Hacker News Reader

Comment by JackFr | Hacker News Reader

Lost me at “Mulholland Drive” is a good movie.

I think Mulholland Drive is a great movie, why do you think it's not good?

I think it’s successful as a practical joke in an emporer’s-new-clothes vein. Professional film critics can’t even agree on what the actual story told in the movie is, let alone any symbolism or allegory. David Lynch won’t give away the game that there is no narrative, no meaning. Thus the movie, and all criticism of it - including this comment - become a self-indulgent intellectual pissing contest where the only limit to what one can read into the movie is his or her own brilliance.

I think you can enjoy the movie for what it is without getting into, as you put it, a "self-indulgent intellectual pissing context" - it's absurd, doesn't quite make a whole lot of sense, but that doesn't mean people can't enjoy it and think that it's good.

Yeah but there is a good way to pull it off, and there is a bad way to do it. E.g. the Room also has the premise that it is SO much more about than what is on the surface, but we all know that's a delusion and that the Room is a shallow piece of movie. M. Drive doesn't give that impression, we're left with "wait... what was this about?" feeling which, to me, means it's a great movie. If I left the movie with "this doesn't make any sense, someone must have had a stroke editing this movie" then it would be bad. I think Predestination is an example of movie that is done in a similar vein but is significantly worse (than M. Drive) as in if you hold it to some scrutiny it's clear there is no deeper meaning and it's just intended to be "mind-blowing" or whatever it means.

Another example is David Fincher's 1997 movie The Game.

Many directors tried this, yet none pulled it off like David Lynch. IMHO.

Just my 2 cents. I'm a movie layman.

I'm not sure about The Room, I felt the same way when I saw it, but after briefly interacting with Tommy Wiseau it seems plausible to me that he's a bizarre satirist with a strange sense of humor playing the long game.

I agree that Mulholland Drive is art, though I don't think it's particularly good art and I don't like it much. What did you think of "David Lynch Interviews a Monkey?" AKA "What Did Jack Do?"

So? Movies are not just story (the curse of mainstream US cinema) but also mood, photography, aesthetic, poetical expression, and tons of other things besides. You can have all those things without the others...

And allegory is a pretty cheap trick in art. You don't need that either...

You wouldn't ask what an instrumental music piece "is about". Why ask it for a movie?

It's really not a hard movie to follow. Story is not what critics disagree on.

"The beauty of an abstract film is it's open to interpretation."

I think requiring each viewer to bring their own brilliance to the reading of his films is Lynch's aim.

I have no opinion about Mulholland Drive (it's been literally 15 years since I saw it), but this reminds a bit of a friend who keeps telling me "Lost in Translation" is a bad movie because it's story is not very compelling. In that case, I think it's completely missing the point, since the story is really about the least that makes me like Lost in Translation so much.

I realize I'm arguing against a straw-man here. The point is: A movie is not just its story.

The older I get, the more I appreciate these kinds of movies. Lost in Translation and Chugking Express are some of my favorites, but I’d be hard-pressed to sell their plots to anyone elevator-pitch style.

"no narrative, no meaning"

7 months ago I would had agreed with you, but after watching (and enjoying!) this 4:30hs pretty plausible imo explanation of what Twin Peaks is about [1], I'm open to believe that other works of Lynch may actually have some idea or meaning behind :-)

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AYnF5hOhuM

David Lynch truly is the most successful troll of all time, ironically achieving artistic depths through deliberate obfuscation and random ramblings.

I think it says far more about people, and what they are willing to accept as profound (or unwilling to discard as meaningless), than about David Lynch.

I remember watching that when my parents got it on rental from the local store. None of us had any idea wtf was going on the whole way through.

Must watch it again to see if it's better now that I've watched clever cinema (gentle /s implied).

It's not a good movie it's a great movie.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com