Mulholland Drive - 2001
I was entirely unprepared for my first go round with Mulholland Drive. It was like stepping into the octagon, myself sporting an extra 15, and my opponent a dude switching between 4 fighting styles all at once. Any of these could be your final submission at any moment. Imagine my surprise: young, doe-eyed Nick thinking he was ready for a straightforward Hollywood starlet yarn from the master of the unconscious himself, David Lynch. Um, nope. Not this one.
Mulholland Drive is anything but conventional, and consequently I was completely bowled over by it (in particular, its third act). There were smoky nightclubs, old hags behind diners, various keys and boxes, film sets and Jitterbugs. There were characters who started one way and then changed their behavior...and their costumes...and their hair. There were "Easter eggs" and clues, meaningful colors, and returning objects. I was completely mesmerized, but by the end of the Club Silencio sequence - entirely lost. I left concluding it was magnetic but a juggernaut of an enigma I just wasn't ready/supposed to solve.
Mulholland lived in the recesses of my memory as this unsolvable riddle from that moment until last night. Again I sat down in front of the screen, but this time I came ready. For one thing, in the interim I had seen Eraserhead, Inland Empire, Twin Peaks, and a large swath of French New Wave and other movements or pictures which similarly "mess with time." Finally, and maybe most importantly, I had my DVD film insert "David Lynch's 10 Clues to Solve..." in hand. This proved to be both very helpful and not really worth much at all. (Lynch is notorious for his "You figure it out; I ain't helping at all." responses to anyone seeking guidance to solve his visual puzzles).
Before my very eyes, something wondrous unfolded. For starters, this film and Blue Velvet (another recent re-watch) are certainly of a piece: Happy-go-lucky, bright-eyed and warm characters as a false veneer hiding the darkest, most bleak seedy underbelly of Hollywood. A Hollywood which in this case goes even further than Velvet in its power brokers and mobsters, film manipulators and hitmen. Moreover, this thing actually coheres! Much more, in fact, then some of Lynch's other works. Yes, it does have its talismans and objects, recurring themes, but they are all in service to an actual STORY. As such, this is truly something terrific.
I conclude with one matter I simply cannot leave on the table, namely the star turn of Naomi Watts. She is simply UNreal in this film! Her dual performances are night and day, and yet she plays them off with the subtlest of nuances. Her one acting audition is three minutes of about the most captivating "stuff" that I've ever seen on the screen. She is simultaneously pruriently alluring at parts and repulsive in others, an utter paradox of light and dark, wonderfully innocent and snidely debauched. A woman uplifted and a woman scorned. This is the balance of Lynch's "LA Trilogy" and nowhere is it as clear than in the serpentine heights of Mulholland Drive.
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