Digital Lynch: The end?

After Mulholland Drive (2001) Lynch is “done” with film. Celluloid is slow, big, cumbersome, disjointed, scratched, and “ancient technology” so Lynch decides to tackle his latest shiny, new toy and is like a puppy at Christmas with the idea of digital film making. Digital, in contrast, is lightweight, smooth, fast there is an immediacy which is almost addictive, instant editing, autofocus all allows for the full artist's freedom from the clunky technical requirements of celluloid.

For Lynch you can see why this is so important, the ability to zoom in close to a scene (without the constraints of a boom operator, grips, camera men) the financial freedom of knowing a scene can keep going without the audio whirl of money being spent (celluloid films are expensive which is why we can “thank” digital for making programmes like Big Brother financially viable.). The organic nature of digital seems to fit Lynch’s creative vision so well, if a director can keep focused on a scene, keep seeing what is unveiled from the actors, the subtle changes in pace, emotion or tension then the end result will surely be better. There’s no one likes to dwell on a scene more than Lynch, his love of “quiet” space to jar so aggressively against “loud” space in his films is unique and as a auteur it’s almost what defines him.

Digital production

So as we’ve established digital production allows for self indulgence. With whizzy cameras and the right editing software digital film-making has been blown open to the masses, allowing everyone to edit, prepare and distribute at a click of a button their film to a potential audience of millions with little cost. For Lynch, this means two fingers to the studios who for so many years tried to control his vision, making it available to the masses, but on their commercial terms. As an auteur Lynch in a digital world is completely free and don’t we know it.

Inland Empire is a film you can appreciate but not love, easy to respect as an experiment, hard to sit through. Without the outside perspective of a studio boss, Lynch’s freedom runs wild, his love of fractured identities, disjointed stories (Twin Peaks style) takes on an existentialist quality of its own, leaving even hardcore Lynch fans somewhat hungering for closure on at least one storyline.

Much like Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire started out as an experiment, a series of monologues with leading lady and Lynch favourite Laura Dern. Fragments which become feature.

Digital quality

What is lost with digital? The compressed nature of digital files means that the “warmth” of film has been coldly wiped away, one megapixel at a time. The richness that comes from analogue distortions has been replaced with cold technical silence (there’s no background click, buzz or whir or the camera in those “silent” moments). As an audience we de-value digital – it misses the “luxury” quality we associate with celluloid – we like our TV to look like film afterall (Sopranos, ER etc)

Digital distribution

With little cost involved with production, surely digital ensures a healthy profit when it comes to distribution? Inland Empire was distributed by Lynch but as with all new technologies not all cinema’s had caught up with the digital trend and as such as limited ways to show the film. Using the Internet to launch the marketing, Lynch has used viral, communities and blogs to his advantage to gather the force of hardcore fans to leave their home comforts and head for the cinema. But why? A digitally produced movie, using digital components to edit, produce and add a digital soundtrack, using digital mediums to drive traffic and interest and then ask people to leave their digital arena and watch it in a cinema? A holistic effort gone too far. These digital fans were already with Lynch, they were sat there waiting for the film, in an instant he could have uploaded the movie and in another instant millions could have seen it.

Digital reception

Nope. This is not how Lynch wants you to see the film. He’s old school at heart. The tiny nuances of his soundtracks, his imagery, his cinematography, the painstakingly hand-carved film sets are not there to be viewed on your MP3 or PC. Hell no. This is a “putrified, false” experience according to Lynch.

The freedom of digital comes with a price. Death of the auteur, in a digital world a director has even less freedom to control how people view his work. What makes movies great is the tension between artistic freedom and business between culture/ industry. Let’s face it, a I pod with great headphones will probably let you hear those tiny nuances better than an old cinema with fading Dolby surround sound.

The question is now, is Lynch done with film? Will he next turn full circle and with the artistic and financial freedom of digital return to “moving pictures” will the artistic ambitions of youth finally be realised?

Blue Velvet - Modern Folklore 2

This week we had a deep dive into the world of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. As a mere film geek and not ‘buff’ my understanding is somewhat limited, so I was keen to see what the other geeks on my course thought – and especially what our course leader, Jake, thought.

Jake explained that after the success/failure of Dune Lynch was willing to take a substantial pay cut to have full creative control over Blue Velvet (1986) and this film ultimately became the first full narrative. Lynch’s “final cut” demands were not written into the contract, just to secure the studio control over future directors, but the studio boss was happy to shake on it and a gentleman’s agreement was made.

Here’s what the others thought about Blue Velvet:

Blue Velvet is Jeffrey’s dream – the narrative starts by entering the severed, grotesque ear where the audience descends into the dreamlike, psychological world of Jeffrey, where the other characters “act out” Jeffrey’s deepest, darkest desires, the narrative then ends with the camera panning out of his ear.

This theory does explain some of the stinted melodrama, the unreal reactions from people and the calm way in which Jeffrey paces through the events of the film, it also explains the nightmarish, surreal moments with Ben (Dean Stockwell). It also helps define the over male desire, the whore/angel representation of women and the Freudian scenes with Frank and Dorothy. However, the film’s overly kitsch, Americana ending is outside of the dream, the narrative has left the ear. Does this suggest that the outside world is more artificial than the truth we find in our dreams? Maybe.

Product placements – Heinekken or Budweiser? Joke or paid product placement? With Lynch, unlikely to be the latter. This discussion of the everyday, the normal products Joe Public enjoys paved a new “Lynchian tone” which others like Tarrantino developed – Pulp Fiction, gangsters discussing the merits of cheeseburgers while on a killing spree.

It’s a “joy ride” of a film – the phrase Frank delights in screaming at Jeffrey whilst at Ben’s place is one way to describe the emotional registers within the film. Starts out as a kind of Nancy Drew teen mystery drama, but as soon as Jeffrey witnesses Frank and Dorothy in the apartment Lynch pulls the carpet from under the audience. Jeffrey’s disbelieve and un-real “calm” is delayed shock, things have escalated so far out of control Jeffrey is now the voice of the audience. The scenes swing rapidly from the horrific to the comic to the sexual.

Post modern director – the 70s TV cop show references with the car chases, the hub caps spinning away, the melodrama point to Lynch being a post modern director, drawing more inspiration from television rather than cinema history.

Love story – for Jeffrey the “love interest” is one woman split into two personalities, played by two women (another Lynchian tone, see Mulholland Drive for doubles) The two women merge into one love when Dorothy shows up naked, beaten and vulnerable at Sandy’s house. The sexual dominator is cast to damsel in distress and his innocent; girl next door is now the object of his adult feelings of true love. Frank is a sentimentalist (arguably) he coverts the small piece of velvet from Dorothy’s coat, he cries as she sings her songs. Frank is a man so in love he has no other way to handle these over powering emotions than through violence. As he turns to Jeffrey he shouts, “you’re just like me” where in turn Jeffrey punches him, fulfilling the circle and becoming like Frank – he has already changed from innocent bystander to aggressive lover (already consenting to hit Dorothy during intercourse).

Fantasy – Frank acts out his fantasies, it’s mechanistic, the bourbon, the dark, “it has to be dark”, the robe, the lipstick and the music. Frank puts these things in place to start the fantasy. This view leads the audience to suspect he may have raped Jeffrey during the “joy ride scene” as these fantasy elements are slowly put into place. Whose fantasy is this? Jeffrey’s voyeur fantasy? Dorothy’s domination fantasy? Frank’s fantasy of masochism and who does the audience identify with? Or this Lynch’s fantasy to pull the audience into this world, to provoke a reaction from them, to start a debate, to make you watch the darker side of society?

Violence – Jeffrey’s moral code is rejected with shockingly quick speed – he goes from out right, offended objection to hitting Dorothy to violently striking her in a matter of narrative minutes, the moment he loses his innocence the screen fills with flames and the audience is thrust into this troubling life of Jeffrey. Lynch’s idea is to make the audience focus on this horrifying violence, if you were to have no reaction to these disturbing scenes then you’re the disturbing aspect of society. Lynch is not like Scorsese who casually passes over violence towards women, he in contrast makes the audience dwell, focus, become involved with the violence (through us identifying with Jeffrey).

Exploiting the audience – could have been a fair reaction from 1980s audiences used to slasher horror movies, entirely there to exploit, scare and shock the audience. An 80s audience could have assumed Blue Velvet was a post modern way for Lynch to exploit, scare and shock his audience – but this doesn’t ring true, the violence is not graphic, Lynch is asking the audience to think, to be engaged by the unsettling aspects of this film, not merely exploit the emotions temporarily. The disturbing part of the film is not the violence, it’s the un-natural fragmentation, and it’s inglorious portrayal of nudity, the tender innocence behind monstrous characters.

Blue Velvet - Modern Folklore

As part of the David Lynch course at the Broadway, last night I had the pleasure of watching Blue Velvet on the big screen. The pre-screening talk was excellent and highlighted the ways in which this film could be viewed. Jake Smith who is hosting this course introduced the idea of Blue Velvet being a modern folklore – a fairy tale for adults. He revealed the horrifying truth that the original Little Red Riding Hood saw the innocent young girl not only being tricked into drinking the blood of her dead grandmother, but also being forced to strip naked to “feel the touch of the wolf’s” skin before being devoured herself. I could see why the brother’s Grimm felt the need to smarten it up for a middle class audience - bedtime stories might not have had such a comforting effect otherwise.

Blue Velvet certainly shows an uncomfortable portrayal of modern life (well, 80s American suburbia) and the dark underside of society that bubbles beneath the surface of white picket fences and immaculate lawns. The infamous line from Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle McLaughlin) “why are there people like Frank in the world” has split critics to ask if this is ironic or not? Is this a desperate plea from a young man who has lost his innocence or just postmodern irony? It’s hard to tell to be honest.

It’s a pretty straightforward film for Lynch, the narrative is pretty linear, there’s a beginning, middle and end, which is perhaps why it received so much critical and cult acclaim, despite the content, it’s a very accessible film.

I felt this was a film about the loss of innocence, a young boy, Jeffrey, is forced to “man up” in several obvious and some unobvious ways. The first is his loss of child like freedom: Jeffrey’s father is left incapacitated after a presumed heart attack, so he takes the reins of the family business and begins to experience respect and power for the first time. Finding an ear in his neighbourhood he feels emboldened by his new experiences to solve the mystery behind this horrifying treasure.

The second his is loss of sexual innocence: Dorothy Vallens (isobella Rossellini) catches Jeffrey spying at her apartment; mistaking his detective intentions as voyeurism she becomes sexually aggressive and fellates Jeffery at knifepoint. This experience is immediately followed by Jeffrey being forced, out of circumstance, to watch Frank (Dennis Hopper) sexually abuse Dorothy Vallens (Isobella Rosellini). Like a child hearing the unsettling creaks and groans of parents in a distant room, Lynch magnifies this child-like experience of sexual revelation to the same disturbing experience for adults. How very Freudian.

The third is his exposure to a world outside his own: Frank kidnaps Jeffrey for a “joyride” through the dark streets of Lumberton. Frank’s home becomes a macabre, fabricated commercial in contrast to the “real world” – a bit like Tim Burton’s ‘perfect’ town in Edward Scissorhands which politely ignores the gothic horror which is built at the end of the road. His known world falls about him as he realises what

The film has been criticised for portraying violence against women, but I found this film difficult to take offence at. The violence is administered by Frank, a man with some serious Freudian hang ups about his mother and a drug addled maniac, it’s not surprising he’s violent towards women. Also, I don’t genuinely believe Dorothy enjoys the violence in any sexual manner, it seemed rather she had been programmed to expect this from men – though that could be wishful thinking as there’s no indication what her husband is like.

Dorothy and Sandy (Laura Dern) are such one sided characters that it’s hard to empathise or criticize them. It’s an all too obvious, dark-seductive-older- woman versus light-innocent-girl-next-door scenario. I guess they represent the two sides of male sexual desire – a fantasy of the bedroom and a saint – and it’s written and filmed from such a male gaze that it’s hard to see they’re real people at all – for example, Sandy cries melodramatically into the phone that she forgives Jeffrey for sleeping with Dorothy because she loves him. Please, what a male fantasy.

Visually it’s stunning, a modern twist on film noir. The soundtrack shows signs of classic Lynchian techniques – mechanical noises, the unsettling use of silence – and the theme song by Roy Orbison doesn’t seem to leave a scene. As a modern fairytale for adults I’m not sure what the moral of the story is, but I can guarantee that you won’t be able to easily get this film or “Blue Velvet” out of your mind for days afterwards.

Best scene: Ben, (Dean Stockwell – Al from Quantum Leap!), Frank’s partner in crime, lip-syncs a performance of Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" into a lamp in a full face of make up.

Week 2 Lynchian Tone

David Lynch spent his childhood being raised in several towns across the Pacific Northwest and North Carolina, with an occasional visit to his grandparents in Brooklyn, New York. As a student he spent a portion of his early adult life in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. This odd combination of small town America and industrial metropolis may well have influenced his work, and seems to be a good place to try and figure out what the “Lynchian tone” is.

Lynch was an Eagle Scout and occasionally joined his father, who was a US Department of Agriculture scientist on research trips. As an artist, Lynch would fuse the biological textures of the real world with his work, incorporating dead flies, moths and even a dead mouse into his paintings. After a successful art show where his animated film entitled “Six Men Getting Sick” (1966) received critical praise Lynch acquired funding to produce “the Alphabet”.

The Alphabet is a nightmarish short film about the fear of learning - the sin of knowledge that leads to corruption and the destruction of innocence. As a painter and photographer Lynch seems to have slipped into film making as a way to bring images to life - his first films had no dialogue and used unique soundtracks to express emotions - he’s also consistently reluctant to offer explanations of his films and to put his thoughts on paper. Hmmm …

The Grandmother (1970), his first funded film was produced from a $5,000 grant from the newly formed American Film Institute. This might be a good place to see what the ‘Lynchian tone’ is. Well, not being an expert I didn’t know, so I rely on what the tutor told us. “The Grandmother” is grotesque, surreal and sentimental – a narrative theme which is repeated in some of Lynch’s later work, it is also the first chance to hear the work of Alan Splet, the sound technician Lynch has worked with on many films. The film (again) has no narrative and relies on the score to set the nightmarish atmosphere. Splet uses natural sounds like thunderstorms while the boy ‘grows’ the grandma and distorted dog barks for the parents.

The boy is dressed in a suit, and stands isolated against his possessions in rooms with black walls. It’s surreal; it makes the characters look disconnected and their white faces look dream-like and stark in contrast. The boy’s suit serves to further disconnect him from his animal-like parents and also illustrate the formality of Middle American society. I think Lynch is hinting that the surreal infiltrates the normal; the subconscious lives with the conscious and we live in a world where dreams and reality are seamlessly merged.

I think this idea of inner/outer psychological experience is best expressed in the Terry Gilliam style animations Lynch intersects with the film. The animations tell the same story, but as a different media, they represent imagination or subconscious. In later films Lynch moves away from film/ animation to show this and works towards film/ film and even further with dual characters (Betty/ Diane in Mulholland drive). Mulholland Drive I think shows perfectly how conscious and subconscious lives together and are one way the ‘Lynchian tone’ resonates in his work.

The animation also suggests that all the characters were ‘grown’ in the same way the grandmother was. It highlights Lynches themes of the natural and artificial world merging – an idea Lynch illustrated in his paintings. He seems pre-occupied with the biology of birth, of botanic things ‘oozing’ and dripping and this is a theme we see in grotesque detail in the infamous midnight movie, “Eraserhead” (1976).

Lynch’s work has been described here as “uncanny”, “surreal” and “grotesque” where his nightmarish images are perfectly matched to a sweeping sound scape designs. The ‘uncanny’ is the best way to sum up Lynch’s work – this Freudian idea explains why everything we see makes us feel uncomfortable - it is darkly familiar, it awakens primeval, repressed memories, in other words, the inner hidden voice is given a very visible outer amplifier. Inner/ outer, repressed/ expressed, dreamed/ experienced, nature/manmade – there is a duality in Lynch’s work and this can be seen as the “Lynchian tone” in my mind.

Auteur Theory: David Lynch

What is an auteur? Well blame the French for this. Cinema critics of the 1950s were tired of the conveyer belt approach that studio directors had taken towards filmmaking. There were no distinguishable characteristics by each director - just formulaic, commercial pap which was churned out time and time again.

Auteur critics wanted a new wave of cinema and argued the camera should be an instrument for art, just as the brush is for the artist. As a instrument, the camera should provide artistic integrity; the auteur should demonstrate technical mastery, a distinguished personality and provoke an interior meaning to their work. As such a group of select auteur directors deemed to meet these standards were born: Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock and in recent times Kubrick, Lynch, Tarrantino and Wes Anderson.

This might seem strange to today’s cinema audiences, after all many film lovers could name their favourite director - suggesting that most films have a distinct look and feel. But a director like Stephen Spielberg is not an auteur (debatable) - even though his work is distinct and has repeated themes it arguably does not stir an interior meaning. Also, his work is commercial successful suggesting a popularist approach to filmmaking and a willingness to be influenced by the financial ambitions of the studio. Don’t get me wrong, I love Spielberg films, I’m just playing devils advocate.

An auteur might be a critic’s dream, but what are the limitations? Withstanding artistic integrity and vision in an industry which inherently relies on a team (sometimes an army) of people to produce. Keeping their unique stamp on the finished work without turning out the same old recognisable tricks. And finally, the medium. Producing a cinematic masterpiece is reliant on the theatre – the sound system, the oversized screen, the darkness, and the all-encompassing sensory experience. Once taken into the home, arguably, the film is no longer the work of an auteur.

Critics seem to deem the cinema as the pinnacle and playground of auteur work, and assign only directors to be worthy of this title (not producers or cinematographers) so can TV create auteurs who are producers? Or is this a ‘lesser’ medium not worthy of true, artistic and critical acclaim?

Well, we discussed today how a director like Lynch consistently manages to keep a distinct identity within his work. In an interview he described the film making process as an abstract cloud of ideas. He maintains the vision and everyone working with him subscribes to this - they can makes suggestions (which might be included in the work) but their suggestions only work as part of this wider cloud of ideas which is gently floating through the process with him at the centre. Nice and direct.

As a trans media artist Lynch manages to keep a “lynchian” tone to all his work – it’s always distinctly his whether it’s TV, film or painting. He uses repeated metaphors (red curtains, mystery sinister figures), music (industrial, ambient soundtracks) and a unique directorial style (camera angles, disjointed narrative) to make this stamp.

We watched a 1-minute short Lynch created to celebrate the 100^th Anniversary of the Lumiere Camera. 60 seconds of continuous filming with no edits, no sound (other than a dubbed on soundtrack) Lynch still manages to display extraordinary technical skill, style and authorship. The mark of a genuine auteur – to not have to rely on any one medium or additional people! It was a magical, engaging and eerie piece which even not knowing it was Lynch, you could make an educated guess by the tone and feel.

Sadly we were shown a “making of” clip which had filmed Lynch filming the short. Now, I’m not a fan of behind the scenes sections or even DVD director’s commentary to be honest. I prefer Roland Barthes’s “Death of the Author” approach to cinema going – I don’t need a director to tell me what their vision was, or how they created it – I don’t want it to influence my experience as ultimately it doesn’t matter what the director intended, it’s what I took away from it that counts.

The strange thing about films, which is unlike authorship in novels, is that with a book you don’t get the back-story – there isn’t an introduction which explains how Thomas Hardy wrote Tess of the D’Urbervilles or what was happening socially at the time to influence him (well sometimes). Good thing too, it’s really got nothing to do with how you interpret the book, the story, the narrative. This is why I like Lynch, he refuses to help out the audience, he doesn’t offer explanation, he doesn’t care if you draw conclusions or flap about in frustration. I watched Mulholland Drive for the first time 2 days ago and it’s still going round and round in my head, that’s why I think it’s an auteur film – anyone got any explanations they want to share, then I’ll pleased to hear what you got from it!

“Poisonous Valentine for Hollywood” – Mulholland Drive

This week I start a new film course at the Broadway in Nottingham, this time the theme is David Lynch. Ouch. I could have picked Hitchock and studied movies with clear constructs and narratives which follow a logical path, but where would be the fun in that? So last night I decided to watch Mulholland Drive (2001) and get stuck into the surreal workings of Lynch’s mind and films.

For anyone who’s seen the film you may well have had the same reaction to me when it ended; WTF. Well, exactly, it’s no clear story. This morning I decided to seek the advice of professionals and hit Google hard. It seems to be fairly conclusive that most critics assign the narrative to be first a dream sequence and second a gritty reality of the characters.

Betty (Naomi Watts), a “gee golly wiz” girl from Ontario arrives in LA to stay at her Aunts Sunset Boulevard apartment, on arrival she finds the injured doe, “Rita” (Laura Elena Harring), who’s suffering amnesia from a car accident the night before. In the process of trying to find out whom “Rita” really is and what the blue key opens Betty auditions successfully for a film role and the two women fall in love. Their story ends at the eerie club Silencio where on returning to the apartment with the blue box Betty found, “Rita” turns the key, Betty disappears and the audience are sucked into the black hole.

This section does seem dream like to me – Betty’s lines feel so “wholesome” and out of synch with those around her, her upbeat nature, her inability to feel fear, her extremely talented performance at the audition (smooth transition from naive girl to Hollywood seductress) all point to an idealistic attitude towards life. The beautiful “Rita”, a genuine 50s bombshell who’s dependant and submissive in nature, yet wiley and astute enough to work out how to break into Aunt Ruth’s apartment undetected. The fact the two girls are called Betty and Rita (harks back to 50s Hollywood), the easy way in which they break into Diane’s apartment and the fact they’re unfazed later that night by the horror of what they had seen. Lynch’s camera angles drift upwards as the characters speak (symbolising an out of body experience?) which gives the scenes a surreal edge, as do the winding (almost drunken) views of walking through the corridors of Aunt Ruth’s apartment.

The second half of the film depicts the sad, embittered life of Dianne (Naomi Watts) and her unrequited relationship with the cruel, beautiful and teasing Camilla (Laura Elena Harring). The audience sees her hung-over (drink and drugs?) tired and lack being awoken by the terrifying cowboy figure (twice, so we know things have gone wrong - his earlier warning to the director Adam, played by Justin Theroux) and in her morning stupor hallucinating that the Camilla has returned to her. Her sad tale at Adam’s party forces her publicly announce her failed movie dreams and re-live the broken promises by industry professionals while the twisted and successful Camilla openly taunts her (kissing another woman and fawning over Adam). The reality is Dianne works as a waitress and the vicious rejection she receives forces her hand to hire the assassin to kill Camilla, unable to live with her guilt she shoots herself. The camera angles change in this section too, no high angles (out of body style), no soft focus stylised close ups – rather the opposite, intimate, uncomfortable angles which show every imperfection.

Well, what about the old couple? Diane could be haunted by her own conscious, a failure to herself and her parents? Or are they simple demons in disguise? Are Betty and Rita the dream of what Dianne really wanted - her subconscious desire, her daydream? Or did everything really happen and all four characters exist together in some parallel universe?

Mulholland Drive is like the road itself, a winding, twisted route through Hollywood with some clear pointers and clues along the route, which, if you chose to ignore them do not stop you getting to your destination. Perhaps that’s the point, there are clues like the red lamp, the ashtray, the blue keys the people at Winkies but ultimately if you see them or miss them you’re none the wiser at the end, having reached the conclusion of the film with hopefully your own interpretation. I think it’s always a good film if you spend days afterwards thinking about it, and perhaps that’s the point as Lynch has never offered an explanation – maybe it’s one huge joke, made up as he went along like Twin Peaks to frustrate and tantalise the audience – the clues are not there to be sensibly analysed but rather to anchor the narrative with traditional repeated metaphors? Who knows?

I loved it; I need to watch it again but hopefully this film course will throw up some good insights along the way.

Best scene: the scary as hell club “Silencio” where we are told in several different languages that, “it’s all an illusion.”