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just as the title says.

La Strada (1954) for comes to mind to me instantly. Something tells me that the director was trying to do more then depict the lives of circus performers.

Coincidentally, I got this from Netflix and watched it last Saturday.  If you watch the Martin Scorsese intro on the DVD, it might give you some insight.

One that comes to mind for me is David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE.  It's a barrage of great images and snippets of dialogue, but is very disorienting. 

Some people have spent way too much time trying to analyze this one, but I am pretty damn sure it's Lynch's try at true surrealism---like "Un Chien Andalou," it isn't intended to make any literal, conscious sense.

Naked Lunch.

I didn't fully understand 2001: A Space Odyssey at first viewing, but loved it anyways. I like to think I understand most of it now, though.

I didn't have a clue what was going on in 2001, but it was still very cool.  It's all explained in 2010 pretty much.

Still don't know what's going on in Zardoz, but that's kind of what's fun about it.

Everyone is taking a lot of drugs while making a movie.  :smile:

Sick Nurses

any Cheech + Chong  :teddyr:

Celine & Julie Go Boating

the ultimate "wtf?" film I ever saw though is VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS

EL TOPO-I read an interview with the director in an old Castle of Frankenstein magazine-and he didnt make a dam bit of sense,either!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3joYVNyyi5w

Cool World:  Have no idea what the main thing or story was about in the film since the most of the time movie seemed doped up on something and busy pulling crap out of their asses that suppose to be the plot I think.  At least it looked cool (no pun intended), had decent voice acting, and a neat soundtrack.

I am decidedly a DL fan, but I still haven't worked up the courage to watch Inland Empire. I've read that the movie was largely made in a stream-of-consciousness fashion, with the actors showing up not having any idea what they were going to do that day. Lynch himself started production without a complete screenplay, showing up and handing out pages of freshly written dialogue every day. He said that he had never made a film that way.

I know I'll catch it some day, but I feel like I have to be in a certain frame of mind to undertake a viewing, and the problem is I'm not sure what frame that is.

Eraserhead comes to mind. I adore it, and kinda get it now. First time I watched, I needed a shower.

I bought the DVD when it was released and envisioned myself watching about half of it, then taking a break and watching the rest a few days later.  However, I ended up watching it all in one sitting.  I don't know why because it's not easy to follow by any stretch of the imagination.  But it had a hypnotic quality that kept me watching it until the very end.

El Topo, I know, is mostly impossible to understand as it has meaning specific to the director which he didn't even try to make clear to the audience.  Which is pretty stupid in my book. 

I agree that EL TOPO has a meaning specific to the director and it's not clear to the audience.  I don't agree it's a stupid method, however.  To me it's like looking at an old religious text where the precise symbolism, which would have been understood by someone in the ancient culture, is lost on you, but you can still feel the poetry in the words.  Like the experience I would have trying to read the Bhagavad Gita, and even most of the Old Testament.

Or David Lynch films, for that matter. Lynch NEVER tells anybody the meaning of one of his films when asked. He operates from his subconscious alot.

Mulholland Drive, for example, is a film that he says tells a coherent story, but doesn't reveal anything when asked because it's a mystery, and besides, isn't it more fun to figure out the mystery for yourself? That, and he welcomes alternate interpretations of the symbolisms and clues.

**SPOILER ALERT**

The general consensus of Mulholland Drive seems to be that the first half of the movie is the central character's dream, and the second half is her rather depressing real life, but the two blend with and influence each other.

**END SPOILER**

But aside from that, it's all open to personaly interpretation of the clues. I personally have an interpretation of the film that makes sense to me and is satisfying, but when I share it with others they don't agree. And there are still things about that movie that I don't understand, like what is being revealed at Club Silencio. I'm still not sure. DL enjoys hearing different interpretations, but he never reveals is on a silver platter, and I hope he never does.

This is my favorite DL film, by the way, but Blue Velvet is about a gnat's eyelash behind in second place.

Alot of DL is being offered in this thread. Methinks DL would be pleased.

LA STRADA translates literally as "The Street" but figuratively you should think "the road".  The whole film is summed up in the very last scene: Zampano on the beach, gazes at the stars, and breaks, having an epiphany.  He must live with himself for the rest of his life, and the universe is implacable. 

Any David Lynch movie.
VALHALLA RISING - unless "Christians suck" really was the only message they were trying to convey. 
One movie I thought I got the point of, but hearing interviews with the director regarding it now I'm not so sure, was Cronenberg's CRASH. 

INCEPTION.  I thought I knew what was going on at the beginning, but mid way I was lost.  Still entertaining film and great visually.

I think it is about the beauty of space and how far mankind has come from the time that apes ruled the planet

Return To Horror High was a real headscratcher for me.

Police Academy. That one blows my mind. It's not wonder they made so many sequels. They had to resolve all the unanswered questions from the first one.

my favorite movie ever made  :teddyr:

the team goes into a the three-layered shared dream to Robert Fischer

Absolutely. I thought its was a straight forward film, then it just went nuts. Im still not sure what happened. I need to watch that again. SOBER.

Another film I kept getting lost in was Enter The Void overall I loved this film and would recommend anyone to watch it (especially my fellow Lynch fans)

The difference being the Bhagavad Gita or the Old Testament at one point could have been understood by an audience.  It's fine if you want to make a deeply personal film, which is very difficult to understand but you can get some sort of idea.  I feel that's pretty much what Lynch does. 

I feel that Jodorowsky goes beyond that, to making a film that is more confusing than actually intriguing.  I don't know.  Just not for me I guess.

Fair enough.  But I like surrealism, so the fact that Jodorowsky makes movies that play like surrealist features but are actually full of private symbolic meanings doesn't bother me.  The movies play better when I don't know Jodorowsky's interpretations and can use my own instead.

lol... Agree here... the movie would make so much sense without the 20 minutes of classical music, the apes and a girl walking upside down, on the other hand the movie would then suck cheese without those visuals.

I tend to believe the guy (lead character in the end of the movie his name escapes me) dies in space. But instead of showing us a floating corpse we see his mind dreaming an endless dream.

(http://b.dv1.us/p0/606/029606-d0.gif)

up until the ending I thought I understood this

the ending left me incredibly confused

Donnie Darko.  I dont get it, but i will watch it everytime i see it.  I sort of understand the technocrat thing but still...

You and me both, brother. I think I finally got a handle on those films when I realized the concept was implicit in the title. Police ACADEMY. The films, properly understood, are a delicate exploration of the state that lies between being and becoming. It's a shame they never finished the planned 11-film cycle. It's so frustrating to be denied the answers to all life's questions that could have been. Would of made Schubert's Unfinished Symphony look like a pile of puke.

Donnie Darko was mentioned. I like that film, but think it is a much better film when the literal explanation is unexplained. There's a director's cut, where the sci-fi elements are much more clear cut. There is a fairly prosaic literal interpretation of the film, pretty well explained on many websites, but I think the film suffers because of it.

It's very similar to most Lynch movies. There are literal explanations for almost of all of them, but to find them out would ruin the magic. It's like a magician telling you how his tricks work. You don't want to know because it will make the elusive and ephemeral concrete. No fun at all.

Your preaching my liturgy, brother! 

the beginning introduces the monolinth concept which is further used as the reason for the ultra-awesome space sequences, although that still doesn't completely explain 2001 I think

and the main character at the end is Dave

Hmm, I suppose Napoleon Dynamite. I'm one of the few people who love that film, even though it was all over the place. I loved the creativity, even down to things like the opening credits. I enjoyed  the odd nature of the story also. Don't ask me what it's about though.

Not sure, but I just always understand it as being about friendship, and staying true to your buds.

I liked Valhalla Rising but I have no idea what the director's message was there. 

I just now read this. Mofo, you complete me.  :bouncegiggle:

Leaving Las Vegas.

Shes a hooker, hes a drinker.

And...

Thats it?

There's no change or heart? No character growth? No lessons learnt?
Or... Maybe that is what the films about.


And Primer.
I had to go online to see diagrams of how the time travel worked in that. I was lost!

It's about unconditional love taken to the extreme.  Cage or Shue accept each other for what they are, and neither tries to change the other.  But -- should they have?   

Well you appreciated the visuals, which was certainly the whole point of that film.  The apes, however, explain the whole movie; that's why the bone tossed in the air segways to a spaceship... it's cool, but ham-handed actually... that's also the most obvious use of "classical music"... "The Blue Danube".  That waltz by STRAUSS explains more: we'd gone from bone-tooled raw-meat eaters to space children...

Uhm... Cmdr Dave Bowman...?   That's not a dream but a transmogrification.  And did you forget the climactic moment of the film when the "star child" appears near planet Earth?  Looks just like KEIR DULLEA.   :wink:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXS8P0HksQo

I didn't get Adaptation. upon first viewing. Some say I don't get Boogie Nights yet I still don't like it. I like Quintet but I'm not sure I fully "get" it.

Permit me to discuss 2001 for a while here; I find that film fascinating.

The monolith clearly represents a spark that transforms the band of apes from animals to what is now humanity. A divine spark if you will. It's no coincidence that the apes touch the monolith and then progress to realize that they can use the world around them to form tools. The first tool they use is a bone used as a club, which amplifies their ability to kill and thus their power.

It's important to realize their first tool was an implement of killing.

The film ties the use of tools into the flowering of human consciousness, and it was the monolith that provided this impetus. The entire rest of human history is jump-cutted in that famous sequence. We go from Australopithecus to space travel.

I don't think the use of tools was the impetus that sparked off the "human revolution," but this was the '60s and they still didn't have all the data we have these days. I'd say the use of language is what really kick-started it all, but I digress from the movie's central thesis.

Now, this rest of this is just my interpretation, and the movie intentionally obscures itself to invite interpretation. The main thrust of the middle part of the movie is dedicated as to whether or not mankind can overcome its tools to move on to the next phase of evolution. HAL 9000 is the ultimate tool. "He" is the culmination of every technological innovation from that basic club to electronics and space travel. The mystery of the movie is just why HAL turns murderous. It's explained explicitly in Clarke's book, but the book is not the movie.

In the interpretation I like, it doesn't matter what HAL's "reasons" were, because the computer is only a symbol for mankind's tools, and as they are only a stepping stone for greater things, "he" is only the crutch we must move beyond. Dave Bowman manages to do this, and so we move on to the next phase.

Good for Bowman, but notice that the astronauts in the film barely function beyond their clearly defined roles. They're as close to robots as you can get.

Now, I don't agree with this interpretation of human history and potential. Our tools and technology are not something to fight against. They are us; we are not separate.

Also, the monolith was not a divine spark. It's a great metaphor, but in this movie's cosmology, it was simply an invitation to join a proposed larger community. The existence of the monolith is proof that there are other intelligences in the galaxy/universe, and they are recruiting.

As for the endlessly long cuts with the monkeys and the light show, it's a movie. This is light, sound, and music, the things that movies excel at. You know, the sort of things raised apes enjoy.

Anyway, carry on.

I'd like to chime in again on 2001. See 2010, I greatly enjoyed it and it sheds light on some of what happens in 2001.