THE ABSURD MYSTERY OF THE STRANGE FORCES OF EXISTENCE: “LYNCHIAN” CINEMA
Looking for movies actually made by David Lynch? Find all upcoming Seattle-area Lynch screenings HERE.
Over-used, abused, and functionally defused, the term “Lynchian” is nevertheless the best language available to us to convey that special way in which the profoundly singular style of the late David Lynch has been reflected and refracted through the shattered mirror of movie history.
Like the incomprehensibly malign forces permeating out of the Black Lodge and into the modern world - unleashed by the detonation of the atom bomb before crawling down the throat of a teenage Sarah Palmer in TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN - Lynch's aesthetic and thematic preoccupations reverberate forwards and backwards through time, radiating their way to the surface in places both blazingly clear and surprisingly subtle.
The Lynchian world is a liminal one, teetering on the edge of dreams and nightmares. Steeped in a fraught nostalgia for an idyllic America that never was, it exudes a tantalizing elusiveness, and the enigma of what signifies the Lynchian sensibility lies in producing unfamiliarity in that which was once familiar. The essence of the Lynchian is a collision of several discrete elements that all combine together to create that uneasy mélange of luxuriant melodrama, absurdist humor and impending horror. The Lynchian is oneiric and interior, attuned to the universe’s deepest frequencies. It’s a place where identity is never fixed and Good and Evil both exert their powerful sway over our fragile lives.
From explicitly acknowledged influences and favorites of Lynch, to films of speculative kinship that simply evoke "that certain feeling", with this program the Beacon invites you into a world of familiar faces and unfamiliar worlds. While each of these movies has their own unique alchemy, distinct and apart from the actual work of David Lynch, every last one is essential viewing for bereaved and hungry Lynch fans who want to keep dreaming this strange and wonderful dream.
Films in this Program
Otto Preminger
88 minutes
“I shall never forget the weekend Laura died.”
The narrator welcoming us into the pleasingly perverse upper-crust New York of the film is Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), a columnist who writes ‘with a goose quill dipped in venom’, first encountered at work in his bath by Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), the detective investigating the recent murder of beautiful advertising executive Laura (Gene Tierney). But Waldo’s not the sole suspect; there’s Laura’s fiancé Shelby (Vincent Price), and Shelby’s somewhat older lover Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson)… And can McPherson’s judgement really be trusted anyway, given that he too appears to have fallen for the dead woman he’s hearing about?
A brilliantly witty, tortuous script and Preminger’s cool, sharp-sighted direction ensure that the film succeeds gloriously as both social satire and taut suspense. One of the subtlest, most sophisticated and most invigoratingly acerbic Hollywood crime movies ever made.
"Few movies make you feel dirtier, and so perversely grateful for the pleasure." - Keith Uhlich
The narrator welcoming us into the pleasingly perverse upper-crust New York of the film is Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), a columnist who writes ‘with a goose quill dipped in venom’, first encountered at work in his bath by Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), the detective investigating the recent murder of beautiful advertising executive Laura (Gene Tierney). But Waldo’s not the sole suspect; there’s Laura’s fiancé Shelby (Vincent Price), and Shelby’s somewhat older lover Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson)… And can McPherson’s judgement really be trusted anyway, given that he too appears to have fallen for the dead woman he’s hearing about?
A brilliantly witty, tortuous script and Preminger’s cool, sharp-sighted direction ensure that the film succeeds gloriously as both social satire and taut suspense. One of the subtlest, most sophisticated and most invigoratingly acerbic Hollywood crime movies ever made.
"Few movies make you feel dirtier, and so perversely grateful for the pleasure." - Keith Uhlich
Billy Wilder
110 minutes
Utterly transfixing from the opening moments, in which Midwestern journalist-cum-skint-screenwriter Joe Gillis (William Holden) begins to posthumously narrate his sob story while floating face-down in a swimming pool in the Hollywood Hills, Wilder’s Tinseltown gothic is a movie steeped in love and hate for the movie business and the monsters that it attracts and nurtures, like Gillis and his sugar mama, faded silent film star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson). An industry inside joke both funny and haunting, often stolen from and quoted (“I’m ready for my close-up”) but never diminished in its eerie grandeur.
"Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic not only pioneered the portrait of the camphorously demented American shut-in (and therein opened one of the drains leading to PSYCHO), but brilliantly joined it to the hip of Hollywood. Here was an Industry vision of the Industry’s fake-life boneyard, wherein the meta-world of movies — already so notorious for corrupting the hopes and sensibilities of moviegoers — also condemns its godlings to an empty afterlife. Wilder’s Norma Desmond is the paradigmatic matinee-idol has-been witch-beast, alone with her glory days for so long in a curtained mansion that eventually Gothic clichés are reborn as Beverly Hills pathology." - Michael Atkinson
"Still the best Hollywood movie ever made about Hollywood." - Andrew Sarris
"Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic not only pioneered the portrait of the camphorously demented American shut-in (and therein opened one of the drains leading to PSYCHO), but brilliantly joined it to the hip of Hollywood. Here was an Industry vision of the Industry’s fake-life boneyard, wherein the meta-world of movies — already so notorious for corrupting the hopes and sensibilities of moviegoers — also condemns its godlings to an empty afterlife. Wilder’s Norma Desmond is the paradigmatic matinee-idol has-been witch-beast, alone with her glory days for so long in a curtained mansion that eventually Gothic clichés are reborn as Beverly Hills pathology." - Michael Atkinson
"Still the best Hollywood movie ever made about Hollywood." - Andrew Sarris
Joyce Chopra
96 minutes
Suspended between carefree youth and the harsh realities of the adult world, a teenage girl experiences an unsettling awakening in this haunting vision of innocence lost. Based on Joyce Carol Oates’ celebrated short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and produced for PBS’s American Playhouse, the narrative debut from director Joyce Chopra features a revelatory breakout performance from Laura Dern as Connie, the fifteen-year-old black sheep of her family whose summertime idyll of beach trips, mall hangouts, and innocent flirtations is shattered by an encounter with a mysterious stranger (a memorably menacing Treat Williams).
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, SMOOTH TALK captures the thrill and terror of adolescent sexual exploration as it transforms the ingredients of a standard coming of age portrait into something altogether more troubling and profound.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, SMOOTH TALK captures the thrill and terror of adolescent sexual exploration as it transforms the ingredients of a standard coming of age portrait into something altogether more troubling and profound.
Robert Altman
124 minutes
Altman’s dreamlike study of down-and-out women existing in a liminal state between reality and fantasy in a tiny California town shows the filmmaker at the summit of his powers as both surreal image-maker and humane storyteller. After having worked with the great Shelley Duvall throughout the decade, from MCCABE & MRS. MILLER to THIEVES LIKE US to NASHVILLE, Altman gifted her a role of astonishing depth and pathos in Millie, a gabby, self-involved health spa worker whose life intersects with — and inexplicably refracts — that of a mysterious new coworker named Pinky, played by the brilliantly mercurial Sissy Spacek. Altman’s oneiric vision, inspired by a dream (and reminiscent of Bergman’s PERSONA in its depiction of women’s lives doubling and taking on one another’s traits), is a singular mix of otherworldly and earthy thanks to the intensely grounding performances of his stars.
With all manner of twinnings haunting the edges of 3 WOMEN, Pinky’s infatuation with Millie takes an obsessive turn. Meanwhile, the “third” woman lurks in the background, expressing herself silently and potently through mythic paintings and mosaics depicting a domineering patriarchy. In this unpredictable hall of mirrors, Altman’s characteristic multi-track audio soundscaping creates a muffled, almost underwater effect, reflecting the film’s uncanny surreality, rather than the seamless naturalism for which he was known.
With all manner of twinnings haunting the edges of 3 WOMEN, Pinky’s infatuation with Millie takes an obsessive turn. Meanwhile, the “third” woman lurks in the background, expressing herself silently and potently through mythic paintings and mosaics depicting a domineering patriarchy. In this unpredictable hall of mirrors, Altman’s characteristic multi-track audio soundscaping creates a muffled, almost underwater effect, reflecting the film’s uncanny surreality, rather than the seamless naturalism for which he was known.
Werner Herzog
91 minutes
"The mystery isn't who, but why."
MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE? marks the only collaboration between cinema greats David Lynch and Werner Herzog. An intense observation of the mind and madness behind a brutal crime, it tells the story of Brad McCullum (Michael Shannon), an engaging and committed stage actor who becomes obsessed with the Greek tragedy he is rehearsing. Brad slips into a spiral of mystifying intrigue that will ultimately become his undoing. Ostriches, matricide and unhinged lunacy abound in this cop-procedural oddity as detective Willem Defoe pieces together the story McCullum's decent into madness with help from Chloe Sevigny and the always menacing Udo Kier.
Though producer David Lynch had no direct involvement in the filming, the final work plays like a strange homage to the world of Lynch filtered through the entirely unique perspective of Herzog. A fascinating, frustrating, disturbing and beautiful experience.
MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE? marks the only collaboration between cinema greats David Lynch and Werner Herzog. An intense observation of the mind and madness behind a brutal crime, it tells the story of Brad McCullum (Michael Shannon), an engaging and committed stage actor who becomes obsessed with the Greek tragedy he is rehearsing. Brad slips into a spiral of mystifying intrigue that will ultimately become his undoing. Ostriches, matricide and unhinged lunacy abound in this cop-procedural oddity as detective Willem Defoe pieces together the story McCullum's decent into madness with help from Chloe Sevigny and the always menacing Udo Kier.
Though producer David Lynch had no direct involvement in the filming, the final work plays like a strange homage to the world of Lynch filtered through the entirely unique perspective of Herzog. A fascinating, frustrating, disturbing and beautiful experience.
Herk Harvey
80 minutes
The sole survivor of a fatal teenage drag race, Mary Henry (Candace Hilligoss) leaves her life in Kansas behind to start over as a church organist in Salt Lake City. While travelling toward her final destination, Mary’s gaze fixes upon an abandoned roadside pavilion but is suddenly shocked by a terrifying vision of a pale-faced man (played by director Herk Harvey). His haunting apparitions continue upon Mary’s arrival, compelling her to return to the site of the crumbling amusement park.
Herk Harvey’s macabre masterpiece gained a cult following through late night television and lived a bootlegged afterlife for years. Made by industrial filmmakers on a modest budget, CARNIVAL OF SOULS was intended to have the “look of a Bergman” and “feel of a Cocteau,” but no other movie looks or feels like this. More than the sum of its parts, it approaches operatic beauty and moments of real lyricism, not to mention Lynchianism.
"As immediately and thoroughly disorienting as REPULSION or ROSEMARY'S BABY, but with a tantalizing cheap elegance. The simple cuts, the harsh lighting, the caked-on makeup, the tacky furniture. That perfect alchemy you see in the best trash cinema. Terrifying banality, the molecule-by-molecule ticking-off of our lives, radioactive decay." - Matt Lynch
Herk Harvey’s macabre masterpiece gained a cult following through late night television and lived a bootlegged afterlife for years. Made by industrial filmmakers on a modest budget, CARNIVAL OF SOULS was intended to have the “look of a Bergman” and “feel of a Cocteau,” but no other movie looks or feels like this. More than the sum of its parts, it approaches operatic beauty and moments of real lyricism, not to mention Lynchianism.
"As immediately and thoroughly disorienting as REPULSION or ROSEMARY'S BABY, but with a tantalizing cheap elegance. The simple cuts, the harsh lighting, the caked-on makeup, the tacky furniture. That perfect alchemy you see in the best trash cinema. Terrifying banality, the molecule-by-molecule ticking-off of our lives, radioactive decay." - Matt Lynch
Jacques Tati
120 minutes
When Monsieur Hulot, Jacques Tati’s cinematic comic alter ego, goes to visit his sister’s family, his simple lifestyle comes into contact—and conflict—with their ultramodern way of life. In a series of brilliant set pieces, Hulot traipses around their absurdly automated home, fumbles his way through a new job at his brother-in-law’s plastics factory, and forms a very real human bond with his nephew, who is similarly alienated by modern living. A thought-provoking examination of the negative effects of modernity, MON ONCLE is a singular achievement by one of the all-time masters of comic film.
"Tati’s capacity to explore the full contours of the frame takes flight, staging shots in depth with four or five comical elements occurring at once — and it’s up to you as the viewer to decide what you find interesting. It’s a supremely democratic form of comedy. Tati doesn’t underline what you’re supposed to find funny. You have to find it yourself." - Christian Blauvelt
"It is not a comedy of gags or funny lines (the only kinds of comedy left in Hollywood); here tragedy and comedy go together, enriching each other, contrasting and balancing between laughter and tears." - Jonas Mekas
"Tati’s capacity to explore the full contours of the frame takes flight, staging shots in depth with four or five comical elements occurring at once — and it’s up to you as the viewer to decide what you find interesting. It’s a supremely democratic form of comedy. Tati doesn’t underline what you’re supposed to find funny. You have to find it yourself." - Christian Blauvelt
"It is not a comedy of gags or funny lines (the only kinds of comedy left in Hollywood); here tragedy and comedy go together, enriching each other, contrasting and balancing between laughter and tears." - Jonas Mekas
Jess Franco
82 minutes
Jess Franco enters the Black Lodge.
Melissa, a young woman living in a large seaside mansion with her father and aunt, decides one day to marry. She rushes home to tell her father the good news, yet after telling him, she returns home later on to discover (through the reflection of a large ominous mirror) that her father has hanged himself. Distraught and heartbroken, she breaks off the marriage and decides to join a touring group of musicians to escape her tragic home. However, as time creeps on, she begins to notice ghostly happenings anytime she stares directly into a mirror, plunging her further into nightmarish conflict with forces from the other side of reality.
A crowning achievement of Jess Franco’s astonishing mid-70’s run, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR remains a fairly classically constructed affair for the director, albeit infused with the sort of cinematic somnambulism that remained signature throughout his entire career. Anticipating moments and scenes that would later appear in the films of David Lynch (LOST HIGHWAY and INLAND EMPIRE, in particular), THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR points to the rarely acknowledged but undeniable influence Franco had over many of today’s greatest and most forward-thinking filmmakers. (Oscarbate Film)
Melissa, a young woman living in a large seaside mansion with her father and aunt, decides one day to marry. She rushes home to tell her father the good news, yet after telling him, she returns home later on to discover (through the reflection of a large ominous mirror) that her father has hanged himself. Distraught and heartbroken, she breaks off the marriage and decides to join a touring group of musicians to escape her tragic home. However, as time creeps on, she begins to notice ghostly happenings anytime she stares directly into a mirror, plunging her further into nightmarish conflict with forces from the other side of reality.
A crowning achievement of Jess Franco’s astonishing mid-70’s run, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR remains a fairly classically constructed affair for the director, albeit infused with the sort of cinematic somnambulism that remained signature throughout his entire career. Anticipating moments and scenes that would later appear in the films of David Lynch (LOST HIGHWAY and INLAND EMPIRE, in particular), THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MIRROR points to the rarely acknowledged but undeniable influence Franco had over many of today’s greatest and most forward-thinking filmmakers. (Oscarbate Film)
Norman Mailer
109 minutes
After a two week bender, Tim Madden awakens one morning from his drunken state, only to discover everything in his life seems amiss. There’s a fresh tattoo on his arm, his car is covered in blood, his girlfriend is in bed with the town sheriff, but worst of all, there's a woman's severed head in his weed stash. Sensing a setup and in desperate need to clear his name, Tim begins an investigation, with the help of his dying father, that soon begins to expose an ever stranger web of corruption, greed, blackmail, and violence woven into every aspect of the small coastal community of Provincetown.
The last feature film directed by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Norman Mailer, TOUGH GUYS DON’T DANCE is a wild, labyrinthian, neo-noir black comedy — equal parts brutally violent, suspenseful, and blisteringly funny.
"Imagine Tommy Wiseau wrote a spec script for TWIN PEAKS, someone only cleaned up the language to sound like actual English, but changed nothing else; then Golan & Globus got VAMPIRE'S KISS Nic Cage to be an acting coach; and finally put everyone on a strict diet of cocaine. I'm 100% convinced that every ounce shown in the movie is the real deal, and NONE of it went to waste." - Carlo Verdugo
The last feature film directed by Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Norman Mailer, TOUGH GUYS DON’T DANCE is a wild, labyrinthian, neo-noir black comedy — equal parts brutally violent, suspenseful, and blisteringly funny.
"Imagine Tommy Wiseau wrote a spec script for TWIN PEAKS, someone only cleaned up the language to sound like actual English, but changed nothing else; then Golan & Globus got VAMPIRE'S KISS Nic Cage to be an acting coach; and finally put everyone on a strict diet of cocaine. I'm 100% convinced that every ounce shown in the movie is the real deal, and NONE of it went to waste." - Carlo Verdugo
Arthur Ripley
86 minutes
The noir genre is known for its labyrinthine plots, but Arthur Ripley's THE CHASE takes the "wrong man" premise to unexpected extremes. Robert Cummings stars as Chuck Scott, a down-on-his-luck veteran who lands a job as a chauffeur to a sadistic millionaire and his reptilian bodyguard (Peter Lorre!). Scott plays white knight to his boss's suffering wife, stealing her away to Havana. But when she is fatally stabbed in a crowded nightclub, Scott is accused of murder, and must flee the shadowy streets of Cuba in a reckless attempt to prove his innocence.
Adapting a novel by Cornell Woolrich, screenwriter Philip Yordan introduced a number of twists to the original story, including a third-act surprise that transforms what might have been a conventional story of an ill-fated love into something truly mind-bending and surreal - making it into one of the strangest films of the 1940s.
"As close as any Hollywood film of the era came to presaging the dark and dreamy world of David Lynch." - Eddie Muller
Adapting a novel by Cornell Woolrich, screenwriter Philip Yordan introduced a number of twists to the original story, including a third-act surprise that transforms what might have been a conventional story of an ill-fated love into something truly mind-bending and surreal - making it into one of the strangest films of the 1940s.
"As close as any Hollywood film of the era came to presaging the dark and dreamy world of David Lynch." - Eddie Muller
Ingmar Bergman
88 minutes
In self-imposed exile on a secluded island off the Swedish coast — in fact Fårö, where Bergman himself made his home and shot several films, of which this is certainly the most nightmarish — self-loathing, insomnia-plagued painter Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) is thrown into an ever-hastening tailspin of psychological disintegration after a dinner appointment at a local aristocrat’s castle, persecuted by visions that draw inspiration from painter Henry Fuseli and the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann.
His wife (Liv Ullmann), attempting to understand and save him, begins to see the very demons, real or not, who taunt him – the Bird-Man, the 216-year-old Lady With the Hat and removable face, and Baron von Merkens, the owner of the secluded island they live on, who recasts THE MAGIC FLUTE as a Poe story and who throws a dinner party in Borg’s honor that isn’t dissimilar from the one Marilyn Burns would find herself attending six years later in THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.
Named for the hour "between darkness and dawn, when most people die, most children are born, and nightmares come to you," HOUR OF THE WOLF is one of Bergman’s most personal films — a sinister piece of self-recrimination, resembling Strindberg’s A DREAM PLAY by way of Val Lewton or Dreyer's VAMPYR.
His wife (Liv Ullmann), attempting to understand and save him, begins to see the very demons, real or not, who taunt him – the Bird-Man, the 216-year-old Lady With the Hat and removable face, and Baron von Merkens, the owner of the secluded island they live on, who recasts THE MAGIC FLUTE as a Poe story and who throws a dinner party in Borg’s honor that isn’t dissimilar from the one Marilyn Burns would find herself attending six years later in THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.
Named for the hour "between darkness and dawn, when most people die, most children are born, and nightmares come to you," HOUR OF THE WOLF is one of Bergman’s most personal films — a sinister piece of self-recrimination, resembling Strindberg’s A DREAM PLAY by way of Val Lewton or Dreyer's VAMPYR.
110 minutes
"I love mysteries, to fall into a mystery and its danger ... everything becomes so intense in those moments. When most mysteries are solved, I feel tremendously let down. So I want things to feel solved up to a point, but there's got to be a certain percentage left over to keep the dream going. You understand it, but you don't understand it, and it keeps that mystery alive. That's the most beautiful thing." - David Lynch
Join us for a specially curated mystery box program of short-form cinema featuring films which have alternatingly inspired, or been inspired by, the one and only David Lynch.
The curtains open and we go into a world. This is the place where dreams and nightmares come to life.
Join us for a specially curated mystery box program of short-form cinema featuring films which have alternatingly inspired, or been inspired by, the one and only David Lynch.
The curtains open and we go into a world. This is the place where dreams and nightmares come to life.
Guy Maddin
Evan Johnson
Galen Johnson
63 minutes
Guy Maddin asks the question: how do you make a film paying homage to a masterpiece without using any of its footage? THE GREEN FOG is the answer. At once a remake, a remix, an interrogation and a celebration of Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO, this movie uses Bay Area-based footage from hundreds of sources — all of them haunted by the curse of a mysterious green fog that seems to cause irrepressible vertigo — to create a new assemblage that still exerts the inexorable pull of Hitchcock’s twisted tale of erotic obsession.
"Miraculously, Maddin succeeds in alchemizing this Hollywood junkola into something strange, new, and frequently wonderful. This collective tantrum is another reminder of why people go to the movies: to see others moved. It could be the most entertaining experimental film ever made." - J.R. Jones
"Miraculously, Maddin succeeds in alchemizing this Hollywood junkola into something strange, new, and frequently wonderful. This collective tantrum is another reminder of why people go to the movies: to see others moved. It could be the most entertaining experimental film ever made." - J.R. Jones
Delmer Daves
100 minutes
THE RED HOUSE is a queasy dissertation on Rural American Gothic. Something about the solitude of out-of-the-way, neglected spaces lends them to secrets, pent-up guilt, sexual anxiety and madness.
Crippled farmer Pete Morgan (how did he lose that leg?) and his spinster sister Ellen (why didn’t she marry her true love Doc Byrne?) live in seclusion with their adopted teenage ward Meg (what really happened to her parents?). When Meg’s classmate Nath comes to work the farm, his schoolboy crush on Meg in tow, Pete begins to unravel. He warns of screams in the night and an evil Something that inhabits the Oxhead Woods, centered around an abandoned red cottage and derelict ice house sequestered deep among the trees. Undisclosed sexual and murderous transgressions of the past break through into the present, shattering the carefully crafted veneer of gentility at the Morgan Farm with shame and tragedy.
For many years, THE RED HOUSE languished in public domain hell and was available only in substandard copies. It’s a gift to see it fully restored, and to be able to appreciate its great visual beauty and nightmarish, proto-Lynchian noir sway.
Crippled farmer Pete Morgan (how did he lose that leg?) and his spinster sister Ellen (why didn’t she marry her true love Doc Byrne?) live in seclusion with their adopted teenage ward Meg (what really happened to her parents?). When Meg’s classmate Nath comes to work the farm, his schoolboy crush on Meg in tow, Pete begins to unravel. He warns of screams in the night and an evil Something that inhabits the Oxhead Woods, centered around an abandoned red cottage and derelict ice house sequestered deep among the trees. Undisclosed sexual and murderous transgressions of the past break through into the present, shattering the carefully crafted veneer of gentility at the Morgan Farm with shame and tragedy.
For many years, THE RED HOUSE languished in public domain hell and was available only in substandard copies. It’s a gift to see it fully restored, and to be able to appreciate its great visual beauty and nightmarish, proto-Lynchian noir sway.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
122 minutes
Weaving together Thailand’s rich fundament of supernatural mythology and its often troubled national history, Apichatpong crafts a bewitching and seductive cinematic idyll in CEMETERY OF SPLENDOR. Soldiers with a mysterious sleeping sickness are transferred to a temporary clinic set up in an abandoned school house. The memory-filled space becomes a revelatory world for housewife and volunteer Jenjira, as she watches over Itt, a handsome soldier with no family visitors. While taking care of Itt, Jenjira befriends a young medium who uses her psychic powers to help loved ones communicate with the comatose men. At the same time, favoring science over psychic ability, the doctors at the clinic explore different healing methods - including a glowing dream machine - to ease the men’s somnabulent suffering. Magic, healing, romance, and visions are all part of Jenjira’s tender path to a deeper awareness of herself and the world around her.
Working through a prism of personal and collective memories, refusing to distinguish between the everyday, dream-states and dark fantasies, Apichatpong creates a vast pool of cinematic associations for us to sink into and explore.
Working through a prism of personal and collective memories, refusing to distinguish between the everyday, dream-states and dark fantasies, Apichatpong creates a vast pool of cinematic associations for us to sink into and explore.
John Dahl
98 minutes
A standout entry in the early ’90s neo-noir boom, John Stahl’s taut, twisty, awfully nasty thriller stars an unusually and effectively laconic Nic Cage as a discharged marine who wanders into Red Rock, Wyoming, looking for a job and instead finds himself caught up in the dirty dealings of sleazy bar owner J.T. Walsh, his seductive and conniving wife Lara Flynn Boyle, and “Lyle, from Dallas” (Dennis Hopper), a superficially genial hired killer with plenty of experience in his field.
In RED ROCK WEST, the actors chew the scenery with gusto, breathing life into stock archetypes. Such a choice is emblematic of Dahl’s entire methodology: there’s a faith in the familiar, a belief in the aesthetic and its storytelling, a comfort in watching the wheel spin. It’s the type of film that we so rarely get anymore as viewers, one that rests the value of its entertainment on the laurels of its genre.
"A diabolical movie that exists sneakily between a western and a thriller, between a film noir and a black comedy. It’s the kind of movie made by people who love movies." - Roger Ebert
In RED ROCK WEST, the actors chew the scenery with gusto, breathing life into stock archetypes. Such a choice is emblematic of Dahl’s entire methodology: there’s a faith in the familiar, a belief in the aesthetic and its storytelling, a comfort in watching the wheel spin. It’s the type of film that we so rarely get anymore as viewers, one that rests the value of its entertainment on the laurels of its genre.
"A diabolical movie that exists sneakily between a western and a thriller, between a film noir and a black comedy. It’s the kind of movie made by people who love movies." - Roger Ebert
Jean Cocteau
95 minutes
Jean Cocteau’s lushly lyric, allegorical update of the Orpheus myth, based on his play of the same title, depicts a famous poet (Jean Marais) who’s scorned by the Left Bank youth, torn between his love for his wife, Eurydice (Marie Déa), and a mysterious, black-clad princess (Maria Casarès). Seeking inspiration, the poet follows the princess from the world of the living to the land of the dead, a dreamlike journey that begins with his passage through Cocteau’s famous mirrored portal and into a cinematic landscape in which everything shimmers and shivers with nightmare luminosity. ORPHEUS’s peerless visual poetry and dreamlike storytelling represent the legendary surrealist Cocteau at the height of his powers.
"A magical film where each image, like the lark in the mirror, reflects only itself, that is to say, us." - Jean-Luc Godard
"A magical film where each image, like the lark in the mirror, reflects only itself, that is to say, us." - Jean-Luc Godard
Jacques Rivette
192 minutes
A film of magic, curses, intimacy, giddy magnetism, and the macabre world of haunted dreams, it’s not hard to see why CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING is Jacques Rivette’s most beloved dose of cinematic (and theatrical) pleasure. Incorporating allusions to everything from Lewis Carroll to Louis Feuillade, this is a film that invites, rather than insists, that we watch it more than once.
Librarian Julie (Dominique Labourier) invites nightclub performer Celine (Juliet Berto) into her life, and what begins as a chance encounter opens up a series of trapdoors. It’s not long before they are launched through the looking glass and straight into a labyrinthine comic adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder mystery as, all the while, the line between illusion and reality grows ever fainter. For every moment enjoyed in each other’s company, they discover a branching, doubling effect in what they see, juggling Beckettian loops, Lynchian liquid identity and sapphic subtext. CELINE AND JULIE is both one of the all-time-great hangout comedies and a totally unique, enveloping cinematic dream space that delights in the endless pleasures and possibilities of stories.
Librarian Julie (Dominique Labourier) invites nightclub performer Celine (Juliet Berto) into her life, and what begins as a chance encounter opens up a series of trapdoors. It’s not long before they are launched through the looking glass and straight into a labyrinthine comic adventure involving a haunted house, psychotropic candy, and a murder mystery as, all the while, the line between illusion and reality grows ever fainter. For every moment enjoyed in each other’s company, they discover a branching, doubling effect in what they see, juggling Beckettian loops, Lynchian liquid identity and sapphic subtext. CELINE AND JULIE is both one of the all-time-great hangout comedies and a totally unique, enveloping cinematic dream space that delights in the endless pleasures and possibilities of stories.
Atom Egoyan
104 minutes
One of the defining independent films of the 1990s, Atom Egoyan’s mesmerizing international breakthrough EXOTICA takes the conventions of the psychological thriller into bold new territory — unsettling, dreamlike, and empathetic. At the neon-drenched Toronto strip club of the film’s title, a coterie of lost and damaged souls — including a man haunted by grief, a young woman with whom he shares an enigmatic bond, an obsessive emcee, and a smuggler of rare bird eggs — search for redemption as they work through the traumas of their mysteriously interconnected histories in an obsessive cycle of sex, pain, jealousy, and catharsis.
Masterfully weaving together past and present, Egoyan constructs a spellbinding narrative puzzle, the full emotional impact of which doesn’t hit until the last piece is in place. Thirty years on, EXOTICA feels more and more like the great Canadian filmmaker’s masterpiece, the purest expression of the aesthetic and themes that would define an entire career.
Masterfully weaving together past and present, Egoyan constructs a spellbinding narrative puzzle, the full emotional impact of which doesn’t hit until the last piece is in place. Thirty years on, EXOTICA feels more and more like the great Canadian filmmaker’s masterpiece, the purest expression of the aesthetic and themes that would define an entire career.
Mark Robson
71 minutes
B-movie impresario Val Lewton’s string of low-budget masterpieces in the 1940s remain among the most influential horror movies ever made, works of astonishing ingenuity that used off-screen space, sound, and shadow to create diabolical tales of people who descend into dark worlds of terror and ambiguity, such as CAT PEOPLE and I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE. Perhaps the most complex and sinister of them all is this pocket-size portrait of evil and despair, starring Kim Hunter in her film debut as a young woman who leaves the safety of her boarding school to track down her missing sister (a haunting Jean Brooks), who has fallen in with a death-obsessed, Satan-worshipping cult.
“A sober, melancholy tale of fragile humanity that only limns the edges of the supernatural, the film is firmly grounded in reality; nevertheless, when it’s over, we feel like we’ve been to hell and back.” - Michael Koresky
“A sober, melancholy tale of fragile humanity that only limns the edges of the supernatural, the film is firmly grounded in reality; nevertheless, when it’s over, we feel like we’ve been to hell and back.” - Michael Koresky
Douglas Sirk
99 minutes
The Technicolor expressionism of Douglas Sirk reached a fever pitch with this operatic tragedy, which finds the director pushing his florid visuals and his critiques of American culture to their subversive extremes. Alcoholism, nymphomania, impotence, and deadly jealousy - these are just some of the toxins coursing through a massively wealthy, degenerate Texan oil family. When a sensible secretary (Lauren Bacall) has the misfortune of marrying the clan’s neurotic scion (Robert Stack), it drives a wedge between him and his lifelong best friend (Rock Hudson) that unleashes a maelstrom of psychosexual angst and fury. Featuring an unforgettably debauched supporting performance by Dorothy Malone and some of Sirk’s most eye-popping mise-en-scène, WRITTEN ON THE WIND is as perverse a family portrait as has ever been splashed across the screen.
"In WRITTEN ON THE WIND the good, the ‘normal’, the ‘beautiful’ are always utterly revolting; the evil, the weak, the dissolute arouse one’s compassion. Even for the manipulators of the good. Douglas Sirk's films liberate your head." - Rainer Werner Fassbinder
"In WRITTEN ON THE WIND the good, the ‘normal’, the ‘beautiful’ are always utterly revolting; the evil, the weak, the dissolute arouse one’s compassion. Even for the manipulators of the good. Douglas Sirk's films liberate your head." - Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Victor Fleming
102 minutes
Judy Garland provides the big, plaintive voice as Dorothy, while companions Tin Man (Jack Haley), Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), and the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) are pure knockabout vaudeville fun, in this criminally entertaining musical adaptation from L. Frank Baum’s treasured series of Oz books, which leaps from bleak black-and- white Kansas to ruby slippers-and-yellow brick Technicolor. Why? Because, because, because, because.
"THE WIZARD OF OZ is a film with very great power," says David Lynch. "And it’s to be expected that it has stayed with us for many years and that we find its echoes in our films for such a long time after. THE WIZARD OF OZ is like a dream and it has immense emotional power. There’s a certain amount of fear in that picture, as well as things to dream about. So it seems truthful in some way."
"But I've been scared of those monkeys all my life."
"THE WIZARD OF OZ is a film with very great power," says David Lynch. "And it’s to be expected that it has stayed with us for many years and that we find its echoes in our films for such a long time after. THE WIZARD OF OZ is like a dream and it has immense emotional power. There’s a certain amount of fear in that picture, as well as things to dream about. So it seems truthful in some way."
"But I've been scared of those monkeys all my life."
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FEATURE LENGTH
Totally FREE. No RSVP. First come, first admitted! Doors open 30 minutes before showtime.
Welcome to Seattle's premiere "blindfolded" screening series! The film title will not be announced until the seats are filled and the movieshow is about to commence.
Take the gamble of a chance encounter and discover the movie you didn't know you needed. We aim to provide an enjoyably disorienting experience in which you can indulge your curiosities without any intimidating barriers to entry. And besides, we just think it's sneaky and fun to keep sexy secrets. Don't you?
Movies from all o'er the globe, spanning from the dawn of cinema to its far-flung future. The only criterion is that the Beacon is going to bring out that private stock stuff every single time. We're giving you films that haven't been played to death, proffering an alternative history of cinema, a celebration of the breadth and depth of film history, a pulsating motion picture party.
*All of our secret screenings in March and April will fit into our program THE ABSURD MYSTERY OF THE STRANGE FORCES OF EXISTENCE: “LYNCHIAN” CINEMA. Let's get weird.
Welcome to Seattle's premiere "blindfolded" screening series! The film title will not be announced until the seats are filled and the movieshow is about to commence.
Take the gamble of a chance encounter and discover the movie you didn't know you needed. We aim to provide an enjoyably disorienting experience in which you can indulge your curiosities without any intimidating barriers to entry. And besides, we just think it's sneaky and fun to keep sexy secrets. Don't you?
Movies from all o'er the globe, spanning from the dawn of cinema to its far-flung future. The only criterion is that the Beacon is going to bring out that private stock stuff every single time. We're giving you films that haven't been played to death, proffering an alternative history of cinema, a celebration of the breadth and depth of film history, a pulsating motion picture party.
*All of our secret screenings in March and April will fit into our program THE ABSURD MYSTERY OF THE STRANGE FORCES OF EXISTENCE: “LYNCHIAN” CINEMA. Let's get weird.
