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  • Film & TV Moderators: ghostfreak

Most Complicated Movies you've ever seen (intellectual)

Originally conceived as a television series, Mulholland Drive began as a two hour-plus pilot produced for Touchstone Television and intended for the ABC television network. David Lynch sold the idea to ABC executives based only on the story of Rita emerging from the car accident with her purse containing $125,000 in cash and the blue key, and Betty trying to help her figure out who she is. An ABC executive recalled, "I remember the creepiness of this woman in this horrible, horrible crash, and David teasing us with the notion that people are chasing her. She's not just 'in' trouble—she is trouble. Obviously, we asked, 'What happens next?' And David said, 'You have to buy the pitch for me to tell you.'"[2]
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What a clever bastard.
 
most of my favourites (brazil, 12 monkeys, donnie darko, 2001, mulhulland drive,stalker) have already been mentioned.

since this seems to be a thread about mindfuck films I will add a few more...

Pi
the fountain
oldboy
eraserhead
 
jpgrdnr said:
Mulholland Drive's script was originally a pilot for TV. Lynch has gone on record that they did stuff just to do it. The blue key/box has no meaning, its not even a macguffin. Its not a complicated movie at all.
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the blue key certainly does have specific meaning.
when she contracts the hitman, he tells her that she will know the job is done when she receives the blue key (which is a normal key in the latter real life parts). the key mutates into the strange shape and box in the unreal parts, and they both signify her guilt at causing the death of her unrequited love.
much of the film is left with dream-like vagueness, really effective at provoking emotion, but the blue key is this.
 
Jean-Luc Godard is geniusly and fundamentally complicated, although to me his cinema is very simple and limpid. All his 70's work is political and avant-garde. Numéro deux (Number two) comes to mind.

We have Robert Bresson's work too, which I adore but the castings of his films are willingly made of amateurs and his cinema is the most stark I've seen.

Tormented and hyper sexual are the films of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Try one, it's worth the hassle of finding them.

Now Marguerite Duras made a few films, and that's intellectual and complicated stuff. Go see Le Camion (The Truck) or Son Nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (Her name of Venice in desert Calcutta), the last having the exact same soundtrack as her earlier film India Song, only the images being different!

Now we are arriving at the gates of human perception: Jean-Marie Straub and Danielle Huillet. Can't be beat. Pure cerebral cinema.
 
^ Yeah hydro, Robbe-Grillet was a naughty filmaker and touche-à-tout. I'm not surprised he collabored with Hamilton, I had a girlfriend in college who played the principal part in one of his films: she's Santa in Un bruit qui rend fou (1995) ;) I told her to be careful with him, as she didn't know who he was, lol.
 
you have some connection to everyone who works in france. could you tell anna "hi" for me?

i don't really know who he is. i haven't seen anything he's directed. the only thing i've seen that's written by him is Last Year at Marienbad. but a look at his imdb page and i see what you mean.
 
poopie said:
Mulholland Drive can go fuck itself. (I should review movies for a living)

I attempted it twice.

Even after reading about it online, to help me piece it together. It was like the SATs all over again.

Memento, on the other hand, is an amazing and awesome journey.
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I've never seen Momento. Checking it out now. Wow ya, I feel like that guy since I got in a wreck. Horrah for writing shit down.
 
on the us version dvd, there's a hidden easter egg which plays memento in chronological order. they even play the backwards shots normally. interestingly it works both ways.
 
Easter egg? Is there some glitch where the guy can sometimes remember shit longer than 30 seconds and an exploit where he never forgot a thing?
I liked it. I'll have to check out the DVD. Netflix just streams the original.

Already sent in for Mulholland Drive.
 
Lol I dont know what to say to this post, its not like most complicated necessarily means most effective at communicating meaning. But Loulou took this post seriously, so I guess I will too to some degree. I love the old film Mouchette by Bresson, a director LouLou already mentioned I believe. Also, I have decided to answer this post honestly I have to let my inner snob out, so if that bothers you, choke.

Alejandro Jodorowsky films are always fun and surreal and loaded with images that provide lots of cerebral activity to decode, I would highly recommend. Luis Buñuel and Fellini are in a similar vein but I don't find their films quite as enjoyable to watch usually, with some exceptions (satyricon).

I was recently surprised by how much there was to think about in a film directed by Orson Welles, one of his old ones called The Trial. Its adopted from a Kafka book and really keeps the vibe. I had a similar experience with Roman Polanski's old movie Cul-de-sac, and actually his version of Macbeth is pretty damn good too. Andrey Tarkovskiy also did a lot of work on a similar sort of level, his film mirror sticks out in my mind.

Also Lars Von Trier's movies can be pretty thought provoking, although they always tend to leave me annoyed at the same time. His movie the five obstructions is something everyone should probably see though, I find it comes up in discussion more than most any films.

Also see Akira Kurosawa's collection of short films called dreams, that one really stuck with me.

Ingmar Bergman's films also tend to be highly visually engaging and full of visual symbolism, which is what I like.

I'm a very visual person so those are some films that really stuck with me, but they are just personal favorites, thinking of the real most meaningful films of all time is too big a task for me.
 
DexterMeth said:
Easter egg? Is there some glitch where the guy can sometimes remember shit longer than 30 seconds and an exploit where he never forgot a thing?
I liked it. I'll have to check out the DVD. Netflix just streams the original.

Already sent in for Mulholland Drive.
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easter eggs = dvd hidden features.

the memento dvd was the worst of the lot. you need to figure out a ridiculous sequence to make it even work normally. if you get it, quickly google the solution, cuz there's no other reasonable way to figure them out.

mulholland drive is purchase worthy. dim the lights and turn off the computer and pump up the volume. man, that first cinema experience left me speechless. i was dumbfounded and petrified and i didn't know why.
 
mulholland drive is excellent, and reading explanations online really defies the purpose of any given lynch movie. they're not supposed to make sense, they're about the emotions they invoke. although i could never make it through inland empire, even though i tried three times.
lost highway is one of my absolute favorite movies, and the story doesn't make a lick of sense, and it's not supposed to.
shinya tsukamoto made a few really great ones too, tetsuo & a snake of june being standouts.
oh yeah, and everything by alejandro jodorowski.

and donnie darko is a movie i for some reason i can't quite name dislike. maybe it's that godawful whiney song that plays at the end.
 
The thing here is, some of these movies aren't complicated at all. There's cognition, and then there's emotion.
I mean, for example, Jordorowski is visual. He just shoots a bunch of random bullshit, obviously satisfying his own needs and leaving the audience out of the equation. Then when you watch the crockpot of shit that is 'The Holy Mountain', the only movie of his I've seen, you realise just how overrated he is. He's not 'arthouse', he's 'shit'.
I also think the use of that rendition at the end of DD is a very good use of music in cinema.
I mean, there are surrealist/visual movies, and then there are movies with jaded plots/sequences, and then there are movies with deep plots and sub-plots.
What you derive from the movie, what you find the most complicated, may not be applicable to someone else.
Anyway, fuck The Holy Mountain. That is all.
 
DeathDomokun said:
Seriously? I predicted Shutter Island before I witnessed the events transpire..
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I feel you.

I agree with Donnie Darko. I know most people hated S. Darko. I loved it, but I also saw it before I saw Donnie. I prefer Donnie primarily because for SOME REASON I CANNOT FIGURE OUT, all of the weird things that happen (the extended auras, etc)... I didn't question them. I was just like, sure, that's happening! When I had seen them in S. Darko, it all just seemed SO random and unnecessary.

One that will leave you going WTF is Triangle. I didn't necessarily love the film itself but it's the biggest WTF I've ever seen.

Also a big fan of La Jetee, Memento, and Pi. Another one I don't think has been mentioned is The Game. A lot of people didn't like it but I still think about it sometimes, and I saw it over a year ago.
 
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Yeah, I wasn't expecting the twist in Triangle.
I still think Alain Robbe-Grillet has made the most confusing movies I've seen.
 
I would argue he doesn't just shoot random shit but uses a lot of visual symbolism, which you could call complicated. I was thinking of this post as complicated strictly in the sense of plot.
 
Also if you are interested a Alejandro Jodorowsky film thats a bit less bewildering I would suggest Santa Sangre its a bit more em, reserved than magic mountain
 
xxxyyy said:
mulholland drive is excellent, and reading explanations online really defies the purpose of any given lynch movie. they're not supposed to make sense, they're about the emotions they invoke. although i could never make it through inland empire, even though i tried three times.
lost highway is one of my absolute favorite movies, and the story doesn't make a lick of sense, and it's not supposed to.
shinya tsukamoto made a few really great ones too, tetsuo & a snake of june being standouts.
oh yeah, and everything by alejandro jodorowski.

and donnie darko is a movie i for some reason i can't quite name dislike. maybe it's that godawful whiney song that plays at the end.
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inland empire perfected the art of hilarihorror. it is both funny and damn scary at the same time. i remember in a special screening of it at the sydney festival in an ancient and beautiful theatre, my wife passed out completely and some woman in the audience got upset at people laughing and stormed out screaming "it's not meant to be funny!". i disagree with her, it's both very funny and very scary.
 
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