterating them. At this point the cabinet with the squiggle (Henry’s sex impulse) becomes animated and takes on a life of its own. It refuses to stay in the cabinet—as BEAUTIFUL GIRL ACROSS THE HALL calls on Henry for sex.
     When Henry and Beautiful Girl Across the Hall embrace, they’re in something like a giant steaming puddle of white in the middle of his bed. And when the woman submerges below the surface the top of her head resembles a mound of a woman’s pubic hair. Sex between Henry and Beautiful Girl Across the Hall takes him into the proscenium, but at the moment he travels to his next place, the white liquid is seen as to open up like (the elevator doors and) Lady in the Radiator’s proscenium doors—this is there to indicate a sublime (transcendent) ascendance. Also before Henry goes into the radiator there are shots of Beautiful Girl Across the Hall terrified by the appearance of a large lump that resembles Henry’s planet.
 
I think in Eraserhead everything to do with Mary X is experienced in a reality that operates according to the logic of a nightmare. And everything that has to do with Beautiful Girl Across the Hall is experienced as a reality that operates according to the logic of a wet dream. Now the final part of the narrative after Beautiful Girl Across Hall comes over occurs in Henry’s psyche. We get “In Heaven Everything is Fine.” When Henry touches her everything fades to white; he’s practicing. He can’t fully overcome darkness on his first try. When he stops, Lady in the Radiator disappears, and quickly replaced by Man in the Planet.
     When Henry’s head pops off and an Animal Fetus Head sprouts up, he clutches the rail in the proscenium in a way identical to how Beautiful Girl Across Hall did right before she and Henry had sex in his room. A rock is wheeled in that cracks a stream of dark liquid (Henry’s peace of mind). Then his head is sold for erasers. I think this construct is depicting how Henry’s lust is battling his increasing succumbing to the dark taking him over, as is his professional-creative life. He works as a printer. He creates. His head being turned into an eraser is the opposite. He destroys.
 
Upon Henry’s return to reality from his psyche exploration, back in his apartment he looks through his window (for the first time brick wall is gone) and sees someone outside down below beating someone up in a puddle. Then Animal Fetus Head Creature taunts him mercilessly. But a closer shot outside again now shows there’s nothing happening at the puddle. It’s Henry finally beginning to see a world beyond his inner struggles, finding that courage. And his fears at seeing an attack are what the darkness delights in, but looking again realizing that they aren’t there is overcoming the fear.
     When Henry sees Beautiful Girl Across Hall with other dude she sees Henry’s head for a moment with replacement Animal Fetus Head (dark has claimed him). So Henry overcomes the dark and cuts to the heart of his torment (literally cutting into the guts of Animal Fetus Head Creature). And the lamp shorts out just like the lamp shorted out at the dinner when Mrs X first burdened Henry with taking care of Animal Fetus Head Creature. Man in the Planet explodes. Henry literally embraces the light. 
 
In conclusion, I think Henry might’ve been a virgin before he met Mary X. Or she was his first love. And she dumped him. Ghosted him. And it hurt. Everything else that happens in his reality occurs according to nightmare logic, stemming from them having sex, possibly guilt induced. What if Mary got pregnant? What if her mother Mrs X claimed he’s the father of a baby? Even though Henry knows beyond a reasonable doubt that he couldn’t be. What if he had to take care of it anyway? What if it was hideously deformed, sick, taunted him? What if Mary bailed (like she did the first time) and left him to raise it? What if she had more? And the implication that Mr X is depravity and Mrs X is lust and they are the source of terror sex disease. Nightmare.
     Similarly, I think Henry might’ve only seen Beautiful Girl Across the Hall in passing. And his sex dream logic fantasizes that in his mailbox the pouch is this virility, like magic beans out of a fairytale, that make him so desirable to her that she’ll make the first move, knocking on his door in the middle of the night and outright initiating sex. 
     And throughout all this, Henry needs to get back to work. His vacation needs to end. It’s imperative he find his way back to Lady in the Radiator, his muse. And it doesn’t hurt that after he defeats Animal Fetus Head Creature garmonbozia is released from it like magma. In Eraserhead the elevator is only ever seen going up. The appearance of elevator-like doors to the stage where Lady in the Radiator is found is what uplifts us: heaven, spirit, art, cinema, inspiration; the white liquid elevator doors also include sex in this bliss.

The Most Hollywood Un-Hollywood Movie Ever Made

Last night, an acquaintance of mine invited me to attend a theatrical screening of a 35mm print of Mulholland Dr. (2001, David Lynch) and I immediately decided this was something I could not pass up. My previous encounter with this challenging narrative, from quite possibly the most challenging auteur to tread the boundary between commercial and arthouse, from both within and outside of Hollywood, simultaneously, was about 10 years ago. A longtime David Lynch fan, I'd always gone out of my way to actively engage with his works, in my own way, finding my own meanings. Then, I kind of got burnt out after Inland Empire (2006, Lynch) and walked away for about 5 years--until last night.

So, I used to try to figure out what Mulhollalnd Dr. was about. Then, I decided that was no use. After returning to this film, 10 years wiser about life and with a recent BS in film production added to my cinematically analytic arsenal, I think I'd like to give another shot at attempting to explain what I think Mulholland Dr. is about--my apologies to David Lynch, as I assume he discourages this type of discourse.

Part 1: Decoding Messages

1A (Follow your dream)--In the 1940s, it was common to hear Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer described as "The Dream Factory." The first shots of the Jitterbug Competition in Mulholland Dr. accompany a POV shot of someone going to sleep, setting up the potential to read the following film as some one's dream.

1B (Sequence between the two gentlemen in Winkie's on Sunset)--This may be a key to decode the entire narrative. The key elements are:

• One person telling another about a dream they had with the other person in it.
• That first person then becoming frightened after seeing that the account of the dream scares the listener.
• That first person then attempting to confront the dream, in reality, and being killed by it.

My conclusion is that this structure is a model for the film in two other instances: The first part of the film (Betty wants to be a star and falls for Rita) and the second part (Diane Selwyn wants to be a star and falls for Camila Rhodes). Now, an important distinction here is that the structure of Mulholland Dr. is one that supports an emotional truth, rather than a conventional realism typically associated with Hollywood movies. Furthermore, the film is ridden with double symbols. Perhaps the most startling discovery for me last night was the scene where Betty and Rita first discover the corpse of Diane Selwyn and run out into the front yard--the photographic effect used is a double exposure--because it suggests that the entire film is an instance of the collision between dream (Betty plot) and reality (Diane Selwyn plot), cinematically expressed as one image exposed onto a film negative that has already been exposed and the perplexing nature of this effect; or, the collision between dream and nightmare; or, the collision between Old Hollywood clichés and New Hollywood auteur riffs; or, the collision between youthful naiveté and aged cynicism.

Personally, I'm currently obsessed with filtering my entire existence through the lens of a paradox--or, the collision between opposing forces.

1C (Hollywood movies and their formal characteristics)--In addition to the significance of where Lynch has employed the double exposure shot in Mulholland Dr., there are other instances of double meanings derived from decoding cinematic techniques and the implicit meaning therein.

Next, there's the old couple, Irene and her companion. For me, they're nothing more than a gratuitous symbol of the language of conventional Hollywood film language from the twentieth century. Consider this: we see them at the beginning and end of the film. They are a coin that shows first, the side of how Hollwood movies communicate a dream--in the car they don't speak, but by how they're filmed, we, the audience, imbue them with meaning (jubilation) because of the slow motion (or, overcranking the shutter speed)--then, second, they show how Hollywood movies communicate a nightmare--again they don't speak, but the fast motion (undercranking the shutter speed of the camera) imbues them with a terrifying, threatening menace.

1D (Hollywood Movies and their formal characteristics, continued)--The scene where we first are introduced to Naomi Watts as Diane Selwyn is a huge turn from the entire narrative thrust up until that point. It's jarring. It's bizarre. It doesn't really make sense. But, Lynch blocks this by intentionally Jumping the 180° Line (the convention established in Hollywood movies whereby spatial orientation through blocking and editing establishes a realistic visual geography for viewers) and actually seems to be the first director I've seen to do so, in a way, suggesting an almost cannibalistic comment he's making about his super un-hollywood Hollywood movie. Sorry, I prefer cannibalistic to meta--I don't like using the term meta too much.

1E (Hollywood Movies and their formal characteristics, continued more)--Lastly, I'll suggest that the opening scene of Betty's idealized image of herself as movie star appears overly white (or technically, burned out--a term in cinematography that means over exposed), implying that the type of "exposure" she seeks is "overblown;" or even that that pinnacle (as Valley of the Dolls hypothesized) of fame is the point at which one falls victim to Hollywood Burnout.

Part 2: Hollywood Burnout

2A (Hollywood Burnout as a model for Betty and Diane Selwyn's respective emotional cores in Mulholland Dr.)--For me, Hollywood Burnout is a symptom evinced in Betty's emotional requisition of her romantic object of desire (Rita). The symptom is, again, getting to the point where attaining your dream destroys your personal identity. The link is that of the realization that it won't last, no matter how desperate you may want it to--whether it be attaining the career of a movie star or attaining a chance to be with the love of your life--because it's all an illusion, albeit one that we believe we have mutually contracted ourselves into, and once we realize it's disintegrating, we often are unable to survive from.

2B (The director, Adam Kesher)--He also suffers from Hollywood Burnout, of the variety wherein he's gone from auteur to commercial hack. A very telling line of dialogue occurs when he's told by a financier, "it's no longer your film."

Part 3: References to Other Hollywood Movies

3A (Part 1, Old Hollywood)--Mulholland Dr. begins with an inventory of Old Hollywood bright-eyed, overly sentimental idealism. And we get all of the most saccharine chestnuts one could imagine: comical references to dog poop and a kagaroo that destroyed a courtyard; slapstick (the entire botched hitman thread is a comment on Hollywood violence because it's all gratuitous and goes absolutely nowhere and has practically nothing to do with the rest of the plot); etc...

3B (Part 2, New Hollywood)--Lynch's over the top lesbian scene is nothing other than Camp of the most intentional type. It's hilarious, not erotic.

3C (Specific references)--I'd always found the line Betty says to Rita before her audition hilarious: "...And don't drink all the Coke!" Anyone remember the line in Showgirls (1995, Paul Verhoeven) where Nomi is off to work and tells her roomate in a similarly overacted delivery: "...And don't eat all the chips!"?

There's obviously a ton more of these, but I'll just limit my observations to Showgirls and The Wizard of Oz (1939, ???Victor Fleming??? and way too many others). One of the biggest narrative devices that helped me understand Mulholland Dr. was that the second part is reality, because Diane Selwyn has obviously awakend from a dream and the people in her reality are versions of characters she'd created in her dream, just as Dorothy had done in The Wizard of Oz. In fact, the exact moment this occurs, Coco (Ann Miller) exclaims to Diane: "So you just flew in from Kansas... is that it?"

Conclusion

This movie is so close to the themes I find most important in films: feminine identity, Hollywood Melodrama, and artifice as a means to achieve aesthetic emotion are the big ones; but also, of course, the illusion of love and its analog, the illusion of movies. Or, as Mulholland Dr. says: "There is no band, but we hear music." Of course, the entire Club Silencio is an analog for watching movies, as important, if not more than the haunted house shown in Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974, Jacques Rivette).

Ahh, these are just a few thoughts off the top of my head that I wanted to jot down while they're fresh. There's no telling what this movie will mean to me in the future, but I'm guessing a lot.

--Dregs