Amanda Mae Meyncke,
Oct 14, 2008
For years, David Lynch has been the King of Weird, but does director Darren Aronofsky have what it takes to take the crown, and maintain the distinction of having the strangest, most inscrutable movies coming forth?
THE CONTENDERS:
The Mainstay
David Lynch is an easy mark for ridicule with his wild films. He's also been around a lot longer, and has more of a canon to decipher. Mulholland Dr. is a sprawling mess of a film half set in reality and half in a dreamlike state. Blue Velvet doesn't seem much better, and with Inland Empire we seem to have hit an all-time confusion level. As a friend of mine likes to say, the final episode of Lynch's '90s TV show Twin Peaks is the most "non-narrative hour of television, ever." Lynch defends himself to critics frequently, denying that he is ever weird for the sake of being weird: "It's just something that people say. It's an easy thing to say. It doesn't mean it's true. To me, it's completely wrong to do something strange for strange's sake. It has to be an honest thing and it has to come from way inside... But some of these ideas are strange, just like there are a lot things down the block that are happening that are strange." It's somewhat comforting at least that Lynch seems to think his work is deeply grounded in reality, albeit the furthest reaches of reality.
The Potential Usurper
Darren Aronofsky has less of an established career. He really started to get noticed with the mathematical mystery Pi, after which he moved on to drug-addled hysteria with Requiem for a Dream. He then waited six years to release The Fountain, a beautiful film about a love that spans the millennium ... or something. With his new film The Wrestler, and the upcoming The Fighter, a film about boxing, what is one to make of these choices? Granted, neither of those last two were penned by Aronofsky himself. Liking Aronofsky isn't quite as pretentious as liking Lynch sounds, since at least with Aronofsky there's a bit of everything, for every taste. Either Aronofsky is interested in every genre, and we can expect some outright horror, or his choices are simply unfathomable, the work of a chaotic mind.
The Final Judgment
Darren Aronofsky is more inscrutable because at least with Lynch one knows what one is getting into. There seems to be a plan, even if no one else is lucky enough to be privy to it. He himself has the vision for a strange world inhabited by the oddest cross-section of humanity. With Aronofsky, who knows what will come out of this grab bag of films. He's impossible to pin to a genre, and what would we make of an individual who said, "Oh, I like all of Aronofsky's films." Where is this person, and what are they like? With a possible Noah's Ark epic in the works as well as RoboCop rumors swirling, we wait to see what happens next for Aronofsky. It might not make sense, but it will certainly be interesting.
Editor's Note: Okay Film.com'ers - what's your call?
