2021-10-10 09:49
Was still thinking about The Headless Woman for a day or two. Guess it is one I will have to rewatch at some point. Something about all its ambiguities and mysteries stick in your thoughts, and make me feel like there is more to be had from seeing it again.
The new Decadent Editions Inland Empire book by Melissa Anderson showed up the other day, and I've already read it. She does not take the tact of trying to explain the movie, so much as she uses it to talk about acting and in particular Laura Dern. I liked that the focus was not so much on the director this time, and the book did make me want to revisit the movie, as, while she didn't explain the movie, she did clarify a few things for me that might help make the film a little less disorienting. I'm really enjoying this whole series (three books so far), and look forward to the next ones (on The Headless Woman and Hong Sang-Soo's Tales of Cinema (which admittedly not one of Hong's I loved)).
After that, I decided I should rewatch Mulholland Drive since there is a certain relation between the two Lynch movies, and my memories of the latter are very favorable, I'm sure I've watched it at least 3 times. My rewatch yesterday morning did not disappoint, I really love so much of that film. It starts off as a kind of surreal Hollywood noirish mystery and then becomes a complete Surreal noirish dream drama. The last section (~20 minutes?) Are just such a surprise (even after a few watchings) and a revelation to what has come before. It does still, in many ways, especially in the beginning, hold onto it's "written as a pilot for a tv show" origin. There are scenes that bear very little relation to the primary plot that seem like they would have had larger roles to play in a serialized form. You can see how a few of the characters probably would have had bigger parts, and a few plotlines probably would have been expanded on (like the two detectives in the beginning who show up at the car accident). But, overall, those don't hurt the film, as they tend to happen at the beginning when it all feels like it is setting up something rather more conventional than it ends up being.
Gave up on the Dee book. Gave up on Robert Gluck's Margary Kempe and Yxta Maya Murray's Art is Everything. Neither were bad, but neither were really driving me to finish them. Started instead of the abridged edition of Emma Goldman's autobiographay Living My Life which I've wanted to read forever and finally got a copy of. I'm quite enjoying it, she has a clear style that well conveys her feelings and changing perspectives on her life, politics, etc.