Into the Dream World of David Lynch w/Richard Hanania and Rob Henderson

David Lynch recently passed away, so Rob and I decided to honor the legendary director by watching two of his movies, Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2008), and discussing them.

We liked the first film, and debated various interpretations of it, including the standard one and other possible theories. I’m motivated to have a contrarian take here, perhaps because of the overwhelming beauty I found in the reality we were initially introduced to.

While Mulholland Drive gave us much to work with, we both absolutely hated Inland Empire. In my view, it’s fine to have surrealist or absurdist elements, but if it gets to the point that the whole thing is a disjointed mess it’s hard to stay interested or care what happens. A character could have died or turned into a rhinoceros at any point after the first hour and I wouldn’t have been moved or surprised, because nothing actually matters once you figure out what the director is trying to do. You need reality to be bounded in some way if you hope to be entertained by or learn from a work of art.

We refer to ChatGPT throughout, which performed quite impressively, generating arguments for novel interpretations for the films and clearing up some of the confusion we had about the plots and sequences of events.

At the end we decide we’ll give the series Twin Peaks a chance, so look out for that.

This conversation was originally posted at the Richard Hanania Newsletter. Click here to find it and subscribe.