Originally posted by Capo de La Cosa Nostra: But if you found hollowness beneath Lynch's mystery, then how come my claim to understand the film is a pretence?
I've said in the past that I think it helps to approach Lynch's films, particularly Mulholland and Lost Highway, as blankets, as textures, as a canvas full of splattered paint. What comes across to us as rather abstract might make perfect sense to the painter; but in describing it as abstract, the painter has not failed to translate his meaning, because that is what he always set out to do: not to confuse, but to create said blanket, the shapeless texture, a mass of visuals and sounds, underneath which might be as much depth as you want to find, or a vacant void of emptiness.
With most other filmmakers, the subtext is there, lying on a plate, and whether you like the film or not depends on whether you decide to eat what's on the plate. But Lynch only serves what your mind wishes to have; there's nothing tangible there, it's what you find to eat for yourself.
I feel that a screenwriter/director should communicate their ideas to the audience. If I am not wrong, Lynch refuses to explain the plot in any of his interviews. The only medium through which we can now understand it is the movie itself. I accept if you say you understand it, I don't necessarily imply that you are pretending, but I have a strong suspicion that your (or anybody's) interpretation might be totally different from what was originally intended by the script. I remember you had written an essay long ago about art in which you said that an artist completes a work and the viewers pick it up at a later stage and form their own interpretation of it. Thus art survives, though transforming in the process. In that grand picture of art, what you say makes sense, but again I doubt if we really force Lynch to come up with a single solid theory to explain all of the scenes of Mulholland drive, he would really succeed. IMHO there is a lack of clarity. But I may be wrong.
