Recently I watched Inland Empire and Mulholland Drive back to back. My present opinion is that Lynch uses symbols better than most directors I know. I feel he has started a new type of cinematic object.
Here I explain.
Symbols:
Fate:
First off, both movies have a "gypsy" warning character. A woman comes early in the plot to tell the central woman character what is her fate. Some other person helps this archetypical main female character to get rid of this unwelcome truth teller. What she was told in a riddle manner does happen. Fate has spoken. We are all warned, but few of us understand.
Language:
In Mullholland Drive Lynch uses Spanish, and a bit of French. For Inland Empire, the main other language is Polish, but there are bits of other languages.
Film Structure:
Lynch uses his idea of a Unified Field. No matter how he films, at the end everything will make sense, in a kind of Mud Pie, or Stone Soup. Everything will be where fate put those symbols since the beginning of time. I understand that according to Lynch, even Inorganic Matter follows a kind of Morphogenetic Field, à la Sheldrake, that forms, or maybe informs matter. I like to call this field Information.
Objects:
We have a blue box and a blue key in Mulholland Drive, and movie sets where the heroine moves in between parallel universes. Calling her companions with not much success. Only she knows at the end that the movie is over, and she can get out of "character", like a marathon runner that stops at her own peril, exhausted. She has to ease out her way from the evil personas as in Bergman's Film.
Camera Effects:
Inland Empire has digital video camera tricks, I feel as if Lynch is a kid playing with his new toy, the "digital camera". Mulholland Drive has filters all over, one part of the movie has blue, the parallel universe has yellow and orange.
Final Object:
Both films are cultural objects, which I am going to watch over and over. This is the final Lynchean Symbol.
This is why I call Lynch a Semiotic Wizard.
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