Desire Avenue

We don't appear to have a topic for this incredible film. Must have been on CQD where we had a discussion about it.

I'm mentioning it because today, after at least a couple of years of thinking I had it all figured out, I suddenly realised that what happens at the end doesn't actually happen. I can't believe I didn't see it before. The levels and layers in this movie are just amazing.

Do we have spoiler tags on this board, Alex? Cos I'd really like to get into some discussion with Dave and any other MD fans here, but it's impossible to do without giving the game away (partially, at least ) to people who haven't seen it yet, or who haven't sussed the main gist of what's going on.

Ooooh!
Been a couple of years since we chatted MD. I've thought once or twice lately about watching it again.Trouble is,my other half would hate it,so I have to watch it late at night or when I maybe have some daytime free time.She hated 'Memento',an equally fascinating (but deeply disturbing) film. If I'd known in advance what it was going to be like,I wouldn't have countenanced the idea of watching it with her. She takes everything in movies/art etc to be real,and can't get the necessary objective critical standpoint. Fair enough.
As for something like 'Dancer in the dark',I wouldn't let her within a million miles of it
MD is such a fascinating movie with so many layers and details,and also unbearably poignant ultimately.

I find the trouble with spoilers is that it's bloody difficult to resist having a peek. I wouldn't have thought they were difficult to add to a site like this though.Having made a couple of websites meself ,the code for such things is readily available to copy/paste.
In the meantime it'll have to be PMs....
Love to know what you found, Beth!

sound world wrote: also unbearably poignant ultimately.

Well you see, that's what I've always thought too, but now I don't think it is - the ending is not at all what it seems, it's not even the ending in fact! And it's so bloody obvious when you think about it, but Lynch is such a genius for putting something right in front of your eyes in a way that distracts you from seeing it.

It might have to be PMs.

This and Lost Highway are DL masterpieces, though he has such excellent films to his name it's almost too hard to pick!

Not seen Inland Empire yet, still preparing myself for 3 straight hours of Lynch, could drive me mental if my heads not clear!!

I'm still waiting to get my unreadable DVD back, and another copy also, to finally see it again, for the first after seeing it twice (in french version and original - much better) when it came out.
One day maybe.
I'd love to see it again and again, and maybe understand a bit more than previously.

It's one of those films you can watch again and again, and each time something new will suddenly dawn on you. It's also a very frustrating film in that there's so much to talk about, but you can't bloody do it on a messageboard in case you spoil it for other people!

What if I just amend my topic title to 'mulholland drive - don't read if you don't want to know'? Then we can really get into it, and the rest have only got themselves to blame if they come in and find out.

Inspired by this thread I decided to watch the film again last night only I couldn't watch it again as I hadn't seen it before in the first place!
Seemingly I've owned the dvd for the last couple of years but had forgotten to watch it which became quite obvious once the film had started as I didn't remember any of it.

Not surprisingly I couln't really make much sense of it on the first viewing and being much to lazy to try and work it all out I haeded for the IMDB where some helpful poster explains it all .....well,most of the main plot and timeline anyway.

Its so multi-layered there are bound to be a lot of other aspects to the characters waiting to be uncovered but at least I'm now now up to speed with the plot.

Ooh you big cheat, you can't just go and read up about it on t'net! Anyway, half the people writing 358 page essays about it online are quite obviously deranged, you can't trust what they say.

Well, I suddenly realised that the end is actually part of the .... you know. It's not real. There's FX in there, the smoke bombs going off in the room and the little tiny people and the blue haired lady who comments so poignantly on the action. Who's perspective are we seeing that from? I've always just accepted it on face value and assumed it was Lynch's typically surreal style, but of course it isn't. It's the same as every other part where there are FX and strange perspectives/happenings/people. It's absolutely in character for the perspective of the 'narrator'.

I think the actual ending is in the kitchen, the morning after the night before, so to speak. When she sees the blue key on the table and knows the deed is done. The bit that comes after that actually 'happened' before, if you see what I mean.

I love this movie.

blue wrote:Ooh you big cheat, you can't just go and read up about it on t'net! Anyway, half the people writing 358 page essays about it online are quite obviously deranged, you can't trust what they say.

Thats true so I'm satisfied by the following IMDB message board post which explains the plot/time-line of the film......in their opinion anyway.

SPOILER LINK ALERT:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166924/boa ... 598763?p=1

OK, I've just read that link and it pretty much sums up what I initially thought about it all, including the notion that the strange happenings in Diane's kitchen at the end, where 'Camilla' suddenly re-appears and we have 'Diane' seen from different perspectives, are a hallucination. That's the easiest explanation for those events. But I don't think it's the correct one ....

Go right back to the beginning, in Winkie's diner. The young man who tells his dream to the older man. Something he says has always sounded a little bell in my mind every time I've watched the movie, but I've only just realised why: he says 'There are two dreams. This is the second one.'

Does anybody get what I'm saying, or am I on my own here?

I think the standard interpretation that probably most of us have arrived at, ie the one also given in Rob's link above, is nearly it but doesn't go quite far enough in understanding the nature of what we're seeing at different points in the story. Narrative perspective is the key, I think - we're seeing someone's perspective in that end scene, and that someone is not inside the action, but outside, looking at it. And there's only been one person looking at the action the whole way through. We've only been seeing one person's perspective from the very beginning.

This problem with the end scene had occurred to me before, the question of how we can be seeing the room filling with smoke and the blue lady etc after what's happened has ... happened. I couldn't explain it to myself in any logical way so I just decided it was an indulgence of the film-maker, that the perspective we're seeing it from is his, but it wasn't the most satisfactory explanation because there is no precedent for it in the rest of the film.

But now, it makes complete sense to me. I just can't believe how brilliant Lynch is at persuading the viewer to not see what's right there in front of his eyes. In the last scene of the film he has the last laugh on everyone watching. Everyone thinks she dies, and sympathises with her as the tragic heroine. What a triumph for the self-pitying/romanticising narcissist she has shown herself to be in reality, eh?

I just read some of the replies on that link, and the first one brings up something I also disagree with in the op's explanation, that the 'black tramp' represents her fear. The extreme reaction of the young man to his encounter with this figure at the beginning of the film is more than fear, it's literally heart-stopping terror that results in him being unable to stand and face it; I think the tramp is the Shadow, the epitome of all our individual nastinesses, a visual representation of all that we cannot bear to face about ourselves. This interpretation explains why the tramp is in possession of the blue box near the end of the film - of course he is, cos there's nothing more nasty and evil than what's contained in the blue box, right?

I've always thought it interesting too that there's a kind of strange resemblance between the tramp and Louise, the psychic lady, who insists that 'someone's in trouble' in the apartment. I noticed this the second time of watching - the black clothes, the mad hair. She's like a not-quite-as-blatantly-terrifying-but-deeply-unsettling echo of the tramp figure. I find that an interesting connection, particularly given the apparently premontory tone of some of the other scenes. It kind of suggests that one of the nastiest things about ourselves is that we already know what we're going to do, horrifying as it is, before our conscious mind gives us a rationalization for doing it. Fascinating stuff. He knows his theory, that Lynch.

moving swiftly on to 'The Elephant Man'

Don't let the door hit your bum on the way out! [akiss]

I'll walk out backwards.
Hang on,maybe thats not a good idea after all. [b)]

Seriously,I think I'll need to watch 'Mulholland Drive' again to comment further.....I havn't taken in enough of the film to converse on the subject. My attention span/memory isn't as good as yours, Beth?

I have a very weird memory: I can't remember things people said to me five minutes ago, or anything to do with practical things like .... everyday life, but I can quote verbatim passages from books I read 30 years ago, and remember minute details from films I love but haven't seen for ages, etc. I have a thoroughly obsessive attention span/memory for art that moves me, and complete indifference to virtually everything else.

I am however very aware that my capacity for detailed discussion of things that interest me can be very taxing for the rest of the board, so I quite understand if nobody wants to join in. It's just there's so little in-depth discussion of anything on this board, and everyone always complains about how dead it is. I was just trying to do my bit. [b)]

Never mind.