To give you an example of this--I was thinking that I would like to see a work that might challenge me the way MULLHOLLAND DRIVE did, but without the confusing excesses of INLAND EMPIRE.
That's really about the gist of what I want to say about this series. I'm glad it was produced and I'm happy that a lot of my friends got a big kick out of it, but ultimately I did not enjoy it and I am not completely happy that I invested so much of my leisure time watching it. Maybe that will change, later. There have been works by artists that I initially disliked and later came to enjoy. But I rather doubt that will ever happen with this (hopefully) final series of TWIN PEAKS.
Lynch does not tell linear stories. Also, he is obsessed with the idea of alternate reality and enjoys plucking at the threads of reality and our perception of consciousness. He is the cinematic equivalent of a jazz musician. He gives you glimpses of notes that your square ass can follow, and then intersperses those lines of notes with a litany of discordant melodies. Lynch has given us inconceivable puzzles, but he has also failed to give us the keys to solving them. If there is meaning in the stories that he has chosen to tell the past few years, then the explanations for them reside only with him, and he isn't willing to share the answers within the body of those works. He even has told us as much.
You either get it, or you don't.
I get it...but just as I'm not a big jazz fan, I have grown weary of Lynch's shtick. I just doesn't work for me.
The ending was a moment of classic horror, though. I'll give it that much.
"My cow is not pretty, but it's pretty to me."-- David Lych.
"It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It is better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it's a very personal thing and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for someone else." -- David Lynch.
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| The author of the confusion. |
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| The puppet. |
I saw part of one episode of TWIN PEAKS during the initial 1990 run to see what the fuss was about. I watched as one character in a diner went on about the wonderfulness of his coffee and pie. It just went on and on. Just as I was hoping we'd cut to something relevant to whatever plot was out there, the whole diner broke into a theatrical song-and-dance number about coffee and pie. Oh, yeah, maaaaaaan, I get it! Lynch is gifting us with an ironically over-the-top celebration of the quotidian pleasures. It has nothing to do with the plot; it *is* it's own point! Right. I changed the channel and never went back.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you compare Lynch to a jazz musician, because I regard the show and its fans likewise, but from an opposite angle. That is to say, I can't tell which is more insufferable, the noodly, indulgent, deadly dull and uninspiring jazz itself, or the rotund, bespectacled, oh-so-smug little goony-beard types who *need* you to know they listen to it while they work, because they're so gosh-darn sophisticated. No shade on you, Bob, but whenever I read someone going on about how excited they are for TWIN PEAKS, I want to ask them, "Why?" Because I know they can't tell me. They just need me to know they're Super Cool Sophisticates for mentioning the name of the show. Because David Lynch. Yeah, I've seen MULHOLLAND DRIVE. Eh, so? An elaborate excuse to get Naomi Watts nude and nasty with a hotter brunette. It was back when Watts still had her looks, so there's that.
Bukowski mentioned Lynch and his squeeze Isabella Rossellini visiting the set of BARFLY in his "novel" HOLLYWOOD, their names changed, of course, but not so you couldn't figure out who they were. Buk observed that while they seemed friendly enough, he couldn't shake the feeling the couple felt themselves superior to everyone in the room. Lynch's fans seem to like to delude themselves in a similar fashion, because while everyone else is rolling their eyes at the contrived absurdities, they "get it." Me, I get that the emperor really needs to put some pants on.
Yes, there is that aspect to it, for certain.
ReplyDeleteAs for jazz...some of it has merit. I don't think Harvey Pekar would have spent so much time with it if jazz were completely worthless. I like some of it, but I could never be the jazz fan that Pekar was for the reason you mention.
Lynch does have an eye for gorgeous women. You see it in his films and you see it with his personal babes. No ugly wimmen for him, no way.