calebwhutch

Lynch constantly plays with the idea that America has been constructed to intentionally create a facade that evil can fester beneath, going unnoticed. There’s a critical commentary at work here of course, but there’s also a nostalgia for this system, which elevates all of his pieces away from didacticism into complex swirling portraits of the American psyche.

Holding in your hands the (seemingly contradictory) ideas that the system is rigged while also having an unwavering admiration for the system’s iconography and culture. THE American filmmaker, in my opinion.

Interesting read!

I’m in the minority, but I think Maul’s function works better as one of mystery. In The Phantom Menace he is placed in the narrative as a stand-in for the standard “evil” in the eyes of a religious order, clearly evoking Satanic imagery. The “Other” that is to be hated and fought against, his silence being an illustration of modern organized Christianity’s creation of this figure as all-encompassing evil. Satan as a literary figure is much more complex than what Church will tell you, so the silence of Maul in The Phantom Menace feels like a perfect illustration of that.

I’ve found it interesting just how deeply in conversation The Phantom Menace is with A New Hope in its third act. Vader vs. Obi-Wan with Luke witnessing the sacrifice, Maul vs. Qui-Gon with Obi-Wan witnessing. Lucas has always been obsessed with technology vs. organic matter, and the prequels are all about the non-dualism that is at the heart of the religions in which The Force is based upon. Maul is a very obvious riff on Christian Satanic imagery, and Qui-Gon is the noble zealot fighting off the “bad”, and this is a visual representation of the simplicity of the Jedi Order’s thinking, and organized religion’s thinking in general. “Good” vs. “bad” is revealed as a false premise. Obi-Wan witnesses this false duality and takes it with him, until the entirety of the system he lives in is torn apart.

His arc across the prequels beautifully inform his sacrifice in A New Hope. There is no battle between “good” and “evil”. It’s much more complicated than that. Vader being a perfect synthesis of tech and organic matter, of good and evil. Instead of fighting this man who would be perceived as a walking contradiction if looked at through a dualistic lens, he refuses to fight. He illustrates non-dualism to Luke, which Luke will only understand later.

In my opinion, the prequel films are much more thematically complex than the original three, and their existence enhances the texts of all the installments that chronologically come after them.