The apparent suicide of David Foster Wallace, shockingly sad and disturbing as the sudden death of Heath Ledger earlier this year, has me revisiting my memories of his writing. I know him from his short stories and nonfiction -- never tackled "Infinite Jest," even though I bought it in hardback when it was first published. I won't put off reading it much longer.
From Premiere magazine, September, 1996: "David Lynch Keeps His Head," anthologized in "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments":
13. WHAT EXACTLY DAVID LYNCH SEEMS TO WANT FROM YOU
MOVIES ARE AN authoritarian medium. They vulnerabilize you and then dominate you. Part of the magic of going to a movie is surrendering to it, letting it dominate you....
...The sitting in the dark, the looking up, the tranced distance from the screen, the being able to see the people on the screen without being seen by the people on the screen, the people on the screen being so much bigger than you: prettier than you, more compelling than you, etc. Film's overwhelming power isn't news. But different kinds of movies use this power in different ways. Art film is essentially teleological; it tries in various ways to "wake the audience up" or render us more "conscious." (This kind of agenda can easily degenerate into pretentiousness and self-righteousness and condescending horsetwaddle, but the agenda itself is large-hearted and fine.) Commercial film doesn't seem like it cares much about the audience's instruction or enlightenment. Commercial film's goal is to "entertain," which usually means enabling various fantasies that allow the moviegoer to pretend he's somebody else and that life is somehow bigger and more coherent and more compelling and attractive and in general just way more entertaining than a moviegoer's life really is. You could say that a commercial movie doesn't try to wake people up but rather to make their sleep so comfortable and their dreams so pleasant that they will fork over money to experience it -- the fantasy-for-money transaction is a commercial movie's basic point.
An art film's point is usually more intellectual or aesthetic, and you usually have to do some interpretative work to get it, so that when you pay to see an art film you're actually paying to work (whereas the only work you have to do w/r/t most commercial film is whatever work you did to afford the price of the ticket).
David Lynch's movies are often described as occupying a kind of middle ground between art film and commercial film. But what they really occupy is a whole third kind of territory. Most of Lynch's best films don't really have much of a point, and in lots of ways they seem to resist the film-interpretative process by which movies' (certainly avant-garde movies') central points are understood. [...]
You almost never from a Lynch movie get the sense that the point is to "entertain" you, and never that the point is to get you to fork over money to see it. This is one of the unsettling things about a Lynch movie: You don't feel like you're entering into any of the standard unspoken and/or unconscious contracts you normally enter into with other kinds of movies. This is unsettling because in the absence of such an unconscious contract we lose some of the psychic protections we normally (and necessarily) bring to bear on a medium as powerful as film. That is, if we know on some level what a movie wants from us, we can erect certain internal defenses that let us choose how much of ourselves we give away to it. The absence of point or recognizable agenda in Lynch's films, though, strips these subliminal defenses and lets Lynch get inside your head in a way movies normally don't. This is why his best films' effects are often so emotional and nightmarish. (We're defenseless in our dreams too.)
This may in fact be Lynch's true and only agenda - just to get inside your head. He seems to care more about penetrating your head than about what he does once he's in there. Is this good art? It's hard to say. It seems - once again - either ingenuous or psychopathic. It sure is different, anyway.
13(A). WHY THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF WHAT LYNCH WANTS FROM YOU MIGHT BE A GOOD THING
IF YOU THINK about the outrageous kinds of moral manipulation we suffer at the hands of most contemporary directors²³, it will be easier to convince you that something in Lynch's own clinically detached filmmaking is not only refreshing but redemptive. It's not that Lynch is somehow "above" being manipulative; it's more like he's just not interested. Lynch's movies are about images and stories that are in his head and that he wants to see made external and complexly "real." His loyalties are fierce and passionate and entirely to himself. [...]
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23 Wholly random examples: Think of the way "Mississippi Burning" fumbled at our consciences like a freshman at a coed's brassiere, or of "Dances With Wolves"' crude smug reversal of old westerns' 'White equals good and Indian equals bad' equation. Or just think of movies like "Fatal Attraction" and "Unlawful Entry" and "Die Hards" I through III and "Copycat," etc., in which we're so relentlessly set up to approve the villains' bloody punishment in the climax that we might as well be wearing togas.
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I wonder what David Foster Wallace would say about these passages from his assessment of Lynch today. Or, more precisely, last week, when he still could have. I love his wry, perceptive take on the difference between "art films" and "commercial movies," and I appreciate what he says about Lynch even as I'd like to know more about the language he uses.
I used to describe Lynch similarly, as someone who tries to put what's in his head directly onto the screen with as little mediation as possible. (In that sense, he's a Surrealist.) But as "Mulholland Dr." and "Inland Empire make abundantly clear (and this is probably the only thing they make abundantly clear -- which I mean as a compliment), he doesn't necessarily know what's in his head before he's finished creating the movie. He says he dreamed the ending of "Mullholland Dr." after the network turned it down as a TV pilot. And he celebrated the freedom of using low-definition video for "Inland Empire" because he said it allowed him to go deeper inside the scenes with the actors -- while they were happening -- and to discover more than he had imagined.
That sense of discovery is, I think, particularly apparent in "Mullholland Dr." and "Inland Empire" (and "Eraserhead"), and what helps make them his most rewarding and challenging movies -- and "Twin Peaks" his greatest achievement. Too much of "Blue Velvet" felt to me like it was not so much "manipulative" as pre-programmed, and its occasional reassuring winks to the audience too much like comic-relief cliches -- as if Lynch were hedging his bets, hinting that he wasn't entirely serious even if (I hope) he was.
At this moment, however, I am appreciating Lynch through Wallace's eyes. Read this 1996 Lynch piece alongside the 2005 commencement speech I quoted from below, and you can get some idea of why Lynch's definition-resisting films spoke to him so profoundly.
Jim, you say – Blue Velvet felt pre-programmed.
A very, very simple and profoundly insightful summation to the film. Blue Velvet is a film that doesn’t invite the audience; it rather exists as a puzzle that is frozen into stone. Most films structured as puzzles are inherently dishonest, and with Blue Velvet I felt like I was cheated. In the sense that Lynch had chalked up something he himself could understand and filmed it onto screen, with dozens of symbols.
I wonder, why symbols. And here I would line along Tarkovsky. An image of an underground bug would mean something different to me than what Lynch intends to mean with it. So much of Blue Velvet feels designed and not necessarily a spontaneous burst of heart.
I believe a film with a surrealistic experience as Lynch’s ought to rely not on intellectual but emotional response. Blue Velvet falls terribly flat precisely for that reason. There’s a lot of atmosphere, just like what Burton creates, but atmosphere can only be haunting, can only create horror, and can only get under our skin when they make us feel. A designed thing can seldom do that. What it can only do is have scores of people trying to figure out what it stands from a narrative perspective. We stop experiencing the thing, and become mere curious bystanders in that narrative puzzle. And once we have the narrative Rubik’s cube done, we’re left with nothing on the plate. The problem actually lies with us, and our culture of cinema, where we intend to have an almost frame-by-frame, minute-by-minute explanation of the events at hand, which in a way limits the boundaries of creation.
And that is precisely why I consider Mulholland Dr. one of the greatest creations of cinema. Like 2001. Because I just cannot get that film out of my mind. There might be numerous narrative explanations, and each of them haunts me. I might never get over that image of the screaming Naomi Watts as she withdraws to her room followed by that odd couple. I have seen the film a million times and there have been occasions when I have cried during the scene at Club Silencio. Why? Because Mulholland Dr. is like music, without words I mean, where the mysteries strike a chord in your heart that you can never put on paper through mere words. With Mulholland Dr. Lynch has explored cinema like only few before him. And I guess the credit ought to go equally to Angelo Badalamenti, whose score is the secret to the haunting feeling. If there’s a doubt, one could try the opening scene on the road with all the lights switched off. It works equally brilliantly as a short film. Mulholland Dr. works so brilliantly as a claustrophobic film.
But I believe the secret of Mulholland Dr. is Naomi Watts, who in my opinion gives one of the great performances of all time. She is driving force, and I believe she is one of the most truthful artists we have ever seen. In Naomi Watts, we have an actor with such intense honesty that it is almost always painful to watch her in a state of misery. Her performances seldom seem measured, seldom seem methodical, seldom seem calculated. Instead they seem to burn out, in every which direction, with the most raging of emotions. I see Naomi Watts, and I see not an actor in the least for that term when alone might just do a bit of disservice to her. What I see is an artist par excellence, who incessantly peels layer after layer, searching deep within the past of her life and bludgeon us with powerful feelings. Feeling and emotions that haunt us for days.
I wonder though, and I would be immensely grateful to anybody who could help me with one decision by Lynch that always leaves me a bit disappointed. Howsoever much I love the film, I can still never come to grips with the fact how in the final half-hour dispenses with his uncompromising self and makes an almost self-conscious effort to try and install some logic in our minds. I hated that. He never resorts to actual explanation, but does the next worst thing – he strings together a stretch of scenes that desperately exist to bring some overall coherence, rather than entities themselves. At least, he could have been clever by spreading those scenes across the stretch of the running time. Most of the sequences in the initial two-thirds of the film are long takes, and that is a key to their effectiveness. Yet, once we start dwelling in what could be called the real world, the scene length seems to considerably lessen. There can be another explanation too, that since everything in the film is either Diane’s memory or fantasy, the latter are longer because they’re pleasant and the former are obviously shorter. That is why Lynch is a genius, and I’ll watch the later part of the film with just that extra bit of salt. It is astounding, yet in a way it falls just that wee bit behind the rest of the film
Glad you posted this, Jim--it's one of my favorite DFW essays.
As much as I've always loved Lynch, I think this essay let me understand his work in a different and dare I say more profound way. Which makes sense. What's on display in this piece is certainly academic in some sense, but it's so personal too. It's an amazing balance.
Good luck on "Infinite Jest"; it's still sitting on the bottom of my bookshelf (too too heavy for the upper shelves). I'll get to it eventually.
And can I recommend "Broom of the System" to you? (Of course I can.) It certainly has first novel flaws but it's touching and witty and dense in the best way possible. And, I mean, it's got a character named Judith Prietht.
Oh, and one of my favorite interviews ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPWh9yQbU4E
DFW on Charlie Rose ca. 1996. Has one of my single favorite moments ever: "You're seriously asking me for my view on "The English Patient"?" It's the moment at which you realize these two worlds have collided and that, perhaps, they shouldn't have.
Satish, you contradict yourself and your analysis of Lynch, though charming in its good intentions and sincere yearning for understanding, shows a profound muddledness of thinking. You say Blue Velvet is an empty Rubik's Cube, then go on to praise the considerably more scattered and opaque puzzle pieces of Mulholland Dr.. It is understandable that Lynch would render an earnest viewer so confused and turned around.
I’m sorry if I came across as puzzled. Let me try and be clearer.
(WIPES THE SLATE)
If I sum the two films Blue Velvet and Inland Empire (Mulholland Dr. II), I would say the former is a mere puzzle. Cut and dried, that is it.
The latter though exists as an experience, and not just at a narrative level. At an emotional level too. There can be a million theories about each of them, and I don’t mind any of them, as long as a film throbs as a living organism. Full of life and its unpredictable nature. Not easy to summarize. Not easy to capture. Not designed.
I hope I’m clear Harry. I am afraid I might come across as terribly confused. Never mind. In simple terms I felt like I knew Diane, I knew I had met a person. In Blue Velvet they just felt cleverly designed elements each complementing the other. That is why I said one of the great secrets of Mulholland Dr. is Naomi Watts, because she gives one of the most fearless and compelling performances I have ever seen. She made me feel the journey through the film, and I do that every now and then. Blue Velvet was an interesting film that was, well, just interesting.
Satish,
Fair enough. However you will concede both films have the similar tactic of juxtaposing exaggerated innocence with disillusioning horrors. You'll recall the scene of Naomi Watts entering L.A. with the old woman, "Thanks Irene!! That'll be the day!" The tone of this scene is hyperbolically sunny and naive - the young woman so confident in her dreams of making it in Hollywood. This is the same thing as Laura Dern's hopelessly naive "robins" speech in Blue Velvet. Both girls' enthusiasm and innocence is amplified for purposes of satire. Naomi Watts's character, I admit, is allowed greater nuance than the "aw shucks, gee whiz Sandy" archetypes of guileless innocence(Jeffrey & Sandy) in Blue Velvet. But I assure you that if you watch interviews with David Lynch, you will see that he is NOT an intellectual. If you've read any of the myriad books dissecting the implicit psychology of his films, you'd assume he was deeply calculating, relying on an "intellectual response" as you say, but this is not the case.
Jackson Pollock once said of his abstract art:
“When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.”
In so many words, this is exactly what Lynch does when crafting his films, as he has discussedhere and in various interviews on Charlie Rose and elsewhere or as he has detailed in Dynamic: 01 - The Best of DavidLynch.com (from which the title of my blog is derived). Lynch is not cerebrally detached from his films like, say, Kubrick, or Haneke, (though all three share common themes) and Blue Velvet is famous for being a fevered catalogue of the subconscious: urges, thoughts, and even nihilistic, misanthropic stream of (sub)consciousness that have, insanely, not been filtered through a PC grid of propriety. In order for the film to rely on an “intellectual response” it cannot be as raw as Blue Velvet so obviously is; it is not icy or seen from a remove. If you read enough about Lynch and see enough of him speaking and behaving, he comes across as a bit of an idiot-savant. He does not have a list of themes or social commentary in his head he consciously wishes to dissect or explore – he has feelings, primal feelings, which he evacuates (in a way no one else on this Earth possibly could), and then the implications, connotations, and meaning (which are all there from the beginning, though not in a way he can precisely articulate or even predict) are sorted out later. Like with Pollock. That’s abstract art, in a nutshell. You cathart and evacuate, and then step back from it and notice, “Well, this must have been from a feeling of x or this is a response to y, etc.”
You propose that the man relies on “an intellectual response." Blue Velvet is not a cerebral film; it is an emotional one. To suggest otherwise is to reveal that you are unfamiliar with Lynch and/or his work.
You are projecting your own (inexplicable) detachment in the face of the often raw, quivering, unfiltered things taking place in Dorothy’s apartment onto Lynch. The obstruction is coming from you, not from the film. Lynch is not that calculating. I’d go so far as to say Mulholland Dr. is the more obvious intellectual exercise as it has symbols that are, at naked face-value, symbols, such as the blue box. There is no gray area for interpretation of that particular symbol - It does not mean anything other than what it means, which is the locked vault that must be unlocked to bring to an end the dream-fueled denial that keeps Diane Selwyn from accepting that she is guilty of monstrous jealousy and murder.
denial-fueled dream, rather
I most agree with you Harry, and I was aware that Lynch isn’t an intellectual. As a matter of fact, it is apparent. But yes, I admit, I haven’t read what he has to say about his films, and that is because I have yet to see Twin Peaks and Dune. I generally tend to first consolidate my feelings about a filmmaker’s style and themes and then juxtapose them against what he intends to say. Thanks a ton for providing me with the links.
But, when I say Lynch isn’t an intellectual, say like Kubrick or Hitchcock, I mean no disrespect. I don’t mean to say he deliberately calculated his films, say like Hitchcock, and manipulate his audiences. What I feel, is that filmmakers like him, personal filmmakers like him and say like Martin Scorsese (the kamikaze Scorsese of 70s and 80s) are ones who have thrived upon personalizing their environment onto the screen. As you put it so precisely, he thrives on primal feelings. Mean Streets works, Taxi Driver works brilliantly, because it feels Scorsese knows and feels his subject.
In Blue Velvet, and please allow me the analogy here, I felt a certain amount of Barton Fink in David Lynch. There’s earnestness in his thoughts, in his aims, but unfortunately it didn’t seem to me he made a film that explored his Charlie Meadows so thoroughly and so devoutly, even though the Charlie here was he himself. Emerson cleverly used that word – pre-programmed. In Mulholland Dr., and in Inland Empire, I felt David Lynch knows these people like the back of his hand, right down to their core.
You’re very true, the resistance came from me. I do resist when I feel a film, or a book, isn’t being true. I might not have a sound reason, and frankly I have watched Blue Velvet only twice (lot, lot lesser than I have Inland Empire, Mulholland Dr. and Eraserhead). The first time I watched it, I was put off. The second time, and this time it was late in the night (the best possible time for a Lynch film), I was bored. It seemed to me I had understood what Lynch seemed to be arriving at, and I felt he sure was ‘arriving at’ something, and the film this time around just didn’t grip me on a viewing/experience level. Maybe narrative level, in some places, but is till felt to be a bystander.
I wonder if Blue Velvet displays the sort of resistance that often creep in when somebody goes on to create something autobiographical in nature. There’re certain designs that come in mind, and maybe that is the resistance I felt. I don’t know, and frankly I am still in search of Clare Swann everyone so obviously needs to clear the muddledness of thinking. And yes, I will watch its special edition DVD again. Then I might gather greater insight into what I feel precisely, and purge them onto paper.
Satish,
Bottom line is, we often get turned off by a film for instinctual reasons that are impossible to circumvent or even explain or articulate. Which is why I am generally hesitant to discuss art with people who I do not know intimately (and even then, I am hesitant when it is a piece of work I feel passionately about) because you cannot explain why it works for you with chalk and a blackboard as if it was a math problem.
Frustrating, that; I'm sure you, being an avid film watcher and spending considerable time cogitating over the films you absorb, have encountered moments of severe mental anguish when you feel a deep connection with a work of art, meet someone who glibly dismisses it, and feel bottomless frustration at your inability to telepathically put your innermost, swirling, inarticulate feelings and admiration, etc. into that person's skull so that the light switch will activate in their psyche. This is an irrational feeling and art works outside of the bounds of rationality and often outside of concrete sorts of analysis.
David Lynch is one of those directors who you're either inclined to like from a deep, buried presence (or maybe, absence?) of something (and I know we share that presence or absence because your intuitive appreciation of Mulholland Dr. is identical to mine - I adore it on a level beneath theory and understanding, like feeling a piece of music or something; but I'm blathering...) that is either in your personality and genes from birth or just isn't. We agree enough on Lynch that this is a small quarrel, really. I'm actually reading A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again right now (finished Oblivion a few days before the 12th - I was driven to tears upon learning the news. Just an unthinkable loss.) And I'd recommend reading the entire entry. DFW considers Blue Velvet to be Lynch's best work. He has some thoughts on it that might prove interesting. He is a great, great writer, and was a sweet, soft-spoken guy, if you've ever seen him interviewed. Again, I'm still sort of reeling from his suicide.
That helpless feeling is indeed one of the more frustrating aspects of discussion. More so if you cared about a certain person’s viewpoint. Like when Jim Emerson wasn’t exactly over the moon, or rather not exactly thrilled, with The Dark Knight and how I wish I could tell him how so wonderful it is. What you say is most true for a filmmaker like David Lynch because to many I just cannot convey why I love Mulholland Dr. so much. With other filmmakers, it is in fact better to know a person with a counter viewpoint, so that it provides a more wholesome standing. But with Lynch, it is impossible, and sad, because you feel him and those feelings are just indescribable in words.
Here in India, I know David Wallace only through Infinite Jest. I never heard the man, never knew much about him except for his entry on Wikipedia. I would watch Blue Velvet again, and read the article.