by Allan Fish
(UK/USA 1980 124m) DVD1/2
The Lord is my shepherd…
p Stuart Cornfeld d David Lynch w Christopher de Vore, Eric Bergren, David Lynch ph Freddie Francis ed Anne V.Coates m John Morris (including “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber) art Stuart Craig cos Patricia Norris make up Christopher Tucker, Wally Schneiderman
John Hurt (John Merrick), Anthony Hopkins (Dr Frederick Treves), Anne Bancroft (Mrs Kendal), Wendy Hiller (Mothershead), John Gielgud (Dr Carr Gomm), Michael Elphick (Porter), Freddie Jones (Bytes), Hannah Gordon (Mrs Treves), Helen Ryan (Princess Alexandra), John Standing (Fox), Dexter Fletcher, Lesley Dunlop, Phoebe Nicholls, Frederick Treves, Patricia Hodge, David Ryall, Pauline Quirke, Kathleen Byron,
It’s quite ironic that a film about the unfortunate John Merrick should be in itself so shocking, being as his appearance shocked the populace of late Victorian London. But when I mean shocking I don’t mean horrific, but rather perhaps surprising, for who could have foreseen that such a film could have been directed by David Lynch, whose only previous film was the impenetrable Eraserhead, be produced by Mel Brooks’ company, a man whose films could not be further from this one, and shot in ‘Scope black and white at a time when such practices were in themselves obsolete. It seems thus a film not only displaced in time but in style, and could, prior to release, have been reasonably predicted a disaster waiting to happen. It’s therefore a pleasant shock to find out that not only could no-one have predicted how well it would turn out, but that the film is such a moving, humanist tract of a type long thought past its sell-by-date.
In London in 1888, Dr Frederick Treves visits a travelling freak show and finds that its chief attraction is a horrifically deformed man, dubbed ‘The Elephant Man’ by his owner/exploiter Bytes. He takes him to his hospital to show off to his peers, but gradually comes to realise the man is being mistreated by his owner and takes him into his own custody. Meanwhile outside forces still contrive to try and exploit John and though he reveals himself a cultured, softly-spoken, kindly soul, people still see him as an oddity and Treves himself wonders whether he, too, is subconsciously exploiting him.
There are aspects of the film that do rankle, not least the caricatured bullies portrayed by Elphick and Jones and the somewhat unnecessary cameo from Bancroft (Brooks’ wife, of course) as an actress who befriends Merrick, but these are churlish objections. Pauline Kael called the film the most beautiful black and white film for fifteen years and she was quite right, and though there have been black and white masterworks since, none in this ‘Scope format, in which the brilliant Francis (Sons and Lovers, The Innocents) was arguably the greatest exponent. Here was a film that held a mirror up to our own fears and prejudices, and though it’s never mentioned in the film, the irony that a man who looks like a monster was around at the same time (gorgeously recreated by Stuart Craig) as a human monster, Jack the Ripper, was terrorising the very part of London here depicted (Treves worked at a hospital on Whitechapel Road) is not lost on us (the same coroner sat in Merrick’s case as for several of Jack’s victims).
The greatest credit, however, must go to the performances of the principals, and Hopkins and Hurt are exceptional as the doctor and his charge. Just observe the look on Hopkins’ face when he first sees Merrick, filled with horror and pity, and even that iconic opening shot of him turning quickly toward the camera with intent. Then there’s Hurt, unrecognisable not only in looks but in voice, the only time his inimitable voice was not employed – he sounds rather like a mixture of Derek Jacobi’s Claudius and George the hippo from Rainbow. The moment where he rises and recites Psalm 23 in perfect cultured diction is one of the most moving sequences in all cinema, yet matched by the poignant finale, which uses Barber’s immortal piece more adeptly than a thousand Oliver Stone overkills. As Dilys Powell observed, “in an age of horror movies, this is a film which takes the material of horror and translates it into loving kindness.”
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Wow Allan I’m almost shocked this made the list. I like this film quite a bit, (as it is Lynch) but I figured you’d go with ‘Blue Velvet’. I suppose I am jumping the gun here, maybe if this IS the only Lynch on the list, then I’ll be shocked is what I should be saying…
My favorite scene has always been when Merrick is first introduced to Dr Frederick Treves’ wife. It still moves me after repeated watches, so sad, then so optimistic. When Lynch shows heart he has quite a bit to offer (and the script’s pretty good too).
oh also the sequence where is birth is depicted in the beginning (which it looks like you’ve sort of screen capp’ed above) is a great marriage of the lynch making ‘The Elephant Man’ and the Lynch that made ‘Eraserhead’. It’s beautiful, creepy, gothic, and primal. fantastic.
interesting to think about B+W films in ‘Scope from after, say 1965. I can’t think of many that looked better then this one (to challenge Kael’s quote).
I recall ‘In Cold Blood’ that’s a beautiful film to look at… ‘Angel-A’ looks great, Von Trier’s ‘Europa’, ‘Manhattan’. In other words– it’s rare. Am I missing any? not saying these are better or worse then ‘The Elephant Man’ it’s just fun to think about.
One I was shocked wasn’t 2:35 was ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’; shots I remember from that film just always seemed to me to be anamorphic. Same for ‘Rumble Fish’.
Was “Angel-A” shot in scope? Whenever it plays on cable around here, it’s only ever shown in 1.85:1. And this is on a channel that routinely shows films in their correct aspect ratio, or otherwise in full-screen.
According to http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0473753/technical it was.
I’ve seen it about two years ago and can’t remember. All I remember is that is was widescreen couldn’t remember exact ratio so I looked it up.
it’s a beautiful film to look at. kinda wish i owned it now to rewatch actually, maybe i’ll netflix…
A fine film, and while not Lynch’s best (I expect to see more of his films in the coming entries) it is a triumph that is rather rare in some ways– the triumph against type. A rather straightforward historical drama, it’s not quite the film the man who directed “Eraserhead” and would go on to direct so many more surreal gems would create, and yet in the end, it absolutely fits.
I think you’re underplaying Lynch’s role here, to an extent– Hopkins and Hurt are great, of course, but without Lynch’s studied use of scope, patient, but sometimes shocking pacing and immersive sound-design, the film would be little more than a well-acted, but unremarkable character study. In his hands, however, it’s art.
Interesting that you point out the Whitechapel connection, Fish– check out Alan Moore’s Ripper book “From Hell”, and you’ll find that connection exploited in a most clever way.
I will say this– it’s a bit odd that you chose to include this on your list of the 80’s, but chose to leave “Eraserhead” off of your list of the 70’s. I’ve always felt that the latter was one of his finest films, while “The Elephant Man” keeps looking less and less important as time goes on. But hey, that’s me…
Bob. this we agree on 100%. and I DO greatly like this film.
Oh, so do I. And I believe it belongs on a list of the best films of the 80’s. But I also believe that “Eraserhead” deserved a place in the 70’s list more, and that its absence almost singlehandedly undermined the credibility of said list. Then again, all it really takes for each list is one film’s lack of presence for me to write it off– for the 60’s it was “Woman in the Dunes”, for example. I’m almost certain that if I looked at Fish’s lists for the other decades I’d find essentials he’s leaving off that I’d decry as blasphemy, but hey, it’s his list.
Though I still don’t understand why “Woman in the Dunes” wasn’t up there, man…
‘Woman in the Dunes’ was on mine, but it WAS also below ‘A Face of Another’ which I like better…
“Face of Another” is a fine film. “Woman in the Dunes” survives the barrier of a foreign-language better, however. Most of it is conveyed through visuals, from the trapped situation the protagonist finds himself in to the quality of the performances. It’s one of those films that you could more or less understand without knowing a word of Japanese or the benefit of subtitles. It’s a perfect example of what I think of as pure cinema.
“Face of Another”, on the other hand, is very talk-heavy. It’s very good, but also a little more difficult to approach, especially with the language barrier. Still, Teshigahara makes up for that with very bold and striking images, and a much more urban, sophisticated blend of surrealism. I’d be happy seeing either movie on a list. The fact that you include both, Jamie, is a credit to your taste.
Bob, have you ever read Camus ‘Myth of Sisyphus’? such a great companion to ‘Woman in the Dunes’ just exchange sand for boulders.
I agree with all your comments on ‘Face of Another’; ‘it’s harder to get’, ‘more urban’, ‘talk-heavy’, ect. These are all reasons I like the film slightly more.
A surprising and most welcome pick. It’s also a nicely written piece and, to boot, the first film on your list I’ve seen (though not for a long, long time)! I too hope there’s more Lynch to come.
Like Movieman0283, this is the first film on your list that I have seen. Reiterating what you have said this is beautifully filmed in black and white. It is unfortunate that B&W is so little used and under appreciated today. It is a different world in B&W. Coincidently, I watched Blue Velvet last night and hold out hope we may see this on your list.
This is one of the most moving films I’ve ever seen.
I like the final quote there, which asserts that the ‘stuff of horror is turned into loving kindness’. This is one film I have never nor will ever forget.
This is definitely a beautiful film, and one that simultaneously makes sense as Lynch’s work, and yet doesn’t quite feel like a product of his undiluted sensibility. In any event, it’s Lynch at his most straightforward, and also his most compassionate and empathetic. I agree with others that, in Lynch’s body of work as a whole, it’s something of an outlier, dwarfed by Eraserhead and his other more characteristic works.
I also second Bob’s mention of From Hell (the brilliant comic, not the Johnny Depp film), another definitive portrayal of Whitechapel in this era, with the Elephant Man himself making an interesting cameo appearance.
Oh yes, the comic book was a phatasmagoria of the era, especially the epilogue. Just like the film the conclusion reached was the wrong one – I have my own favourite for Saucy Jack. Mind you, though not up to the comic book, the 2001 film had a fairly exemplary production design.
A fine film indeed. As to Lynch’s career, I love the fact that he could balance films like this, DUNE, and THE STRAIGHT STORY in between more “off the wall” films like BLUE VELVET (still his masterwork), LOST HIGHWAY (still creepy) and MULLHOLLAND DRIVE. I always thought Lynch picked the visual styles that were correct for the stories he told. So, is this film so different from his others? Yes, if you think each one has a different audio/visual style. No, if you consider that the themes of his films are all pretty much the same (that being the bizarre that lies beneath seemingly ordinary places). I always thought Lynch was brilliant because he made the perfect style choices for each story he was about to tell. This film, like most of what followed it, is extrodinary in its own way.
By the way, Bob, I watched The Hidden Fortress on DVD (the Janus Films Arthouse series) and was rather shocked to see the framing was about the same as on the big screen. To my relief (as I had mentioned the issue in an e-mail to the theater) I later determined that this was due to the TV – BOTH the projection and the television were cutting off a bit of an edge, though the difference was probably not between 1.85:1 to 2.35:1. But it just goes to show you how precisely Kurosawa composed his shots – shave off even a small bit on the sides and suddenly characters are nearly disappearing from the frame.
The Elephant Man is a film that has some of the most magnificent performances of the 80s and has some breathtaking images. One sequences comes to mind where a crowd of people chase John Merrick through England (a scene reminiscent to the famous scene from Frankenstein where the monster is chased by an angry mob) leading to the film’s famous quote: “I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being! I am a man!” I can’t deny the artsy that came into making this sometimes overlooked film (and I understand its very well liked among the masses of voters who go on imdb), but I’m not sure I ever embraced this film like Lynch’s others: like Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, Muholland Dr., or even the ridiculously over-the-top masterpiece that was Wild at Heart. My biggest problem with this film was the strange sequences involving Merrick’s mother in the beginning and end of the film. I never gave this film multiple viewings and hate myself for not doing so. This was a film that I really liked when I first viewed it some years ago, but really appreciated it much later. A good film, very deserving on this list, and a film, along with his Straight Story (another overlooked masterpiece), that proves Lynch wasn’t some heartless pseudo-intellectual film maker with a track record of just weird films.
A brilliant film rich in every department, full of depth and richness and for a Lynch, one with fully textured characters so that it’s not just weird intellectual and posturing (unlike the dreadful ‘Blue Velvert’).
Ah Bobby, there are few who would say that about BLUE VELVET, which is Lynch’s greatest film, and certainly one of the 80’s masterpieces. The tremendous reviews from virtually every critic woth their salt speak for themselves. But aside from that I have not yet come across a single person who didn’t think it a masterpiece, much less ‘dreadful.’ But I got that off my chest. The last thing I want to do is offend you, my very good friend.
***takes the dagger and***
Alas, I know what kind of minefield I was stepping into in regards to ‘Blue Velvet’, Sam. It’s just a film that bored the living daylights out of me, as a video watch in the mid ’80s, before I knew anything about Lynch. Then I remember a film lecturer showing it during films studies to a crowd and the mauling it got in the discussion afterwards. I think it’s a critics movie. ‘The Elephant Man’ bridges the gulf and was not only a darling of the critics but has mesmerised audiences where ever it gets shown. For me, it’s as good as it gets. Whilest keeping the Lynch flavour and this is a far greater accomplishment than making a movie about weirdos. If I want that kinda movie, I prefer ‘King’s Row’.
I might add that I’m all for individuality and experimental cinema but I never connected with ‘Blue Velvet’.
Bobby: That’s a fair enough position. While I personally find Frank Booth of the cinemas’s most deliciously fascinating characters, I can understand him also being a turn off. I applaud your love for THE ELEPHANT MAN.
Bobby, I’d like to hear more on your objections to Blue Velvet. It is obviously not one of my “favorite” Lynchs but I do acknowledge that it’s an impeccable piece of work, virtually flawless in terms of craftsmanship. What sort of “mauling” did it take in your class – what were the specific objections? Of course, I have my own ambivalence about film studies, but we’ll leave that for another day…
If you think ‘the Elephant Man’ is Lynch’s best work you have very populist film taste. which I personally don’t think is a good thing, you may think it is. whatever.
oh and, ‘Blue Velvet’ is better then ANYTHING that stars Ronnie Reagan, ‘King’s Row’ included. A film I don’t mind, but c’mon. let’s try not to show our conservative sides THAT easily. ‘King’s Row’ and ‘Blue Velvet’ may be both about the under belly of small town America but they aren’t in the same planet, let alone ball park (insert ‘Pulp Fiction’ quote here).
“Vincent: It’s not. It’s the same ballpark.
Jules: Ain’t no fuckin’ ballpark neither. Now look, maybe your method of massage differs from mine, but, you know, touchin’ his wife’s feet, and stickin’ your tongue in her Holiest of Holies, ain’t the same fuckin’ ballpark, it ain’t the same league, it ain’t even the same fuckin’ sport. Look, foot massages don’t mean shit. “
There were probably about 20/25 students in the class and for all of them, it seemed to have no emotional resonance. There wasn’t a character that they could connect with or empathise with to make the horrors real. It left them cold and unresponsive despite the lecturer’s obvious enthusiasm (he was a cool dude, did a dance of joy when I provided him with a copy of ‘The Zanti Misfits’) and though I don’t remember specifics, the vibe was very aggressively negative .
I have no problem with the themes of the film, except it leaves me devoid of any engagement.
Jamie, there are degrees of populism. A B/W movie with surreal dream sequences made in the ‘80s maybe your idea of populism, it’s not mine. Just because it has some of the finest performances and a narrative to do justice to 1,000s of years of story-telling is not something to be sniffed at.
To think in terms of populist vs elite & arcane doesn’t do anyone justice. I just saw ‘Mirror’ for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and loved it. I also love ‘Seconds’ and ‘The Swimmer’. ‘Raging Bull’ is another favourite (though it does have a huge flaw, in my eyes). ‘Man with a Movie Camera’, ‘Rashmoon’, ect, ect.
Populist is relative. If you mean I don’t like movies that are made for the director and his ten best friends, that are arcane, elitist, and all intellect but no emotion and have very little going for them in visual aesthetics.
“whatever” makes you sound like my petulant nephew.
“King’s Row” delves into the same murky underbelly, so it is comparable. It a failure at the box office if memory serves me right.
I hate shallow crap like ‘Pulp Fiction’.
And the fact that I despise Reagan (Iran-Contra, Latin American death squads, blowing up harbours, allowing the Bush Neo-cons in, allowing the Religious Right in, allowing the companies that pollute to write their own pollution ‘guidelines’), Nixon (Watergate, Chile’s CIA coup for the United Fruit Company, the sell-out of health to the drug companies, Cambodia, the sabotaging of the 1968 Vietnam peace conference for political ends), Ford (East Timor’s 100,000 plus dead), LBJ (who did great things with Medi-care and brought in the Civil Rights legislation, but also killed JFK, MLK, RFK and a score of witnesses eliminated after the JFK assassination, plus escalated the Vietnam War to benefit his friends in at ‘Brown and Root’ – now Halliburton, turning a blind eye to the attack on the USS Liberty and a whole host of other crimes). Well if you can tell all that by dislike of a favourite film of yours, who needs media analysts.
Best regards, bobby
Bobby, as I indicated my response to the film is not very emotional, either. But I don’t think that’s a reflection on the film’s quality, and obviously it has connected to more than just “the director and his ten best friends” given that it is the most routinely celebrated Lynch film. I don’t disagree with your visceral response, nor even with your feeling that it is overrated, but I still haven’t heard evidence that it should be dismissed as cavalierly as you dismiss it. (Also, in some ways it’s rather un-intellectual; I don’t think Lynch saw himself as writing a moral or aesthetic treatise so much as translating dream images and disturbing themes into filmic terms. That there’s so much to read into the film afterwards is a tribute to its richness, not an indication of Lynch’s intention, methinks).
As for the LBJ litany of the deceased, you forgot about Princess Di (I mean, you didn’t buy that “dead in ’73” crap, did you? No, he was just waiting, biding his time…).
MovieMan0283, ““the director and his ten best friends” – quote wasn’t about Lynch, I haven’t seen enough of his films to make that comment yet but was a response to Jamie’s charge of populism. That’s the problem when trying answer two people.
While I agree with your statement about it being surrealistic dream images, it didn’t engage me. It’s not enough in itself.
As for your LBJ assertions, well if you believe Elvis is alive, you maybe watching too much Fox News. Do you actually know anything about the greatest murder mystery of the 20th or have you been watching Peter Jennings on ABC and their computer generated re-enactment of Dealy Plaza?
you may want to watch/listen to the following before showing any more ‘knowledge’….
This is LBJ’s mistress….
This is the Estes documents (Billy Sol Estes was a LBJ business partner, appeared on Time Magazine’s cover, was mentioned by Reagan in a mid ’60s speech that made him a serious Republican contender).
http://home.earthlink.net/~sixthfloor/estes.htm
The motive…..
This is the guy in the Texas Book Depository
This is Jack Ruby, Oswald’s assassin, pointing the finger at LBJ…..
This is the “Deathbed Confession of E Howard Hunt” – one of the CIA’s top Officers (project managers), who was involved in and imprisoned for his part in Watergate.
The CIA Operation behind the Grassy Knoll….
History is so full of coup and assassinations, do you think that by the 20th century American Politics has evolved so far that nothing like it could have happened?
Don Hewitt, who has just died, creator of ’60 Minutes’ in an interview on a 6 part documentray only available on the internet said that there is something wrong with the whole JFK killing….
It’s never going to be broadcast, it’s too incendiary…..
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=666048701355447870
The whole 6 parts are a remarkable collage……
You may also want to watch the 9 part British documenatry called ‘The Men Who Killed Kennedy’. The last part was shown only once on the History Channel before both Democrats and Republicans put pressure on them to withdrew it from future showings…….
…..take the yellow pill….
yours faithfully, Bobby
Bobby, I have no trouble believing there may have been a conspiracy to kill JFK. I have somewhat more trouble believing large sectors of the government were involved. And I have huge trouble believing LBJ was at all responsible.
But beyond that, the assertions that he had something to do with RFK’s and MLK’s deaths, both of whom were killed AFTER he abdicated, is ludicrous.
This kind of stuff can be fascinating, but it’s also dangerous. I know people who’ve gone off the deep end with conspiracy theories and it ain’t pretty – in fact it’s destroyed lives (though usually in these cases the paranoia hits closer to home), so I’d advise you to tread lightly here, for whatever that’s worth. But I’ll leave that for you to parse. I can’t look at all those videos now, but the page is bookmarked and I may look into it one of these days, especially since I am mulling over writing something involving secret societies, conspiracies, paranoia, and the like. These subjects are of course deeply fascinating and psychologically resonant but I will not be taking any yellow pills, thank you very much.
“That’s the problem when trying answer two people.” God, I know. Along with half-finished sentences and the endless distractability of the damn thing, this is one of the curses of the blogosphere…
Well, Movieman0283 – I really hope you do your home-work with that research your gonna do. Those links will help you a lot. I’d also check out the six part ‘Evidence of Revision’.
My interest lies in a lot of fields and US politics is one of them. I’m not interested in blind assertions whatsoever.
Large sections of the Government weren’t involved, as you’ll find out from the E. Howard Hunt confession about the CIA’s part. A conspiracy was established in the mid ’70s by The House Senate Hearings on Assassinations.
As for LBJ – you might want to read the first three of the four part epic biography by Robert Caro (20 years of research). One of the most unscrupless, crude, vindicative, power-hungery men thats ever been in the White House.
When you assert that RFK’s assasination as ludicrous, are you actually talking about something that you know about or something you’ve picked up from the media and regurtitating. There have been few hatereds more viscreally pungent that that between those too men. And, the one thing LBJ always feared was being seen as the mistake between the Kennedys. RFK was also killed because he would have pulled out of Vietnam and re-opened JFK’s murder.
You may want to watch the doc ‘RFK Must Die’ by a British journalist.
It’s about the Military-Industrial-Complex that Ike warned the US public about in his last and most famous speech.
As for MLK, it was a military operation after he came out against the Vietnam War exactly one year before his death, having seen photographs that accompanied the article ‘The Children of Vietnam’ in Ramparts Magazine. He planned a march to the capital, and to convert the Civil Rights movement into an anti-war one, and was seen as a potential messiahic lightening rod for those opposing the war. It was nothing to do with LBJ abdicating (which he was forced to because RFK destroyed him in the initial democratic primaries). The article was written by Dr. William Pepper, who went on to represent King’s supposed killer James Earl Ray at the urging of King’s family. ‘An Act Of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King’ is a comprehensive over-view of his findings.
It’s not about it’s fascination, the danger lies in believing the Government line, on wars, on neo-liberal free markets, on less regulation is good for the citizen (as the rivers get polluted with toxic sludge), the list is endless. A good dose of cynical disbelief is healthy.
‘The Yellow Pill’ by Rog Phillips is a classic SF story which predates ‘The Matrix’ and is of Philip K. Dick calibre. The pill induces reality and perception from paranoid but warm esacpist fantasies. It’s available to read online, after I asked a celebrated and Hugo award-winning SF editor Ellen Datlow to publish it on the Sci-Fiction web-site as part of the reprint of classics that went next to original publications.
lol….I just got the idea that you may have thought I was taking drugs, or advocating them and these assertions of mine were due to that. 😉
PS: I’d be really interested in reading that article once you get going.
PS 2: you may find this interesting…..
Bobby, this will be my last comment on the thread, but no I did not think you were advocating drugs – but I am wary of conspiracy theories as I seem them as a kind of drug, particularly wearisome to me is the either/or aspect. I don’t believe everything I read nor do I unquestioningly accept “the Government line, on wars, on neo-liberal free markets, on less regulation is good for the citizen (as the rivers get polluted with toxic sludge)”. A good dose of cynical disbelief is healthy when applied to all comers, otherwise one runs screaming from one thing, right into the arms of something else even worse.
I will be happy to bone up on conspiracy literature, if for no other reason than the aforementioned interest in write on such things (albeit more from the secret society angle than the conspiratorial plot angle, but still). But paranoia is too easy, its fallout too dire, to be indulged in lightly. I’m skeptical of anything which calls upon you to wake up only to march in tune to another dream (a nightmare no less), unawares of what you’re doing. (At least in our present blinkered state we are generally aware of our limitations. There’s nothing quite so messianic as the person who’s thrown off one set of crutches for a wheelchair and tells you they can walk. This is not a rejection of spiritual transcendence, by the way, merely a rejection of statements of fact made more on an inclination to believe and selectivity than evidence – i.e. I don’t doubt the validity of a religious experience, but I do doubt the statements of separate facts which arise from them).
By the way, RFK did not trounce LBJ in the primaries. He had just declared his candidacy when Johnson decided to drop out of the race. Eugene McCarthy had shaken Johnson, but not by defeating him: he actually lost to the President in New Hampshire (and Johnson was a write-in candidate too, not being officially on the ballot), but had a good showing. Why is it sweeping statements of vast historical import can be made, without fundamentally understanding the situation at hand?
By that time, by the way, most evidence points to the President being a spent force. Even if he were inclined to assassinate major public figures (and capable of keeping it covered up for 40 years, despite his inability to do anything else right at this stage in his political career), he had little motivation to do so. I’m sorry, Bobby, this just seems way out there. I respect you, but not this particular opinion.
Bobby J, I love a great conspiracy theory, but how come things likes Watergate and Contragate got out, and the other stuff you mention didn’t? At the same time, there are sufficient gaps to validly question the official line on JFK, RK, MLK, and even Malcom X. Certainly, J Edgar Hoover was not above dirty tricks.
Movieman, you are right about the primary, I meant the anti-war forces rather than RFK, who took his time to decide if he was going to run. I have an eye infection and was sloppy.
I’d sure like your opinion once you bone up with those links; that’ll be really cool. Spent force or not, LBJ was one of the most effective Presidents the US has ever had. The only way they could have won in Vietnam, was to use the atomic bomb.
If by ‘Conspiracy theories’ you mean UFO’s and such nonsense, or Elvis being alive, big-foot, Princess Diana, I entirely agree. The media has also used it as a dirty word, meaning weirdo.
The type I’m interested in has to have rigor, be done by professionals and researchers of a very high calibre. Which they normally are. The official line is usually just a theory, accepted. Conspiracies are about all the time, usually they are about fixing prices behind the scenes, ect, but sometime they are far more dangerous (re: the CIA’s coups against socialist governments in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East).
I just hope you keep an open mind when you investigate RFK. By the way, going for the Secret Society angle will get you very little, but just doing a light goggle search on FDR’s coup attempt by big business in the mid ’30s, the CIA ’50s coups, Ike and the Military-Industrial-Complex, LBJ and Malcolm Wallace, the Gulf of Tomkin, JFK, RFK, MLK killings, USS Liberty attack, Nixon sabotaging of the Paris Peace Talks, Watergate, Chile and the CIA, East Timor, MKULTRA, Project Pheonix, COINTELPRO (the FBI attempt to destroy progressive movements of the ’60s, including the use of murder), the October Surprise of ’80, CIA’s major league drug smuggling (as reported by your distinguished ’60 Minutes’ program) and Iran Contra.
All it really is – is an elite rich trying maintain their power.
hey Tony, good to hear from you. I hope you check out those links, some of them are stunning.
Well, Nixon was on medication and a pretty paraniod fella. He taped himself. Historians doubt if the scandal would have unravelled the way it did had he not taped himself and provided the smoking guns. He also tried to frame his council, John Dean, who blew the whistle.
Contragate, well – Tony there’s a superb speech above with RFK’s son and he describes the media that used to exist before 1988 and the repeal of the fairness doctorine. It’s quite spell-binding and the original is even longer. Check it out and let me know what you think.
J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO program is incredible. I was clueless about it but found out when Norm Chomsky raised an eye-brow upon hearing that his interviewer had never heard of it. I’ve done my digging into it.
The ’60s and Vietnam were the most traumatic time America has had since the Civil War.
By the way, Tony – here’s another thing. It’s from Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’. Their was a huge backlash after Watergate and Senate hearings by Senator Church into the CIA’s dirty tricks revealed that they had over a 1,000 people working domestically in all fields, including the media; planting stories, alerting the agency to potential problems, ect, ect.
If you really want enjoy yourself, see if you can torrent or goggle video ‘The Men Who Killed Kennedy’ (9 parts over a decade) and ‘Evidence of Revision’.
Plus, in the above links to JFK’s murder – there are all sorts of major stories but most will never have heard about them, but a thing to remember is that the Government can always revoke a broadcast licence.
If an alternate theory from the official theory fits the facts, then that alternate one is closer to the truth. The facts should dictate the theory. Which is why I hope Movieman looks into those, rather than the catch-all secret society. That society has a better chance of being detected by looking at the major events mentioned above….
Tony, I’d like you opinion on those links, if you get a chance to watch them. ‘The Manchurian Candidate’, ‘Seven Days in May’ and ‘The Parallax View’ take on new meaning.
Here is JFK on Secret Societies, in a speech which could never have been made by any President since:
Just to close off the conversation, Bobby, some of what you speak of is undoubtedly true – for example the CIA subversions in Latin America. I just don’t think every theory out there is justified – but we’ll agree to disagree on the specifics you mention for now.
Also, there’s a bit of a misunderstanding. I am not researching secret societies for journalistic purposes, but for fictional ones (for a screenplay idea that’s been kicking around in my skull for years).
On an entirely different note, I hope everyone checks out the Boop cartoons I posted below. I know I’m kind of behind the curve with this and many people have already discovered the wonders of Max Fleischer, but while I’d seen some of his work I really was not familiar with his pre-Code stuff and I’m simply flabbergasted. Erich Kuersten’s brief essay on Snow White is excellent too, particularly for the context he places the surrealism and subversion in.
Thanks Bobby. You have provided a wealth of material, and I will try to get through it, though it may take me a while.
Apropos Nixon, recently declassified secret memos published by the National Security Archive this week reveal Nixon discussed with Brazil’s president in Dec ’71 a co-operative effort to overthrow Allende and Castro. (I was 20 at the time of the Allende coup, and it hit me pretty hard – I have never fully recovered the optimism of that false dawn.)
Btw, re the 80s what do you think of Stone’s Salvador and the later JFK (1991)? I consider both films essential historical artifacts. What about Obama’s silence on Honduras? Another false dawn?
Thanks Tony, good feedback.
Did you ever hear the quote from Dr. Strangelove, I mean Henry Kissenger, about not letting Chile go socialist just because of a handful of votes in a silly democracy.
The more I study US politics, the more I come to understand that it has long been hijacked by a business elite and its domestic and foreign policies are for the sole benefit of the Corporations that run America. The gangs of America.
Stone has carried the torch of political film-making from John Frankenheimer in the ’60s and Alan J. Pakula in the ’70s with ‘Salvador’ and ‘JFK’. The later film has stacks of facts, but the media only focused on scenes of characters that were condensed for dramatic purposes and never dealt with issues like the Zapruder film. His ‘Nixon’ was good, but too white washed. I’m in complete agrrement with you on their historical value.
I think the problem with Obama is that he is Mr. Smith, absolutely clueless about structures. At best he will stop the neo-con agenda for four years. He has fashioned his approach to ‘honest Abe’s’, but those structures will systematically de-rail him. It’s not the 18th century.
The first thing he should have done is to implement the ‘fairness doctrine’ that was in place from the late ’20s to ’88, when Reagan abolished it. It meant that both sides of the political devide had equel air time, it’s absence has given us barbarious ‘shock jocks’. The media has always been a right-wing media with several left wing people in it, contrary to the myth.
The second, would be to dismantle the media corporations. In 1983, there were 50 separate owners of the media, that has consolidated to 5 mulitnationals.
If it was done by Teddy Roosevelt and Truman, it can be done now.
Which reminds me of an anecdote from the famous British based Australian journalist John Pilger: “During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. ‘I have to tell you,’ said their spokesman, ‘that we were astonished to find after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don’t have that. What’s the secret? How do you do it?’”
The next thing would be to dismantle lobbyists, who have really hijacked the government.
So introduce the fairness docterine, break-up media giants (Murdoch should have no more than one paper, then have no tv or movie studios, Fox ‘News’ would be the first to be put under the sword), finally pass down an executive order to dibarr the lobbies. He probably has enough powers after all the neo-con attempts to by-pass scrutiny. If he’s still alive, then he can start implementing policies that are benficial to the American Public.
There is a brilliant bit in the RFK, Jr speech where he states that the defintion of fascism is the unholy allaince between Corporation and governemnt.
I think the best hope is local communites getting together and fighting both locally and nationally.
Tony, have you seen the films ‘Why We Fight’ and ‘War Made Easy’?
> ‘Why We Fight’ and ‘War Made Easy’
More to add to my list!
It is ironic that it was Eisenhower in his farewell address in Jan ’61 who was most prescient:
“[The] conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
Tony, excellent quote,
as for those films…..this is from my August the 10th Monday Morning Diary……just check out the trailers for a buzz first. It’s incredible that the documentary form, which can often be so dry and dispassionate can be so scorchingly electrifying……
The best thing I saw all week was…..
War Made Easy**** (out of four) (2007) (narrated by Sean Penn) – a quite brilliant little documentary (70mins) based on the book by Norman Soloman. I actually saw it 3 times in a row via the internet, it was that good. It’s about how Presidents and pundits have been spinning the USA into one war after another for the past 50 years. It keeps its focus narrow and incisive and delivers a devastating indictment on The State and the Media in a cool and matter of fact way. It’s the complete opposite of Michael Moore in this way, while he is passionate, Norman Solomon just matter of factly lets the facts and his thesis express themselves. He intercuts between the eras and allows the viewer to sense the pervading theme from one age to another. It’s also markedly different from ‘Why We Fight’****(2005), which allowed a fair bit of balance by allowing both the left and the right to have their say and the truth to emerge about the military-industrial-complex.
I watched ‘Why We Fight’ again because the two make a exquisite double bill of provocative films. I’d put them up at the same level as any of the great fictional anti-war movies. In the words of Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly, “Nimble and brilliant. I defy anyone not to be staggered by it.”
Both of these films have been legally posted on the internet by the film-makers for wider access to vital infomation that would never see the light of day on the Corporate media.
anyone wanting to watch them for a spell-binding journey into the heart of darkness, can find them here:
Why we Fight:
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcuStxJHv4c&feature=related
Film: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-173889827965723460&ei=cDmASrDHBZPQ-AaBm93hDA&q=why+we+fight+film
War Made Easy:
Tralier: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5CF5pfVzLI
Film: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8383084962209910782
this last decade has been a Golden Age for the documentary.
I have no intentions of starting an argument, but I’ll chime in and add that this is a movie that I found to be OK, but did not live up to expectations for me. As Ed said, it’s Lynch at his most straightforward, which is not when I find myself enjoying his movies. The thing that I struggle with is that he appeals to the same sentimentality that other popular directors are lambasted for employing. I don’t think it’s wrong for any director to use it, but it’s interesting that this movie seems to get a pass on it.
So, in short, it’s the epitome of a movie that is just OK for me… I like it, but don’t love it.
Dave: I fully see where you are coming from. While I do love THE ELEPHANT MAN, it is far from typical Lynch, as is THE STRAIGHT STORY.
I love this movie and really don’t have much to add to what has already been said other than I am delighted it made Allan’s list –though would’ve liked to have seen it ranked higher. I have it as my number 2 film of the decade. Allan makes great note of the use of Barber’s piece in the end and the overall exquisite aesthetic of the black-and-white photography. Freddie Francis is one of my all time favorite cinematographers…and this, where he helps Lynch (one of my favorite directors) achieve his vision, is perhaps his/their crowning achievement.
As for the nightmare/dream bookends involving Merrick’s birth/death, when viewed in context of what is otherwise a very straightforward approach to the story from Lynch — well, I’d say it’s genius. The film is beyond haunting…and one of the most moving, if not the most moving, depiction of one human being’s triumph over suffering and inhumanity I have ever had the pleasure to watch.
Magnificent comment here David, one that Allan will surely be thrilled to read. I do remember that #2 placement, and I also love the film very much as well. This is actually one of two instances in the 1980’s where Barber’s “Adagio For Strings” was used to spectacular effect. The other instance was Oliver Stone’s PLATOON.
As i said in the review, this easily beats Stone’s use of it. Then again, Platoon is a thoroughly standard movie. Not by any means the worst Best Picture winner of its decade, but only because Ordinary People, Chariots of Fire, Terms of Endearment, Out of Africa, Rain Man and Driving Miss Daisy were even worse.
To you they are “worse.” Not to me and many others. Your “opinion” is just that. An opinion. Not a fact.
And I said nothing about PLATOON here except to say that the Barber piece was used in it.
Yes, but why say it at all when my review already had. Anyone who saw the reference to Stone knew what film I was referring to.
To call Blue Velvet “a movie about weirdos” is just about the most simplistic thing one could possibly say about it. It is one of the most powerful cinematic depictions of the struggle between innocence and corruption — and the pubescent discovery that the difference between the two is not always as clear-cut as the childhood fables of good and evil would suggest. It’s an eerie, unforgettable film, a parable for a young innocent’s introduction to the darker truths of the world — a journey at the end of which he seemingly returns to the comforts of innocence, but not without a newly mature outlook on the world, an awareness of death and evil. Like many of Lynch’s best films, it’s about primal forces visualized in striking ways. To say it’s just “weird” is to misunderstand everything about it.
God are you brilliant. There’s not much more I can say.
Ed, well said…Blue Velvet is a masterful film in so many ways — and haunting in oh so many different ways from The Elephant Man. Lynch is one of a kind and to dismiss any of his films simply as “weird” is a criminal act of the imagination.
I always felt MULLHOLLAND DRIVE was far more ‘difficult’ to decipher, but that one is one of the greatest films of the 90’s, and one that challenges BLUE VELVET as Lynch’s greatest film. Of course TWIN PEAKS is for most, the toughest nut to crack, and INLAND EMPIRE raised the bar even more.
“Mulholland Dr.” is great, but it’s hard for me to watch now. The first 90 minutes work so well as a pilot, they make me wish it’d been picked up for series, instead of being reworked into the beautiful, but compromised masterpiece we have here. Still, the extended denoument contains some of Lynch’s most ravaging, disturbing images, and does the best job of intertwining his surrealism with his everyday realism for an experience that’s both dreamlike and grounded enough for people to “get it” without much effort. Part of me prefers the more intricate “dress rehersal” of “Lost Highway”, but it’s still a great movie. I just wish we’d gotten to experience it week after week, as we did with “Twin Peaks”, easily his most accomplished work to date.
“Inland Empire” is the sad face of what happens to an artist who’s been pushed out of the mainstream too many times to ever entertain the idea of coming back. If only he committed to an actual narrative throughout those three mind-numbingly opaque hours, we might’ve had an experience as trascendental as what he was aiming for. Instead, all we really get is some rather masturbatory filmmaking linked with occasional moments of clarity that are as harrowing as they are hypnotic.
One thing I’ll say for that movie, it does the best job of capturing the Burroughsian notion of the “Naked Lunch” as anything I’ve seen– the moment when you look on the piece of food on the end of your fork and recoil in horror. When Dern comes face to face with her own grinning, decomposing doppelganger, it’s the most invasive cinematic experience I’ve ever had, equaled only by those white-eyed doubles from the Black Lodge finale of “Twin Peaks”. I only wish the rest of the film wasn’t composed of so much aimless padding.
Bob, I love Twin Peaks but I don’t think it could be called Lynch’s most accomplished work (or did you mean the movie?). Too many compromises for it to be that (though I know you value those compromises, and I do too, sometimes) – and actually the film “prequel” is a far more honest and direct piece of work, which is probably why so many fans hated it. It does not dance around the themes which the series hinted at but coyly allowed us to “enjoy” without swallowing the full implications. This complicates matters of course – it makes the mysticism suddenly seem in poor taste, and the comedic deadpan a distraction from the overpowering suffering and martyrdom of Laura Palmer – but true greatness is seldom perfect.
Anyway, because it did not have to bend and compromise itself to the strictures of the TV format (not to mention the fact that Lynch presumably would not have been directing every episode) I’m quite thankful that Mulholland Dr. ended up as a movie, whatever Lynch’s original intentions. As for Inland Empire, while it didn’t really work for me either, I actually wish it had gone in the opposite direction from what you advise: more experimental, and less tied to the idea that it must have some plot to decode, which ultimately distracted from the harshly surreal dreams Lynch evoked onscreen.
“Twin Peaks” contains a lot of compromises in order to work as piece of long-form serial television, and they become more and more obvious the deeper the series gets into the second season, where network pressure forced Lynch & Co. to reveal Laura’s killer and defuse all the carefully plotted story-arcs that were meant to sustain themselves indefinitely, until the end. ABC, and to a certain extent co-creator Mark Frost, effectively sabotaged the show by forcing Lynch to call their bluff with all the answers to the questions the show had been raising episode after episode, but within the comfy confines of that single, all important mystery, he was able to pull off some of the most impressive filmmaking of his career.
I put the European Pilot of “Twin Peaks” at the top of my 80’s list for a reason– it’s at once the most disciplined thing Lynch has ever done, but also one of the most expressive, as well. I especially love the almost perfectly clear-line of the narrative– the way that one character carries us to the next in a sequence of events that unfolds both in a realistic manner and in a way that presents all the information the audience needs. Surrealism is matched with naturalism in an alchemic way, and throughout the rest of the series it’s a golden magic that’s reproduced, to varying levels, in all the best episodes.
Lynch’s eye and ear for characters was never better, either, and for all the times and long stretches where the show felt all but worthless (whenever Kyle MacLachlan was forced to wear plaid flannel, for example), there were moments of insanity just lucid enough for audiences at home to get caught up in the nightmare. Those final moments in the Red Room, or Cooper excusing himself to brush his teeth…
“Inland Empire” was already too experimental by far. We barely get to know the characters enough for their disturbing transformations to have that much effect on us. I don’t know. He needs to fully flesh out his characters before putting them through the wringer, or else the surreal antics mean practically nothing. We need to identify with a character before we can experience that gut level of dread he aims for on anything more than the most reptilian level.
He needs a focus, a point of balance, a character with consistancy enough to give us an anchor in a sea of troubling things– in short, what he needs is a Lynchpin.
Bob,
I think Twin Peaks had some flaws even before the network pressure to reveal Laura’s killer increased – actually in some ways, this pressure made the show better, albeit in a far more compressed scenario than would have been ideal. Still, most of its subplots are not especially intriguing when you get right down to it and its the central mystery which continuously intrigues and draws the viewers in.
I don’t think the European “film” version of Twin Peaks works because the ending with the red room feels entirely tacked on – as, indeed, it was. It worked far better as a dream sequence in Episode 2. As for the rest of the pilot, it’s quite good but, like Blue Velvet, it’s a work I admire more than I love. I actually think Lynch’s best episode may have been the series finale, which may very well be the ONLY thing post-resolution-of-Laura’s-murder worth watching.
I think you would be interested in my series I did on Twin Peaks last fall – it’s an episode by episode analysis, with a focus on what the different writers and directors brought to the show. I like some of my entries better than others, but overall it was enjoyable to write and hopefully somewhat compelling. It’s linked up under “TV” in my most recent post on my blog.
Your dismissal of Inland Empire sounds almost like a dismissal of experimental cinema itself, but I’m not sure that’s what’s intended. Do you feel Lynch is incapable of evoking maximal reaction without a safety net, or do you feel that all totally non-narrative avant-garde films need “to fully flesh out his characters before putting them through the wringer, or else the surreal antics mean practically nothing.” Of course you don’t say so directly, but by implying one needs to “know” characters before being affected by what happens to them does suggest the primal importance of narrative (though, of course, for this judgement to apply to experimental films we’d have to consider “characters” rather broadly as people captured on film).
Ed, I was using short hand…..my eyes aches, my hand hurts, my neck is sore….it’s just short hand, it’s a descriptive word and one of many that I could have used – I wasn’t writing an essay, it does lead to others. I understand all that you say and understood it when I watched it first time. In fact the discussion we had about it after film studies delved into it. Surreal, abnormal, punctured psyches, emotional cripples…call it what you will. Lynch’s films don’t usually connect with me, though I like him and his integrity. I haven’t seen all of his works yet, when I have, I will make a more concise evaluation about him for myself. Of its ilk, I much prefer ‘Kings Row’ 😉
We are allowed to have differing opinions, right.
Of course differing opinions are fine, I was just expressing my own. And it sounded like you were taking the typical lazy tack of dismissing Lynch as trying too hard to be “weird,” a criticism that really irks me when applied to him.
Ed, I don’t find the innocence of Blue Velvet to be all that…innocent, I guess. Naive, yes, but almost wilfully so…there’s a dark undercurrent to the surface innocence which casts the corruption in a different light. The world of picket fences already exists with brick landscapes and the supposed “small town” is actually quite urban. The clipped formalism of the mise en scene also contributes to a sense that what we’re seeing is a very shallow conception of innocence indeed. Which is most likely what Lynch intended, but it differs from his vision in other works, where innocence is almost a primal state, as real in its own way as the surrounding darkness – admittedly I find this conception more moving and, to a point, compelling, although I’m intrigued by what he’s doing in Blue Velvet too.
I wrote about this in my own piece on the movie – it’s a film which did not connect with me as directly as Mulholland Dr.; I find it increasingly fascinating with each viewing, but largely from outside. It is classical whereas Mulholland Dr. is impressionistic, secular wheras later Lynch works are spiritual, and hence more Freudian than Jungian, unlike, say Lost Highway. I find its sensibility to more “Beat” than anything, somewhat cold, austere.
I respect it a great deal but it does not communicate to me with the visceral impact of Mulholland Dr., Lost Highway, or Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which I find to be absolutely devastating, beautiful, and powerful…I’m still astonished that it has been so roundly dismissed by critics (though not so much in the blogosphere). I will acknowledge that Blue Velvet is a “better” film, and perhaps that shouldn’t even be in quotes, but I have to say I value a messier, more directly emotional film like Fire Walk With Me more, personally.
Hmmm, well actually even with the reservations I wrote in that’s too summary a judgement. I value both films, and both types of films, I’m very glad they both exist, but I connect to Blue Velvet on a cerebral level and to the extent that it engages my feelings, it’s rather indirect – I’m moved mostly by the absence of emotion, or its barest traces (that speech by Laura Dern about the robins is a perfect articulation of dim emotional recognition stirring in the sleep of apathy, sterility, and frustration) – and even then the “moving” aspect is reached largely through intellectual means.
But I’m quite glad both films exist and I’m squeamish about saying I “value” one over the other, as I’m quite pleased to them both playing yin and yang off one another.
Sam, more than ever this is the time for your contention that taste must come into play at a certain point. But even as I type that, I don’t want to create the impression that I “dislike” Blue Velvet. I recently acquired it, watch it from time to time, find it fascinating. Frank Booth was one of my 40 favorite characters in that post this spring. But I’ve always had trouble reconciling my appreciation of it with its rapturous critical reputation and even more so with the very visceral (to an unrivaled extent, really) response most Lynch films evoke in me – which I find Blue Velvet does not. If it’s like a dream, it’s more like a sweaty, feverish one the kind in which you keep turning corners and looking for something without finding it, where the elusive goal keeps moving ahead of you, like a rabbit on a line in front of the greyhound…except you can’t even identify what it is exactly you’re grasping for. Of course, that evasive quality is fascinating in and of itself (if not as “enjoyable” as the trancelike hypnosis and mythological grandeur of Twin Peaks or Mulholland Dr.) and though one could reasonably say the film leaves me “cold” that experience remains a fascinating one.
But I do constantly wonder if I’m having some weirdly offbeat reaction to the movie, which everyone else seems to love unabashadly. Which makes me wonder, is there response to the OTHER Lynch films the same as mine? Of course, one can take these kinds of philosophical propositions far outside the realm of Lynch or even cinema or even art, but we seem to have burrowed far enough into the bug-laden dirt for now…
Actually, I’m more referring to moments like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyYLOpnyidU&feature=related
These rabbits were being compared with The Honeymooners as I recall. But yes, otherwordly, bizarre and disturbing, though the Dern monologue remains the centerpiece.
I really think the praise being shot off here at WitD for BLUE VELVET is not enough. Personally, once you strip the top ten of the films made outside the US, the first AMERICAN films that usually pop up are RAGING BULL and (yup, you guessed it) BLUE VELVET. Most critics have HANNAH AND HER SISTERS or CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS in there as well. DO THE RIGHT THING, TOOTSIE, E.T. and a few others are often mentioned as well. I would NOT be surprised at all to see BLUE VELVET come out very highly in the polling by the intelligentsia here at WitD. I think it was the second US film on my list (bested only by Scorsese’s “love it or leave it” THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST). I think I rounded the top ten out with one othe American director (Kubrick-THE SHINING). Lynch, in my humble opinion, deserves nothing. Less than the company of these great directors (as well as Bergman, Kieslowski and Kurosawa). The 80’s was his decade and BLUE VELVET was his best work.
Dennis, Tony Dayoub once suggested – and I agree – that Twin Peaks represented a pivot point in Lynch’s career. Of course there are many phases in his development – the early gothic avant-garde of his experimental shorts leading into Eraserhead, the flirtation with the mainstream, the full realization of the Lynchian narrative with Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, the high water mark of popularity with that show and the prize (can’t remember which) at Cannes for Wild at Heart, the dreamy esoterica of Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Dr., and perhaps a new stage with the video technology and mostly non-narrative approaches suggested by Inland Empire.
However, if we could pick one turning point, I would pick Twin Peaks – it marks Lynch’s movement from male protagonists to female (along with a more sensitive, overtly emotional approach to his works), a deeper connection to the Jungian atmosphere of a deep dream, and the beginnings of a move from formal precision and perfectionism to a looser, more free-form style. I think people may generally fall in two camps, however much they like both sides of this divide: those who prefer the first Lynch, and those who prefer the second. As already established, I very much prefer for the second, but I take it you (and many others) prefer the first. Which is interesting, though I’m not sure why!
Wow…my head is spinning (not unlike after watching a Lynch film) —especially with MovieMan’s psychological interpretations of Lynch’s filmic evolution over time…back in my college days I would’ve been all over this. It’s a shame Lynch has not been more prolific over the years and often seems to get obsessed with side projects (like painting or sculpture…or his pay website). It’s almost as if being a filmmaker is the last thing he cares to be.
By the way, did anyone read his “Catching the Big Fish” book on transcendental meditation? There was a lot of keen (and sometimes funny) insight into his filmmaking/artistic process. I still laugh when I think about his one page chapter on what the key/box represent in MULHOLLAND DRIVE:
Lynch: “I don’t have a clue what those are.”
So glad he decided to explain it!
David, I did read that book, over a couple tricks to the bookstore. Cinema Viewfinder also featured an excellent anecdote from the book not long ago (to be found here: http://www.cinemaviewfinder.com/2009/05/writings-on-cinema.html)
“Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is.
Eraserhead was growing in a certain way, and I didn’t know what it meant. I was looking for a key to unlock what these sequences were saying. Of course, I understood some of it; but I didn’t know the thing that just pulled it all together. And it was a struggle. So I got out my Bible and I started reading. And one day, I read a sentence. And I closed the Bible, because that was it; that was it. And then I saw the thing as a whole. And it fulfilled this vision for me, 100 percent.
I don’t think I’ll ever say what that sentence was.”
MovieMan—oh, man…I remember that part….I wonder what that sentence was! AHHHH! Amazing!
One almost wonders if he made it up, given that the Bible so large a million sentences are available to tease the curious. (No, I don’t think he did, but it’s amusing to think so.)
By the way….going to see MULHOLLAND DRIVE at a Greensboro NC movie theater (the cult famous Carousel…where they used to serve alcohol and was the only theater in the area that would show art films) with a bunch of college friends…TWICE…because we just all had to see it again so we could test our theories on what it meant….was the single most visceral movie-going experience of my life. Possibly only THERE WILL BE BLOOD (which I saw in the theater three times, each time with different people) could compare…but there was something about being a psych major at the time and living in NC (where BLUE VELVET was filmed) and going to THE frickin’ CAROUSEL and just being so damned excited about seeing a Lynch film in the theater….it was an experience that can never be repeated!
I posted a link on another page, but it might be better off here. I just discovered this and was blown away. If you’re like me, jump right in. If, like many, you’ve already seen it, well, enjoy it again:
Thanks to Erich Kuersten to drawing my attention thusly: http://acidemic.blogspot.com/2009/08/acid-shorts-1-betty-boop-in-snow-white.html
So here’s another I just discovered, more Cab Calloway and perhaps even more random in the imagery it puts to song. Fantastic:
Amazing! I had not seen these before – great fun. Cab Calloway performing Minnie the Moocher In The Blues Brothers nearly 50 years later is just as infectious.
A stack of the Fleischer BB’s – including Snow WHite, Minnie, and Chess Nuts – are in the public domain and can be downloaded here: http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=boop%20AND%20collection%3Aanimationandcartoons
This is priceless material here Tony.
David S, I can understand the feelings of your experience. With MULHOLLAND DRIVE I was doing, let me say this delicately without implicating something illegal, certain oral supplements that were helping me “expand my conciousness”, and the film vicerally washed over me like being beaten up. As someone stated, his films come onto the viewer like a dream, albeit a strange and dangerous one, but a dream you feel your forced to visit again to unlock clues to the mystery of why your having it. THERE WILL BE BLOOD, my favorite film of the last ten years, was a different animal altogether. That film firmly placed me in the time and place and, through Day-Lewis’ performance forced me to see the nightmare through Plainviews eyes. I became a man who is convinced he is the final word on everything and that all actions deserve his concequences. I KILLED Henry, I LOST my son, and I WILL USE THAT BOWLING PIN. Think of BLOOD as a cross between Lynch and Altman.
Dennis — ah, yes….a wonderful idea….I like what you’re driving at here. But in fact…I hadn’t meant to imply MULHOLLAND DRIVE and THERE WILL BE BLOOD were similar in any traditional sense…only that they both engendered an “other-worldly” experience when seen on the big screen multiple times. I would consider THERE WILL BE BLOOD more of a cross between Kubrick and Altman…though…now that you mention it and now that I think of it…there were some stretches of Lynchian silence and visualizations.
Yes….indeed….I think I will use that bowling pin. 🙂
MOVIEMAN-I understand what your asaying and I understand where the split occurs in Lynch’s work. But, let me make this clear, I LOVE ALL OF THIS DIRECTORS WORK! Regardless to the fact that he becomes more dream-like and philosophical from TWIN PEAKS on, I still love his earlier work as well. I look forward to his films like a rabid dog going for a long awaited meal. KUROSAWA, SCORSESE, SPIELBERG, KIESLOWSKI, BERGMAN, ALLEN, TRUFFAUT, COPPOLA as well as more recent film-makers like BURTON, ANDERSON, FINCHER, COEN, as well as my beloved KUBRICK were all making films during my breathing lifetime. I looked forward to and continue to look forward to, ANY film they make. I always felt, as I still do with those that are still with us, that their films were/are SPECIAL. Lynch, I feel, is one of those guys, and it makes no difference whether the film is more like early half or the latter half of his career. I look to his films like they are, an EVENT.
Excellent post here Dennis. A Lynch film is certainly an event as you say. Loving Lynch’s most challenging films hasn’t in the least bit taken away from this masterfully made, emotionally-overwhelming film that only the hardest of hearts can resist.
Now’s the time for a personal anecdote that I want to post here. As a former summer and weekend driver of an airport limousine for 12 years, I once picked up John Hurt and his American wife and drove them from Hoboken to Philadelphia. It is a story all my friends know, and one that greatly excited me back in the late 80’s when I was assigned the ride. I clammed up and couldn’t initiate conversation in the car during the nearly two-hour ride, but I do remember I received a $20 tip, which was OK for back then. The couple needed to attend a wake in the City of Brotherly Love as I recall, and the car ride was kind of urgent. I was assigned the ride because of my penchant for popular conversation, but Hurt was very private and preferred to remain silent. I did think of his role in THE ELEPHANT MAN during the ride. Dennis remembers this quite well.
Greath thread here, Dennis….
A Lynch film certainly is an event…
Other (still living and working) event makers for me:
Scorsese
Malick
Von Trier (though his stuff has been a bad event…or trip, should I say, of late)
P. T. Anderson
Christopher Nolan
David Fincher
The Coen Brothers (again slipping of late, but I still get giddy over their new films)
Quentin Tarantino (a guy who I am not a fan of in the traditional sense….but man….going to see one of his clusterf***s is always an event…in fact…one such event will occur tonight when I go to see his latest, IB)
Just saw INGLORIOUS BASTERDS David, and I must say I didn’t care for it at all. I’ll have more to say on Monday, but I’d be interested in hearing your take.
IB as you say:
wow, his masterpiece in this man’s eyes. saw an afternoon showing i couldn’t wait.
Jamie, I’m glad it worked for you, but I thought it his worst film ever. All kinds of issues here.
Sam, I must say you are a fool.
Lol, just kidding, problems? really? ok. I was entranced. think it’s the best thing he’s done. and I was even ready to call it ‘juvenile’ after reading the script and seeing other reviews, but then after seeing it, it kind of makes all those pretensions irrelevant.
Okay…so this would’ve been up earlier had it not been for a power outage…..but here is my review of IB….and I also invite you all over to rank QB’s films and further discuss….(which I see you are doing already below…great stuff!)
http://davethenovelist.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/you-might-be-a-basterd-if/
I just completed my ratings David. I hope Jamie and some others here are able to do it as well.
It can’t be worse than Death Proof…
Jamie, you can tell me to f**k off if you want. I’ll take it like a man. As you can see with Allan and I, anything goes here at WitD…ANYTHING!!! LO but true. Now that I’ve said that I’ll say this:
The film was overlong, often tedious, the feeling that it’s content is trite, enormously self-indulgent and incrediby insensitive and sadistic. It’s various send-ups are undermined but an underlying seriousness, and the head scalps are frankly demented. It’s an embarrassment.
Yes, yes, I remember the night John Hurt got in your cab. You called me the moment he vacated the car. LOL!!!! I think I said he could have tipped more. LOL!!! That brings back memories. That and the time you left the paint cans in the trunk with the lids cracked open because you didn’t have a screw-driver at home. LOL! Poor George screaming about the paint all over the trunk. LOL!!! I really think, Schmulee, you were part of the reason George’s hair was so white. God, that brings back memories! LOLOLOL! Or how about when I used to ride with you in the Limo to talk movies with you and you’d tell the clients I was a trainee driver, or your manager!!! God, thanks so much for bringing that all back!!!!
To be honest, Tarantino seems obsessed with making the sort of movies he wants to see, but which increasingly only the most loyal nerds do, too. His original originality (his first two films remain milestones if losing lustre over the years), if that isn’t bad syntax, has dissipated into hashes of films he loved but which were, in actual fact, utter shite. Death Proof was an accurate riff on the films it spoofed, right down to beign just as awful as them. Kill Bill was enjoyable, but empty, and in part 2 incredibly self-indulgent. Jackie Brown was solid enough, but he wasn’t as comfortable with those characters as his own.
Old QT may be great copy in interview, and he may have an encyclopaedic knowledge of films, but comparing him to Scorsese in terms of his appreciation of the art as opposed to pure action mayhem is like comparing John Waters to George Cukor.
i agree with this Allan, i’d be very interested with your take on this new one. should you see it this weekend of course.
his love for film, and the moviegoer experience is so evident in this i don’t know how anyone can not like it. as you say many of the films he (and I) like are absolute garbage, but the memory of seeing them can be made into something…
it also features his best dialogue he’s ever written. at times it’s (somewhat) profound, absurd, poetic, idiotic, and mesmerizing. I loved it. I wish we had the whole cut, as some stories needed longer exposition. should make for great debate next week if anything.
Jamie: I will give you this. The reviews are mostly positive, even if Manola Dargis and stepahnie Zacharek headed up the negative charge. Whenever I’m in th evast minority, i always say “maybe it’s me.” I liked PULP FICTION, RESERVOIR DOGS–sadistic as it wa shard to take—and KILL BILL, so I am not anti-Tarantino at all.
“The Elephant Man” is by far my favorite Lynch film, and the only one that I actually love–rather than just admire. In my opinion Lynch grew a soul in this one. He does full justice to Merrick by showing the harsh and unspeakably cruel realities of his life–which would have stunted if not killed most men. Then he lets us see, in the incomparable “23rd Psalm scene,” that by some incredible grace Merrick has survived: gentle, kind, and idealistic, an innocent. We’re astonished in the same moment that Hopkins is–before, as a humane man he’d pitied Merrick as he might a suffering animal; now for the first time he realizes his strength of spirit. It’s a truly miraculous moment. There are many others. I remember a brief comment from Merrick, addressing a woman friend, asking to remain with the first people who have treated him with respect and kindness–“I would try so hard to be good,” he says. There is something so piercing about his childlike simplicity.
Partly because of this, the later scenes in which he’s abducted and brutally misused have a special horror, are hard to watch. And there’s also a special heartfelt relief when he’s rescued and returns to the doctor who befriended him. I think Lynch went the distance with his Elephant Man–gave him everything that he had–and the Elephant Man gave it back.
Margaret, whta an utterly wonderful post here. Your observations are dead-on and poignant. I found myself nooding my head regularly while reading this. It’s a film that leaves a lasting impression, once seen always remembered. I dare say it’s impossible to watch it without welling up. The mournful Barber piece would make you cry even with a blank screen.