IR: Mullholland Drive

“Do you think when David Lynch comes to write his movies, he just sits down and writes 20 scenes he really likes, photocopies them a few times and jumbles them up in a weird order and say’s “Right! That’s my film!” - Britta

I don’t understand.
F*****G good film though. (This is also the star rating : P)
Halfway through, the two leads completely change character to completely different people. The cheerful young cute-as-apple-pie lady becomes a sullen awkward struggling actress jealous of her former lover’s success and conquest. The vulnerable car crash stranger is suddenly at home and in charge. Somehow these fit together, with the new characters being people we’ve seen in the original cast. Or at least one of them is. Or both – either could be the dead girl at apartment 17. The money found in ‘Rita’s’ handbag and hidden by the cute actress was later used by the spurned lesbian to pay for ‘Camilla’s’ (same lady’s) death. Why did ‘Rita’ wake up saying Silencio? How did the key get in Betty’s handbag? Who is the man with the horrifying face? Who is ‘Rita’ really? And what was her purpose in the car before the crash? The acting is the best I have seen and so tense and strange at times. And the lust scenes were so real. My favourite part was when Betty was practicing her lines with Rita and was strong and angry… and then playing them opposite the actor she was suddenly so vulnerable and intimate, until she said “then I’d kill you” and they both snapped out of it and realised they were acting. I wouldn’t want to waver an idea of how the plot fits together but I do know I want to watch it at least once more and hear that Silencio song again. Mind boggled. Fantastic.

5/5


I have seen this film a couple of times before, and have described it to many as ‘The Lesbian Lost Highway’. In fact I remember distinctly saying, unfairly as it turns out, that if you have seen Lost Highway there is nothing in Mulholland Drive to surprise you.
This was probably because both in general and in this film, Lipstick Lesbians do nothing for me. Sexually, or in terms of telling a story. I’ll get back to that.
This third viewing really allowed me to sit back and enjoy the film, and I have to say I was mistaken. Although I do still consider this film to be a companion piece to Lost Highway, I think that Mulholland Drive really adds another layer of complexity and really hones what Lynch began in his previous film.
Perhaps LH is the angry male yang, MD is the melancholy female yin.
Both films deal with loss, love, jealousy, manipulation and have the structure David Lynch described as ‘elliptical’ rather than circular.
Whereas LH is all about noise, MD has the major theme of silence. This time round, I really noticed how the whole of the first half hour is nearly soundless, very little music and with voices muted or subdued. Where one might expect a dramatic chord, instead only silence, which only served to emphasise the drama. There is a truly heart-thumping tension that develops due to this, and Lynch and his team manage to craft horror out of every day spectacles, like Betty walking through a (supposedly) empty flat. The photography and lighting is lush, painterly and warm yet the atmosphere couldn’t be more oppressive. The wooden interiors, a visual hearken back to much of Lynch’s work most notably the Packard Hotel from Twin Peaks, seem to trap and confound the characters. MD is, of course, rich with references to the famous horror-melodrama Sunset Boulevard, and one which becomes particularly noticeable on this third viewing is the way people’s faces are lit, half radiant light, half shadow. Whether there is a deep meaning to all this, such as, for example, separating the dark reality from the light exterior (and knowing Lynch their probably is) I will allow you to decide.
The acting is excellent right across the board, and special kudos has to go to Naomi Watts for her dual role as Betty/Diane, which was so different I had to double and triple check the credits to see if it really was the same person.
I also like Justin Theroux as the slightly-Marcus-Brigstocke looking director, going from a sympathetic chew toy in the first act to Diane’s possibly unfair viewing of him as a shallow, giggling, leach.
The structure and story are more or less insoluble, but the cleverness of the recurring themes, the seemingly unconnected vignettes (which turn out to be anything but) and the rich references make it impossible to dismiss as simply ‘open ended’ or ‘deliberately confusing’. There is a real logic at work here, but it is dream logic. The Cowboy, like The Mystery Man (or The Man With No Eyebrows) serves as a sort of minimalist Dues Ex Machina, but he is only one of a dozen mysterious MacGuffins which push and pull on the reality of the film.
You could literally fill a book analysing Mulholland Drive, so I won’t bother doing it here. This is not the place.
I do have my criticisms though; number one, the first Lesbian Love scene. It is, for me, the most awkward in the film. Maybe because of the way it’s shot, maybe just because both girls look like they’ve just stepped out of the makeup room in a shampoo advert. A more subtle rendering would probably have worked better. I don’t think its really supposed to be sexy, on consideration, but its not even that I have a problem with. It just feels wrong.
Second, it’s just too darned long. I would hate to be the editor who had to say which scenes went, but it IS too long. I know this because I love the film, and I love David Lynch, but I was getting bored by the end. It suffers far too badly from multiple ending syndrome, and some of the excellent scenes at the beginning (the incompetent hit man comes to mind, or the scene at ‘this Winky’s’ for me the highlight of the whole film) begin to fade from memory.
All in all, an awesome film; one last thing about the silence…perhaps it’s a reference to ‘the love that dare not speak its name’? Silencio!

4/5



What I Think Of Jim’s Review:
Jim has obviously been watching it through filmmaker’s eyes and studied it for its quantifiable elements. It’s strange that we have opposite opinions on the two girl-on-girl love scenes; he finds the first one too awkward and unrealistic, but would find the second one a believable portrayal of two girls getting it on. While for me, that second one was too much of a bad cartoon universe. Reading his review, I realised I’d almost completely forgotten about the bungling hit-man scene, as he didn’t reprise that role later on in a loud enough way to remind me. Also I should have given honourable mention to the ‘This Winkies’ guy whose face switched between fear and apologetic bewilderment at a rate of 6 per second. We discussed some similarities with Inland Empire that I noticed; both begin with choosing an actress who is tested for the main role, and soon after a mad old woman comes to the door foretelling of evil, and later on there is a blurring of identities.


What I Think Of Britta’s Review:
Really interesting to hear Britta’s review, since I’m an old timer and she’s seeing this for the first time. She took a characteristically intuitive look at her feelings on seeing the film without needing to break it down like what I do. Glad to see she is so positive about it 
When we chatted one thing I really like was her attitude that she wasn’t going to complain about ‘not getting it’ because obviously that wasn’t the point.
Very surprised about our different reactive to the love scene. In discussing it we talked about the second ‘love’ scene, where Diane and Camilla are on Diane’s sofa. I actually found this much more realistic and would have been completely unfazed if they had proceeded to get it on, but it was much more powerful when it became awkward and unsexy, with Camilla calling a halt to the proceedings and opening up a world of hurt.
Interestingly as we talked we got onto Lynch’s subsequent film, Inland Empire, particularly about the similarities of themes around acting and its inherent schizophrenia. I think now that MH sits in the middle of a trilogy of films about identity, starting with LH and ending in IE.
Also, she mentioned after reading my review that she had indeed forgotten the incompetent hit-man scene; you see, Mr Lynch, too freaking long!.