The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. -Eleanor Roosevelt
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One of the most adventurous things left us is to go to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams. -E. V. Lucas
INTRODUCTION
David Lynch, touted as the all time best director in the world as per Guardian Unlimited, is a master of dream interpretations. Almost all his movies are exceptional piece of filmmaking involving dreams. Almost all his films are compelling puzzle. They leave you perplexed and thrilled. He takes a simple story and makes it a complex puzzle told in the form of a dream. You are always intrigued to know what he is saying, as all his movies are like an n-dimensional Rubik's cube.
Mulholland Drive, Elephant Man, The Twin Peaks, Eraserhead and Blue Velvet are all his examples of movie surrealism. He follows a style similar to Salvatore Dali followed in his famous art works. All his movies take a minimum of 3 viewings to understand. I saw his Twin Peaks just recently and felt he recollected child abuse in a fashion that is quite nicely. It is quite a spooky movie filmed it in a totally great fashion.
Mulholland Drive is a thriller in the form of dreams. It is classic by all means. You greatly see the amount of intelligence that DL leaves for you. It is a mesmerizing puzzle. You have quite a nice visual splendor to intepret the dreams in your own way. No other comtemprory classic comes even closer. Memento is great and complex but not this complex as everything is in reverse and one has to closely reverse the sequence to see what Chris Nolan was saying. Memento is beautiful in its own right. MD is a jig-saw puzzle scattered all over. Too bad it was looked over at the Oscars as there were box office behemoths (Training Day, A Beautiful Mind et al) in the fray that year. Incidentally Memento got a nomination for screenplay and lost. One reason for MD being eccentric is that DL originally planned it as a TV Series for ABC. The studio executives balked seeing the pilot he prepared. He then decided to weave his masterpiece as a film.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE - PLOT and ANALYSIS
Sigmund Freud/Carl Jung would be very proud of David Lynch for painting such a beautiful and sexy picture in the form of a film. This movie is all but a dream. What happens in a dream? Do you always see incidents in sequence when you are in a REM? No. That's what DL is doing. The various pieces of scenes make the collage in a grandeur manner. For a casual viewer, it may be a piece of worthless movie making. If you watch closely, you will really appreciate the intelligence embedded in the picture. The movie is solved in the following way
SPOILER BEGIN (Skip the para in Italics, if you do not want to know. I just wanted to check the validity)
Diane (Naomi Watts) is an aspiring actress in Hollywood. She loves another starlet named Camilla(Laura Harring) is into lesbian affair with her. Adam Kesher chooses Camilla Rhodes over Diane Selwyn for a movie. Diane feels insulted. The producer gives a party at his house on Mulholland Drive(!). Camilla and Adam announce their wedding plans. Diane is heart broken and is extremely angry after all insults. She hires a hitman and pays 50 Grand to kill Camilla. He gives her a Blue box and a key to symbolize the deed is done (The pandora's box is opened). Diane has the key in her apartment and has a dream go through (This is shown from the beginnig in a surreal fashion). The dream is constructed of all the incidence and people. She is very mad at herself after realizing what she has done. She shoots her self. You see Silencio (symbolizing) end of the movie and the nightclub they go to.
SPOILER END
There are so many better analogies to this story. It is all based on how you interpret the drean
David Lynch has done this movie in a virtuoso fashion. Nothing beats the innovation he has shown in this film. You cannot make heads or tails out if you watch it casually. You need to analyze the movie closely solve the mystery. He has done so many things in a masterful way. They are
♣ Correlation to Hollywood noir with the dialogues.
♣ Use of drive from Mulholland drive to Hollywood as a drive of passion to achieve fame and fortune. This dream is crashes for many. Referring to hollywood reality
♣ A lot of critique on the hollywood lifestyles
♣ Use of Red color for Passion and intensity
♣ Use of Blue box and key to reflect the division of reality and dream. When Diane opens the box with the key, she opens the hopeless world of deciet and guilt
♣ Use of Blond wigs and Non-blond stuff to reflect Diane becoming Betty and Camilla becoming Rita. The dream of becoming famous
♣ Whenever you see Dr. You think of Dreams instead of Drive. :-)
♣ Usage of current correlations to distinguish dream from reality
David Lynch has done all this and much more. Kudos are due to this great master. Sigmund Freud would have had tough time interpreting his dreams. ABC's loss is hollywoods gain. He has given 10 steps to solve the puzzle. I am including it in the comments section.
Naomi Watts has given a performance that is dazzling, diabolical, delicious and distinctive. Diane and Betty are quite distinct and very different. She has given a picture perfect performance as both. Its too bad that she was over looked in 2002 and the Oscar was won by Halle Berry. She was given credit for 21 grams but was looked over as she was not very popular.
Laura Harring as Camilla/Rita has given an ''eye-popping'' performance and goes well. Her performance is nowhere closer to Naomi's. Ann Miller as Coco (Adam\s Mom in real life), has done her role nicely. Dan Hedaya and Justin Theroux have given nice performances as well
The background music is Angelo Badalamenti is too good and the real master is the screenplay by David Lynch. It is simply out of the world. Peter Deming has done some exceptional work with the camera.
All in all a treat to watch and it needs to be seen many times, over and over again
Some Finer Points
♣ Diane comes to Hollywood after winning a jitterbug contest in Ontario (Shown in Gap commercial in the beginning)
♣ The scene at the restaurant is to reflect the bad deed that Diane has done. The monster is the inner demon of Diane and when it is shown; the person collapses, reflecting the suicide Diane commits
♣ The 50K Diane gives to the hitman is the same as in Rita’s bag
♣ The cowboy is a character of the dream and is used beautifully to wake Diane up.
♣ Movie correlates to “Wizard of Oz” where the real-life characters correlate to fantasy world.
♣ The silencio scene where the MC says “No hay banda! There is no band. It is all an illusion” is too classy!
I can go on and on but I would refer you to the following links for better understanding of the film
♣ https://geocities.com/sftola400/mulhollanddrive.html
♣ https://salon.com/ent/movies/feature/ 2001/10/23/mulholland_drive_analysis/
CONCLUSION
MD is a case of cinematic brilliance at its best. Made by an eccentric genius, it is a fantasy film complete with a classy dream filmed in a sexy manner.
I enjoyed my viewing of Mulholland Drive. Two Thumbs up for one of the best films of this decade. Obviously, it may be difficult for those who have no patience and biased about film-noir. It may be difficult if you just watch this film from David Lynch alone.
I hope you liked my review. Do comment if time permits
KALIL
