Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
You saw the headline, right? Whattaya need, a diagram? Capone. Lynch. Kung-fu. Do it.
Hey Moriarty. Capone in Chicago here trying to clear my plate before the Chicago International Film Festival begins tomorrow. Here are a couple of films about as different from each other as they come, and I liked them both…
MULHOLLAND DRIVE
Every so often a film arrives before my eyes that I love because it exists. It may not be a great film in terms of its writing or production value; it probably won’t be a movie I even recommend to a lot of people. I just like it because it gives me hope that there is somebody out there making movies who doesn’t care about appealing the greatest common denominator or the widest possible demographic. I kind of felt this way when I saw DANCER IN THE DARK last year, but David Lynch’s MULHOLLAND DRIVE is so utterly other-worldly at times, frightening, captivating, shocking, and occasionally awe-inspiring, that I’m convincing words have not yet been invented to explain it, let alone critique it. But I’ll take a shot…
For all it weirdness, MULHOLLAND DRIVE starts as a fairly simple story. An absolutely stunning woman, whom we come to know as Rita (Laura Harring), is in a nasty car accident on Mulholland Drive as she is being driven by criminal types in a limo late one night. The other people in the car are killed, but Rita manages to walk away from the wreck with a bump on the head and any memory of who she is gone. She wanders from the accident scene into the courtyard of an apartment complex and falls asleep behind some bushes. When she awakens the next morning, she sees an older woman packing up a car for a long trip. Rita manages to slip into the woman’s apartment and fall asleep again until the table just as the older woman is driving away for what appears to be an extended absence, leaving Rita alone in the apartment.
Enter Betty (Naomi Watts), an aspiring actress from Canada (and another total babe), who lands in Los Angeles with dreams of being a star. Betty’s aunt is letting her stay in her apartment while she’s away so Betty can look for work. Guess who’s waiting in the apartment that Betty is staying in? Between the car accident sequence and the introduction of Betty is a scene I just plain didn’t get involving two men in a diner. The way they talk, it seems as though one might be the other’s shrink, but who knows. The scene ends in an alley and one man dies. I may have missed something but this side story has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. Since David Lynch had originally written and directed MULHOLLAND DRIVE as a T.V. pilot, perhaps this was a scene with characters that would have appeared in later episodes of the show. Who knows? I sure don’t.
Anyway, back at the apartment with the two beauties, once Betty discovers Rita in the apartment, the two try to trace Rita’s origins based on the contents of her purse (most of which is filled with cash, along with a strange looking key). Somewhere around this part of the film we also meet Adam (Justin Theroux), a film director in the final stages of casting his latest movies. He is being forced by some very scary mob-like guys to cast a particular woman for a major role in the film. At first I thought this woman was going to turn out to be Betty, but it’s not. Again, this seemed like a storyline that would have been continued over many future episodes of a non-existent T.V. show, because the entire storyline involved Adam and his movie leads nowhere. He finds his wife cheating on him, all of his income disappears when he refuses to cast the pre-determined actress, he is visited by a terrific character known only as “The Cowboy,” and he eventually is forced to utter the words “That’s the girl” during her audition.
The storyline that does come to something of a conclusion is the one you’re probably going to hear the most about. The mystery of Rita’s identity is established…sort of. The two women start up a steamy lesbian relationship; they discover a badly decomposed body of a woman in an abandoned apartment, apparently the victim of a suicide; they attend a hypnotic concert where the music is pretaped but the performers play as if it were real (once again, Lynch uses a Roy Orbison song to great effect as he did in BLUE VELVET); and finally they find out what that strange key goes into. In the half hour or so after they slide the key into its home, the movie takes a turn that seems to have baffled every audience that has seen this movie.
What this final 30 minutes does is try to tie up as many loose ends as it can. Does it all make sense in the end? Absolutely not. Does it need to? Same answer. After much self-consideration after the film, I pretty much figured out who Rita and Betty and the suicide victim and Adam were all supposed to be. I don’t think I could “spoil” MULHOLLAND DRIVE for you if I wanted to, but you essentially have to forget nearly everything you’ve seen before the last half hour to until stand all the relationships. It’s a tough sell, I realize, but ultimately I think it’s worth it. Lynch provides us with his usual mix of gorgeous visuals, ambient soundtrack, held looks, moments where absolutely nothing happens, and the occasion flash of brilliance. You have to walk into this film expecting to be let down when looking to wrap everything up neatly. But if you like a challenge, I promise you your brain will be well utilized for the two and a half hours that MULHOLLAND DRIVE is happening to you. Go in expecting to be confused, and you may end up understanding everything.
IRON MONKEY
The title is hardly that of an action masterpiece, but that’s exactly what IRON MONKEY is. Directed by Yuen Woo-ping the legendary martial arts choreographer of THE MATRIX and CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, IRON MONKEY is one of his earlier films as a director, and it completely rocks. For those of you that thought CROUCHING TIGER was a bit soft on the action side and too talky, IRON MONKEY is all about high-flying kung fu action. Yes, there’s a story, but it’s basically a variation on every kung fu movie ever made, some combination of evil warlords, corrupt shaolin monks, scrumptious-looking food, every piece of wood in sight being used as a weapon or being shattered to bits by flying bodies, and gravity being a force that only wusses bother with.
IRON MONKEY was actually made in 1993, but has been beautifully restored and rereleased to American audience probably as a direct result of CROUCHING TIGER’s huge success. Miramax has thankfully seen fit not to dub the film, and presents it here with subtitles. Although Yu Rongguang plays the mysterious Iron Monkey (basically a Robin Hood-like character who steals from the exploitative ruling class and gives to the poor), the real star of this movie is Donnie Yen (from Woo-ping’s WING CHUN and the upcoming BLADE 2). Watching him do his thing is almost impossible to do without your mouth hanging open and your eyes unable to blink. Some of the roof-top leaping scenes are nearly identical to CROUCHING TIGER’s, but that’s just a small part of this movie. And there are at least a half dozen of he most amazing fight sequences you are likely to see. You want to applaud at the end of every battle; it’s that good. IRON MONKEY is pure fun, totally amazing, and will hit my DVD collection ASAP.
Or see my collected reviews at Buffalospeedway.net; just click on Steve@theMovies
