Back to Academic Index
The Life You Live, The Life You Invent
Who are you? Given you know the proper context in which the question is being asked, it's simple enough to answer. The common response is a statement of identity.
Now consider the path your life has taken and how much it differs from the path you set out for yourself years before. Do you have the job you hoped to have? Do you live where you expected to live? Is the person you married the one you dreamed of waking up next to every morning? Think about all your unfulfilled dreams; every witty comeback you wished you had uttered but kept silent; every risky decision you could have made but held back in favor of the safer road; every dollar in your pocket that you think ought to be doubled, tripled, or more. Think of all that and ask the question again: Who are you?
No one's life turns out quite the way it was expected to. Even if the life procured is perfectly adequate, the fantasy of what you wanted to be, what you could have been, never really goes away, does it? You even continue to indulge the fantasy in a private fashion. It is your fantasy, it is your privacy. Is there harm in that? That depends on the fantasy. For every harmless, candy-coated fantasy, there is its equal and opposite in the human mind - dark, demented, destructive. And indulging in that fantasy might harm not only yourself but everyone it involves. It is the indulgence of that fantasy that opens the door to a calamitous simulacrum that will inevitable collapse.
"Simulacrum", in the simplest terms, means an "imperfect copy" of reality; something that convincingly resembles reality at first, but by its imperfections eventually becomes so different from reality that instead of taking the place of reality, the simulacrum reveals - for lack of a better term - the "true" reality. Jean Baudrillard, in The Precession of Simulacra, described the process as such:
These would be the successive phases of the image:
· it is the reflection of a basic reality
· it masks and perverts a basic reality
· it masks the absence of a basic reality
· it bears no relation to any reality whatever; it is its own pure simulacrum. (Baudrillard 256)
Simulacra are no better utilized than in a realm where a passing viewer can accept what they see because they know the participants are not playing by the same rules that ordinary people are bound by. The spectators wish these alternate rules could apply to them, and oftentimes they get to play out their fantasies by watching the performers indulge their own. The cautionary simulacra: the knowingly falsified realities of cinema.
Filmmaker David Lynch has been having fun with the "invented reality" for nearly the whole of his career. Among other things, his films are defined by a certain manufactured atmosphere of dread - usually rendering a sinister disturbance within an otherwise idyllic setting, such as the 'whodunit' murder mystery in the titular town of Lynch's 1990 television series Twin Peaks - and the presence of lead characters that take on entirely different roles and personalities as their stories progress. Lynch's storytelling style has often been compared to Surrealism, lending itself heavily to dream analysis in its use of objects and even supporting characters to represent other concepts entirely. Assuming this perspective, that Lynch's films function with a dreamlike aura, it stands to reason that the dream is the product - sometimes conscious, sometimes not - of the imagination of someone within the story.
Mulholland Drive (2001), a failed television pilot that Lynch reworked into a stand-alone feature film, establishes its scripted reality in Hollywood, appropriately enough, where bright-eyed, abnormally chipper Betty (Naomi Watts) arrives to housesit for her aunt and hopefully kickstart her own acting career. She finds in her aunt's house a beautiful woman (Laura Harring), an amnesiac who took refuge in the house after surviving a nasty car accident on Mulholland Drive, an accident that halted her assassination by unknown men. Assuming the name "Rita" (from a poster of Rita Hayworth), she confesses she is unable to remember anything before the accident. Betty resolves to help Rita discover her identity, thus commencing the film's primary narrative string, "primary" in that it is only one of several concurrent strings that obliquely tie together by the end of the film. Other paths in the narrative involve an accident-prone hitman apparently in search of Rita; a pair of gentlemen and their frightening encounter with a ragged bum hiding behind Winkie's, a local restaurant; director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), bullied by an ominous conspiracy into recasting the lead role of his film with Camilla Rhodes (Melissa George), an actress of their choice; and a creepy, soft-spoken cowboy (Lafayette Montgomery) who appears to tie the film's table-turning third act to its relatively lucid first and second act.
While Lynch drops sporadic hints about the true nature of the film's reality throughout the story - such as a casting director's obtuse instructions, "Don't play it for real until it becomes real" - the simulacrum begins to visibly unravel when Betty and Rita investigate Diane Selwyn, a name Rita remembers after spotting "Diane" on a Winkie's waitress' nametag. Upon entering Diane's apartment, they are horrified to discover a days-old rotting corpse.
Shortly thereafter, Rita is struck with a nighttime vision, repeating the word "Silencio" over and over in her sleep. The two head to Club Silencio, wherein an illusory show is performed that emphasizes its use of soundtrack. "There is no band!" shouts the emcee, as a trumpet player walks onstage. "It is an illusion." The player stops but the music keeps going. A singer takes the stage, belting out a tear-jerking Italian version of Roy Orbison's "Crying", but this too is a fraud; the singer suddenly faints and is dragged offstage, but the haunting vocals are still blasting through the auditorium.
It is here that Betty suddenly comes into possession of a small blue box that matches a mysterious key Rita found in her purse. They open the box and...Rita disappears, seemingly sucked inside. The entire mood of the film is then turned on its head.
While Club Silencio is the vital clue to deciphering the story's true nature, it is the discovery of Diane Selwyn's body that begins the deconstruction of the simulacrum because of what is revealed after the blue box has been opened. A note on the blue box: it has been argued - by analytical websites such as Lost on Mulholland Dr. (www.mulholland-drive.net) - that the box represents the realization of the truth and the grudging acceptance of responsibility for the vile actions that have been taken: "The blue box signifies the trauma of discovery and consciousness. Diane's dream is broken when Rita opens it and sets the truth free." (Lost on Mulholland Dr.) This is the reason why Betty vanishes moments before Rita opens the box; because Betty does not exist. "Betty", in reality, is Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts), a failed actress and obsessed lover of Camilla Rhodes (now played by Laura Harring).
While Betty is an enthusiastic starlet who appears to succeed on sheer talent, her counterpart Diane is a desperate, disheveled nobody who came to Hollywood prepared for glory only to fall on her face - here, it is the illusion of an idealistic Hollywood where "dreams come true" that is targeted by Lynch. And while Rita is a scared amnesiac who turns to Betty for love and support, Camilla is a veritable success story who has outgrown Diane's infatuations.
What is gathered by this startling contrast? The film's third act details the sequence of events that led to the rift that developed between Diane and Camilla, the retribution Diane instigated against Camilla, Diane's descent into insanity and finally her death. The first two acts represent Diane's idealistic vision of hers and Camilla's love, starting with a happy accident that saves Camilla from the hit Diane put out on her.
Although the simulacrum has come undone by the third act, there is possibly no section of the film that is entirely "real". To say that the film's first two acts represent the fantasy and the final act the reality is an oversimplification; the first and second acts are not strictly fantasy, and the third act is not strictly reality. The "fantasy" sections of the story are filmed in a quiet, straightforward fashion, mirroring reality but warping it just enough so that it bears an artificiality that only a bushy-tailed aspiring star like Betty could conjure. Meanwhile the "reality" of the final act is made hyperreal through hallucinatory, highly stylized sequences leading into Diane's apparent suicide. Just before frantically grabbing a gun and shooting herself in the head, Diane is terrorized by a pair of maniacally grinning senior citizens that Betty met on her flight to California. The old couple possibly represents Diane's parents, or that nagging parental voice that always warns "it will all end in tears." Furthermore, the cackling old couple is seemingly unleashed by the gruesome bum hiding behind Winkie's, who possesses the blue box that connects the fantasy to the reality. The bum - who despite being described as a "man" in the film is really played by a woman - is considered a manifestation of the guilt and devastation Diane feels after her contract with the bumbling hitman is fulfilled. Alan Shaw writes:
This female monster from behind Winkie's is Diane's dark, twisted and baneful persona, and it is ultimately the face of her guilt. This is the side of Diane that was firmly in control of her when, while at Winkie's, she said to the hit man that she wanted Camilla dead "more than anything in this world." (Shaw)
Remembering that simulacrum is a scripted environment in which nothing occurs by chance, the "dream logic" of the film is the one factor that combats the label of simulacrum as far as Mulholland Dr. is concerned. In Lynch's 1997 film Lost Highway, which tackles similar plot devices - the protagonist develops a new identity in order to escape the consequences of a crime that's been committed - the establishment of the invented identity appears far more deliberate and appears to take place outside any visible "dream world". While dreams by their nature are unconscious products of the mind and therefore outside the constraints of "the script", the narrative of Betty and Rita in Mulholland Dr. becomes real enough, both for Diane and for the audience, that whether it is a dream or not is inconsequential; it is still the product of Diane's desires for what could have been - in her mind, what should have been. Therefore, control is hers.
Conscious thought is also a problem for Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), the "hero" of Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000). Leonard's simulated reality is the product of a cognizant decision he makes, but unlike Diane of Mulholland Dr., he doesn't remember making it.
The films of Nolan also follow a trend of exploring the simulated lives of the characters within, albeit on a far more reality-based plane than Lynch's work (relatively speaking, anyway). His recent film The Prestige (2006), about a pair of rival magicians and their ongoing efforts to deceive and ruin one another, reveals in its climax that the life of what was believed to be one man is actually two men, twin brothers, sharing the life of one. Even his comic book blockbuster Batman Begins (2005) plays the two-sided card of brooding avenger Batman and hip socialite Bruce Wayne - both identities invented by the protagonist.
Memento centers on Leonard, a former insurance claim investigator who spends the film searching for the man who raped and murdered his wife. The catch is, Leonard suffers from anterograde memory dysfunction (short-term memory loss), which prevents his brain from producing new memories. He can remember everything up until the blow to his head that caused his condition, but anything after that fades within a few minutes. In order to organize his vendetta - citing his dependence on "habit and routine to make [his] life possible" - he writes endless strings of notes, takes dozens of photographs, and even has messages tattooed on himself; reminders of his mission, personal axioms, and clues to the killer's identity. His logic in favor of these tactics is hard to deny:
"Memory's unreliable... Memory's not perfect. It's not even that good... Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They're just an interpretation, they're not a record, and they're irrelevant if you have the facts."
To produce in the audience Leonard's constant sense of disorientation, the film is cut so that the primary narrative runs in reverse chronological order, beginning with Leonard killing Teddy (Joe Pantoliano), the man he believes killed his wife. Intercut with these full-color scenes are black-and-white segments running in forward chronological order, in which Leonard describes his day to day habits and relates the story of Sammy Jenkis (Stephen Tobolowsky), whose insurance case Leonard was assigned to handle. Sammy apparently suffered from the same condition as Leonard, but based on Sammy's unresponsiveness to "conditioning" (that is, learning to accomplish new tasks by instinct rather than memory), Leonard turned down the insurance claim, believing Sammy's condition was mental, not physical. Leonard uses Sammy's story to help himself and others understand his condition.
Along with the illusion of "real time" within film, Nolan also destroys illusions of truth, fact, and trust by use of his cast of characters. Even Leonard, as a narrator and protagonist, becomes increasingly unreliable as the plot progresses. At the "end" of the story (i.e. the beginning of the film), he appears to be the avenging hero, but by the "middle" (the end of the film), he comes across more as a delusional sociopath. By taking advantage of his condition, Leonard is made the puppet of nearly every major character.
Carrie-Anne Moss plays Natalie, a barmaid and girlfriend to a murdered drug dealer, who helps identify Teddy as the "John G." who killed Leonard's wife, but this is only after she's tricked him - tauntingly, even - into chasing her boyfriend's boss Dodd (Callum Keith Rennie) out of town. Leonard's "sidekick" Teddy is the shadiest character of all; whenever he offers Leonard advice, Leonard turns to his pocketed photograph of Teddy and sees his own notation, "Do not believe his lies", and promptly disregards Teddy's guidance. The film's greatest twist is the revelation of when and why the note was written, and even then it is unclear whether Leonard writes it in acceptance or denial of the bludgeoning details Teddy regales him with at the end of the film. Teddy's overall sleazy demeanor (a trait Pantoliano performs to perfection) and the knowledge that he's a dirty cop after a dead drug dealer's money do not aid one's impression of him.
The film's greatest deceit, however, is conducted by Leo0nard himself.
The conclusion of Sammy Jenkis's story relates to Sammy's diabetic wife, who tests Sammy by having him perform her daily insulin injection. Hoping he'll remember his actions, she has him inject her three times in a row. In proving to herself that his condition is real, she dies of an insulin overdose.
What Teddy would have Leonard believe, however, is that Sammy was a con man who never had a wife, and that the story of Sammy that Leonard relates is really his own - that Leonard's wife survived the assault, couldn't handle Leonard's condition, and initiated this diabetic disaster. If this is true, Leonard has coped with the guilt of his mistake by replacing himself with Sammy in the scenario.
The Sammy Jankis business is a dreamy conflation of a real story with events from Leonard's own marriage, events so horrifying and guilt-causing that Leonard has had to project them onto someone else -- poor, hapless Sammy Jenkis. (Klein, Salon.com)
Furthermore, the real John G., the one who attacked Leonard's wife, had already been found and killed by Leonard, thus his actions during the timeframe of the film are nothing but a self-imposed wild goose chase. Among Leonard's possessions is his police file, but a recurrent observation is that there are pages missing. Teddy claims Leonard removed those pages himself in order to "create a puzzle [he] could never solve." He argues, "So you lie to yourself to be happy. There's nothing wrong with that. We all do it. Who cares if there's a few little etails you'd rather not remember?"
In retaliation, Leonard sets himself on the path to killing Teddy (whose real name, conveniently, is John Gammel - another John G.) at the beginning of the film, knowing he won't remember any of what he has been told or that he's hunting down the wrong man; he writes down Teddy's license plate number to have it tattooed on his leg.
Despite Teddy's untrustworthiness, there are details to support his claims. Nolan inserts a few subliminal shots into important sections of the film, chief among which is a shot of Sammy Jenkis in a mental institution; a nurse walks by the camera, and as she passes, for but a few frames, Sammy is replaced by Leonard! Is this merely a bone tossed to the audience by the director, or a moment of self-awareness for Leonard, realizing things are not as he has conditioned himself to believe?
And this leads to the film's largest looming unanswered question: is Leonard's "condition" authentic? Andy Klein writes, "As Leonard tells the tale, the crucial point is whether Sammy had suffered physical brain damage or if his affliction was somehow psychological." Given the assumption that Leonard has projected his own life onto Sammy's, the same crucial point applies to Leonard. If Leonard's condition is imagined, then several instances in the film in which Leonard breaks the "rules" of his own disability, as well as the projection of his wife's insulin-induced death - an event taking place after Leonard's injury - onto Sammy Jenkis are more easily explained, if only slightly. "How am I supposed to heal if I can't feel time?" Leonard asks. And by that token, how is he supposed to heal if he is not truly ill? If Leonard's condition is real, however, and his memory has not been compromised in the way Teddy claims, then Teddy is clearly lying, and Leonard's breached memory could be the result of the "conditioning" he depends on to drive his mission.
While the ruinous outcomes of these characters can attest to the danger of indulging in one's darker fantasies, cinematic fiction alone is little deterrence to real-world tragedies. In fact, film - and the rest of the entertainment industry, for that matter - is often the scapegoat for outbreaks of violence that bear a striking resemblance to critically acclaimed (or lambasted) acts of darkness committed by A-list movie stars. The results might be harmful only to one's self and others who willingly participate - such as underground boxing clubs that appeared after the release of David Fincher's Fight Club (1999), another film dealing in the invented reality and the indulgence of dark fantasy with cataclysmic resolutions - or the illusion can spin far out of the dreamer's control - such as the case of a teenager who killed his parents in order to "free" them from the simulated world of The Matrix (1999).
But is this really a matter of the films directly influencing the minds of its right-minded viewers, or are the films simply sparking the one vulnerable, suggestible corner of an already highly confused mind looking for any productive outlet regardless of plausibility or consequences? The killer in Wes Craven's horror film spoof Scream (1996) - famous for its tagline, "Someone has taken their love of scary movies one step too far" - makes the argument, "Movies don't make psychos; movies make psychos more creative."
Of course the key, if only it were that simple, is to know the difference; to know the fantasy from the reality.
WORKS CITED:
Baudrillard, Jaques. "The Precession of Simulacra." Issues in Contemporary Art: The Body, Bodies, & Embodiment. Ed. Regan Golden-McNerney. Milwaukee: Clark Graphics, 2007. 190-218.
Klein, Andy. "Everything you wanted to know about 'Memento.'" 28 June 2001. Salon.com Arts & Entertainment. 24 Apr. 2007. <http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2001/06/28/memento_analysis/index.html>
Lost on Mulholland Drive. 37 Mar. 2007. Rotten Tomatoes. 23. Apr. 2007. <http://www.mulholland-drive.net/>.
Memento. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Guy Pearce, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, Stephen Tobolowsky, and Callum Keith Rennie. Newmarket Films, 2000.
Mulholland Dr. Dir. David Lynch. Perf. Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, Dan Hedaya, and Robert Forster. Universal, 2001.
Scream. Dir. Wes Craven. Perf. Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Drew Barrymore, Jamie Kennedy, and Matthew Lillard. Dimension Films, 1996.
Shaw, Alan. "A Multi-Layered Analysis of Mulholland Dr." Lost on Mulholland Dr. 6 May 2007. <http://www.mulhollanddrive.net/analysis/>
