How many times have you woken from a dream, only to find you can only remember fragments? The faces are familiar, and the places are real…but things don’t makes sense and seconds after you’ve awoken, you find that details of the dream are already becoming hazy. That sensation, my friends, is akin to watching MULHOLLAND DRIVE. It’s disjointed, it’s brilliant, and it’s the next film up for the 1001 Movies Club.

My thoughts on David Lynch’s mind-fuck can be found below

I’m going to try and explain what the film is about, however I’m not entirely sure myself. What I can tell you is that half of the film is about a young film director named Adam (Justin Theroux) trying to get started on his latest project. I say “trying” because he is continually the target of a shake-down by some truly strange gangsters. They aren’t trying to extort a nickle out of him; they are only trying to influence his casting decisions. They insist that he put an actress of their choosing in the lead role of his next film. Why? Don’t know. Why does Adam refuse? Don’t know that either.

The other half of the film – a largely unrelated half by the way – is about Betty (Naomi Watts). To say she arrives in L.A. bright-eyed is putting it mildly. She steps off the plane from Back Woods, Canada still exuding that new-car-smell. She’s intent on becoming an actress you see, and has even talked her aunt into letting her crash at her aunt’s empty apartment while she goes about auditioning.

However, when Betty arrives at her aunt’s seemingly empty apartment, there’s a surprise waiting. “Rita” (Laura Elena Harring) has snuck in and is seeking a bit of refuge. She’s been in an accident and now can’t even remember her name. Betty takes pity on her, takes her in, and takes her by the hand as they embark on a Nancy Drew-esque trek around Los Angeles in hopes of learning the truth.

These are the two cohesive plot lines. Seem pretty straight forward don’t they? Well they are, however every ten minutes at least, the movie picks up the remote and changes the channel to “Weirdsville Hour presented by David Lynch”. Sometimes it’s amusing, and we happily go along with it…other times not so much. It was actually suggested that I make a post listing all of my unanswered questions, but I decided against that because my list just seemed to go on and on. I will ask this though – what’s with the scary-ass elderly couple?

The first time I watched this film, I was left quite puzzled. In watching it again, I tried to look closer in the hopes of putting the puzzle together. What I finally noticed was that much of the film seems to have a deep undercurrent of dreaming. Betty calls Los Angeles “a dream place”, and Rita later expresses that she’ll be okay if she can just get some sleep. In an ironic twist, the film really takes a turn for the nutty when someone calls out “Hey Pretty Girl, time to wake up”. There’s even a moment which seems to be taking place in a dream of a dream of a dream.

Perhaps it’s this thread of sleeping and dreaming that explains much of the film’s absurdity. Sure it seems odd that Betty reaches into her purse and pulls out a curious blue box, but who hasn’t had a dream where they are frantically trying to make a phone call using a salmon (…really…just me?…alrightee then…). It’s in dreams and fantasies that our brains become unhinged, where the real and the surreal come together at will, and it’s in this universe that MULHOLLAND DRIVE seems to exist.

Lynch isn’t interested in telling a straight-up noir-esque L.A. story. He wants to set it in that place in the subconscious between sleep and terror; the place that allows him to swap items, names, and faces in and out of the tale at will. It’s a decision that immediately widens his canvas and allows him to paint with colours not usually found on the palette. It allows him to create scenes of sublime beauty, such as the Silencio Club scene and the achingly moving performance of Llorando we witness. It also allows him to create scenes of unnerving terror, such as the film’s finale which was so dark and hyperactive that I could barely keep up with it.

Allowing the film to exist in that fleeting moment we all experience when we first wake up makes it beautiful and strange. Lynch challenges us to put together a puzzle of identity, murder, and ambition, but hasn’t been kind enough to include a picture on the box of puzzle pieces for us to work with. It’s an extraordinary film…and I still don’t completely understand it.

But Ryan, Is It List-Worthy?… Hard to say actually. It’s a film that appeals to me both for what I can take from it, and for what I want to take from it but can’t seem to wrestle out of its hand. However I fear the audience at large would just find it too weird.

13 Replies to “Back to Basics – MULHOLLAND DRIVE”

  1. Its strange when people blog about Mulholland Dr. they always seem to pick that same photograph of Laura Harring and Melissa George, I did too!

    From the article it sounds like you have only seen it twice, it took three of four screenings before I had a firm grasp of what I think is going on. I won’t ruin it for you by telling you what I think but it’s probably time to look at David Lynch tips. They are on my blog, I think I posted the link in a previous comment.

  2. Lovely review. I remember reading the wikipedia article for the movie after I watched it and it helped me piece certain elements together. There are still plenty of unanswered questions though!

  4. @ Number Six… Not too many still shots from that movie online, so I'm not surprised a lot of people pick it. Plus…y'know…hot.

    I've seen it I think four times total now, however about seven years went by in between viewing number three and viewing number four.

    You're right, I don't have a firm grasp of what's going on…but in a way I sorta like it that way. MULHOLLAND reminds me of a song where the lyrics don't make sense.

    Pardon me while I go read your post…

    @ Alex… Had the article up while I was writing, but such comprehensive info wasn't around the first time I watched this sucker!

    @ Andrew… Why not?

  5. I'm a bit with Andrew on this one. I couldn't get a copy in time for the 1001 movie club so I won't be watching it for today, but I still am very wary about watching it. Interpretation films very seldom agree with me…

  6. Apparently I can no longer avoid seeing this based on my distaste for "Wild Hearts." (To this day I've only seen that opening scene ONCE.) Most reviewers whose opinions I hold in high esteem — do I have to say that that includes you? I hope not — find much to like about this film. My curiosity is piqued.

  8. I don't know, it's not just that it's an interpretation film: I look some good allegories every now and then, but I just remembered it being too much. But I'm going to vow to see it before the end of February at least, and reassess.

  9. Yeah, I was a little weirded out by the elderly couple too. I just watched this movie for the first time, and I've got my review on my blog. You're the first fellow Torontonian I've met in the film blogosphere.

  10. @ Univarn… I quote George Michael "You gotta have faith".

    @ Meredith… Aww shucks! Lynch is indeed an acquired taste, but I'd venture that this will suit your palette far more than WILD AT HEART. Give it a watch – I'm curious to know what you think.

    @ Number Six… That post made me feel amazingly film illiterate. Thanks for pointing it out to me…I'm off to go hang my head in shame now.

    @ Andrew… Give it another look. Can't wait to read your thoughts on it.

    @ Sasha… Old people that are a little off give me the heebie jeebies sometimes. These people are pretty high on the all-time list.

  11. Yes, dreaming is the key to Mulholland Dr., both in terms of its actual storyline and in terms of the mood and mindsight in which it's best approached.

    I think this is probably the greatest film of the 00s, and that it's reputation will only continue to grow. It captures something, an ineffable quality that most movies can only hint at or glimpse in a fleeting moment, on a subconscious level. Mulholland Dr. luxuriates in the aura, the promised land that even the dreamiest films usually can only point to. In this sense the story is only the means to an end, the physical stuff you smoke, not the trip you take.

    Basically, the movie's storyline could belong to an E! True Hollywood Story (spoilers ahead):

    Bitter failed actress is dumped by lesbian movie star – and lashes out by hiring a hit man to kill her former lover. Just another sordid tale from Hollywood.

    But by turning it into a surreal, nearly mythical dream Lynch transforms the melodramatic pathos into the stuff of grand, epic tragedy. And it's a great achievement, particularly the way he structures it so that the mythologized version of the story comes first, framing the way we view the more superficially mundane reality. We get the emotional truth before the outward appearance, which is probably the reverse of the way most storytelling works. Quite brilliant, in my opinion.

    And if nothing else, the elderly people are there to present one of the creepiest scenes I've seen in a movie: when they continue to grin ear-to-ear in the car, even after they've left Naomi Watts' side – it only serves to point up the falseness of her cheery facade – their encouraging grins are merely masks, and her naivitee is desperately willed rather than natural.

    I think this is Lynch's masterpiece.

  12. Excellent review Mad! Loved the part about making a phone call with a salmon! We all have to accept that the film may not have any explanation and just experience it for what it is.

  13. @ Movieman… Wowsers. If I could give out an award for the most thought-out and intuitive comment I've ever seen on this blog, you'd win in a walk.

    Thanks for that!

    @ Castor… Glad I could amuse. funny thing though, in posting about a movie on the same day as everybody else, i suddenly feel like an awful lot added up in this movie that I just wasn't able to calculate.

    Then again, I must ask to anyone who's still following these comments – did any of y'all understand the whole movie the first time you saw it?

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