HOTEL ROOM

Hotel room is a trilogy of short episodes for television, from 1992. Two of the episodes, "Tricks" and "Blackout" are directed by David Lynch and written by Barry Gifford, while "Getting rid of Harry" is directed by James Signorelli. In this case, I will focus only on the two directed by the filmmaker of "Eraserhead". The common thread of the three parts is the setting: room 603 of a hotel, which hosts different stories in different eras (although, as often happens in Lynch, temporality seems to be a rather undefined element). Fundamental is Gifford's contribution to the construction of these new Lynchian visions: especially the first episode closely recalls, for themes and situations, the subsequent "Lost Highway", which saw an even closer collaboration between the two. Two tense and vibrant stories, two plastic canvases of human despair. The anguish of what cannot be understood. The unease of those who have understood too much. The director wraps the characters in a dreamlike atmosphere (the departure of the lights; the walls that hastily enclosed the always-existing space of room 603). The logic of the dream is ironclad. It pulverizes what we blindly insist on calling rational. In a key scene of the series Twin Peaks, Laura Palmer reveals in a dream to Agent Cooper the name of her murderer, whispering it in his ear. Upon waking, the memory has already vanished. Discreet.