Mulholland Drive Review
by Homer Yen (homer_yen AT yahoo DOT com)October 29th, 2001
"Mulholland Drive" – A Dark and Twisted Road by Homer Yen
(c) 2001
Watching the noirish "Mulholland Drive" will easily leave viewers with a thousand questions and very few answers. In fact, no film this year will likely inspire more discussion over its meaning than this one, not "AI" and not even "Memento." The beauty or the curse of "Mulholland Drive" is that it challenges us to derive an interpretation when such a feat is virtually impossible. There may be a dozen interpretations. Or, there may be none at all. Thus, the experience is maddening, frustrating, and seemingly nonsensical. And for those reasons, it is difficult to recommend this film to the majority of filmgoers.
Yet, despite how I felt AFTER the film ended, at no point DURING the film did I feel disappointed. With its surrealistic approach, the film was incredibly hypnotic. You just had to sit up and take notice.
But the question is "take notice of what?"
"Mulholland Drive" seems like a scathing critique of the cruel studio environment and how Hollywood fantasies frequently degenerate into broken dreams, a loss of identity, and nightmares. This is portrayed through a mystery that begins in the hills overlooking Hollywood. Rita (Laura Elena Harring), a voluptuous brunette, barely survives an attempted murder. She stumbles down a hill in a daze and makes her way into an apartment where she tries to rest and gather herself. The owner of the apartment has just left town, but her niece, Betty (Naomi Watts), is about to arrive and stay during her aunt's absence. Betty has just flown in from the Midwest and is fueled with perkiness and ambition as she tries to achieve stardom. When she first encounters the stranger, she mistakes Rita to be her Aunt's friend. They themselves become fast friends and together try to piece Rita's life back together.
Instead of revealing clues, the film gives us characters, both dark and eccentric, that appear and then disappear, like fleeting images if a daydream. There is a director who is threatened with death if he does not cast a certain actress, and there is a wheelchair-bound mogul who sits in a room in which the light comes on when he speaks but then dims when he stops. There is a mysterious corpse, and there is a psychological patient that loses his battle against his mind. They may be symbolic of something specific or perhaps part of a larger dreamscape in which random images appear and fight for prominence.
While these elements may seem absurd, the seductive artistic direction is such that everything looks absolutely normal. We don't question the out-of-place cowboy, why several other characters look like Betty, or the 3AM performances at a club called Silencio. We are somehow absorbed by what's going on. And we wished that director David Lynch sat next to us to explain it all.
You'll applaud its uncompromising style and continued state of weirdness. It's provocative enough to sustain your curiosity. But, the film lacks closure and structure, even if that is not the goal. This film is more experimental rather than anything else, with artistry that is bold and a atmosphere that is alluring. The movie remains in a state of dreamlike semi-consciousness, and we are left trying to fit the incongruent pieces together to make sense of something that shouldn't make sense anyway. Is this a nightmare or a satisfying dream? Again, we are left to wonder.
Grade: C
S: 3 out of 3
L: 1 out of 3
V: 1 out of 3
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