There are those movie experiences that stick with you. I
remember back in the fall of 2001….it must have been in October I suppose, and
I was attending school at the University of Illinois. I was in the midst of filmic obsession, probably viewing at least one arthouse or classic film every
day. So I arrived to the Goodrich 16 in Savoy, which
was just the town over, to watch Mulholland
Dr. I specifically remember being one of only 3 people in the theatre for
that evening’s showing. I also distinctly remember feeling completely
overwhelmed by the film, to the point that when it was over I could only sit
there. I literally didn’t want to move when it was over as I felt so
overwhelmed and shaken by the film. When it was over I remember thinking that
I had no idea what I had just seen but I had seen something AMAZING. I didn’t
care that I didn’t understand the plot. Somehow all that mattered was
understanding the emotions. It was an overwhelming emotional experience…feeling
terrified and exhilarated all at the same time. It was probably the single most
incredible experience in a movie theatre that I’ve had to date. Amazingly, it
had been over a decade since I’ve seen the film.
Going back to revisit films that I really love is kind of an odd thing
for me. I go long periods without watching films. Lynch’s film at the time was getting a lot of
dissection over the plot and the structure. Watching it so far removed from its
release allowed me to take the film as it is, which is actually a remarkably
simple story. Mulholland Dr. is the
story of Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts) who comes to Hollywood with dreams of being
a movie star. She tries out at an audition that her aunt helps her get, but
loses out to a woman named Camilla Rhodes (Laura Harring). They end up hitting it off and eventually become entwined in a passionate affair that leaves Diane
feeling helpless and abandoned when Camilla becomes involved with her director. Diane, bitter with rage and hatred for Camilla,
hires a hitman to kill her. Diane spends an entire day dreaming,
daydreaming and remembering times she had with Camilla and experiences since
she got to Hollywood. She ends the day by killing herself over the grief of
losing her lover and the loss of her dream.
Of course the film is not as straightforward as I’m
making it sound. For the first 2 hours of the film, we see Diane’s dream. It is
explicitly a dream as we see a POV shot of someone lying down on a pillow, and
we see Diane wake up at the end of the dream. In her dream, she projects all of
her fantasies and desires and redirects certain events in her life to skew the
outcome of her wishes. In her dream, she is Betty, and Camilla is Rita. She
takes certain people from her real life and views their roles differently, in
order to redirect her present day guilt and fear. I liken this to The Wizard of
Oz, whereby Dorothy re-imagines those in her life into different characters.
It’s much the same here. We also know it’s a dream from the cryptic glossiness
of the first two hours and from the odd dream logic in which things occur. It
is a heightened state of reality where everything is of extreme importance.
This is contrasted with reality at the end where Diane is shallow eyed, morose
and bitter and even the film loses it's glossy edge for a more
realistic and pat portrayal.
Lynch also displays much of his prototypical Lynchianisms throughout, from
the velvet red curtains, to flickering lights, to bizarre setpieces, to
fractured linearity, to the use of sex to reflect fear and desire. What I was
struck by watching it this time, is how the film is mostly about a woman
scorned, and when the film is over, the thing that stands out is the desperate
sadness and bitterness of Diane/Betty. It is a sad tale of lost love and lost
innocence. She projected an immense amount of love and emotion into her relationship with
Camilla, but it was not returned to her in the same quantity. Her dream allows her the fantasy of recreating
the feeling of being in love, and controlling the relationship, making Camilla do what she wants, that is until the two women attend the show at the
Silencio club in the dream. This scene still plays as one of Lynch’s greatest setpieces, filled
with clues that the film we have been watching thus far is a dream. It contains
that brilliant Spanish acapella version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying”, “sung" by
the woman on stage as Betty and Rita sit in the audience brought to tears for
no apparent reason, other than that Diane is realizing that it is a dream
(while dreaming), and that it must come to an end.... that she is about to come
back to reality and know that she has had Camilla killed. The scene is one of cinema’s best moments of the last 15
years.
Many also see the film as a myth of the Hollywood
dream. It does contain some kinship with Wilder’s Sunset Blvd., but I don’t think Lynch’s film plays best this way.
If it’s the tale of the dark side of the Hollywood dream, doesn’t that play a
bit too clichéd for our modern sensibility? Don’t we know this already, that
Hollywood is nothing but a catch-all for 15 minutes of fame type stuff? Isn’t
the myth of the Hollywood dream so 1950’s? If this is all that Lynch was after, I don’t think it’s
worth the effort on that basis alone. I think it plays better as a heightened emotional experience,
as a surrendering of the senses to dream logic, or as a fractured and tragic
love story. It also contains what may be the best performance by any actress of
the last 15 years. Naomi Watts thoroughly commands the screen, playing what amounts to two roles and has
scenes of intense honesty here that has rarely been duplicated in the last
decade. She is emotionally fragile and carries the film on her shoulders. In
the scene where she attends the party given by Camilla and the director Adam, there
is that look of sadness and disgust on her face as she attempts to hold back
tears while watching Camilla and Adam across the table. Lynch’s film
ultimately works so well because it makes one FEEL. It is one of cinema’s great
experiences. I had that feeling back in 2001, and I still have it now.
Trying to dissect it too much leads to over-analysis and rather rote
interpretations and I don’t think that’s where the film’s strengths lie. It is
best experienced and felt, rather than undermined with too much dissection.
