Mulholland Dr

2001, Rated R, 147 minutes,  Directed and Written by david Lynch, Produced by Pierre Edelman, Cinematography by Peter Deming, Original Music by Angelo Badalamenti

With: Naomi Watts (Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn), Laura Harring (Rita), Ann Miller (Catherine ‘Coco’ Lenoix, Justin Theroux (Adam Kesher)

A limousine traverses down the winding and scenic Mulholland Dr. A beautiful woman (Laura Harring) waits to reach their destination only to find the car stopped and a gun pointed at her. Her time has come to an end until a car smashes head on into the limousine leaving everyone dead but the woman who only has a scratch. Dazed and confused she heads through the woods towards LA. 

And so you enter into the Lynch’s world where you will be scratching your head asking yourself constantly what just happened, who is that, where is this going? Many of these questions will remain unanswered but will be in your mind days after the final credits roll. The multiple stories in the movie will converge and diverge sometimes at the same time. Mulholland Dr will capture your imagination but at the same time leave you with a furrowed brow and a brain tied up in so many knots that even a seasoned sailor would have trouble getting them out.

The woman stumbles into an apartment complex and manages to sneak into an apartment where the tenant has just gone on vacation. She falls asleep and the film cuts to a wide eyed smiling Betty (Naomi Watts). She has come to LA to pursue her dream of acting and her aunt has lined up an audition for her and given her her apartment while she is away. Betty enters the apartment and finds a woman in the shower. And so their story begins to converge. Naive and unsuspecting as she is, instead of throwing her out, Betty takes it upon herself to help the woman who has amnesia and just made up a name for herself from a Gilda poster. The mysterious beautiful woman is Rita. As they try to find out more about her identity, they look into Rita’s purse where they find stacks of 100 dollar bills and a blue key.

At the same time, Adam Kesher (Justin Thoreaux), a director finds himself at an impasse over the casting of a lead role for his new movie. He is being forced to cast a woman at the request of mafiaesque lawyers who are being directed by a dwarf in a wheelchair who stays behind plate glass. Kesher is given a choice to cast the woman, or be murdered. He leaves angry and confused and decided to go home only to find his wife in bed with the gardner whereupon he seeks to get back at her only to be beaten up by the gardner and thrown out of the house.

Rita realizes that she thinks her name is Diane and she and Bette find her name in a phonebook and decide to go to the address. Bette first goes to her audition where she manages to wow everyone in the room with her superb acting. Betty then picks up Rita and they go to the address they found. After breaking into the house through an open window they find a rotting corpse on the bed and immediately leave the house. Rita is so shaken up she decides she needs to cut her hair and don a wig to avoid being found by whoever is after her. 

The two woman find themselves in bed with each other and realize that they are in love with each other and they proceed to express that love. And it after this that they story takes a sharp turn from slight reality and logic into a dreamlike sequence where everything that was is not as it seems. Late in the night Rita and Betty go to the club Silencio where they are entertained by an emcee who reminds that the audience that the performance is all an illusion, it is not what it seems.

We soon find a disshelved and totally different Betty who is seriously distraught in her apartment. This is Diane who we find out came to the city in hopes of acting only to find her role stolen from her by none other than Rita, who is now Camille. Camille helps her find other roles and the two do fall for each other but that love is torn apart by director Adam Kesher who Camille falls for. As the movie continues all that you had built your foundation of understanding upon is torn down. The movie spirals into dreams and reality, hazy sequences and tension filled dialogues. Just remember it’s all an illusion...or is it. Maybe the better question to ask would be what is the illusion.

There you have most of the plot; there is more of course: two detectives who appear and disappear, a landlady (Ann Miller) who is trying to figure out who this other woman is in the apartment with Betty. Having told you most of the plot it is safe to say that I have told you very little about the film. Lynch constructs, deconstructs and then hypnotically reconstructs every aspect of the film. There is no way to say that you will eventually understand it all, and for those of you that want closure at the end of the film, this is not the movie for you. Lynch addresses the Hollywood life and the inner workings of the system, love, betrayal, revenge, life, and dreams.

Lynch captivates the audience with unusual camera angles and fuzzy focus. He pulls you in with the quick cuts between scenes. The script draws out the plot and ever so slowly connects the dots. The music creates a mood of suspense and uneasiness and leaves you wondering how things are going to turn out.

Watts does an excellent job at playing her character. What at first seems like very poor acting is actually the perfect embodiment of the character Lynch created. Harring also does a similar job with her character and she handles the transformation of Rita into Camille seemlessly.

Lynch originally wrote the script for a TV series but after it was rejected, was picked up by a new financier and made into a movie. Mulholland Dr twists and turns at every opportunity and it is only by running to keep up with each turner that you will begin to see what is going on; the consequence being that you had to leave so much behind that you do not have enough information to answer all the questions that you have. But are the answers there? Would a second, third, tenth viewing of the film answer them? I would say not completely. This is a film, that in order to enjoy and appreciate you must accept for what it is, you must surrender yourself to it and surround yourself with the world Lynch created. Many motivational speakers will tell you to “follow your dream;” Lynch certainly did and with total disregard of convention created a movie that alarms, excites, angers, engages and infatuates you at the same time. 

B+

Content Advisory

This is an adult themed movie, two scenes feature topless girls in a love scene, a woman also masturbates with clothes on; there are several images of dead corpses, and a few obscenities

Food for thought/discussion

1. The cowboy says, “a man’s attitude...a man’s attitude goes some ways the way his life will be.” Do you agree or disagree with that statement? Why?

2. At the club silencio, the audience is told nothing is as it seems and the movie is steeped in subjective reality. Is the movie trying to make a comment on man’s desire to live in fantasy? If so what is the comment?

3. The movie often serves as a commentary on the world of Hollywood and its inner workings. What comment(s) is it trying to make?

4. How did Diane (Betty) deal with the reality of her situation? What happened when this solution failed? What was Diane missing in her life?