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Apr. 8th, 2005 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
proximoceptionSo we watched Lost Highway, John the Baptist as it is to Mulholland Drive, and I explained it to Julie and she went to bed hating it and woke up liking it.
One thing we're both confused about, after this viewing, is whether Mr. Eddie AKA Dick Laurent is:
A) The jealous, misogynous, murderous portion of Fred he tries to cast off while willing his change into young, innocent, harmless Pete, a portion that lurks about, then invades and corrupts Fred's fantasy ("funny how secrets travel") embodied in an evil old mobster; in the killing of whom, Fred destroys or anyway rejects everything inside him that had lost touch with the reality of his wife's dignity and mystery (cheap words but you know what I mean), his own horrible crime, his own coming fate. The self-shadow that obscured the world, let's say.
B) A nightmare figure representing whatever had corrupted or emptied Renee and made her cheat on him, in creating whom Fred absolves his wife of blame, and in killing whom Fred tries to heal her past and thereby his own present. (Obviously for A we're led to think B till the climax.)
I really hope it's A but I couldn't locate anything that clinched it. If it's B the movie seems little more than complicated noir: a murderer is in denial and more or less stays there and dies, the end. A Marilyn Manson film.
Ambiguous evidence for A includes The Mystery Man's dealing the death blow: the Man had previously seemed to be on Laurent's side but ultimately executes him, in a manner not far off from what he told Pete is done "in the East, the Far East". He kills the guilty part of Fred, not Fred himself (note this too may be wish, as The Mystery Man in general is someone who provides "If Only I Could..." solutions). Also, since the climactic revelation--"You'll never have me."--is essentially a conclusion Fred comes to on his own rather than new external information, and one of sufficient potency that he becomes himself again, it seems a little cheap to have him then get lost in a mere revenge fantasy. But maybe Lynch and Gifford didn't think so.
But the low quality camera and its tapes signify "look at what's real, see who you are and what you did" everywhere else in the film and are always directed at Fred, and The Mystery Man makes Laurent look at it before dying. And Laurent's last words, apparently to Fred, that "you and me sure can out-ugly" everyone, surely intimate a significant communion.
Of course that too can be read the other way, a corruptor's salute to a murderer. A and B both work fine for the end/beginning, also. "Dick Laurent is dead" can mean: I've killed the man who was stopping us from having her so now we don't have to kill her and now we don't have to die; or, I've killed the killer inside us--so now we don't have to etc.
The best evidence for A might be Mulholland Drive itself, or even The Straight Story, or Fire Walk with Me or The Elephant Man or Blue Velvet for that matter. Lynch is interested in forgiveness, in an innocent strain that can't be destroyed. Of course he's also interested in really fucked up things. I guess another viewing is in order.
One thing we're both confused about, after this viewing, is whether Mr. Eddie AKA Dick Laurent is:
A) The jealous, misogynous, murderous portion of Fred he tries to cast off while willing his change into young, innocent, harmless Pete, a portion that lurks about, then invades and corrupts Fred's fantasy ("funny how secrets travel") embodied in an evil old mobster; in the killing of whom, Fred destroys or anyway rejects everything inside him that had lost touch with the reality of his wife's dignity and mystery (cheap words but you know what I mean), his own horrible crime, his own coming fate. The self-shadow that obscured the world, let's say.
B) A nightmare figure representing whatever had corrupted or emptied Renee and made her cheat on him, in creating whom Fred absolves his wife of blame, and in killing whom Fred tries to heal her past and thereby his own present. (Obviously for A we're led to think B till the climax.)
I really hope it's A but I couldn't locate anything that clinched it. If it's B the movie seems little more than complicated noir: a murderer is in denial and more or less stays there and dies, the end. A Marilyn Manson film.
Ambiguous evidence for A includes The Mystery Man's dealing the death blow: the Man had previously seemed to be on Laurent's side but ultimately executes him, in a manner not far off from what he told Pete is done "in the East, the Far East". He kills the guilty part of Fred, not Fred himself (note this too may be wish, as The Mystery Man in general is someone who provides "If Only I Could..." solutions). Also, since the climactic revelation--"You'll never have me."--is essentially a conclusion Fred comes to on his own rather than new external information, and one of sufficient potency that he becomes himself again, it seems a little cheap to have him then get lost in a mere revenge fantasy. But maybe Lynch and Gifford didn't think so.
But the low quality camera and its tapes signify "look at what's real, see who you are and what you did" everywhere else in the film and are always directed at Fred, and The Mystery Man makes Laurent look at it before dying. And Laurent's last words, apparently to Fred, that "you and me sure can out-ugly" everyone, surely intimate a significant communion.
Of course that too can be read the other way, a corruptor's salute to a murderer. A and B both work fine for the end/beginning, also. "Dick Laurent is dead" can mean: I've killed the man who was stopping us from having her so now we don't have to kill her and now we don't have to die; or, I've killed the killer inside us--so now we don't have to etc.
The best evidence for A might be Mulholland Drive itself, or even The Straight Story, or Fire Walk with Me or The Elephant Man or Blue Velvet for that matter. Lynch is interested in forgiveness, in an innocent strain that can't be destroyed. Of course he's also interested in really fucked up things. I guess another viewing is in order.
