Secondly, I need to alert you to a real rarity; a great album, not just a collection of really good singles but the best cohesive aural work I've loosed my earbuds upon since, oh, probably sinceKid A came out a decade ago. It's called Hadestown, and it's billed as a "folk opera", but don't let that scare you off; the sound is less traditional roots music and more of something unclassifiable and indescribable, a magical melding of the familiar and the fresh, a potent mixture zydeco and alt-acoustic rock and classic blues shot through with the gravelly gravity of a Tom Waits ballad and the lyrical inventiveness of a Dylan anthem . The brainchild of Anais Mitchell, a singer/songwriter I've loved since the Jesus I don't believe in was a baby, the album is a retelling of the Orpheus myth (you know, the one where the dude isn't supposed to look back but does), set during the Great Depression in what is presumably N'awlins (LOVE). Mitchell wrote all the songs, and then brought in some friends to sing the different characters in the myth, which is pretty badass when the characters include Olympian gods and your friends include Ani DiFranco and Bon Iver. This is one of the most ambitious musical projects undertaken in recent years, and it's a rousing success, filled with songs of such transportive genius that listeners can enjoy them without even trying to follow the story, though, if you do pull up Mitchell's website and go along with her plot summary, your goosebump attacks will double in their frequency. Mitchell's done more than make the best concept album in ages, she's created a series of sublime standalone songs that will remain, I suspect, both timeless and of their moment; check out "Wedding Song"and "If It's True" and I bet you'll agree.
Onto this week's film, not for the faint of heart. To pseudo-paraphrase Judge Trudy, bring in the smooching lesbians!
MULHOLLAND DRIVE
The 25: Cinema's mad scientist experiments successfully with the subconscious.
Mulholland Drive is a film that’s hard to swallow for many simply because snooty-ass critics and couch potatoheads have spent so much time telling us to appreciate it as something it isn’t. It’snot a massive metaphysical mystery that takes hours of re-watching to figure out (though critics would love it to be, because they could engage in so much more pointless intellectual masturbation if there were hundreds of Hidden Meanings) What it is is a staggeringly successful experiment in using the tools of the medium to reconstruct how and what we feel while we’re dreaming.
The dream belongs to Hollywood actress (Naomi Watts), and depending on your interpretation (again, no Hidden Meanings), the actress is either suicidally depressed Diane, escaping into a sunny fantasia, or happy-go-lucky newcomer Betty, descending into a perverse nightmare. Just like our real dreams, the film is a disjointed series of moments that affect us, and we do not for the life of us know why. There are moments that inspire total dread, absurd laughter, maddening confusion, unchecked awe, and even sexual arousal (yeah, yeah), despite not really contributing to the advancement of a traditional narrative. Perfect, say I; while we’re dreaming, we’ve neither the time nor the capacity to analyze what’s going on-it simply flashes before us, and in the walled-off corners of our subconscious, we form a purely emotional reaction to it all. Also, in our dreams, names and traits we connect to those close to us are redistributed in strange ways. Lynch evokes this wonderfully by having the same names and faces pop up in connection with seemingly different people; “Betty” is a name that we ascribe to both an actress and a waitress at a diner, “Diane” is non-existent or a disturbed woman or maybe a dead body. Finally, the film recreates that indescribable sort of floaty sensation we get in a dream; the use of clever focus tricks and transitions give us the strange feeling that we’re hovering a few feet above whatever’s going on.
This isn’t a film that benefits from lots of tech talk, nor description of the “story”; to discuss the ins and outs of how this was made detracts from its otherwordly allure, and this experiment only pretends to have a narrative, so why bother? A note though, to Naomi Watts; in addition to being smokin’ hot, you gave the best performance of 2001 in this movie, and you may steal Halle Berry’s undeserved Oscar if you like. As my final defense of a film that confuses and frustrates many, I will say this; before action flicks, we are told to turn off our brain, because if we think, we’ll notice the steaming bag of shit we’ve been treated to. Here, turn off your brain, because if you can successfully do so, David Lynch’s daring vision starts to work on your soul.
The Singular Scene: The visit to Club Silencio tends to be the point where viewers start to cry, jump out of their skin in fright (count me in), or turn the film off in revulsion. I’m curious to hearyour reaction.
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