Deep in the writhing mass of special effects and half-realized on-screen relationships, there was something really fascinating going on in Pirates III. It was Gore Verbinski's cinema freak-out, a desperate, unbridled flash of filmmaking, something... how do I put it... Lynchian?
Yeah, David Lynch. Anyone who attacks this movie as being too weird or incoherent can go chew on that name for a while. Mulholland Dr. was a tweaky roller-coaster of a film, and it shared a lot of creative and stylistic techniques with Pirates III: unexplained reappearances of characters, strained and shifting loyalties and relationships, and recurrent motifs that were hard to pin down to a particular significance.
There are a few specific elements that made me think of Mulholland Dr. as I was watching Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End.
First, Jack Sparrow's on-screen delirium was very Lynchian. He spent whole chunks of the movie interacting with himself, and frequently murdering other versions of himself. Two of them were little shoulder-mounted Jacks, like the old couple in Mulholland Dr. who were shrunk to the size of a rodent. Others were alternate-reality versions, Jack Sparrows that laid eggs, Jacks that had been assimilated by the Flying Dutchman, Jacks who were into bestiality. There was no good reason for this tendency — just a lingering postmodern sense of the surreal and absurd, giving us reason to ask: just whose head are we wandering around in here?
Second, the recurrent theme of the crabs was like something from David Lynch. Mulholland Dr. also had a few themes that kept coming back into the narrative, like the little box with the key, and these frequently had no clear symbolic significance or obvious associations. There are a number of ways they could fit into the narrative; they could represent something abstract, like deliverance, or they could represent the call of the sea to Jack. They seemed to be metamorphic presences, turning into objects and people and disappearing back into the environment again. They were never capitalized on or made clear; they just showed up and established their surreal presence, and then vanished again.
Article comments
1 - Claire
I'm glad I read your review. I was a bit disappointed by the film because of its incoherence. However, I did enjoy all the parts you describe here, so perhaps I wasn't disappointed, simply confused.
2 - Phil Ryan
People seem to forget that movies are about entertainment... at least the film critics too often do. I went to this film with my teenage kids, and we all had a ball: it was great fun! It was crazy silly stupid unreal but fun!
Thanks for the nice intellectual comments on the film though... they will go down well in arguments against the too-stuffy-by-half brigade who would criticize anything just because it is designed as blockbuster.
3 - couch tato
hmm u bring an interestin view about mullholand dr which i spent a sleepless night tryin to figure it out
i loved this flickbut my main disappointment was introducing too many characters and storylines all in one go which they could have done before
it left me confused and unhappy to say the least...the supersaturated this thing
4 - Mukta
This was a great review.
Before watching it, my husband and I thought that with all the average reviews,this movie must have failed in a way that most sequels do- failing to bring something new to powerful first n second parts.We just went to watch out of loyalty to ol'Jack -to see what he is upto now, but we were surprised. For a change, it wasnt just Dep's creation that held centre stage. The scenes you mentioned were a delightful surprise-providing the perfect combination with Jack's madness,and their pointlessness was refreshing,it was intellectually stimulating and I couldnt even tell why and how before i read your review!
5 - Jesse
Hey, thanks for the comments, everybody. It's great to see that mass culture hasn't numbed our brains past the point of discussion and mutual appreciation.