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This is one of David Lynch's best; he wrote and directed it; received many director and film awards for it. I came across it on the pay-per-cable lineup; I think Cinemax is currently showing it. Not to be confused with 'Mulholland Falls', 1996, with Nick Nolte. This ain't that.
'Drive' cannot be figured out in any logical detail, it will cook your brains trying, but the general lay is a combo of reality, dream interpretation, and psychosis; all generated from the trauma of betrayal and murder. A mind can only take so much. I love films like this. I'm forced to hang with it to the end because I cannot foresee anything coming.
The story is (hope I'm not giving much away) about a young girl moving to LA to break into the movie biz. She gets romantically involved with, and left by, another actress who became successful in the biz, leaving her alone and failed. Various things happen to the other woman after this; mainly death by --
-- and there it is. Audience will have to wonder, choosing between reality and fantasy as it all interweaves in and out of temporal disruptions. I think that when its over, you will understand what basically happened, and discern what was real and what was psychotic fantasy, but you won't be able to logically splice much together.
That's because it was built that way. This film was originally intended to be a pilot for a television series. The series was rejected, so Lynch shot the rest of it to make a full length film out of it. Some elements introduced in the first half don't seem to have much to do with the second. Lynch has refused to discuss any plot details, so head-scratching is built into the deal.
Extremely worthwhile, IMO. Naomi Watts is the Dorothy-from-Kansas type main character, and this was supposedly her big start in films. Lynch didn't know who she was before he interviewed her for the part. Which is curiously juxtaposed to the character she plays, who failed to get into acting. Very strange, but very well done. Try to see this one.
Follow Ups:
....
I like to stew awhile on these capers, without help, before I go in search of smarter sources.
If Betty/Diane's name had been Pandora, I think we all would have jumped on it.
Nt
You'll remember in the next chapter.
Edits: 08/15/16
Owwwwwwwwww!!!!!!
Track, dammit. I meant track.
All part of a wonderful dream!
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...a brilliant film which introduced Naomi Watts to me - she is terrific in it.
I've read enough about it after seeing it twice to have a vague understanding of it.
OK, fair enough. What do you think the underlying premise is, in a sentence or two. This I gotta hear.
Mulholland Drive is a story about a woman named Diane Selwyn who is experiencing an extreme mental and emotional breakdown. For reasons that become progressively clearer, her life has reached a point of desperate crisis that has driven her into a suicidal depression. The most apparent cause of her deteriorating condition is guilt over a horrible incident she recently set in motion.
Diane is a Hollywood wannabe who fell in love with another aspiring starlet. However, after the two of them become involved with one another, at some point Diane is jilted and humiliated by this woman, and so she hires a hit man to murder her estranged lover. Once the deed is done, Diane descends into a downward spiral of guilt and despair.
You managed to distill the psychotic bits out. In engineering, we call this critical path management.
The blue box and silencio theater are hard for me to interpret. I think I got the little people under the door thing down.
But hey, we got us some decent hooter shots. Thank you subscription cable.
Dreams and alternative realities Edit
An early interpretation of the film uses dream analysis to explain that the first part is a dream of the real Diane Selwyn, who has cast her dream-self as the innocent and hopeful "Betty Elms", reconstructing her history and persona into something like an old Hollywood film. In the dream, Betty is successful, charming, and lives the fantasy life of a soon-to-be-famous actress. The last one-fifth of the film presents Diane's real life, in which she has failed both personally and professionally. She arranges for Camilla, an ex-lover, to be killed, and unable to cope with the guilt, re-imagines her as the dependent, pliable amnesiac Rita. Clues to her inevitable demise, however, continue to appear throughout her dream.[21]
This interpretation was similar to what Naomi Watts construed, when she said in an interview, "I thought Diane was the real character and that Betty was the person she wanted to be and had dreamed up. Rita is the damsel in distress and she's in absolute need of Betty, and Betty controls her as if she were a doll. Rita is Betty's fantasy of who she wants Camilla to be."[18] Watts' own early experiences in Hollywood parallel those of Diane's. She endured some professional frustration before she became successful, auditioned for parts in which she did not believe, and encountered people who did not follow through with opportunities. She recalled, "There were a lot of promises, but nothing actually came off. I ran out of money and became quite lonely."[22]
The Guardian asked six well-known film critics for their own perceptions of the overall meaning in Mulholland Drive. Neil Roberts of The Sun and Tom Charity of Time Out subscribe to the theory that Betty is Diane's projection of a happier life. Roger Ebert and Jonathan Ross seem to accept this interpretation, but both hesitate to overanalyze the movie. Ebert states, "There is no explanation. There may not even be a mystery." Ross observes that there are storylines that go nowhere: "Perhaps these were leftovers from the pilot it was originally intended to be, or perhaps these things are the non-sequiturs and subconscious of dreams."[23] Philip French from The Observer sees it as an allusion to Hollywood tragedy, while Jane Douglas from the BBC rejects the theory of Betty's life as Diane's dream, but also warns against too much analysis.[23]
Another theory offered is that the narrative is a Möbius strip, a twisted band that has no beginning and no end.[24] In another interpretation Betty and Rita and Diane and Camilla may exist in parallel universes that sometimes interconnect. Or the entire film is a dream, but whose dream is unknown.[25] Repeated references to beds, bedrooms and sleeping symbolize the heavy influence of dreams. Rita falls asleep several times; in between these episodes, disconnected scenes such as the men having a conversation at Winkies, Betty's arrival in Los Angeles and the bungled hit take place, suggesting that Rita may be dreaming them. The opening shot of the film zooms into a bed containing an unknown sleeper, instilling, according to film scholar Ruth Perlmutter, the necessity to ask if what follows is reality.[26] Professor of dream studies Kelly Bulkeley argues that the early scene at the diner, as the only one in which dreams or dreaming are explicitly mentioned, illustrates "revelatory truth and epistemological uncertainty in Lynch's film".[27] The monstrous being from the dream, who is the subject of conversation of the men in Winkies, reappears at the end of the movie right before and after Diane commits suicide. Bulkeley asserts that the lone discussion of dreams in that scene presents an opening to "a new way of understanding everything that happens in the movie".[27]
Philosopher and film theorist Robert Sinnerbrink similarly notes that the images following Diane's apparent suicide undermine the "dream and reality" interpretation. After Diane shoots herself, the bed is consumed with smoke and Betty and Rita are shown beaming at each other, after which a woman in the Club Silencio balcony whispers "Silencio" as the screen fades to black. Sinnerbrink writes that the "concluding images float in an indeterminate zone between fantasy and reality, which is perhaps the genuinely metaphysical dimension of the cinematic image", also noting that it might be that the "last sequence comprises the fantasy images of Diane's dying consciousness, concluding with the real moment of her death: the final Silencio".[28] Referring to the same sequence, film theorist Andrew Hageman notes that "the ninety-second coda that follows Betty/Diane's suicide is a cinematic space that persists after the curtain has dropped on her living consciousness, and this persistent space is the very theatre where the illusion of illusion is continually unmasked".[29]
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... instigated by a jealous and psychotic newbie actress (Watts) fails against a well-established Hollywood star actress (Laura Harring). As the cops who are investigating the murder-for-hire case arrive (knocking loudly on her apartment door), the failed and desperate newbie actress kills herself in bed (and puts an end to her "dream") via a gunshot wound to the head.Poof!!!
Edits: 08/14/16
I think that it's easy for some people to forget that Lynch is in the business of making movies that resemble dreams.Because time and logic in dreams operates sans firm rules, Lynch's methodically "nonsensical" film-making actually makes sense. These are REALISTIC films, in the dream sense, fittingly. Without the jarring effects deliberately introduced, one might be tempted to lapse into daytime (rather than nightime) viewing mode, but doing so would be mostly inappropriate in such cases.
The sequencing of events and the introduction of silly or nonsensical pictorial elements, in "Mulholland Drive", perfectly resembles the type of subjective perceptual sequencing and imagery that could (conceivably) be experienced by the *restless and/or troubled sleeper*. The restless/troubled sleeper fitfully dreams and awakens in intervals throughout the film, and in this case, conveniently and deliberately courts (with the help of a little grogginess) an unwillingness to putting everything into "proper" perspective for the purpose of moral analysis.
It all makes perfect sense when you think about it, really.
Edits: 08/14/16 08/14/16
Deservedly so.
'Eraserhead' explained his ability to create seemingly unreal concepts like the singer behind the steam radiator. Perhaps he is a high-functioning schizo?
Eraserhead is a mixture of many things Lynchian so sometimes it involves dream recall, at other times it involves dream creation. All of that, plus any other deliberate and/or accidentally introduced elements are then rolled up into one big dreamball.Despite the methodology, a certain amount of underlying "meaning" forced it way through for recognizance by Lynch himself.
Edits: 08/14/16
"I never read an opinion that came close to what I was actually thinking."
Obviously, Lynch never read about my opinion.
I agree that Mulhollamd Drive is very impenetrable, even seeing it twice doesnt really help unravel the thing. What does help, fortunately, is the existence of a few very good web sites dedicated to unraveling the mystery of Mulhollamd Drive. ;-) Billy Ray Cyrus is a rather odd casting choice, but what the heck.
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