Eraserhead

Eraserhead
dir. David Lynch

Nance-y Boy.

Jeff GP, NEW YORK CITY
January 20, 2007 - 35mm/Museum of Modern Art

Eraserhead is a drill into my brain. Suck out some brains, mash it all up and stick on the end of a pencil. Life in a factory that makes pencils and sucks brains. It erases the pencil markings and narrative movie memories!

Eraserbed is the place Eraserhead takes me. Its woozy rumbling soundscapes and cloudy black and white dreamscapes are not the things of dream, but of sleep induction. That is, until…

Eraserbread is a bun in the oven. A giant leechy sperm, well-cooked and popped out; growing into a sickly horse fetus monster. Eraserbread is scary, boring, overcooked, overwrought, random, whiny, wide-eyed and underwhelming. David Lynch is insatiable. His immense cinematic appetite cannot simply be satisfied by this bouldery mountain of Eraserbread.

The uneven, bouldery, cavernous echo of Eraserhead is only matched by the molten, craggy, toxic gas spewing aggression of the chalkboard scratching Inland Empire. No matter what’s to be said of those two movies, no matter my slight distaste for Eraserhead and my staggering distaste for Inland Empire, David Lynch is some kind of monster when it comes to directing actors no matter the picture, and bless him for that, but somebody needs to keep him on a fucking leash, if only for a moment.

A monumental achievement for a young fellow, such as a young David Lynch, Eraserhead contains many wonderfully directed scenes of aggravating nonsense. With that said, any director so able to make any non-narrative stew shine with pure conviction of performance is a perfect match for a Hollywood picture. It almost makes Mr. Lynch the ideal director for hire, but then again his strengths are clearly guided by a wavering, yet rock solid certitude in his psyche. He’s the sidearm knuckleballer of cinema. He is quite the pitcher, no matter if he throws a ball or strike. Eraserhead is a stiff-haired sandlot Lynch practicing in his backyard, developing his style by throwing against the garage door. Inland Empire is Lynch inevitably throwing out his arm in Game 6 of the ’86 Series. Lynch, for a moment triumphing in epic stupendous disaster, becomes Bill Buckner. Whether or not this injury will be career-ending is left to be seen.

Back to that leash. The leash of a movie or television studio would bring upon Lynch’s greatest triumphs (The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Dr., Twin Peaks). The 8-time Oscar nominee, The Elephant Man being the most typically narrative and oddly enough, his follow-up to Eraserhead. Like The Elephant Man, Eraserhead taps into the quite fear worthy subject of parenthood and deformity, both emotionally and physically. This physical viscera is what pushes bits of Eraserhead to greatness. The horse-headed pulpy mush of a child that the heroine, Mary (Charlotte Stewart), births is undoubtedly horrifying as well as a technical achievement. Is it a puppet? It must be a puppet, right? Whatever it is, its whine is a thing of death, and hero, Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) looks on in equal parts helpless befuddlement, adoration and anger. This look is now rightfully legendary and immortalized on merchandise.

If David Lynch can be blamed for anything specific in this world, it would not be merchandising, but the insistence film students and short-filmmakers have in feebly attempting to mimic the blown-out howl of the David Lynch emotional soundtrack. This howl is most effective when accompanied by any number of Lynch’s scores by composer Angelo Badalamenti. Eraserhead exists without his future collaborator, and the drone wears out its welcome.

The same goes for much of Eraserhead, as images repeat and reform themselves without the aid or comfort of character or precious narrative. Many of the images do stick. Lynch conjures his first of many riveting musical sequences and the image of a spectacular crystalline moon man. There are many seminal, classic bits of moviemaking here, and I will be forever grateful for the immense faith shown to Lynch post-Eraserhead, in order to make The Elephant Man and continue and build on what would become a career of legendary ups and downs, no matter how long we were forced to wait from one to the next. Do not make us wait anymore. Perhaps after Inland Empire you have another narrative masterwork in store for us, but I will not hold my breath, for that knuckleball may sink.

Miami Vice

Miami Vice
dir. Michael Mann

"My mommy and daddy know me."

Kalen Egan, LOS ANGELES
January 17, 2007 - DVD

I was walking through the aisle at Ralph’s when an impossible deal made me stop in my tracks. It said, essentially, “MIAMI VICE DVD: 19.99. Ralph’s Club Price: 8.00.” I was all, “Whaaaat?” So I asked the clerk if that price was right, and he looked at it and went “Whaaaat?” He rang it up, and the pricing was accurate. He stashed the remaining two copies under the register. I left the store thinking that it was kind of charming the way the Ralph’s clerk dug the cool-looking but ultimately goofy Miami Vice movie enough to save multiple copies for himself. The truth is, I probably wouldn’t have bought the thing if it hadn’t been for the price (in tandem with my kind of insatiable desire to own DVDs), and if I hadn’t, I would perhaps never have realized that this was one of the absolute triumphs of 2006.

Now, I saw Miami Vice in the theater and enjoyed it, but kind of came away feeling like there wasn’t a lot there outside of the visuals and editing. Seeing it at home, however, was... well... the best way I can get at the feeling is by using a sort of trashy, stupid simile, for which I really do want to apologize in advance. Here goes-- to me, watching it this second time felt like jumping into a swimming pool while intoxicated. You’re kind of out of your element, and “this isn’t like normal swimming,” but it feels so good. The water has a new weight against your body, and the fact that something you’ve done a hundred times is now unfamiliar makes it twice as exciting. This was the effect the movie had on me this second time-- it made the familiar, procedural, drug-bust plot seem alien and immediate, and the look of the thing is not just slick and high tech, but exciting in a way that stirs the soul (see: 2001, Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and almost any Herzog movie ever made for similar examples of visuals with the capacity to fill your heart). Yes, it’s true—I see all this in Miami Vice.

And the only explanation I have for this nearly 180-degree turn in appreciation is INLAND EMPIRE. I think it’s valid to let it be known that there are members of this very site who loathed their INLAND experience, and I certainly won’t, and don’t, speak for them now. It’s not a film everyone will love (neither is MV). But for me, watching INLAND was like thinking about movies with a new brain. It asked me to accept and adore what I would under normal circumstances refer to as hideously ugly image quality, and to see the tools used as the only possible way of communicating Lynch’s thick and balmy soup of ideas. It’s not that I just became okay with losing the quality of film—it’s that I was made to prefer this ugly, shit-looking, three-chip digital image to film stock. It told the story better, and INLAND would be worse without it. The filmmaking synchronizes with the visuals, and I realized that with enough revolutionary storytelling, the beauty of the visuals fall into place naturally.

With Miami Vice, I find almost the complete opposite equation. Here, the visuals are so unbelievably enthralling that the story feels perfect and sparkling new. Gunfights take on a new immediacy, even when most of the participants are just ducking behind cars, popping up for potshots. There's an unbelievable camera move during the final shootout, handheld and feeling totally unplanned, in which our perspective urgently races from behind one car to another, while bullets fly overhead. Watch that shot, and see if you don't feel like ducking. Wind whipping through Colin Ferrel's hair as he roars down a street in his convertible-- the moment feels fast and cold. Clandestine meetings in parking garages, when shot on this high-def video, feel like they're really happening-- someone could show up from out of nowhere and catch these guys, because this feels like real, unpredictable life. The difference is in the immediacy; on film, you're aware that there's a hand at the controls. On this video format, you're not so certain. Oh, man, and I don't even want to begin talking about the way the sky flashes in the background, but never quite gives way to rain; it's cinema fucking magic, and gorgeous to behold.

After seeing INLAND, I think I’ve become more open to the idea that image quality and storytelling are somewhat separate, and with enough of one you can feel entirely satisfied with the other. If INLAND is the new brain of digital cinema, asking the viewer to think in a difficult and challenging new way, than Miami Vice is certainly the new eyeballs (okay, okay… at least until this behemoth proves otherwise…), demanding a whole new way of looking at the screen. Visuals this beautiful seem to inspire a different kind of acting, and I think Ferrell and Foxx got kind of a bad rap when the movie came out—check out the way Ferrell and Gong Li nod their heads while looking at each other while sharing a shower. Thanks to Hi-Def digital’s strange, intangible ability to make things immediate, this rang to me like one of the truest cinematic moments of 2006.

There are many, many more individual great moments on display in here. I’d love to write about those extensively, or write about why (in both MV’s and INLAND's case) an extensive knowledge of the directors’ filmographies will vastly improve your experience (not in an elitist, in-jokey way, but in the way that triumphant art rewards those who know the biography and work of its creator). But I think both of those things will have to be saved for another time, or maybe for a personal conversation (and since I think I know most of the few people that might be reading this, that’s not at all out of the question—start me up, man, we’ll talk about this shit all night). For now, just go to your local Ralph’s grocery store and drop the 8 dollars. It’s so worth it if you can catch this wave.

I haven't posted in a while, and I think this article is a bit more breathless and less considered than other ones I've written. Somehow, that feels appropriate. I usually write about older movies, and MV and INLAND are brand new, and I think suggest a lot of wonderful, wonderful possibilities for the future of cinema. It's difficult for me to find a careful, considered way to put that into words... I think it says something that I'm really struggling to explain why the movie based on that funny show and later unofficially adapted into that sweet, bloody video game strikes me as revolutionary. Just see it. And if you've seen it already, see INLAND EMPIRE, then see Miami again.

Vertigo (with a soupçon of INLAND EMPIRE)

Vertigo
dir. Alfred Hitchcock

This is normal: Alfred Hitchcock and Kim Novak

Spencer Owen, BERKELEY
January 7, 2007 - 35mm/Cerrito Speakeasy

I'm part of the "loved it" half of the microscopic percentage of the world's population that will end up having seen David Lynch's new INLAND EMPIRE. It's a droning behemoth. Yes, Laura Dern wanders slowly through passageways for an endless final 20 minutes of the movie (uh, spoiler), but when I say "droning," I mean the type of sound design that Lynch has been fond of since day one. The first moment of INLAND is a stream of light bursting from a projector in the distance accompanied by a deep, deep bass drone that bursts as well. Leave it to Lynch to associate an illuminating beam emerging from the darkness with the sound of stirring, sudden doom. From there on out, like in all of his other films, the mood is often sonically saturated, especially in the low or low-mid ranges, and the ambience is noted, whether consciously or subconsciously. It was more than cute to discover that Lynch had Mulholland Dr. distributed with a special note instructing the projectionist to (and I paraphrase) turn it the fuck up.

A kindly memo from Eagle Scout Lynch

Today I saw Vertigo for the first time at a beautiful theater in El Cerrito, CA called the Cerrito Speakeasy; if you're in the area, do check their schedule, and if something appeals to you, you can grab a healthy dinner and some alcohol while watching the film. I loved the movie, and I was particularly struck by Bernard Hermann's score. His music had always worked for me in other Hitchcock films (and the shower scene is another topic altogether, but you all can just go ahead and stew on that if you must), but never like this. Tonight, the score's effects followed me outside of the theater. It's rare to hear film music so uniquely orchestrated and so conceptually sound that I'm actually glad they went and blanketed the whole movie with it.

The score for Vertigo was put together precisely in a manner that David Lynch has noticed and run with: an unusual, visceral ambience that enhances and deepens the mood that already exists, something that is brought out of the material rather than pasted on top. The difference is that Lynch scored INLAND with rock 'n' roll (pre-existing and of his own creation), musique concrete, and the atonal works of Krzysztof Penderecki; Hitchcock & Hermann, on the other hand, did all their effects with a classical orchestra and without resorting to pure modernism or atonality. Two good ways of doing it, but it is good to be reminded that there are two ways.

I would go deeper into analysis, but I haven't gotten a hold of the soundtrack recording yet, so it would be a lot of remembrance from my recent first exposure, and I'm not sure how well I trust that for getting details right. But I do recall noticing ... isn't it wonderful how, in this first act, with all these scenes of no dialogue, the score actually does the talking, and I'm glad for it? And isn't it interesting how here, in the second half, the music is much more bittersweet and romantic (though far from traditionally so), whereas in the first half it was truly ... eerie, and unnerving? And the opening credits theme ... so gorgeously slippery, the way the arpeggios are really just not in time with each other, with accents marking ... what rhythm exactly? I could go on. How rare!

There are two moments, though, that Hermann can't take credit for (at least I don't think so). In the movie's first scene, Scotty's hanging out with Midge and -- I have to pause right here to call him a fool for not making it work with Midge, because she was way more appealing and grounded than that crazy Madeleine (not to mention Midge being phenomenally cute), but anyway -- there's some peppy string music playing in the background, if a bit low in the mix. I thought, "Well, this is some delightful background music, seems to serve to brighten the mood, a traditional sunny-day everyday tonal element, kicking off the action '50s-style..." Then one of them, I don't recall who, gets up and takes the needle off a record. This turns out to be some kind of foreshadowing for a moment in which (okay, a real spoiler) Scotty's in a hospital, acting like a near-vegetable, and Midge, in her final appearance, puts on a Mozart record, saying that she's been told Mozart should do the trick. When he doesn't respond, she takes it as a sign that she should turn it off. Just as Bernard Hermann brings out the sensations already present, lying in wait to be enhanced, Mozart won't bring Scotty out of his funk, because there's no Mozart -- or Midge -- inside him.