Mulholland Drive Review
by Christopher Null (cnull AT mindspring DOT com)September 27th, 2001
MULHOLLAND DRIVE
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 2001 filmcritic.com
Twin Peaks stands as one of my favorite television series ever made.
But if you slapped the first three episodes together and called it a
movie, I doubt I'd feel the same way. Mulholland Drive was originally
intended as David Lynch's return to TV. Rumored to be a creepy and
atmospheric drama, I had anticipated another Peaks -- and prayed for
something better than Lynch's disastrous "sitcom" On The Air.
Trouble began when ABC abruptly pulled the plug on Mulholland, but
Lynch, ever the trooper, decided to take the footage he'd shot so far
and turn it into a movie. Of course, a few things would have to be
added -- namely a lot of nudity and oozing sexuality and, well, an
ending -- so it was back to the set for extra shooting. The result is
archetypical Lynch -- creepy, uncomfortable, erotic, and devoid of all
logic whatsoever.
The story, as much as there is one to describe, is told much like any TV
pilot would do. Characters are fed to us slowly -- remember, this was
supposed to carry us over 13 hours or so -- and plot details are drawn
with a large brush. We witness a Hollywood car crash and meet its
amnesiac victim (Laura Harring), we see a farm girl/aspiring starlet
(Naomi Watts) take her in and befriend her, and we sit in on a series of
strange meetings surrounding the making of an artsy, difficult
director's (Justin Theroux) Big Movie. And somewhere among the
apartment buildings, the dingy diner, the studio lot, and Mulholland
Drive itself, these stories will intersect.
Whether those stories will be comprehensible (and whether that's an
important quality for a film to have) are something else entirely, and
as with any Lynch movie, it's pretty much up to the viewer to decide all
that on his own. Personally, I think that story does matter, and I'd
also so that Mulholland Drive simply doesn't make sense when looked at
with a critical eye. You can make up your own mind, but between the
mystical matter-transference box and its triangular key, a pair of
giggling seniors, a yeti that lives in a parking lot, and a good dozen
character identity changes a la the boneheaded Lost Highway, even the
most patient moviegoer will be utterly lost starting right at the fade
in.
I realize that faulting Lynch for not making sense is a bit like being
mad at the dog for digging in the garbage. It's in his nature to be
random. But Twin Peaks and movies like Blue Velvet are masterworks
because they managed to be cryptic think-pieces and still satisfy you in
the end, backwards-talking dwarfs or no. To be certain, Mulholland
Drive is gutsy and has moments of greatness: Watts' virtuoso audition
with a far-too-tanned leading man shows how truly magnificent the movie
could have been. Other vignettes are just as memorable -- like when a
perfectly ordinary event like coming home from work suddenly turns into
a nightmare -- but they end up being islands in an ocean of overly
pregnant pauses and wild tangents.
But again, I have to harp on this: Far, far too much of the film
(clocking in at almost 2 1/2 hours long) is nonsense. Most notably,
near the hurried finale, Harring drags Watts to a way-after-hours
performance wherein musicians don't play their instruments. Watts ends
up shaking violently until a magic box appears in her lap. Um,
okaaaaayyyyy.... It all sounds like some silly dream Lynch once had and
scribbled down during the middle of the night. Who knows, maybe that
was the point.
Technically, the film is assured and reasonably memorable. The actors'
performances (virtually all unknowns) are good but hardly career-making
-- with the dual exceptions of Watts and Lafayette Montgomery's
miniscule yet thunderous role as a cowboy somehow pulling all the
strings. The camerawork is typical of Lynch but his use of out-of-focus
shots -- presumably meant to make us question our perspective -- ends up
being distracting more than anything else. The music, by longtime Lynch
collaborator Angelo Badalamenti and Lynch himself, is appropriately
creepy when it needs to be and fun when levity is needed.
To his credit, Lynch at least tried to wrap everything up in the last 20
minutes. It all involves that damn magic box, but still, he does pay
lip service to the notion of plot structure. It's no "Who killed Laura
Palmer?", but it's something to chew on. It's just too bad that trying
to make heads or tails of the dozen last-minute plot twists is a bit
like trying to analyze jazz -- the more you think about it, the less
sensical it becomes. Let the movie go, and you'll find it far more
enjoyable.
RATING: ***
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: R
Director: David Lynch
Producer: Neal Edelstein, Joyce Eliason, Tony Krantz, Michael Polaire,
Alain Sarde, Mary Sweeney
Writer: David Lynch
Starring: Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller, Dan
Hedaya, Mark Pellegrino, Brian Beacock, Robert Forster
http://www.bacfilms.com/mulholland/
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