A brief holla about Yella...

Possibly contains vague spoilers for Yella. Maybe.

A lot of people seem to hate Yella, at least if you go by the IMDb (but then we all know that's not exactly a wise thing to do). I was more baffled by it than anything- here is a film coming in at a brisk 89 minutes that fills much of its running time up with business meetings in clinical, sparse board rooms, occasionally interrupted by overwhelming, disorientating rushes of sound. Is this what David Lynch films would be like if he'd once been a systems analyst? (Or something, I mean I know nothing about business, which might be why I often zoned out. I mean, "personal capital"? Please. I don't watch movies to be given a business degree.) It seems like it might, especially with its elliptical ending- only here, devoid of Lynch's unique atmospheric aesthetic, said ending seems more a cop-out than anything, if it actually meant what I think it did, which to be honest I'm not sure about. But even if it did, really, I'm not sure that I really think that Yella is up to much- Nina Hoss won Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival, and she's fine, but too often the character just seems like a vessel for looking utterly perplexed when the director goes off on one of his interruptus sonorus. The strong plot element of Hoss' eponymous heroine being stalked by her husband adds a strangely farcical element that really doesn't fit with the smooth, eerie atmosphere the rest of the film, with its modern fittings and sleek cars as the main spaces, is trying to project. The film does hold some kind of strange compulsion, though, perhaps through this odd twinning of elliptical theme and straight business, for it's so rare to see a film go off on such a tangent that's so easily described as "dull" and actually manage to make it interesting by threading in into the characters' existances and relationships. The plot elements that form the ending seem to mirror themselves in a way that suggests the kind of justificatory explanation for the whole thing that most people have favoured, and this does indeed make Yella stronger, more than the rather pallid figure it would otherwise project. The film is oddball yet strangely ordinary, mystifying in its business suit, bizarre in its modern sleekness. C+

Victim's Gold Stars: #1: King of his Castle

THE TOP TEN: #1: INLAND EMPIRE

And here it is, not only my top film of 2006 but the second David Lynch film of the new millenium to be the best of its year. But what is it about his films- particularly, of course, the particularly labyrinthine ones such as this- that fascinates me, and indeed so many others, so much? It's a well worn fact of debate that his films generally don't make coherent narrative sense, and that Lynch doesn't want them to- but why is it that some respond so eagerly to this, and others detest it? In the case of INLAND EMPIRE, at least, it would be easy to shrug off with an explanation that the sheer emotion here is the reason- scenes like the indescribly discomfiting scene where two strangers have a pallid discussion as a woman lies dying between them- but I think what Lynch does so well, instead of simply using his actors and mise-en-scene to provoke any random emotion, is expertly calibrate a building up of these emotions, leading his audience to horrifying crescendos, letting his three-hour running time take away all sense of time and space (which is why, incidentally, I was so distressed by an intermission during my second impulsive viewing) so that INLAND EMPIRE is simply all that exists, and therefore in itself it is not strange or incoherent, but perfectly, if subconsciously, understandable. The matter of whether or not a person responds favorably is not a matter of elitism or intelligence- it is simply a matter of emotional, and perhaps even physical, conditioning. INLAND EMPIRE is not a film that deals in strange ideas- it simply deals with them in strange, refreshing and unusual ways.

Victim's Gold Stars: In Control

Only two categories and the top two of the top ten to go- hopefully this'll be completed by the weekend.

BEST DIRECTOR

I was going to do a little individual commentary for each one, but as I pondered this, I realized that each and every one of these directors are here because they were fiercely committed to a vision- very different visions, but committed to them all the same, stamping their own personalities and styles firmly on their respective films- these, each and every one, are auteurs, creating unique and surprising films in and out of systems that squash creativity, not bending to expectation, and producing films that inspired and entertained in different, but equally commendable ways.

David Lynch terrorizes Emma Peel?

I saw an episode of The Avengers a while ago (an awesome show, by the way, though only when Diana Rigg was in it), wherein Emma Peel (Rigg) was lured to a country mansion and then trapped within, constantly circling between normal rooms and physcadelically decked-out spaces, some bizarre mechanics meaning that she could not escape except when she finally punches her way through the wall. There were disorientating swirls painted on the walls, spiral staircases, and doors that she could not go back through. Anyway, to get to the point, I was reminded of this episode of The Avengers when thinking about INLAND EMPIRE (something I have been prone to do ever since I saw it), because, like Mrs. Peel, the audience is trapped within a circular world, where we constantly revisit the same places, see the same befuddling things, see no way out of this mad world. Like David Lynch's previous Mulholland Drive, INLAND EMPIRE sets up a conventional narrative only to shatter in into pieces, asking the question whether what you were watching was reality, or whether one of these new places is reality, or whether reality actually exists at all. Is the "real" (for of course ultimately it is all fiction) character of Laura Dern (giving a stunning, fragmentory, hysterically impactful performance which is surely one of the best I've ever seen) the one we are first presented with: that is faded actress Nikki Grace, offered a part in director Jeremy Irons' new film, controlled by a jealous, rich Polish husband? Or is it the character she seems to be playing in said film, one Susan Blue, who falls into an affair with Billy Side (Justin Theroux, also a character within a character)? Or is she a Polish prostitute? Or an American one? Or a twangy-voiced American housewife? INLAND EMPIRE is somewhat of an epic at three hours long, but, for a Lynch fan such as myself, it is never a chore, just an enigma: what the fuck is going on? Does the fact that two of the talking rabbits (taken from Lynch's website) are voiced by Naomi Watts and Laura Harring provide some unknowable link to Mulholland Drive? Like most of Lynch's films, what is important here is not narrative, but feeling; and, above all, INLAND EMPIRE is horrifically frightening: in the last half hour or so (I cannot be sure, because I lost all track of time completely), Lynch takes you to the delirious extreme of one nightmare only to pull you out of it and plunge you into another, even more horrifying nightmare. INLAND EMPIRE affects not just the mind but the body: at various points I was sweating profusely, my left arm went numb, and at one point I experienced the strange desire to curl up into the smallest ball possible and disappear into my seat, so terrified was I. I cannot pretend to explain everything in INLAND EMPIRE, and to know whether it all makes sense, but I do know that no other film from 2006 made me feel so intensely and memorably as this one, and, for that, it is clearly the best film of the year.