There was a time when David Lynch made coherent, challenging motion pictures. Love it or hate it, there's no doubt that was one of the most talked-about motion pictures of the 1980s. Some consider it to be a masterpiece, while others view it as exploitative trash. Nevertheless, at least the narrative makes sense. The script requires the viewer to pay attention, but everything ties together in a sensible manner. Something similar could be said about Lynch's next outing, Wild at Heart.
It's a little more out there, but still not totally outrageous. Next came 'Twin Peaks', the television series that started out as one of the most compelling hour-long dramas ever to air on a network before devolving into silliness. Followed on the heels of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, with neither picture telling a linear or comprehensible story.
Seemed to put Lynch on a different course, but, with Mulholland Drive, the filmmaker is back to his old tricks.Mulholland Drive started life as a pilot for a TV series. When ABC rejected it outright, Lynch elected to shoot a series of new, lurid scenes to provide an ending of sorts. Watching the final project, it's easy to determine where this 'break' occurs. The first 105 minutes of this movie are engrossing, and, for the most part, intelligible. There's no content that would be deemed unsuitable for television. Then, just as things go off the deep end, slipping into the realm of the incoherent, the two lead female characters remove their clothing and spend most of the final 40 minutes topless.
As a TV series, Mulholland Drive might have been compelling stuff; as a movie, in large part because of Lynch's excuse for an 'ending', it's a mess.The film is structured as a mystery set in Hollywood, although, in typical Lynchian fashion, this version of Tineseltown is decidedly dark and skewed. The plot weaves together several strands: a young, fresh-looking Canadian girl who has come to La-la land in search of stardom; an established actress who avoids being murdered by an act of dumb luck, and loses her memory as a result; and a director who is being forced by ominous powers to cast a particular woman in his movie. It's all intriguing stuff. The cast is made up largely of unknowns: Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring.
Robert Forster and Dan Hedaya have what amount to cameos (despite prominent billing - one assumes that had this become a weekly series, they would have been more evident).The film is drenched in atmosphere. That shouldn't be a surprise. Credit the cinematography of Peter Deming and the score by Angelo Badalamenti.
Mulholland Drive is filled with its share of 'Twin Peaks'-ish moments. But, after a promising start and an engaging midsection, there's the third act to deal with.
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And it's not a pretty sight. Lynch cheats his audience, pulling the rug out from under us. He throws everything into the mix with the lone goal of confusing us. Nothing makes any sense because it's not supposed to make any sense. There's no purpose or logic to events. Lynch is playing a big practical joke on us.
He takes characters we have come to care about and obscures their fates in gibberish. Some people will undoubtedly decide this is all very deep and will find hidden meanings in everything, but they're giving Lynch too much credit. This is not good filmmaking; it's immature and wasteful.I suppose on some level I still want to recommend Mulholland Drive - it's a wonderfully stylish film, the score is incomparable, and the first two-thirds border on brilliant.
But I despise with a white-hot passion what Lynch did with the ending. I was simmering with fury when I came out of the screening. And I wanted to throttle one critic who began chirping about the wonderfully existential manner in which things are 'wrapped up'. This is one route best taken by die-hard Lynch fans only. The rest of us can stick to the freeway.
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'Mulholland Dr.' Is something else. It is a film that will make you question your own sanity in many ways. Naomi Watts is the young, starry-eyed Canadian that wants to make it big in Hollywood. She is naive and thinks that dreams can come true if you want them bad enough.
Watts discovers a very beautiful woman with amnesia (Laura Harring in a sizzling performance) in her aunt's house in L.A. And she becomes determined to help Harring out. Harring is mysterious and her near-fatal car crash occurred on the dark and winding Mulholland Dr. Throughout several oddball and very dark scenes take place. A young director (Justin Theroux) learns that Hollywood is run by strange underworld figures that are quiet, but ruthless. Another strange side-story is the mysterious man behind the diner that is seen in another character's dreams. An inept assassin also runs around causing unwanted trouble for himself and others.
Biotechnology and genomics by p.k. gupta institute. Then of course there are cameos by Robert Forster and Billy Ray Cyrus. The film twists into darkness as it progresses as Watts' and Harring's relationship turns sexual. A fine line between reality and fantasy is skewered and it comes down to a strange Pandora's box that holds the true secrets to 'Mulholland Dr.' Oscar-nominated director David Lynch also shows that not all you see and hear is real, even though one's mind might think so.
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The film seems artificial at times, showing Hollywood as a nice place where dreams can come true. But then the dreams are turned into vivid nightmares of what could possibly be the true reality. David Lynch somehow makes this whole thing work and he makes it work beautifully in this reviewer's opinion. The film is a trumped-up version of 'The Twilight Zone' and it adds many techniques that made Alfred Hitchcock the true master of suspense. Many wonder what this film is truly about. I am not sure. I am not sure Lynch even knows, but I am going to give it a shot.
'Mulholland Dr.' Is the dark side of the human condition.
It is a film that shows how easy one can lose one's soul if bad elements are let in. There are figures that seem somewhat supernatural to me in this movie. It seems that many of the characters are 'messengers' that are all after one thing: Naomi Watts' soul. Watts lets the elements in and in the end she cannot overcome them. What she thinks she wants seems attractive on the outside, but there are cobras on the inside that will be too strong to fight off.
In short, 'Mulholland Dr.' Is a brilliant piece of film-making and it is brilliant due to its unique aspects and the fact that it is what one thinks it is. There is no right or wrong answer and it is a film that makes you think. 'Mulholland Dr.' Is a complicated puzzle for the minds of cinema fanatics. 5 stars out of 5.