The Sheila Variations

Am I the only one that gets Mulholland Drive, Mulholland Falls and Millers Crossing mixed up?

I can understand mixing up Drive and Falls. The only thing they have in common is the name, though. I had to look up Miller's Crossing. It looks familiar but I can't quite decide if I've seen it. If I did, I don't remember it.

Did you read any of the reviews of MD at IMDB, Sheila? Stuff like this:

"the crypticness comes from a chopped-up and rearranged plot combined with a very long and rather explanatory fantasy sequence and not from a chaos of visual allegory. Because of the limitation of length, I will try to keep this short and to the point and touch on the major concepts"

Solid gold. Not sure what that means but I think he got more out of it than I did.

Ha!! For me, I basically stopped worrying what that movie was about ... and just got into what I felt it was telling me. It was like a dream - and sometimes when Lynch does that it gets annoying - but with Mulholland Drive I was HOOKED.

Like I said to you in the email: the scene in the dilapidated vaudeville house - with the singer - and Naomi Watts and the other actress weeping and clutching each other in the seats ... I don't know (with my brain anyway) what's going on there ... but on a deeper level, I DO know. It's beyond wonds. To me, the movie works at that level and I never get sick of it, weirdly.

And I didn't find the chopped-up plot a problem ... for me, the whole movie was about identity. Personality. Self.

So to suddenly rearrange everything - and see it all anew - as though the Naomi Watts we thought we knew is now someone totally different - I always find that really upsetting (in a good way).

But like I said to you before - hahahaha - I could never write a thesis paper, pinning down what all of that crap means. It's more of a dream-space kind of logic. I don't know what symbolizes what, etc. I just know that (for me) it totally works.

I've never seen Mulholland Falls, actually - that's Nick Nolte, right?

To pull out a Big Chill quote (Always appropriate in my book): "Sometimes, you have to let art flow over you."

Yes, Falls is with Nick Nolte.

hahaha I can so hear Bill Hurt saying that.

For me, it's true with Mulholland Drive ... not so with other movies where I just get annoyed, when the director relies on tricky stuff to keep me on edge - as opposed to really creating a sense of suspense ...

Thanks for the pointer to those. I've been meaning to see Romeo Is Bleeding for a long time now. I'll have to put Mulholland Falls and Hollywoodland in that list now, too.

Sheila, I asked this on Rob's post, too, but on the subject of modern noir, have you seen Brick with Joseph Gordon-Levitt?