Mulholland Dr. as poem

The film Mulholland Dr. is rich thematically: it's about the loss of innocence, the corruption of the film industry, the existential hell of guilt and memory. Of course, the actual content of the film is secondary to David Lynch's trademark chaotic, random, senseless absurdity.

Or is it absurd?

When I first read a complicated poem, I occasionally have no idea what it means at all: it is simply musical sounding words. Then I'll read it again, and the substance becomes clearer. Another reading gives me further understanding of the poem's structure and subject. I can read other commentaries on the poem to brace my own insights, and further readings simply illuminate the poem further. Eventually, what was once a jumble of words becomes a precise, clear expression: not a single line, not a single word, escapes understanding or interpretation.

That is how I feel about Mulholland Dr. Eventually, it is not chaotic or random at all. Eventually, nearly everything in the film makes a certain sense (or at least can be fit into a comprehensive interpretation). What begins as Absurdity becomes a film that seems obtuse but actually fits together a little too precisely.

Post-modern films, and another stupid thing I think.

PV's Post-modern Films
Skip the philosophical treatises; if you want to understand post-modernism, just watch these movies.

Wayne's World: characters speak to the camera, make many references to the fact that they are in a film, and then guide us through three endings.

The Matrix: the major theme of post-modernism is that the image actually hides the fact that there is no substance underneath it. What film highlights this theme more prominantly? By the way, I'm one of the six people on earth who liked the sequels better.

Moulin Rouge: A story within a story, but the outer story actually makes the content of the inner story, and the inner story actually shapes the content of the outer story. Got that?

The Rocky Horror Picture Show: the participatory nature this film has developed blurs boundries between the work itself and the viewer.

Mulholland Dr.: Perhaps the furthest reaches of the themes of po-mo?

Annie Hall: I've documented pretty plainly here that I'm not a big Woody Allen fan, but there's a certain post-modern element to his work, most noticeably in this movie.

Tristram Shandy: a Cock and Bull Story: Or perhaps this reaches further?

By the way, will it be totally forgotten that for a 3-5 year period of time Dana Carvey was the most popular comedian in America? Do people who were around during that time even believe it? Is there real evidence of this period? But it did happen.

The stupid thing I believe.
Frankenstein is, perhaps no more and no less, than a re-working of Paradise Lost.