I can think of one reason....no, two reasons that movie was worth watching.

Seriously though, I just don't get David Lynch. They'll probably take away my film degree, but he's just too damn obtuse for me. Mulholland Drive (and the Lost Highway) were very stylistically and visually appealing, but good God man, even Luis Bunuel's films had a discernable point.

This movie was a far cry better than many I have watched. I'm pretty sure it was all what Slumberland stated -- a regressive sort of fantasy that we ended up watching, except we were never explicitly told as an audience what it really was or meant.

By the way, if Mulholland left you vexed, stay far, far away from Inland Empire.

Inland Empire has some amazing moments, however.

Since Naomi Watts is involved, you might want to bump it up to the top.

Well, I see that we agree on two out of three points.

Mulholland Drive probably had the most straightforward storyline of any Lynch movie. It's been eons since I watched it, but it was pretty clear cut that most of the movie is a kind of a fantasy. The corpse in the end has been there for a while. The movie STARTS by the camera falling into a pillow, if I recall, so that's kind of a giveaway. So its a dream of wishful thinking of one of the women, who gets rejected by the other in reality, and in the end kills herself... or something.

Man, it's been a while. The "silencio" bit was a hint on the death by the subconscious, or something like that.

In overall I really liked the film. The music, the visuals, just fit together perfectly.

If that's the case, then I can't help but feel he's hoping we all mistake laziness for art. Isn't it a director's job to have a "master plan?"

Also, from what I remember, Mulholland Drive was intended as a PILOT and was left deliberately confusing to that end. When they realized it wasn't picked up, they added a few things but not enough to flesh it out completely, even for lynch.

And voila, you have my half-assed explanation.

When I first saw the thread title, for some reason my mind was thinking of the movie Mulholland Falls, and I was trying to figure out what the heck you were talking about....lesbians? I finally realized I was thinking of the wrong movie. :0

David Lynch can be frustrating, especially since many of his movies would make great straight up, linear crime dramas. When I watch "Lost Highway" for example, I get caught up in the story of the first couple and want to see a resolution.

I guess you can dismiss his movies as being too "artsy", but I think he's getting at something that isn't artsy, or subtle or abstract at all.

In general I think most people prefer narratives that are linear and straightforward. These stories tend to be more accessible to us. But think for a minute about your dreams.

I have a recurring setting in my dreams in which the Vermont countryside where I grew up is somehow connected directly to India where I've done a lot of traveling. I walk through a spruce forest only to come out on the high Ladakhi desert. Or I'll be walking through a green cow pasture to emerge into the chaotic narrow streets of downtown Delhi.

Though in waking life we rarely construct narratives that are as disjointed as our dreams, we do spend a lot time sleeping and dreaming. We experience these strange, non-linear stories in which different places, times and different characters become one another all the time. You could argue that these non-linear, fluid narratives actually reflect our least fettered state of mind.

I think what makes Lynch so creepy to me is his uncanny ability to bring these dreamlike narratives into waking life. You start to feel a little insane when you watch his movies. The plot elements keep slipping away from you. This can be very frustrating, but it also makes for a very creepy movie experience.

Sometimes when I finish a Lynch movie I despise him and I vow to never watch another one again. But his movies are always memorable, and have a way of creeping into my daily observations and thoughts. To me this means that he's really getting at something very concrete about our experiences as thinking, dreaming beings, even if his methods feel elusive and out of control.

His movies aren't for everyone, for sure. But think for a minute about your latest vivid dream and tell me that Lynch isn't onto something.

The point that was made by Picasso's Cubist works was worth making, and as an experiment in art, it was also worthwhile. However, I don't think his works evolved much as he gained popularity. In fact, his artistic development seems to have stagnated after a while. In conceptual art, you should be trying to say something new. If not, it'd be a kindness to at least try to stay out of the way.

I haven't decided if Lynch is adding anything new to the conversation right now.

That's a good point, if we're talking about conceptual art, as you say. But I don't think you can say that all art is such, or that it even should be... of course all artistic expression has some kind of message it wants to deliver, but I don't think that it necessarily has to do with saying something new on an "intellectual" plane. A lot of artists, I think, are just trying to convey emotions, and when they find the right ...uuughhh... "style", which enables them to do so in the best possible way, they stop searching new ways to express themselves. You can consider that lazy, and it certainly isn't particularly exciting from the perspective of those who study their work, but I don't think you should condemn it like that... who are they disturbing anyway, that they should "at least try to stay out of the way"?
Of course there are also conceptual artists that really want to say something relevant about society, or politics or whatever, and they have to renew themselves all the time to be relevant at all. But that's another story, and I'm not sure Lynch is one of them.
Don't want to sound arrogant or anything, just trying to make my point...

Seconding Slumberland (above)

I'm pretty sure based on comments here that I more or less "got" what was going on. It took a second viewing to get there way back when I first saw the movie, but I did make it that far.

Really though.. I don't think I'll ever watch it again unless I feel like watching Naomi Watts go to town on Laura Harring... and herself.