Hotel Room
(1993)
(SPOILERS) In terms of visual flourish and
scope, Hotel Room couldn’t be more
different from David Lynch’s previous couple of features. Even in comparison to
his two prior TV series. This trio of shaggy dog stories, centring on the Railroad
Hotel at different intervals in its history, is theatrical in its minimalism,
consisting mostly (in the two Lynch-directed segments) of two or three-handers.
Barry Gifford, the writer of the Lynch episodes, fully gets on board with the
eccentric Lynch quality, but it’s channelled into something for more verbalised
and so less stylistically provocative. As such, it’s interesting that the most
fully-fledged of these, Blackout,
which is therefore in theory the least Lynchian, is the most satisfying.
1.1: Tricks
Set in September 1969, Harry Dean Stanton’s
Moe takes prostitute Darlene (Glenne Headly) to Room 603. But, before he can get
up to anything you’d rather not see Harry Dean Stanton get up to, his associate
Lou (Freddie Jones) arrives, and proceeds to get up to things you’d rather not
see Freddie Jones get up to (with Headly or anyone).
This is oblique, cryptic and fractured; the
relationship between Moe and Lou references murky past deeds and indiscretions;
Lou appears to know Darlene’s past precisely; he and Moe suggest she has killed
her husband before giving her the fear sufficiently that she exits for her own
safety. Then Lou leaves, telling Moe “Remember,
don’t wait too long”; Moe falls asleep and is roused by the police at the
door, who arrest him for the murder of his wife, Phylicia. Whom Moe earlier
indicate Lou was having an affair with.
Lynch throws in unusual shots and asides
(the empty mirror when Lou walks by it, the focus on his hand as he places it
into his pocket), and occasionally the content becomes engaging in itself (Moe
recounting taking groceries to a woman in a nightgown as a teenager, to Lou’s
rapt interest), but divining clear narrative meaning from this escaped me.
It has been suggested that Lou and Moe are
one and the same, which would make sense of a buttoned-down man, drinking,
losing control (unleashing his dangerous side) and about to kill again
(Darlene), but doesn’t explain Darlene clearly referring to the two of them (“I’ve had some strange tricks before, but you
guys are weird” and “Call the cops!
These guys are going to hurt me!”).
Tricks never feels more than a curiosity, but it’s a well-performed
curiosity, and interesting to see Lynch focussing so closely on just the
performances.
1.2: Getting Rid of Robert
The same room as before but occurring in June
1992, it’s a bit of snooze. Jay McInerney (Bright
Lights, Big City) wrote and James Signorelli (er, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) directed this vignette of Sasha
(Deborah Unger) meeting with friends Diane (Chelsea Field) and TIna (Mariska
Hargitay) in 603 and rather unengagingly discussing splitting up with her
fiancé Robert (Griffin Dunne), who is cheating on her.
Getting
Rid of Robert does enliven when the friends leave,
and Robert breaks off with Sasha before she gets a chance to say anything (“You’re not a nice person” he informs her),
at which point she takes a poker to his skull.
An eccentric scene follows in which the
maid (whom Sasha earlier accused of aiming a champagne cork at her) enters and sees
Sasha attempting to move the body; then we discover Robert isn’t actually dead
and he and Sasha end up making out (Sasha invites the maid to leave with “Do you mind? We’re having a private
conversation”). An arrestingly curious ending (Robert has left a
substantial amount of blood on the carpet), and decent performances (you could easily
imagine David Tennant in the Dunne part), but rather airless overall.
1.3: Blackout
It’s only the Lynch episodes that justify
the portentous, Eraserhead-meets-Twilight Zone introductory narration (“For a Millennium the space for the hotel
room existed, undefined. Mankind captured it, gave it shape and passed through.
And sometimes when passing through, they found themselves brushing up against
the secret names of truth”). Dated April 1936, Blackout is superbly performed by a dialled-down Crispin Glover
(Danny) and contrastingly cranked-up Alicia Witt (Diane).
Diane clearly has some reality-check
problems, seemingly resulting from the trauma of the death of their son at age
two; they’re at the hotel because she has an appointment to meet with Doctor
Smith the next day (“He has a nice voice,
Danny. A good voice”). We first see her with her hand over her eyes, and
when she looks, she perceives the room as “like
being inside a Christmas Tree” (due to the titular blackout it is lit by
candles, which makes it also the most atmospheric of the trio).
She continually confuses facts, asking “Why did you speak Chinese to that man”,
whom she believed to the doctor; Danny has just bought Chinese food, and was
speaking English to the bellhop. She refers to Danny as away in the sea of red
(“Red Sea you mean, when I was in the
navy”) and how “I saw you on the
other side. I shouted ‘Danny, Danny’. But it wasn’t you”. And the fish that
told her of her six children, one of whom is Danny.
Danny: If you weren’t so damn hot,
I’d kiss you.
Diane: Kiss me anyway.
The dialogue is mannered, especially so
given the period trappings and melodramatic subject (beyond its surreal side),
but Glover and Witt (particularly the latter) imbue it with real feeling and
sensitivity. There’s the occasional Lynchian moment (the caution over the
intermittently ringing phone), but mostly he focusses on Diane’s scrambled
mind, letting the weirdness therein tell its own peculiar story, unadorned. Blackout also offers a demonstrably
happy ending, as the couple appear to find peace with their loss upon which the
power is restored, the room flooding with light (so genuinely uplifting, rather
than the tragi-sweet conclusion of Lynch’s previous feature).
Overall:
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.
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