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heystasaIn my Contemporary Hollywood unit this semester (which is amazing, by the way) we've been looking at American independent films from the nineties that mess with structure, time & space; project the interior onto the exterior; and examine the mind, memory, sense of self, reality, and so on. Meaning a lot of the films have been constructed to be ambiguous and difficult to grasp without actively engaging in analysis, so there has been a lot of wtf immediantly after seeing some of them.
For example, Being John Malcovitch was very much "...what just happened?"
Barton Fink (which is just incredible - really excellent and extremely gratifying to analyse. And who knew John Goodman was capable of a performance like that) was "...my god in heaven. With, and, I'm not entirely sure what happened here, but, I, and.... My god in heaven."
Today we watched Mulholland Drive. And, well,
W
T
F
?
!
Or, as the guy sitting behind me said, "Fuck that movie! You see? It makes no fucking sense!"
It really does make no sense. I get the way it used the dream, and how the dream was constructed out of her real world. And get the guilt and inner torment, but why the old couple?! (I do have a bit of a theory, but still. The old couple.) Or the stageshow? Or the blue box? Or the assassin's antics? Or, well, most of the entire movie? My tutor was right, it's a very Alice in Wonderland type of film: it captures the random madness and obscure symbolism that is dreams and makes no logical sense. For that I kind of like it.
And on the one hand, oh yay female homosexuality in a film that isn't tailor made for either men or lesbians! On the other, it's the good old fashioned "be a lesbian and you will have a life of misery and death and insanity yay" trope that we've all missed so much.
I think the only thing I'm really completely positive about with this movie though, is the fact that Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman could be pretty much the same person.
After the tutorial things are generally a lot clearer, so we'll see how that goes. Looking in the course reader I see we're doing Gus Van Sant's (one of my favourite directors) Elephant next week. Talk about contrast. In almost every conceivable way.
Even if the tutorial doesn't clear things up, it'll still give me an excuse to talk about the Alice books, which is an oppurtunity I have not passed up yet throughout the entire course of my degree.
For example, Being John Malcovitch was very much "...what just happened?"
Barton Fink (which is just incredible - really excellent and extremely gratifying to analyse. And who knew John Goodman was capable of a performance like that) was "...my god in heaven. With, and, I'm not entirely sure what happened here, but, I, and.... My god in heaven."
Today we watched Mulholland Drive. And, well,
W
T
F
?
!
Or, as the guy sitting behind me said, "Fuck that movie! You see? It makes no fucking sense!"
It really does make no sense. I get the way it used the dream, and how the dream was constructed out of her real world. And get the guilt and inner torment, but why the old couple?! (I do have a bit of a theory, but still. The old couple.) Or the stageshow? Or the blue box? Or the assassin's antics? Or, well, most of the entire movie? My tutor was right, it's a very Alice in Wonderland type of film: it captures the random madness and obscure symbolism that is dreams and makes no logical sense. For that I kind of like it.
And on the one hand, oh yay female homosexuality in a film that isn't tailor made for either men or lesbians! On the other, it's the good old fashioned "be a lesbian and you will have a life of misery and death and insanity yay" trope that we've all missed so much.
I think the only thing I'm really completely positive about with this movie though, is the fact that Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman could be pretty much the same person.
After the tutorial things are generally a lot clearer, so we'll see how that goes. Looking in the course reader I see we're doing Gus Van Sant's (one of my favourite directors) Elephant next week. Talk about contrast. In almost every conceivable way.
Even if the tutorial doesn't clear things up, it'll still give me an excuse to talk about the Alice books, which is an oppurtunity I have not passed up yet throughout the entire course of my degree.
