Hollywood as a wishing machine The first part begins with a red sheet and ends with the opening of the box. This is the dream of the main character (let’s call her a blonde). The second part is what happens in the present. Her marker is a gray robe in which the blonde is dressed. Part ends in suicide. The “real action” visually woven memories of the heroine about her relationship with the brunette and director Adam Kasher. The only thing interesting to think about here is how the feelings and desires of a failed actress and an abandoned mistress are reinterpreted in her dream.
It's quite simple, clear and boring. Reconstruction of the plot also gives little. It is difficult to imagine Lynch as a cutter of visual puzzles with elements of psychoanalysis for those who want to exercise in observation. What is it? First of all, the Hollywood movie. The first part - the dream of a blonde - is a series of film stamps from the films of the 90s. Neonoir, a crime drama with two police officers at a crime scene, soft porn with a pool cleaner, a parody of a western and Tarantino movies. The scene at the Los Angeles airport, when a blonde woman talks to two “angels” is the beginning of a traditional film story about the embodiment of the “American dream”.
The American Dream is a cheap fuel that spins gears in the head of the average American. Diane/Betty is such an “average” – white, cute, faceless. This type is happy to take in advertising everyday: yogurt, shampoo and washing powders. The American Dream is made, as Lynch shows, out of bad movie scenes. Hollywood nourishes it with images and illusions and is its most vivid and deceptive embodiment. Thousands of provincial women come here in the hope of looking at the capricious "God from the blue box." Older tooth rocks serve as angels for the American Dream. They appear from the sky (the heroine meets them on the plane) and together admire the inscription "Welcome to Los Angeles" (City of Angels). It is natural that they drive the heroine into suicide.
The film has a taste of disappointment with the cinema of the 90s. Mediocre Diane/Betty really looks more like a waitress from a standard American diner than a movie star of the past. The Silentio Club is a detailed metaphor for the cinema of the Golden Age of Hollywood. “There are no musicians here. There's no orchestra here. It's a record. There are no musicians, but we hear... There are no musicians here. It is an illusion”. The voice continues to sound even when the singer is taken off stage. Rita Hayworth died in 1987, and in Gilda she is alive forever.
The whole mechanics of Hollywood is mystical. Those who participate in this heavenly lottery – “hopeful” actors, directors and others who equate themselves with them – believe that the actions of some mysterious forces are hidden behind winning or losing. They look like Italian mobsters and they act the same way. They don’t argue with their decisions: “This girl, then this girl.” Losers feel that the choice is someone’s evil will, and not their insolvency or inconsistency with claims. Everyone wants to open the mysterious blue box and see who or what makes the sacred decisions. As always, there is a void inside the box.
The theme of Hollywood Lynch beats not without in-house humor. The prototype of the Castillani brothers was the Weinstein brothers, the founders and “gods” of the Miromax film studio. By the way, one of them – the one who drinks espresso – was played by Angelo Badalamenti, Lynch’s regular composer. For the role of a mysterious cowboy, the director invited his own producer.
The most interesting thing in the film is the relationship of a blonde and a brunette. The image of the brunette is borrowed, of course, from the mythical Golden Age. Curiously, she assigns Rita Hayworth's name, looking not directly at the "Jilda" poster, but at its reflection in the mirror. Rita, or rather her image, at the beginning of the film descends from the hill, where the main dreams of Hollywood are produced, and turns out to be on Sunset Boulevard. It is here that Aunt Betty lives, an actress of those old times, and it is this name that makes you remember Billy Wilder’s film of the same name about the tragedy of forgotten Hollywood stars. When in the second part Diane goes to a party, Rita meets her at the limousine, and the blonde climbs for the brunette already up to the hill of dreams.
And the first part, and the second is the relationship of a mediocre “ad girl” Betty with a derivative of her consciousness/subconsciousness is Rita. Rita appears without history, without memory, but clearly loaded with additional meanings. It is mystery, danger, sex (money, weapons, blood). Betty/Diane is in love with her, she wants her, wants her memory back (to reveal her secret), tries to possess her (and in a physical sense). As a result of this artificial fusion, we see two reflections in the mirror. Rita in a white wig looks a lot like Betty, but looks cheap. After sex, the culmination of the connection, the brunette "remembers" Silentio. Inside the club, metaphors of true cinema, Betty beats like an obsessed, and Rita has tears in her eyes.
The name of director Adam Kasher in Hebrew translates as “binding”, and, in principle, the intricacies of the relationship within the triangle in this context are clear. The main thing is that in pursuit of the mythical image of Rita, the blonde loses herself. Girls in a dream find a corpse sleeping in reality Diane. In the title credits, filmed in the style of Nam June Pike, mix, as in Plato’s Cave, and the cinematograph, dancing couples and their shadows, things and their ghostly images, Betty/Dian and her angels. When asked what Mulholland Drive was, Lynch replied, “A love story in the City of Angels.” This is the best answer to the question.
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