This is like a complicated jigsaw puzzle, only when you finally fit the whole thing together you discover that each piece is from a different jigsaw puzzle -- part of a cowboy boot here, a puppy dog's nose here, a chunk of an El Greco skyscape somewhere else. It's one of David Lynch's less coherent efforts but I couldn't take my eyes off it.
Okay. Here's what I make of the story. I'm going to try to cut some of the diverting flab off it. Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette (in a long auburn wig) have one of those marriages where the couple no longer has much to say to one another. At a dull party, an eerie Robert Blake pulls some supernatural stunt while conversing with him. They really are supernatural. Puzzled, unhappy, Pullman gets his wife and they leave. Then Pullman begins to get headaches and nightmares. Suddenly, he's found leaning over his wife's battered body and sentenced to death.
So he's sitting in his death-row cell, right?, a little gloomy, and he begins to get a really TERRIFIC headache. One of the corrections officers hears the commotion, strolls over and takes a peek through the cell window. Then he calls his boss over. "Captain," he says shakily, "there's some really spooky s*** going on here." And indeed there is. Bill Pullman has changed into Balthazar Getty. Getty is properly identified and, the cops having no reason to hold him, allow him to go back to his job as an expert mechanic at an auto shop run by poor Richard Pryor, disabled by the disease that would finally kill him.
One of the shop's regular customers is Robert Loggia who likes Getty and embraces him and pinches his cheeks with a warmth only a Mafia capo could muster.
And here the story gets a little twisted, as if it weren't twisted enough. Loggia has a sexy girl friend, Patricia Arquette in a long blond wig, and the two of them get it on behind Loggia's back. Loggia traps the two of them in a run-down desert shack. Then -- I THINK this is what happens -- Pullman and Arquette make love outside but it's love interruptus when Loggia prepares to kill them. Arquette walks naked into the shack and morphs into the supernatural Robert Blake figure, who shoots Loggia full of holes. Pullman get into the car and drives off at high speed. A moment later, he appears to have another terrific headache, as if he's about to morph again, and then -- The End.
I take it that Loggia had Pullman's wife killed and framed Pullman for the job. Blake is the spirit of justice who sees that Hammurabi's code is properly followed. As the wanton blond, Arquette was only Blake in disguise. Getty is an innocent bystander pulled into the story merely to pin Loggia to the board like a butterfly. Loggia is the only guy who is exactly what he seems, an expansive murdering thug.
If you call me on that interpretation, I'll fold and you'll get only a small pot. I anted nothing.
It may be a lesser effort by Lynch but there's nothing quite like it around. Nobody, except the Coen brothers, are making such idiosyncratic movies. The music is as jumbled as the plot. Source music includes cowboy songs and whatnot. The overscore ranges from bossa nova by Antonio Carlos Jobim to something called "Rammstein" sung or chanted in basso profundo German. The interior sets are sparse, almost barren, and the color of internal organs. Women wear excessive makeup. Daytime outdoor scenes are few and there is, lamentably, no sense of "place," usually one of Lynch's strong points. We know some scenes take place in the desert but mostly because we hear of it. There are few glimpses of Death Valley, and all at twilight.
It seems incomplete, mystic, mystifying. But, again, it demonstrates a vision that is anything but commercial and deserves applause if only for that.
Okay. Here's what I make of the story. I'm going to try to cut some of the diverting flab off it. Bill Pullman and Patricia Arquette (in a long auburn wig) have one of those marriages where the couple no longer has much to say to one another. At a dull party, an eerie Robert Blake pulls some supernatural stunt while conversing with him. They really are supernatural. Puzzled, unhappy, Pullman gets his wife and they leave. Then Pullman begins to get headaches and nightmares. Suddenly, he's found leaning over his wife's battered body and sentenced to death.
So he's sitting in his death-row cell, right?, a little gloomy, and he begins to get a really TERRIFIC headache. One of the corrections officers hears the commotion, strolls over and takes a peek through the cell window. Then he calls his boss over. "Captain," he says shakily, "there's some really spooky s*** going on here." And indeed there is. Bill Pullman has changed into Balthazar Getty. Getty is properly identified and, the cops having no reason to hold him, allow him to go back to his job as an expert mechanic at an auto shop run by poor Richard Pryor, disabled by the disease that would finally kill him.
One of the shop's regular customers is Robert Loggia who likes Getty and embraces him and pinches his cheeks with a warmth only a Mafia capo could muster.
And here the story gets a little twisted, as if it weren't twisted enough. Loggia has a sexy girl friend, Patricia Arquette in a long blond wig, and the two of them get it on behind Loggia's back. Loggia traps the two of them in a run-down desert shack. Then -- I THINK this is what happens -- Pullman and Arquette make love outside but it's love interruptus when Loggia prepares to kill them. Arquette walks naked into the shack and morphs into the supernatural Robert Blake figure, who shoots Loggia full of holes. Pullman get into the car and drives off at high speed. A moment later, he appears to have another terrific headache, as if he's about to morph again, and then -- The End.
I take it that Loggia had Pullman's wife killed and framed Pullman for the job. Blake is the spirit of justice who sees that Hammurabi's code is properly followed. As the wanton blond, Arquette was only Blake in disguise. Getty is an innocent bystander pulled into the story merely to pin Loggia to the board like a butterfly. Loggia is the only guy who is exactly what he seems, an expansive murdering thug.
If you call me on that interpretation, I'll fold and you'll get only a small pot. I anted nothing.
It may be a lesser effort by Lynch but there's nothing quite like it around. Nobody, except the Coen brothers, are making such idiosyncratic movies. The music is as jumbled as the plot. Source music includes cowboy songs and whatnot. The overscore ranges from bossa nova by Antonio Carlos Jobim to something called "Rammstein" sung or chanted in basso profundo German. The interior sets are sparse, almost barren, and the color of internal organs. Women wear excessive makeup. Daytime outdoor scenes are few and there is, lamentably, no sense of "place," usually one of Lynch's strong points. We know some scenes take place in the desert but mostly because we hear of it. There are few glimpses of Death Valley, and all at twilight.
It seems incomplete, mystic, mystifying. But, again, it demonstrates a vision that is anything but commercial and deserves applause if only for that.