Continuing his assault on the at-best ill-defined boundary between reality and fiction, David Lynch has opened a nightclub in Paris based on Club Silencio from the apocalyptically strange Mulholland Dr.. While the real-world Club Silencio is seemingly devoid of familiar Lynch iconography (dwarves, red lamps, curtains, Laura Dern and a pervasive sense of aching postmodern despair), the entire club has been bespoke designed by Lynch over the last two years and it includes the following awesome pieces of furniture:
Lynch's Tati-esque take on cinema seating with sinister lamp extensions:
A Kahlo-esque acoustic monstrosity entitled "Grateful Vanity":
What are we to make of all this though? Certainly the club is beautifully appointed throughout, right down to the dark, cavernous bathrooms:
However, fascinating and delightful and above all
ironic as all this is, Club Silencio should not exist. I say this not because of some overly abstruse theoretical point about it necessarily failing, in terms of being the physical manifestation of an impossible psychological scape. Nor that it is the "real" copy of a club from a film which is itself a condensation of "Hollywood" set smack in the middle of Paris. Nor do I have a problem with it being a private members club charging up to 1 500 euros for a year's membership, the first in France. Nor that it is built on 142 Rue de Montmartre, where Moliere is buried, where Zola wrote J'Accuse, and just across the road from where Socialist leader Jean Jaures was assassinated trying to stop the First World War. But then, I'm not French.
No, my problem with this is that Club Silencio took Lynch two years from inception to finished product, and the three years before that he had been focusing on art, with the occasional (admittedly brilliant) foray into music and bizarre sideline into coffee-making (why?). Now, it has been 5 years since Inland Empire and I can understand how making a film like that would take it out of you but come on! Creating a solid version of Club Silencio is all well and good but I won't go to see it - it's too expensive, too far, too exclusive - and that saddens me. It saddens me that David Lynch is creating something weird and beautiful right now and I won't be able to slowly lose my mind to it. I'm not saying he's sold out, because that's a ridiculous phrase, but he does seem to erecting a paywall around his subconscious and I believe, as citizens of world, we all deserve access to that fucked-up meting pot of crazy. Make more films David Lynch!
Oh, and here's the bar:
