Written and directed by David Lynch
USA, 2001
Included with the original DVD release of Mulholland Drive was a note giving David Lynch’s “10 Clues to Unlocking This Thriller.” These were teasing vagaries like “Where is Aunt Ruth?”, “Who gives a key, and why?”, and “Pay particular attention in the beginning of the film: at least two clues are revealed before the credits.” As provocative as these clues are, none are particularly helpful when it comes to deciphering the mysteries of this mesmerizing film. Still, as points to ponder, they do add even further dimensions to one of the best, most fascinatingly perplexing films from a director who knows a thing or two about fascinating and perplexing films.
Leading up to the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray of Mulholland Drive, which does not include these clues but does contain interviews, a deleted scene, and behind the scenes footage (as per Lynch’s home video instructions, however, there are no chapter stops), there was much online anticipation and discussion concerning the film. One repeated refrain was that it is a typically uncategorized horror movie. Certainly, like most of Lynch’s work, there are more than a few unsettling moments, with the threat of danger looming in one sequence after another, and at least one stunning jump-scene works just as well after repeated viewings as it did upon seeing the film for the first time. But if one is going to place Mulholland Drive into the horror genre, one must also accept that it is just as much, if not more, a comedy.
For a time, there looks to be a relatively straightforward trajectory of storylines. Despite the occasional moments of outward irrelevance, those illogical scenes that may only marginally become significant, the predominant stories join in a basically rational confluence of narrative. But by about the 90-minute mark, something happens. After Betty and Rita visit Club Silencio, an uncanny theatrical venue Rita suddenly wakes up speaking about, and the camera soon thereafter zooms into an inexplicable blue box, from there, nothing is ever quite the same. The film concludes with an onslaught of disparate sequences bearing only confounding resemblance to the previously assumed plot, bringing together a convergence of identity confusion, creation, and collusion. Certain familiar elements and characters reappear, but rarely, if ever, in their previous context, and to what new purpose they now function is never quite clear.
The opening sequences of Mulholland Drive are filled with clichéd dialogue resembling something between an antiquated melodrama and a poorly written soap opera (again, making it very funny), and Watts especially excels in these early sections, where her sugary sweet persona is enhanced by the kind of purposefully bad acting only good actors can do well. Here and continuing on, behavior is peculiarly exaggerated, with erratic laughter, eccentric actions, and characters displaying no trace of naturalism whatsoever. The dialogue is just plain enough to be comical, and just odd enough to be creepily ominous: “Could be someone’s missing, maybe,” “Someone is in trouble. Something bad is happening,” etc.
Like the dialogue, some of the more memorable moments in the film deftly ride the generic line of comedy/thriller, as in the hilariously intense Luigi Castigliane espresso scene (Luigi played by Lynch composer extraordinaire Angelo Badalamenti), and the famous Winkies sequence, with its foreboding conversation about a frighteningly realistic dream and a man who perhaps lives behind the establishment. Scenes like these are among the most impressive in the film, but the question is, are they in accord with the film’s larger premise? Not necessarily. But do they heighten the movie? Absolutely.
This sort of necessity of the unnecessary seems to fly in the face of standard narrative conventions, but in Lynch’s omniscient hands, it contributes to part of why a film like Mulholland Drive is so enthralling. The film is designed to encourage inevitable attempts at interpretation and understanding, but it is largely a futile effort to find a rhyme and reason for everything. Why Lynch is so exceptional, then, is that despite this awareness and acceptance of a never realized complete comprehension, one still wants to go back and attempt to figure it all out, even if it becomes readily evident that to do so would be an impossibility. His films manage to coalesce in spite of the randomness, so that while by the end of the film much is left uncertain, everything still seems, in an odd way, unified. Lynch presents a world that is so detailed and so expertly realized that it is thoroughly acceptable, even as it is paradoxically implausible.
David Lynch has embarked on a number of side ventures—painting, coffee, music—but he is a man born to make movies, and one sees this with Mulholland Drive in his complete mastery of all aesthetic facets, from lighting to framing to camera movement, to say nothing of the stories he develops and the singular worlds he subsequently creates. Whatever his intentions, and however much he chooses to acknowledge his cinematic mischievousness, one thing is certain: such inscrutability is enough to keep many, including myself, coming back to his work—and this film in particular—over and over again.