Here’s how:
What is a film about nothing?
While watching the film the audience shouldn’t feel like it’s about nothing. Don’t tell them it’s about nothing when they’re handing over money for the ticket. Until the very last minute it’s kept a secret. You feel you’re watching a story with a definite ending.
Definite ending
Either they lived happily ever after or they all got hacked into different pieces – except the virgin.
The typical reaction one expects from a successful film about nothing is the question: “That’s it? Where’s the rest?”
The answer: In your head. And if it isn’t there, it isn’t anywhere.
It’s like money in your bank account. A movie about nothing will have all kinds of scenes around your bank account, but will never tell you how much money you have.
Some call it intellectual stimulation. Others ask for their money back.
How do you make a film about nothing?
You start by believing your film is about something. If you believe it your cast and crew will believe it, too.
The next step is to actually have a great plot, but not the ending. Or, you shouldn’t care about the ending.
In Chungking Express the first story is about a boy who meets a girl at the end. The second story is about a boy and a girl who have found each other, they practically spend every day together, but can’t admit their love or even acknowledge it for some strange reason.
Every scene in the film drives the narrative forward. In the first plot the mystery girl’s mixed up in some dangerous business. The boy’s a cop. So we’re expecting fireworks, right? There aren’t any. They end up in a bar talking. And by the way, don’t worry about spoilers, you can’t spoil a film that doesn’t have an ending.
The second plot is about another cop and a different girl. They talk every day. She breaks in many times, cleans his clothes and his apartment and buys his groceries. He catches her twice, but they’re still confused. Are they? Aren’t they? The answer: We don’t know how much money is in your bank account.
At this point I’m wishing to do to both of them what David Lynch did to me in Lost Highway.
I actually have a theory on Lost Highway. I’ll tell you at the end.
In the Lost Highway you have a story about two male protagonists. One is accused of murdering his wife, and the other runs away with his wife. And she hates both of them.
There’s lots of mystery. We follow these mysteries until we don’t follow them anymore. What makes a great movie about nothing is, you’ll stick around to the end because until that point the filmmaking is riveting.
By the way, both Chungking Express and Lost Highway are good films. They have great moments. Especially Chungking Express. One could argue Mulholland Drive is a better movie about nothing than Lost Highway.
The movies don’t have much in common. Lost Highway is plot driven. Chungking Express is just scenes strung together with such skill you still think there’s a plot, even when there isn’t.
The best master of the film about nothing must be Michaelangelo Antonioni. Antonioni made two classic films about nothing. Both are mysteries the protagonists try to solve.
In L’Avventura, a woman goes missing from a picnic on an island. The two people who love her spend the rest of the movie looking for her. In Blow Up the protagonist possibly photographs a murder in a park, and spends the rest of the movie trying to solve it.
I won’t reveal the endings, but in the end, you realize the movie isn’t what you signed up for. You could intellectualize it and try to distort meaning from it if you want. For some people that’s the definition of an art film. It is supposed to stimulate discussion and debate.
If that is the criterion, then Star Wars, Bad Boys and practically any film that’s marketed will qualify. Which film would have the best debates? The one with a lack of ending or the one in which Hans Solo returns?
Ultimately, though, I like all the movies mentioned in this video, despite me being frustrated by the lack of an ending. What I’ve realized is:
You can make a movie about anything as long as it’s interesting.
The most important ingredient for a film about nothing is a director who has something unique to share and the skill to share it through the medium of cinema.
You watch it and think: Oh, that’s how life is. Didn’t know I could see life this way.
Instead of debates with other people, a good art movie generates internal debates and introspection. You realize a little bit about yourself, you see a glimpse of life you didn’t know existed, and you are entertained for the duration of the film.
What’s wrong with that?
My version of what happened in Lost Highway
Lost Highway is basically a story told in mixed order of events. You have Fred, who’s married to Renee. She has a life from before she met him. She’s involved in the porno world with a kingpin known as Eddy ‘Dick’ Laurant. Maybe he’s Dick Laurant because he was a porn star himself back in the day.
She still sleeps with him, and has an affair with a kid named Pete who works in a garage. Pete also fixes Eddy’s car. Eddy suspects her of sleeping around, but can’t prove it. Either that or he likes Pete too much so doesn’t kill him right away.
Renee sleeps with Eddy one last time at a motel. To his bad luck Fred has followed them there and attacks him. He drives away with Eddy in the trunk. The mystery man watches from another room and follows them. In the desert Eddy surprises Fred, but the mystery man saves the day and kills Eddy. His body is left in the desert. This is the first time Fred meets the mystery man.
The mystery man then stalks Fred with video tapes of his house. More on that later.
Later they have a party where we meet Andy, who’s supposedly the pimp. The mystery man is also at the party, and he tries to remind Fred they have met earlier, but he can’t remember. He hands over his phone to Fred, so it could just be him playing mind games. Maybe he’s slipping drugs into Fred’s drink so Fred won’t remember anything.
This is why Fred asks Andy who the mystery man is, and Andy answers: (friend of the Dick Laurant).
Then Fred remembers Dick Laurant is dead, but Andy is shocked to hear that. Dick has probably been missing for a couple of days, and his body is in the desert. So nobody knows about it yet.
At the party Renee and Andy talk, and she gets the idea to steal from him. She goes by the name of Alice with Pete, and she asks Pete to rob Andy so they can run away with some cash. She realizes Dick Laurant is dead, so she’s free now. She just has to trick Pete into going along with her plan.
Pete and Renee manage to kill Andy through an accident. Note that neither Pete nor Fred are killers, and do not actually kill anybody. Dick Laurant is killed by the mystery man, not Fred.
Anyway, Pete goes home to collect his stuff, and his girlfriend’s there. They make a scene, he behaves very strangely, and runs away with Renee.
They drive away and she tells Pete they need to go to the desert. Once there, they realize the mystery man isn’t home yet, and they make love to pass the time.
Unfortunately for Renee she tells Pete she doesn’t care for him, and she probably nails him on the head so he loses consciousness.
The mystery man arrives and realizes she’s behind this whole mess. He tricks her into returning home.
At home, Fred is in a fugue state. The mystery man enters and kills Renee. He cuts her up into pieces and records the whole thing. As you can see, when Fred is crying over his wife’s body, somebody is recording it.
Pete wakes up and walks all the way back to the highway. There, the mystery man finds him.
The police arrest Fred and he’s sentenced to death. The mystery man uses his influence to bribe the guards to change Fred for Pete in the middle of the night. How do I know this? Because the guards make a strange joke just before.
(which wife killer?). So right after that scene Pete takes Fred’s place, and the two complicit guards don’t say a thing. Of course the police have to let Pete go, because he’s not wanted for anything yet.
The police tail him, and he leads them to Andy’s home where they find his prints.
By the way, from the jail Fred is taken to the mystery man’s house. He has to hide from the cops. There he realizes the truth, and runs away.
He returns to his house. The police have been staking out the place. Both Pete and Fred end up as wanted men on the run.
Case closed.
What do you think? Can you pick holes in my argument?
Did you know David Lynch has a YouTube channel? Check it out.
