Robert here with the first entry in Season 2 of Distant Relatives, the series that explores the connections between one classic and one contemporary film. This week we feature a request by Nathaniel himself. Feel free to make your own requests in the comments.
Two movies about two women
When Mulholland Drive was released to perplexed but ecstatic reviews in 2001, and then again when it was being declared the best film of the decade in many places nine years later, there were few mentions of a film that seems to be an obvious influence: Ingmar Bergman's Persona. Perhaps that's because the actual influence is as indefinable as the two films themselves. The Wikipedia entry on Persona shares a few non-specific sentences about its influence on Mulholland Drive paired with a note demanding a source for this information. So how do we know these films are related? Well they certainly seem like they should be. Both are about two women living together under unusual circumstances, one sick, the other a caregiver. In both cases, at least one of the women is an actress. Both films show a general degredation of these women's relationships. So why weren't more people blathering about the obvious intersection of these two movies? My guess is because both Persona and Mulholland Drive only really inspire one question: What on earth is going on? Interpreting, explaining, "decoding" if you will, these films is the understandable immediate concern of anyone whose just been exposed to these two terrific cinematic puzzles. Yet that does them a sort-of disservice. These films are more than puzzles. You could spend a lifetime trying to figure out what they're all about and completely miss what they're all about. That said, we won't spend much more energy here trying to find answers about these films. We haven't the time, the space, or the likelihood of agreement enough to keep it from being anything but a distraction.
Bergman's Persona begins with actress Elizabeth Vogler (Liv Ullmann) experiencing a sudden fit of despair and going voluntarily mute. In the hospital, she's paired with nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) and the two are sent off to a seaside cottage where they develop an ambiguously intimate relationship and the silent, passive judgement of Elizabeth begins to turn Alma into an aggressor. Eventually the film begins to flip on it's head, revealing its own artificiality, and it becomes impossible to know who is who, and what role they're playing. Mulholland Drive opens with aspiring actress Betty's discovery of accident victim amnesiac Rita hiding out in her apartment. Soon, between line readings and Betty's audtions, the two lady sleuths are investigating Rita's life and identity and eventually becoming lovers (or have they always been?). Eventually the film begins to flip on it's head, revealing it's own artificiality, and it becomes impossible to know who is who, and what role they're playing.
Unusual universal themes
Death. Sex. Love. Ambition. Lynch and Bergman love all the standard universal themes. But they add two more strange, dark and upleaseant universal themes to the list.... Click for full post.
The first is a known favorite of Lynch's. This is the idea that behind every sunny existence is an unspeakable darkness. It's a concept Lynch afficianatos can find easily in Blue Velvet or Twin Peaks (the latter shares the same universe as Mulholland Drive according to the director). In Muholland Drive, perky, happy Betty's optimism morphs into aggressive desperation. Her world collapses almost inevitably into a mess of crushed dreams, unfaithful lovers, drugs, and crime. Is it this hidden darkness that propels Ullmann's Elizabeth Volger to illness in Persona? She recoils at the sight of an immolated monk on TV. But even that's well after her breakdown. Is it because as an actress she knows she can never truly express real emotion like that monk's suffering? Is it because she doesn't find the joy in her family, her husband and child, that she believe she should? Her companion Alma has a carefully planned life that she claims is a source of happiness. But soon it's clear that it's lackinga too, in large part due to an innocent yet taboo sexual tryst, the details of which she provides perhaps too willingly to Elizabeth. Mulholland Drive's Betty (or is it Diane?) also seems to have problems sexual in nature. There's a mixture of guilt and serious unfulfillment that she shares with Alma. She also shares something with Elizabeth Vogler - her acting aspriations. But unlike Elizabeth, perhaps Betty is good enough to fool reality. She's certainly better than we expect.
The second "new" universal theme that Bergman and Lynch introduce to us is directly at odds with a common western view of the world. It doesn't require any advanced philisophical inquiry to know that our view of the self is simple. We're all autonomous individuals who end at our own fingertips. But someone who sees in the world, a shared consciousness might wonder: how easily can we share parts of ourselves and steal parts of each other? The innocents Alma and Betty become the aggressors after enough time and rejection. They become practically new people. How could this be a them universal in reality? After all, we don't like to think it, but our personalites are always fluid. They change based on age, education, income. People who live together for a long time slowly take on each other's personality traits. Alma and Elizabeth and Betty and Rita begin to share and swap personality traits, even though they haven't been together long, that is, unless they have.
And then there were 3
Between these two films there's a bridge worth mentioning. Another film that hits all of these marks. Robert Altman's 3 Women tells the story of the unassuming Pinky (Sissy Spacek) and the blabbering Millie (Shelly Duvall), two strange women who find themselves suddenly sharing an apartment. Together they work at a senior rehabilitation center, carry on affairs with a cartoonishly masculine man, and aspire to be liked far greater than they are (check off universal themes of death, sex, and ambition). Eventually this film too begins to flip on it's head, Pinky's shy nature turns to domination and Millie becomes the small, frightened flipped side of the coin. Meanwhile a local artist (Jancie Rule as the third titular woman) paints terrifying murals of grotesque humanoid creatures, suggesting a base, primeval reality underneath the surface of our own.
Lynch, Bergman and Altman, all fans of the human condition and the universal truths. Perhaps what this all comes to is the idea that death, sex, love and ambition are things we all experience teetering on the edge of joy and pain. They're easy gateways to a dark reality. And if we have the displeasure of seeing this reality, we can always choose to invent a new one, or steal someone else's. To underline this, we have three films that refuse to portray a definite reality. They alter characters and locations and present us with random images. They take long asides into seemingly unrelated stories or show us footage of the film crew. They leave us wondering if everything was a dream or anything was a dream. And they do so not to create a puzzle worth decoding but to underline their main point: Nothing is real; it's all an illusion.
Other cinematic relatives: Dead Ringers (1988), The Double Life of Veronique (1991), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), The Prestige (2006)