Quote:
Originally Posted by Renall
Several differences here, though: - Lynch does provide answers to some extent, even if they don't make much sense, at least in his more coherent films (Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire). Even a confusing and ambiguous one like Lost Highway has a more likely answer than not.
- Minor details do get cleared up in Lynch's works. The first line in Lost Highway makes sense, etc.
- Lynch does not engage in public speculation as to the meaning of his own works. He's never said "People just don't get what Eraserhead is actually about. I'm sure they'll understand when they finally do." He just doesn't talk at all about what Eraserhead is about.
- Lynch's "genre," if you want to call it that, is generally independent of rules anyway. At his clearest, he makes thrillers. The closest he ever came to a mystery was Twin Peaks, and technically speaking the murder in that show did have a clear solution presented, even if it was quite a strange one. We know who killed Laura Palmer. We couldn't "guess" it, but Twin Peaks never really claimed we'd be able to.
The problem with Ryukishi is he's run his mouth, and now he's got to back it up and he can't/won't. If "it means what you want it to mean" and "the answer that works for you is the answer that you should accept" were what he intended, he shouldn't have suggested there were in fact truths. |
Wait, I'm okay with almost all the points you've made. But I don't think that Mulholland drive and Lost Highways actually have a completely plausible explanation.
You can explain "some things", but you always find some pieces of the puzzle that do not match completely. And I think David Lynch himself admitted so.
I consider David Lynch an author that doesn't really care about giving a perfect explanation of all the strange events that narrates, but as you said, he never have that pretense.