Some ecology, and Mulholland Drive

Two days ago we performed the age-old rain-summoning ritual: rearranging the garden irrigation system. Now Wellington is drenched. And the days are shortening again, although I feel this more than usual on account of getting up at six thirty in the morning to get to my ecology lecture. At the rate of twice a week, I find I enjoy this very much. I feel both tireder and more full of life (it feels odd and pleasant that it's now only one thirty), and it means I'm getting up at the same time as Charlotte, which is nice. We'll see if that goes on. Ecology began drably, (a first lecture full of things I might have taken a while to articulate myself, but nothing actually new, nothing surprising -- definition of ecology etc.) but is looking up. The novel refused to develop anything worthwhile all week and then I came up with the right thing to write during this morning's lecture. I am only taking one course! This should not be how it works! Sigh. But the lecture was about advantages and disadvantages of different sampling procedures, which is interesting, and we are actually going across the harbour to Eastbourne beach next week to use some of them on one weed and two desirable natives, after which our lecturer will write up a meta-analysis of the whole class's findings and send it to Wellington City Council for the sixth year in a row. Which is neat. (I need to retrieve my knowledge of what a chi-square test is. There was a lab session for that, but I can absorb statistics in small clear doses and then the rest of the time -- especially in a loud babbling room -- it just doesn't go in).


...


Wellington Film Society screened David Lynch's Mulholland Drive last Monday. Somehow I both had David Lynch confused with David Fincher and the film itself associated in my head with Revolutionary Road, I think because of a reference to oppressive suburbia. These were not accurate expectations! I'm glad they weren't.

(This all... Sort of has spoilers? Sort of. Stop reading if you'd rather know nothing; I was glad to know nothing myself, but I may be unusual in having had no hints whatsoever to begin with other than, 'It is strange').

Mulholland Drive is glorious, but hollow, but too glorious to be hollow: it has a highly-crafted unpredictability which delighted me, full of scenes which start as one thing and become something completely different, or take up something which happened ten minutes ago and make that something completely different, or in some cases, terrifyingly, fulfil exactly the promise they started with. (There was a while when I was sitting there almost flinching away from the screen because I was afraid a character's face was about to change into a corpse's; it didn't, but it perfectly well could have, and the fear was relevant). So I'd be glad to have watched it even if it was a series of completely disconnected scenes -- and it's not, although for a while there I wasn't sure.

The bright and dark faces of Hollywood. Two women with different kinds of apparent innocence, naive newcomer and mysterious amnesiac, and the treatment of women and sexuality in movies (as leaflemming, who I saw it with, pointed out). The same mood of constrictive unease used to produce horror and comedy by turns. The most startling jump-scare I can remember, occurring directly after a character has described the coming jump-scare accurately. One of the few really hilarious brutally violent assassinations. A shot where the camera watches a doorway across an empty lot where pieces of trash are being blown hither and thither, and then swoops toward the doorway, so that after a moment I saw that the camera had itself been caught by the wind...

And there was a scene I spent thinking, "Are you seriously telling me that the solution to the mystery you've set up is 'You are watching a movie?' Aaargh!"

(t5rrhnjjjjjjjjjjj, agrees the cat. Honestly, the amount of time this cat now spends in her actual owners' house must be approaching the subliminal).

I recovered from the aargh reaction, because that wasn't the whole of what was going on (though it's where my impression of hollowness came from, and it was a good warning to get). I don't think the film is coherent -- though some of it consists of dreams, and it isn't linear, I don't even think it's trying to be coherent on those terms -- but I don't think that's a problem; I also don't know how much coherence is in there, because bits of it have been falling into place in my head for days, and bits of it haven't, many of which must by now fallen out of my head entirely. I want to watch more David Lynch, and if the Film Society were screening Mulholland Drive again next week I'd definitely go.


Edited for footnote: When watching The Prestige I became convinced early on that the two rival conjurers in it were the same man, played by the same actor with different accents and hair, and that his entire life was an elaborate and costly magic trick complete with body doubles. (No comment on most of that, but they are definitely two actors). And before that, I've spent the first quarter of a boxing movie not realising that it had two main characters: brothers gearing up for a major competition who would inevitably both make it to the final round having both won our sympathies. I thought it was one guy with a really convoluted backstory and training regime. And in this movie I spent a long time looking at the characters Betty and Rita going "...you are not the same actress. You have different noses. Do you have different noses? I think you have different noses." I think the evidence is sufficient to conclude that I'm somewhat face-blind.