David Lynch Swerves by Martha Nochimson

Author:Martha Nochimson [Nochimson, Martha P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2013-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

Doris Side (Julia Ormond) is in the police station, a scene that was not yet in the script read by Nikki Grace, and yet already exists, given the uncertain nature of time and space in Lynch’s second-stage films. Doris knows that she will kill someone, but in this frame we see that her knowledge is already also an assault on herself. In the Lynchverse, what you do to others, you do to yourself as well.

The seminal shock when the film begins to veer off more fully into non-locality and its consequences occurs when Nikki first encounters an AXXON N. door in the alley behind the marketplace. AXXON N., which we already know is the earliest ancestor of Blue Tomorrows, is the door that Nikki must enter for the new film to reveal what is already there, in its core. This is non-locality. And it is the process by means of which Nikki’s experience as an actress in the film opens up for us. The AXXON N. door will eventually supplant in importance Devon Berk and the crew members on the soundstage, like Bucky J., and it will relegate Kingsley Stewart to the periphery of Nikki’s experience working on Blue Tomorrows.

But at first, Berk, Stewart, and Bucky J. seem very significant, particularly Berk, as there appears to be some kind of sexual liaison developing as Nikki and Devon act the parts of lovers Susan Blue and Billy Side. However, all this byplay seems to be the center of the action only as long as there is a clear distinction between stories and life and we know exactly where the characters end and Nikki and Devon begin. Suddenly, when a sex scene erupts onto the screen in which no such clarity is possible, we have a problem critically identifying boundaries. We simply don’t know whether they are playing their characters having sex, or whether they are actually having an adulterous sexual interlude. It is no coincidence that this scene, which breaks down Nikki’s orientation in local time and space (and ours too), is also about her first encounter with the AXXON N. door.

During the sex scene, Nikki tries to tell Devon about the AXXON N. door at the same time as Susan tries to tell Billy about it. For us, the characters in Nikki’s and Susan’s worlds suddenly coexist simultaneously, so that we can neither separate the actress from her role nor discount one as a fiction. What was once just Nikki is now Nikki/Susan and this entangled compound woman is terrified. She begins to harangue Devon/Billy—screaming for him to look at her and recognize who she is. However, definitive identification is now impossible and we see the confusion of this inescapable conflation registering on Devon/Billy’s face as Nikki/Susan tells him about the AXXON N. door. She speaks both as Susan in a scene in the film-within-a-film and as Nikki describing a scene she was filming. “It’s a story that happened yesterday, but I know it’s tomorrow,” says Nikki/Susan, as time opens up into a loop.

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