February 19^th, 2003

NOTE: These essays deal with cinema theory and how it applies to Mulholland Drive. If you’d like an explanation of the plot, I recommend reading Salon.com’s Everything you wanted to know about Mulholland Drive

  It would be practically impossible to discuss (or even explain) Mulholland Drive, David Lynch’s latest abstract masterpiece, to someone who hasn’t seen it. That’s part of it’s charm and, to an extent, part of its curse. It is a film so bizarre, so twisted and looped back onto itself that even after several viewings, it is entirely possible for someone who is not incredibly well-versed in film theory and technique (as well as Lynch’s auteuristic style) to grasp the keys within its story or make heads or tails of its warped chronology. The style and some of the story elements mirror those of his 1997 film Lost Highway. Scenes in Mulholland Drive – though coherent within themselves and, to a large extent, in chronological order – are sometimes so random that it’s hard to envision Lynch explaining how the film will fit together to anyone but himself. But the movie works and works very well. Partly because it’s a trance-like experience, party because it deals with the broken dreams of Hollywood, partly because the audience cannot bear to look away from the abstract art up on the screen. But mostly it is because Lynch knows what Mulholland Drive is about even if you do not. It is not a disconnected series of clips, but rather a well-developed, well-directed, well-acted, utterly absorbing film which is as different from other films as cinema is from other art.

  It is hard to explain the story without retreating to the cliché of “the film is really all a dream” because on a basic level, after wading through all the symbolism, that is what one could come up with. But what’s more important than the fact that the movie’s plot turns out to perhaps be a dream is that besides the plot, the movie is a dream in itself. It is an ensemble of tried-and-true film clichés thrown in for nostalgia’s sake, it is rumination on Hollywood and the shattered hopes and lost souls therein, it is also, more than anything, a very interesting way of showing us all the things Hollywood may stand for. The two lead actresses, Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring each play two roles. Watts plays both the wide-eyed Betty Elms, who comes to Los Angeles to fulfill her naïve dreams of being an actress, as well as Diane Selwyn – cynical and run-down -whose dreams of making it in Hollywood have fallen through all the way to hell. Diane is only introduced in the third act and does not share Betty’s world. One may be the other’s fantasy. Harring plays Rita, the first character we are introduced to. Rita isn’t actually her real name but since she cannot remember what that might be, “Rita” – stolen off of a Gilda poster – serves just fine. Rita stumbles into Betty’s aunt’s house (where Betty is staying while her Aunt is away) with amnesia after surviving an attempt on her life. Rita meets Betty who in turn tries to help her piece together who she might be. But Harring also plays Camilla Rhodes, who lives in Diane’s world, not Betty’s and Rita’s. Camilla has attained success mainly by sleeping with the director, something that Diane, Camilla’s estranged lesbian lover, cannot bear any longer.

  Besides that basic run-down, Lynch presents seemingly unconnected episodes involving utterly random characters. One such scene involves Robert Forrester as a detective at the scene of the car accident that saved Rita’s life. He jabbers a few lines which could’ve been lifted from any police television show and his character is never shown again. Another scene involves a man talking to his psychiatrist at a diner about a dream he’s been having. Yet another involves a hit gone bad for a young gun-for-hire. His target, a fat woman in the next room, a passing janitor and the noisy vacuum all get it in the end. What purpose do these anecdotes serve? Why don’t we know what’s going on? Because Lynch wants the audience to think; be engaged. “It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It’s better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it’s a very personal thing and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for somebody else.”^[1] But to understand what Lynch had in mind is to realize that a seeming mishmash of disconnected stories is actually an intricate, well-woven fabric of film. Mulholland Drive is not random because once one understands the keys, unlocking the film is a matter of fitting pegs in holes. Everything becomes clear once it is explained and it fits together beautifully once one watches the film for a second time, looking for the edges of the jigsaw puzzle.

  The ideas that Lynch deals with are those of Hollywood as an inspiration to all those who are not a part of it. Lynch casts Robert Forrester and Chad Everett, both respected actors, in tiny cameos. Why? It’s not because they were passing by the lot that day. If the film is viewed in the confines of its writing, the world that evolves in the first two acts is a fantasy: a masturbatory fantasy conjured up by Diane in act three. (Knowing this fact alone can almost allow the movie to fall into place.) All the events involving Rita, Betty and the characters in their universe are disjoined and seemingly random because they are constructed out of tidbits and images Diane is familiar with (like Forrester as the cop and Everett as himself at a movie audition) or simply happened to get a glimpse of in the past weeks as her life’s been spiraling down. The mysterious cowboy, the lines “What are you doing? We don’t stop here” and “This is the girl” are simply pieces of her life that have collected in her subconscious like rust in a septic tank. This is a common theme for Lynch. To make the audience work for understanding, to make them walk out of the theater with blank stares or, better yet, talking to one another. That is his ultimate goal. He’s tired of the dull movies made to fit a formula and Mulholland Drive is a stylized requiem for those pictures.

  Hollywood has an unnatural dependence on “Star Power” and in terms of business, that’s understood. Create personas that people identify with and even love, then plug those personas into movie formulas and a theater-seat-filling piece of entertainment is churned out. Lynch’s – as well as any major directors’ – approach is different. He is not so much dependant on stars as he is on talent. And in Mulholland Drive he even illustrates the point by making three of the four main female characters actresses. (And having the fourth steal her identity off a movie poster.) Betty is the one with the most actual talent, as for the other two, Camilla has given up and Diane has sold out to sex in exchange for success. Betty’s audition scene works to shows that “Lynch believes, perhaps passionately, that there is such a thing as acting, even great acting.”^[2] And so perhaps star power is worthless in comparison to a true ‘actor’s actor’. But the dream Diane has before the film is over, the movie inside her head, is populated by both people she knows and actors she’d seen in motion pictures (again, Forrester and Everett) and the movie in her dreams even has a happy ending: the heroines fall in love. So it is probably safe to say that Lynch believes in the power of the formula film but seeks the alternative, maybe even the antidote.

  André Bazin wrote “Through the contents of the image and the resources of montage, the cinema has at its disposal a whole arsenal of means whereby to impose an interpretation of an even on the spectator.”^[3] Does this apply to Lynch and Mulholland Drive? Partly. Lynch does have a vision. He does have a story to tell (of sorts). And all the pieces fit perfectly well in his own head. But Lynch believes that part of the fun of abstraction is what the art means for you, the audience member.

“In Hollywood, more often than not, they’re making more kind of traditional films, stories that are understood by people. And the entire story is understood. And they become worried if even for one small moment something happens that is not understood by everyone. But what’s so fantastic is to get down into areas where things are abstract and where things are felt, or understood in an intuitive way that, you can’t, you know, put a microphone to somebody at the theatre and say ‘Did you understand that?’ but they come out with a strange, fantastic feeling and they can carry that, and it opens some little door or something that’s magical and that’s the power that film has.”^[1]

  Lynch understands that movies are personal. They are not only personal to him as a director, but also to each individual in the audience. Every person will have a different and ultimately personal reaction to any given film and when the film is as crafted and as hypnotic as Mulholland Drive, the reactions will vary extensively. That’s a fantastic thing when considering a directorial style. To make films that challenge is the goal of probably every respected filmmaker. Lynch succeeds. And quite originally.

^[1] David Lynch, source: http://www.imdb.com
^[2] Salon.com – “Everything You Wanted to Know About Mulholland Drive”
^[3] Film Theory and Criticism, 46. “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema”, André Bazin