lynch unfurls a hazily disturbing, dreamlike scheme behind dark, saturated curtains and precise, surreal blocking. each frame is a tableau of dread. isabella rossellini haunts the film with raw, aching vulnerability. her presence is both luminous (dark hair against her pale blue eyeshadow and crimson lips) and shattered ("he put his disease in me"), like a candle's flame flickering in a velvet void.

isolation, captured against pale hues of a fading rural America and the loneliness it reeks of. so deeply human, it claws past flesh and bone - beyond the raw, red architecture of the body - and burrows into the fragile, ravaged corners of the psyche.

CLEMENTINE: This is it, Joel. It's going to be gone soon.

JOEL: I know.

CLEMENTINE: What do we do?

JOEL: Enjoy it.

holy fuck

Baz Lurhmann scribbled on every nuance of the novel with flashy opulence, smushed them into a ball, threw it across the river between the prohibition era and the 2000s, then enlarged it on a huge screen, forcing everyone to look at it through a maximalist theatrical lense. what the fuck does jayz know about art deco and prolonged yearning?