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After his enjoyable trundle along the B road that was The Straight Story, Mulholland Dr. sees David Lynch taking the slip road back into Lost Highway territory, with mixed, if undoubtedly typical, results. Originally intended as a pilot for a TV series (what kind of US network executive would give this the green light? Presumably an unemployed one), Lynch reimagined and enlarged Mulholland Dr. once financiers Canal Plus stepped in and the result is part mystery, part Hollywood satire, wholly Lynchian.
Betty (Naomi Watts) wins a dance competition and a travels to Hollywood to stay in the home of her aunt, where she is met by 'Rita' (Laura Elena Harring) who has stolen into the apartment and is suffering from amnesia following an attempt on her life on Mulholland Dr. At Betty's insistence they set out to discover Rita's true identity. Running parallel to this main story is that of Adam (Justin Theroux), a tyro film director having trouble with his backers (questionable legality and sanity), the lead actress for his new film (he doesn't have one) and his wife (sleeping with the pool cleaner).
There's no need to reveal more of the plot, if indeed there is any point in revealing this much. For much of its lengthy running time (146mins), Mulholland Dr. is surprisingly, and grippingly, a formally conventional picture, albeit one leavened by surreal Lynchian touches: the mobster who can't abide less than excellent espresso; the geeky physical comedy of Adam being thrown out of his own house by his wife's lover; his subsequent eerie assignation with a Stetson wearing hoodlum. One suspects Lynch deliberately toned down his excesses - and perhaps the material's possibilities - for TV as, despite echoing Lost Highway's love of dark domestic spaces and inexplicable plot turns, it never really goes for the jugular in the way the earlier picture did (never have apartment corridors been as terrifying).
Instead, the movie takes what, on first encounter, appears to be wilfully wacky turn in its final half-hour, with changes of identity, Hellraiser-style briac-a-brac and - yes! - tiny devilish old age pensioners all being visited upon Betty. One's immediate reaction is to assume we are now in Betty's unconscious - but this is to deny the possibility that we are now, in fact, in Betty's conscious state and that it is the preceding two hours that are actually this dream. Roll with this, and the final thirty minutes of the film actually become a portrait of a disintegrating mind every bit as plausible as Polanski's Repulsion. Even if one doesn't buy this reading, there's no doubt that the picture as a whole is fundamentally a meditation on the very nature of personal identity and one's 'knowability'.
Extremely well-performed by a relatively unknown cast and with a handful of stand-out scenes, if Mulholland Dr. feels a little warmed-over, it's nevertheless a notable piece of work in what has been a pretty thin year for American cinema. The mainstream might have abandoned Lynch in favour of other oddballs du jour, but he still has something to say.
Reviewed by John Atkinson
Reader comments about Mulholland Drive
nayrb snessnaj (bryljan@netscape.net) writes:
So...uhh....could I get some Cliff notes for this? who and what represents this and that....god=midget with mike.....devil=latenight theater emcee.....death=nerdish looking cowboy appearing beneath the georgia o'keefe skull....and all those other lynchlike walkabouts????
Irina von wte (Email address withheld) writes:
No shit, very fancy and actually interesting. The film has all Lynchies items on the reck,-the midget (thought he was the devil), stupid police men (just for general entertainment) beautiful women staring eahch other meaningfully in the shadows (even naked)
I thought the film was about "urban evil" and that the blue box was the late night theatre where you ended up after you'd sold your soul to the devil. How these thihgs collide in the film I have now idea, but the thing I learned is that "curiosity kills the cat in the film. and the gals had it quite good untill the got in too deep.
what ever that means.
still working it out though...
Bryan cockerill (Email address withheld) writes:
"It doesn't make a lick of sense"
Kieron Bakewell (wakeybakey@hotmail.com) writes:
Recommended to me by academics and artists. Very clever to get away with such a film, which leaves the audience totally confused yet strangely satisfied. A portrait on the destruction of life within hollywood?
Derek Baldwin (DJBNJBaol.com) writes:
Wouldn't want to offer more than a provisional opinion on this one, having only seen it last night. Certainly a very creative reappropriation of the original TV material. For a Lynch film there was very little, possibly no, smoking of cigarettes and I don't think I picked up a single profanity as the good folks at www.capalert.com (their reviewer didn't wait for the end) like to refer to them. Will need to view once or twice more at least to get the narrative thread fully and to pick out more of the in-jokes. I noticed, for example, a slide for "BAC DISTRIBUTION" at the beginning and wondered if this was a pun about ABC (the network who took fright at the original material) as might've been the principal's names: Adam, Betty, Clarissa. Overall: weird, typically Lynchean, emotionally engaging and intellectually challenging. Fabulous use of sound as is to be expected from Lynch's films and the eerie music by the now-regular Angelo Badalamenti (who plays the guy who spits the coffee out if I'm not mistaken). I go along with your reviewer's reading of the film and recommend people go visit salon.com which has a very interesting and well worked-out extended article on the film together with reader feedback. It's called " Everything you were afraid to ask about "Mulholland Drive" " But I think your average cinema-goer, especially judging by the comments of those who attended the same screening I did, will regard this film as a kick in the teeth.
max (Email address withheld) writes:
Absolutely great!
Lynch made it fantastic, as usual.
Try to breath in tact of film - amazing!
j (Email address withheld) writes:
This movie is banal, predictable and boring. Good lesbo scene though.
Mal (Email address withheld) writes:
An incredible peice of work. Some will moan cynically about how a film ought to tell a 'straight story' and write this off as pretentious and 'weird-for-weird's-sake' - but veiwing this film with an open mind, especially as regards the purpose and art of 'film-making', is vastly rewarding.
Apus (Email address withheld) writes:
Hated it more than any film I've ever seen. But, that in itself says something about lynch's power. Still thought it was over indulgent and ridiculous.
jgausten (Email address withheld) writes:
Without a shadow a doubt one of the most exhilerating and mysterious things I've ever seen. I'm obsessed with this thing. I've seen it 3 times already and I chip a little more away from the stone each time. If you're totally lost after just seeing it once, give it another cahnce and pay attention to EVERYTHING! When you finally put all the pieces together, it will blow your mind.
Whaa! (Neo_redpill@hotmail.com) writes:
Wait a minute I thought this was a lesbian film.....ohhh no its not? You see that was the hook! The second hook was weird 'Davie'. So I thought hey lets watch some WIERD LESBO ACTION! The kiss was great,, very good..yeah.. Sorry where was I!!...The film is so hypnotic, strange, so cryptic. I thought if I payed attention I would understand the film ..but no...I was fixated on the lesbian action! Did I say the kiss was great! oh yeah I did.. I would guess that the film was sweet Betty's perfect dream/illusion/fantasy or the Holly dream I suppose. Who gets everything she wanted in the beginning of the film, You only realise in the last half hour! The underlining story of the Director who defies the system to not cast the suggested girl subsequently destroys his life but not before he talks to the cowboy. Now what the hell was all that about? Are we all controlled by some unseen force or some manipulative actions of the system that is so hopelessly dependant on its unknown purpose?? or was it Bettys dream?? I am more confused than I was before I started writting this review....I liked the film not because it had some great lesbian kissing scenes since the fim Cruel Intentions But the film has broken the traditional movie story line, with conflicting realities, trying to make you figure out some sense. You would have to be much more open minded than me to appreciate the complexity of this film... that would make you think over and over ..and say.. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS!!
Lobster (daveyc2@hotmail.com) writes:
Fantastic use of music throughout the film - extremely confusing, notably accompanied by groups of people outside the cinema scratching their heads and discussing the plot furiously. Basic summary (I think!): The film is a comment on Hollywood; good is turned to bad, light to dark, helpless to manipulative, and innocent to evil because of the corruption surrounding the industry, and the depseration and insecurity brought in by "wannabe" film-stars. The film actually starts in the middle of the story, the story ends in the middle of the film, then the end of the film goes right back to the start of the story, get that?!? Story appears to be: nice innocent girl becomes lesbian after meeting amnesia-suffering vulnerable woman, but this turns out to be a concussion fuelled dream by the amnesiac who is the reason the nice-girl slides down into a moral oblivion becoming a hit-man ordering protitute after she has lost numerous parts in films to said amnesiac (who also used to be her girlfriend), thus shattering original plot and making for some excellent contrasts at the end of the film. Plenty of Lynch-ness thrown in throughout to confuse - similarities so close within each sub-plot they seem to make it one story, but it isn't - e.g. in the dream the girls visit no. 12 and are re-directed to no. 17, then a similar situation in the real-life ending where the new occupant of no. 12 tells the occupant of no.17 she has had visitors, there are completely different visits but viewers automatically link the two, thus confusing even further the chronology of the film etc. etc! Great - a must see, at least three times to get to grips with it!!!
Nadmaster2002 (Email address withheld) writes:
I'll be truthful. I've never seen a David lynch movie before, I don't give a shit if it was originally for T.V. Let's stop talking about Lynch's life story and previous movies and talk about Mulholland Drive.
When I got to the end of the movie I felt like I might have enjoyed it but for no apparent reason. So I looked on the net for help. My first idea being that maybe Lynch did the same the thing to make this film as Deep Purple did to write lyrics to Black Night. That is, they got drunk and found out what words rhymed. The end result is something that seems like it should make sense but doesn't really.
While it seemed like a plausible idea that Lynch had gotten drunk and stuck all these ideas he had together it led me to another idea.
Now I love poetry, to read and to write. As I've been writing poetry I know more and more that for the majority of people, the meaning of the poem doesn't mean a thing to most people. I even wrote a poem about. People just like to hear words and taken in their sound. So I started writing poems designed to spark pre-exsisting thoughts rather than create them. Perhaps Lynch's loose fitting ideas here aren't meant to make up a coherent story but rather give us short sketch like fragments that spark our pre-existing thoughts. Like a two and a half hour poem that, while doesn't make much sense to the most of us, is enjoyed by not understanding it and observing the different sketches as they come.
Of course with poetry the thing to remember is that everyone enjoys a poem diffently, therefore the movie means something different to each person, largely because we all have different pre-existing thoughts.
someone (dcyspm@yahoo.com) writes:
Lynch directs as well as anyone. Individual scenes were very impressive.
I don't know how anyone can expect a bunch of disjointed scenes initially intended to be fleshed out into a series to make sense as a movie. The point of the beginning of the movie is to leave lots of open plot lines for future episodes. As no episodes were made, and Lynch only had about an hour to try to tie up loose ends (and that he probably kept scenes for their standalone appeal than for plot contribution) what could you expect? Impressive.
I know some people who think it's genius, and that they just don't understand it. You could say that about anything that doesn't quite work. Each segment is great, the whole does not fit, but how could it?
brendan (Email address withheld) writes:
it was good
i was a bit tired when i watched it and i dozed in the last 20 minutes which is when i was hoping to work it all out, but my son said it didn't matter as it was incomprehensible anyway..but i will see it again, just because it was interesting to watch and in the hope of working it out
Erasmus Napier (Email address withheld) writes:
well, your chap above ranting about deep purple and drink just inspired me to get hammered and watch the bloody thing. i'm a bottle of pinotage and a carafe of shiraz to the better, and having watched the whole jesus of a movie again, i can't make it sit up like the doll it is. maybe it's that the later duo like to role play with the others, and it's all about wanting to make it to the toilet in time not to wee yourself. hence the espresso theme.
crazy horse (Email address withheld) writes:
hi guys, i couldnt help but notice that some people havent figured out something really rather basic about the plot, so now i will proceed to explain it.
Watch closely at the beginning, we see the camera fall towards a pillow, this means someone is GOING TO SLEEP. The story that follows, placing Betty in the dominant position in the relationship and in the victimised position in her career IS A DREAM. after she goes into the box thing, SHE WAKES UP. got that? now, if you realise, her real life is nowhere near as romantic as her dream life, with a role reversal in the couple - Rita is in truth the dominant half while betty is the hanger on, 'rita' is even ashamed of 'betty' enough to bring her in the back entrance and is disloyal enough to cheat on her.
As for the meaning of the film's quirky quirkiness, im really quite unsure, ask some of these guys maybe, but a lot of the stuff that we see in the dream state is 'Betty's' fantasy of how she would have liked her life to have turned out, or excuses for how her life has infact turned out. The final half an hour of the film shows the truth of her life and her downfall as she is squashed by Hollywood's reality.
Sharaf (Email address withheld) writes:
Sure crazy horse. If Diane was dreaming the whole thing, how did she know she would shoot herself later after she woke up and be dead in the position in which Camilla and Betty found her when they went to apartment 17??
Sharaf (Email address withheld) writes:
For the nitpickers, that should be Rita and Betty, not Camilla and Betty.
Patrick (Patrickctrombly@yahoo.com) writes:
Mulholland Drive is the Jesus story and Paulist (Nietzsche would say that post-crucifixion Christian theology can't be attributed to Christ) theology, presented beautifully, in a modern context, with gender of God, Christ and Judas switched. There are dozens of symbols/clues, which itself is consistent with the story's being a "mystery." I will address only some of these but after reading the below watch the movie again, and the clues will jump out at you from every inch of the screen - jewelry, birds of paradise, pictures and cowboy hats on walls, apartment numbers, coffee table books, coffee, shapes formed by window slats, telephones, electric lights, t-shirts, seemingly mundane dialogue like "bro" and "man," colors, trees, altitude...
In this movie we are presented again with a familiar message: that physical life is fleeting - a dream. It is not permanent. It is not real. It is only a dream - however beautiful, it is a tape. It is, however, also an audition. It is real in the sense that each individual is given a choice and is judged in the real world based upon the choice made in the dream world. Individuals have only so much control over their script, but how one reads/lives it determines his eternal condition, and collectively, man's "attitude" determines his destiny.
Adam is man - Adam. He is the Director - he has been given free will but chooses wrongly, even after being reminded of the appropriate choice by his agent and the Castigliani brothers, who have recently landed in Hollywood.
As a result of Adam's choice, "everything" must be "shut down." Adam drives "home" to the beautiful house with blue and pink bushes (trees) - blue symbolizing virtue, the sacred, truth, the immortal, and pink symbolizing jealousy, the physical, the mortal. Adam catches his wife in bed with Jake (who wears a shirt with a picture of a snake on the front, and who works for "Gene Clean" pool cleaning company - his job is to clean the gene pool), and experiences jealousy. He chooses pink - he covers his wife's jewelry - Lynch throughout the movie uses jewelry as a symbol of divinity - in pink paint, a symbol of human jealousy. In the process he is covered in pink paint as well, and is exiled. His wife calls him a "bastard" and says, "damn you Adam." A while later, when the mob comes looking for Adam, and states that the house is Adam's, the wife says, "like hell it is." Adam drives to "Cooky's downtown" - notice the picture on his wall.
There is a car accident - and somehow Rita/Camilla, a popular actress, survives, though she loses her jewelry and her memory in the process. The word is passed via calls to telephones under electric lights - the girl is still missing. Missing from the automobile - her tomb. The girl makes her way to Havenhurst (Heaven), and rests under a garden of birds of paradise before sneaking into apartment 12. Ruth does not recognize Rita/Camilla even though she is right under the table on which lies Ruth's key. Ruth has chosen the physical world - the mortal world - and can no longer see the spiritual.
Open Betty's story with Betty landing - landing - in Hollywood. Ruth becomes Betty/Diane - becomes mortal. Both Ruth and Diane, who in the physical world was Camilla's friend and follower, pack and leave apartment number 12 - they both "left the 12." Notice the same set of cowboy hats hanging on the wall.
Coco, "the Manager," of "Havenhurst," with all the heavy but tasteful jewelry, is God, "in all my living glory." Adam, upon being again reminded, this time by the Cowboy (Christ resurrected - the raised skull and the flickering light symbolize "the resurrection and the light"), that if he changes his attitude he can come along for the ride, ultimately chooses Camilla (Christ) - and "the Judge" returns his "pool" to him.
Adam refers to Coco as "my mother" at the dinner party for which Diane is late. The dinner party is, of course, the last supper. Hence the big glass of wine between Adam and Camilla. Hence the kiss, symbolizing Diane's betrayal. Hence the long table. Hence Coco's scornful reference to "the movies."
Dan Hedaya is Lucifer. He wears a t-shirt with an x'd-out cross on the front. The long-haired man is the Son of God. He has rented office space in a low-rise, and arranged the accident to counter Hedaya's murder - notice the white car crashing into the black car. Dan Hedaya steals the phone book - the message of the Camilla's "resurrection" had been passed by telephone. Hedaya sets up the hit on Camilla. He later asks a prostitute if she has seen Camilla - why would a prostitute know the whereabouts of a Hollywood actress? Jesus associated with prostitutes. Notice that the prostitute rejects Hedaya's offer of a meal from the restaurant that served "pinks." Hedaya kills the Son of God, the "Health+" woman in the office next door - he tries to do so quietly, and tries to make it look like a suicide, but absurdly fails to cover his crime.
Ruth comes to Hollywood as Betty but discovers herself as Diane. Camilla comes to Hollywood as Rita. Diane is an aspiring actress, initially a competitor but ultimately a protege or follower of Camilla Rhodes. Diane becomes jealous of Camilla and has her killed. Betty and Rita love each other, physically and spiritually. They both engage in a quest to find themselves and each other. Rita/Camilla is horrified when she sees the corpse in Diane Selwyn's apartment - horrified at the mortality/depravity of man, of the physical. She knows what happened - and what must happen. She is at once horrified by what Betty/Diane has done and by the repurcussions to Betty/Diane and to man. Betty tells her, "I know what you have to do, but let me do it," and dresses Rita up in a blonde wig, resembling an absurd version of Betty.
Rita/Camilla takes Betty/Diane to the blue nightclub - Club Silencio - where it is revealed that (a) real, physical life, is the dream, is the fleeting, but that (b) the two still love each other and weep for each other, despite the decisions of each - Rita/Camilla feels only love, while Betty shakes with the thunderclap of judgment.
When they return to Havenhurst and the blue box is taken out of the hat box, Betty is gone - there is only Diane, the physical, the mortal manifestation. We again see Ruth leaving Havenhurst, to "act in Canada."
Before guilt overcomes Diane, before Diane kills herself as Judas did, she reflects on the cross formed by the window slats of the third window beneath her shade, as she waits for her coffee to percolate. It is time to wake up from the dream. Before she does, Camilla reappears, perfect, almost ghost-like - "you've come back," Diane says. Diane is made aware of the return, the resurrection, of what she's done, before the consequences occur. Rita loves Betty. Camilla loves Diane. But Ruth/Betty/Diane will still be judged, will still suffer mortality, will still be held in a paper bag by the man behind Winkie's - the eternal consequence of the choice that has been made.
Diane's phone rang too - and was ignored, allowed to ring repeatedly, next to a used ashtray - ashes to ashes... On the other end was Camilla inviting her to her party - Diane ultimately came but only after making her choice.
The opportunity to choose rightly, the opportunity to return to Eden, to the "pool," the house on the hill, to immortality, has been restored to man - restored by Christ's living and dying as a mortal, symbolized by Rita/Camilla's losing her jewelry in the crash. The dream, for man, is ongoing - though it almost came to an end (symbolized by the Castigliani brother spitting out his espresso) - a second chance to make the right choice has been restored. Diane (Judas) has chosen wrongly, and experiences the consequences - and the indignity of the revelation of those consequences:
Silencio!
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