This is a still and promotional shot for a Japanese-made gangster (yakuza) movie from I think, the late 1990s. I believe it is titled Silent Town but I can find no entry for it at the film directory website imdb. Originally I was going to use it for the cover sleeve of the single Born That Way [track] but could not trace the copyright owner. It's rare nowadays that a poster or promotional picture alone inspires one to see a film, or buy a record, but in my opinion this photo is intensely stylish - impeccable - and, of course, one is confronted with a cigarette. Good Heavens. (An heroin addiction is far more socially acceptable and infinitely more economical, given the eye-crossing expense of draconian government taxes.)
David Lynch's artwork tends to have the same effect on me; notably 1997's Lost Highway Great poster. A möbius strip of a film (two parallel realities that share the same time-line) that helped to prepare us for the William Burroughs-style cut-up method exposition of INLAND EMPIRE. Whoever edited that film must surely now reside in a gated community in south Florida -- the locks being this side of the railings.
[Actress] "But I thought I was a blonde Canadian movie star with lesbian tendencies living on Mulholland Drive?"
[Director] "You are. But you're also a brunette with a slightly-altered fringe, living on a Warsaw housing project with four human-sized rabbits and an aged grandmother who is partially obscured by an home-made aquarium."
[Actress] "Of course."
To digress a little, Mr Lynch is not content merely to cut-up narrative but delights in snipping away at his characters. Which is something that most of us with any imagination do in real life. If you have not followed the arc of Lynch's directorial odyssey it can be a disorienting and, by the credit roll, a potentially unrewarding experience to view his later films -- notwithstanding the immaculate cinematography, Angelo Badalamenti's subterranean soundscapes and the wondrous moments that leave you in no doubt that you are witnessing first-rate cinema. One might crave an explanatory booklet that details who became whom - but that would vanquish mystery - and David Lynch is nothing if not an auteur of Mystery.
To digress a little, Mr Lynch is not content merely to cut-up narrative but delights in snipping away at his characters. Which is something that most of us with any imagination do in real life. If you have not followed the arc of Lynch's directorial odyssey it can be a disorienting and, by the credit roll, a potentially unrewarding experience to view his later films -- notwithstanding the immaculate cinematography, Angelo Badalamenti's subterranean soundscapes and the wondrous moments that leave you in no doubt that you are witnessing first-rate cinema. One might crave an explanatory booklet that details who became whom - but that would vanquish mystery - and David Lynch is nothing if not an auteur of Mystery.
And a great poster artist.
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