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Replying point by point...
1. Yes, the narrative is frequently driven by or in reaction to female characters, but we never engage with them directly. To take the example of Eraserhead, yes, Mary is critical to the goings on, but she is not of particular interest to the film, she exists more as a way for Henry to explore his own issues. This is true to a lesser extent in Blue Velvet, but we still do not engage directly with Dorothy or Sandy. They are presented as alternate lifestyle choices for Jeffery, and the conflict of the film is in seeing which side he will choose. So, even though we experience her pain, it is not the focus of the film, the focus is still Jeffery. In FWWM, Lynch merges the Sandy/Dorothy, virgin/whore figure into one more complex character, Laura Palmer.
Now, Lost Highway and The Straight Story back off from this development, but in Mulholland Dr., we explore a similarly complex and troubled character. Inland Empire is the film that really made this idea gel together for me, right from the tagline, "A Woman in Trouble," you can see he's in similar territory as his previous stuff. And here, as in FWWM or MD, there is no strong male figure, we experience everything through the subjective reality of our heroine.
But, I'd definitely agree that Blue Velvet is a critical turning point in his work. I'd argue there are three main periods to Lynch's filmmaking, the early, more surrealistic period, of Eraserhead-Dune, the 50s inspired small town world of Blue Velvet through FWWM, and the surreal dreams before dying of FWWM on. The primary roots of his current films are seen in FWWM.
2. Exactly, but FWWM is the first time he does mess around with stuff like he did in Eraserhead. It's a return to that style of filmmaking after the generally straightforward narratives of the Blue Velvet period. There is none of the experimentation in subjective reality that characterizes his later works present in Blue Velvet. Twin Peaks the series is to some extent the bridge to this, with the red room stuff, and we see that flourish in the last episode. FWWM is the work that brings it all together, the emotion of Blue Velvet with the surreal world of Eraserhead.
3. I think Sandy's speech in Blue Velvet isn't meant to be ironic, but it's got a lot of the same 50s inspired pep that Betty in Mulholland Dr. has. I don't think Lynch sees it as false, but it's not the harsher world of second half MD. In the case of FWWM, there are still the strange characters that populate any Lynch movie, particularly in the Teresa Banks chunk, but the Laura stuff is generally harsher and more brutally real.
Of course, it's easy to talk in circles because Blue Velvet does a lot of that too. My primary point is that FWWM synthesizes the surrealism of Eraserhead with the visual motifs and themes of Blue Velvet, and also is a major inspiration on his films that follow. |
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