Monday, November 19, 2007
David Lynch. A Foreign Country.
That would be Poland. Or Hollywood. Or 1963. Or today. Last year's "Inland Empire" received mixed reviews, but was appreciated by fans of David Lynch, that master of the visually-compelling, mind-bending, non-linear fever dream. Count me among them. As I told Brian, reviewing this masterpiece here is, indeed, 'nessa.'With a twist: the 3rd and 4th of our 5 parameters of film criticism, Insight and Oblique Comments, are presented here as captions for the screen captures I created with my own camera. The other 3 parameters:
1. Four Words That Encapsule: 'Mystery, Themes, Dream Logic'
2. Haiku (5/7/5)
'Laura Dern should know
Actions have consequences
When you work for Lynch'
5. Link - Metacritic review
Dance this mess around! Lynch's trump card is the superlative acting acumen of Laura Dern, who is never less than compelling, believable, and engaging...
Early in the film, we meet the menacing Polish neighbor from hell, who visits Laura Dern and provides doom-laden foreshadowing. "Actions have consequences." The Polish lady delivers her cryptic comments in mocking and disturbing tone, with ironic facial gestures filmed at unflattering camera angles. How Lynchean!
And here's Laura Dern listening, slowly realizing that her menacing Polish neighbor is not playing with 52 cards.
There's a film within a film within a film, and, yes, it's in Polish! Laura Dern plays an actress who unknowingly is filming a remake of an abandoned Polish film whose adulterous stars were murdered by the starlet's possessive husband. Dern has a possessive husband, and her co-star is on the make? Will history repeat itself? That would imply a linear film. David Lynch doesn't do linear.. : - )
Lynch is fond of giants and dwarves, but in this movie, the greek chorus household lives a fairly ordinary life, except for being jack rabbits. To me, they look like the Democrats donkeys used in political cartoons!
In one scene, Laura Dern and her friends sit around a low-rent dwelling musing on their lives. Then, for no particular reason, they break out in a dance to the music of 'The Loco-Motion'
Rio hotel carpet patterns! Nobody scrapes the barrel's bottom better than I... muah ha ha ha ha...
Cartoons du Jour:
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