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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

The Director and the Persistent Universe

  
 
Spatula Clarke
18:02 / 30.12.02
From this thread:

Crunchy said: then there's the 'part of the same universe with twin peaks and lost highway' theory which the lynch fanboy in me wants to push...

Chrome said: Blue is also the revealing light, as Bob enters Laura's bedroom at night, blue light flickers in a corner. Lost Highway, every time Pete strives to recall what exactly went wrong that night, we get thundrous blue lights.

I'm interested in what people think of this idea, that some directors intend for their films to be part of a persistent universe. Let's continue with Lynch as the example. The first question that should be asked, of course, is whether there actually is a persistent universe here (or an attempt to create one), or is it just a creation of the viewer's? There are motifs that Lynch frequently seems to return to, but is that actually the case, or is it simply easier for us to reach an understanding of his intentions with each film by assessing it in the wider view of his entire output?

The other main question I want to ask presumes that the director has made a conscious effort to set a number of hir films in the same universe. If we take that as read, what do people think about the effectiveness of this type of filmaking? I can see both benefits and drawbacks to it; on the one hand, it allows the director to take shortcuts that can increase the effectiveness of a movie - the audience understands the workings of the universe that they're being placed in before they've even entered the cinema, saving time that would otherwise be spent laying the foundations of the story and its surroundings, and allowing the director to create a deeper viewing experience. The obvious drawback to this is that an audience member who's unfamiliar with the director's output is likely going to be flummoxed.

So does this make the persistent universe a cheap trick? Is, say, the use of a flahing blue light to signify abuse needlessly oblique? Visual cues can be used that aren't as totally abstract as this (where, arguably, you're not going to be able to decipher this code - or even realise that it is a code - without having seen examples of it in the director's other work), so is reliance on them just laziness?

As I said, I'm thinking mainly of Lynch here, but can anyone think of other directors whose films may be all be part of the same universe (or, for that matter, the same story)?
 
 
The Falcon
18:47 / 30.12.02
Tarantino's explicitly are.

Ummm, that's all I can think of.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
21:02 / 30.12.02
Kieslowski? At least as far as the Three Colours flicks are concerned, I guess. That may be cheating, as they're all part of a piece, but I haven't seen Dekalog, so I can't really comment on that...
 
 
000
21:08 / 30.12.02
What I possibly meant was that Lynch, although not necessarily placing, say, the characters of Dune and Wild At Heart in the same universe, has recently painted some mystifiable quality to the colour blue from Twin Peaks and onwards (not so sure from before that) -- other instances include Fred from Lost Highway playing the saxophone in a blue environment, while Renee sneaks out with that Porn-guy, the Exit sign in red -- the red while he phones back home to check up on Renee's whereabouts... The blue flashes at the end of Fire... Laura finally seeing the Angel = salvation or something better than the pink room and red hell she is/was in (Black Lodge?), the angel disappearing from the painting on the wall midway through. The Blue Lady, singing bittersweet songs ("Questions In A World Of Blue"), the blue flashes in the cafe where Teresa Banks used to work.

Electricity, like the dwarf says.
 
 
Brigade du jour
21:18 / 30.12.02
Kevin Smith seems to have cracked it. Indeed, my contention is that everyone in his movies is completely real. Only the odd name is changed to protect both the innocent and probably the guilty.

By Smith's own admission, Jay and Jason Mewes are exactly the same person.

It's only those pesky wiseguys Matt Damon and Ben Affleck that blow the froth off my magnificent theory. Damn them and their Oscar for a surprisingly good film.
 
 
grant
13:43 / 31.12.02
Well, what's the difference between a persistent universe and the way a director sees the real world?

I have a hunch the Coen Brothers, for example, just tell stories that they think sound true. Or "true." And that all the characters - the Dude, H.I. McDonough, the chatty sheriff from Fargo - they're all coexisting in the same America that *I* live in, as far as the twins are concerned.
 
 
Jack Fear
15:10 / 31.12.02
Rothkoid: Decalogue is, like the trilogy, all of a piece: all the action takes place in and around a particular apartment complex, where most of the characters live, and characters from other films wander in and out of each vignette.
 
 
rizla mission
12:16 / 01.01.03
Going back to Lynch, I think there are really several ways of looking at the (huge number) of recurring themes and images in his films..

The SciFi fan part of me likes the theory that they're all set in the same world and are different stories featuring the intrusion of the same scary supernatural forces..

..but then on the other hand, there are just so many thematic similarities between Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive that it's easy to see them from an entirely psychological perspective.. above and beyond the usual amount of similarity you expect to run through a director's work, it's almost as if Lynch is obsessively telling the same highly traumatic story again and again in different ways..
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
21:09 / 01.01.03
Well, Lynch does admit that a lot of his set-pieces show up in his dreams, and he just puts them on film. Like has been pointed out here, there's specific equations for a visual/auditory feature and an emotion that he goes back to again and again; electricity, darkness, coloured light. From what I remember reading of Lynch On Lynch, he seemed to indicate that he didn't really understand a lot of it, himself; he just dreamed it and filmed it.
 
  
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