What did Alvin’s subtle reactions to his journey add to the story? For example, when several semis passed Alvin and he turned his head and smiled, what did that mean? Did it set up an expectation that something important was about to happen? Did you ever think that there would be an encounter in a scene and then it just cut to the next scene?
Monday, July 02, 2007
Subtlety
What did Alvin’s subtle reactions to his journey add to the story? For example, when several semis passed Alvin and he turned his head and smiled, what did that mean? Did it set up an expectation that something important was about to happen? Did you ever think that there would be an encounter in a scene and then it just cut to the next scene?
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6 comments:
I was fooled basically every time into thinking something was about to happen. And usually nothing did. I have since read that it's a common Lynch-ism to set up expectations that never pan out, which might have been helpful to know.
Sometimes I don’t mind it when expectations are thwarted -- it can be very artistic. The reason it bothered me in this film is that nothing at all ever seemed to happen so each set-up had me thinking, “finally, something is gonna happen!”
Hmmm. I didn't get the expectation thing, really. Did I miss something?
Well, like in the scene Ben has pictured here. Alvin is passed by several semis, and he looks up at them as they pass and kind of smiles. Then he's approaching an intersection, and we get a shot of the traffic light. I really expected one of those trucks to hit him or for some other car to hit him in the intersection. But nothing happened. It just moved on to the next scene.
Interesting. I didn't have that sense, I guess. I just thought he was overwhelmed and felt small in the circumstances.
And he pushed his hat down low on his head to avoid having it blow off again.
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