![]() Showgirls isn’t The Wizard of Oz for too many critics – although as a road movie leading to Las Vegas it might qualify for some. Scripted by Joe Eszterhas, the movie somehow became essential viewing for film nerds. In 2019, Tribeca premiered another film in this vein of broad cinematic reconsideration with You Don’t Nomi, Jeffrey McHale’s reconsideration of Showgirls, Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 tale of a young woman seeking her fortune in Las Vegas. I can only imagine what Philippe would have done with Fassbinder and The Wizard of Oz. Perfect for film critics who want Lynch’s work to be understood on their terms. Somehow all of this - and more, we should assume - is linked to the shady ambiguity of a director, Lynch, who is notorious for, among other things, never saying what any of his work means. Think of clicking red shoes, a laughing witch, the killing of another witch for which Dorothy is applauded rather than punished, an old man’s confession that, despite appearances of power, he’s really just an impostor behind a curtain (not a shower curtain this time), and a journey home that doesn’t seem headed there. Waters is at his best here, eloquent and gossipy, speaking as a cinephile who makes movies. No surprise, these speakers, whom you hear but don’t see, supply a lot about the influence of The Wizard of Oz on themselves. Those arguments are provided by Amy Nicholson, John Waters, Karyn Kusama, and other filmmaker fans. All the while, we hear arguments for Oz’s influence on Lynch’s films over five decades. ![]() Lynch/Oz aims at grandeur and more than a little gentle mockery, raising the curtain on a host in exaggerated stage makeup, then leading us through almost two hours of scenes from the most popular film ever made - at least according to a scientific investigation conducted by Italian researchers. Autopsy might be a a better word - deconstruction in antiseptic black-and-white. To call 78/52 the dissection of a scene would be an understatement. The numbers in the film’s title represent the camera setups in the three-minute scene and the number of cuts Hitchcock made. Philippe, the Swiss director who in 2017 gave us 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene, a chillingly meticulous dissection of the immortal sequence from Psycho in which the runaway secretary Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is stabbed to death by the innkeeper Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins). David Lynch and The Wizard of Oz? This sounds like one of those cooking shows where a chef is given three improbable ingredients and asked to prepare a meal in two hours. As always, the documentaries at the festival were where you found the best films. ![]() The Tribeca Film Festival ends this weekend. ![]()
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