Light House
Drop Dead Gorgeous: Sat 20 July 18:30 | Sat 27 July 20:30
Toddler I N Tia r a s
Madison
Madison’s moth
by Shauna Smullen
Ma gnolia was made for rewatching. Its ensemble cast helps the 3-hour runtime feel seamless. With each viewing, I choose a new character to focus time. Through this endless rewatch I have g rown a deep Smith, a career highlight for William H Macy.
Our first introduction to Donnie shows him having adult braces fit ted while the or thodontists’ commenting “you were so cute when you were on that show!” Once his appointment is over, he drives erratically, late for work, and crashes into a storefront. A man runs to his assistance but stops to declare “Hey! It’s Quiz Kid Donnie Smith!” Ever ywhere he goes, in his most intimate and catastrophic moments, his childhood fame follows. Yet, what I find so fascinating about Donnie is his perpetuation of his own fame. He is not tr ying to escape. He wants ever yone to remember him. He dyes his hair and wears big red rimmed glasses to remind ever yone how cute he was as a child. How ever yone loved him once, can they please love him again. A boy genius now a mediocre adult.
‘ What Do Kids Know?’, the show that gave him his fif teen minutes of fame, continues on without him, an institution within the world of Magnolia and the centre holding all the characters together. His grip on his own fleeting relevance loosens even more when we meet Stanley Spector, a child younger than Donnie was, competing on the same show and set to break Donnie’s record. There is nothing he can do about this, just sit day drinking in a bar run by a bar tender he is in love with, who also has braces.
Donnie and Stanley exist as a mirror, reflecting the beginning and end of the child prodigy Stanley, isolated from his peers and exploited by his father for fame, but adored by an unseen at home audience.
Donnie, an adult that never recovered from this same adoration. Trapped in the amber of his own mythology. Both of them, deeply lonely and motivated by a desire to be loved.
Stanley is forced onto the show by his father and continues to compete to please him. Pushed to the point of public humiliation, Stanley takes a stand. He does not beat Donnie’s record. He leaves the show and ever yone who relied on his “freakish” intelligence. When confronted by his father, he tells him “ You need to do bet ter You need to be nicer to me”. A move of self-advocacy that assures us Stanley will be ok. He will not beg and per form to be loved anymore. Donnie competed to be loved by ever yone. To be adored. He says “I don’t know where to put things. I have so much love and I don’t know where to put it.” The curse of the gif ted child cannot be so easily broken, but through a strange course of events, it can be eased.
This will all make sense in the end.
William H. Macy in Magnolia (1999)
David Lynch Weirdness Scale™
Straight Stor y 35mm: Sun 21 July 18:00
Where does The Straight Stor y sit within David Lynch ’s cinematic filmography? Great question! I have devised a system. The order I have arranged these films in star ts from ‘Most outrightly weird’ then moves down to ‘Most cover tly weird’. The middle represents the Venn diagram of both .
INL AND EMPIRE (2007) with a runtime of 3 hours and a stor y almost indecipherable on the first watch, trapping you within endless rewatches to make sense of it, this is Lynch’s most unset tling, most absurd film. Shot on a handheld digital camcorder, it creates a physical and emotional sense of confusion that outlasts the boundaries of the film.
ERASERHEAD (1977) bookending his current filmography with t wo deeply distressing vibes, Eraserhead is upset ting at ever y turn. The soundscape, designed by Lynch, creates a constant presence of metallic unease. An industrial wasteland is no place to raise a baby Lynch’s most spiritual film (I will not elaborate).
LOST HIGHWAY (1997) a doppelgänger femme fatale playing four-dimensional chess with the timeline in an endless loop of violence.
MULHOLL AND DRIVE (2001) the more confusing the chronology, the stranger things get. Is the end real life? Is the star t of the film actually the real ending? Which par t was the dream? Will we ever know for sure?
THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980) visually reminiscent of German expressionist cinema. Lynch’s films based of actual people tend to have more cohesive narratives with deeply buried emotions.
DUNE (1984) bang in the middle because it is both weird on the sur face and underneath it, but somehow still the least unset tling of his work.
WILD AT HEART (199 0) Lynch’s stab at a romcom. David Lynch admits he thinks his films draw humour from absurdit y but he does not think his films are that strange or confusing. What if he’s actually an alien from another planet and to him all these films are completely straight for ward? (Note: I think Paul Verhoven is from the same planet).
THE STRAIGHT STORY (1999) a straight narrative and visual st yle but squirming with an existential sadness underneath. A delicate and tender stor y Lynch has described as “his most experimental film”.
BLUE VELVE T (1986) behind ever y closed door in your neighbourhood is a waking nightmare of domestic upheaval. But, once that door opens to the world outside, do not mention a word of it. To enter into the world of closed doors is to discover how easily you can become complicit to violence.
TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992) the most devastating por trayal of losing your grip on realit y ever put to film. The ultimate exploration of the horror under the sur face of a nice town and the lengths people will go to ignore a person ’ s cr y for help.
With this patented Lynch weirdness scale , we can see that The Straight Stor y falls more into cover t weirdness. The horror is not on screen for us to see , it is inside the minds of the characters. The under the skin emotions of approaching mor talit y in the flatlands of the American midper fect Lynchian western. by Shauna Smullen
INL AND EMPIRE (2007)
ERASERHEAD (1977)
LOST HIGHWAY (1997)
MULHOL AND DRIVE (2001)
THE ELEPHANT MAN (1980)
(199 0)
STRAIGHT STORY (1999)
VELVE T (1986)
TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME (1992)
WILD AT HEART
THE
BLUE
DUNE (1984)
