Distant Relatives: Persona and Mulholland Drive

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.

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Manuel Muñoz on Psycho, Nashville, and Movies as Inspiration

Interview
The Film Experience doesn't often push books upon you, but it's time for an exception. Manuel Muñoz's debut novel "What You See in the Dark" hits bookstores, virtual and otherwise, this week. While it is a work of fiction, it borrows from reality for its backdrop. The pre-production and eventual release of Alfred Hitchcock's immortal Psycho (1960) figure into the narrative in crucial and evocative ways and both The Actress and The Director in question are characters.

Consider this amazing "double feature"

Full Disclosure (as I always believe in such things): I met Manuel Muñoz at a poetry event about four years  ago and he introduced himself as a reader of The Film Experience. Though predisposed to rooting for him as a result (I'm only human!) we hadn't really kept in good touch. In the intervening years, I bought a copy of his second short story collection. Two months ago his first novel arrived in galley form and I ate it right up.  I think it's quite an amazing read.

Nathaniel: Before your beautiful novel, which we'll get to in a moment, you had two short story collections published. The first piece of yours I ever read was "Skyshot" which had an amazing Robert Altman thread. That really won me over. How did that story come about and has the cinema always inspired you creatively as a writer?

Manuel Muñoz: I was lucky enough to see Nashville on the big screen at the Brattle in Cambridge when I was in college. I was stunned by it, and it remains my favorite film (with The Piano a close second.) Altman's command of multiple character arcs enthralled me--it was the closest I'd seen a film parallel the possibilities of words on the page. He could shift magnificently and I loved that he could suggest interiority with camera movement: I was stunned when I realized the camera had crept up on Lily Tomlin as she listened to "I'm Easy." (He did the same to Ronee when she sings "Dues.")

At the time, I was coming to terms with identity and subject matter, so it confused me to be so attracted to a film like Nashville, which is far outside my experience.

Manuel Muñoz by © Stuart Bernstein

But I eventually thought of how often we use films to narrate our own lives. I've never sat at the back of a bar while in love with a performer on stage, but I've worn that look that Lily has on her face. Know what I mean?

Nathaniel: I think so.  But to the point on identity. I've always believed that specificity -- be it in sharply drawn characterizations or carefully observed milieus -- has a way of inverting itself so it's suddenly universal. I see that in your writing too as you're often dealing with the Chicano experience, which I have little connection to and yet it's totally alive for me.

I'm guessing this has a lot to do with an assured storytelling voice, one that's relaxed about the audience feeling whatever it is they're going to feel without forcing it upon them.

Read the full interview for more on Great Actressing, casting dreams, Psycho and unlikely inspirations.

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