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Mulholland Drive

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Year: 2001
Director: David Lynch

There’s been a slight hiatus in assembling the watching party, but last night we sat down to enjoy the eighth best film ever made – which according to the Sight and Sound 2022 poll is Mulholland Drive (or Dr). It’s place as the apex of the Lynch canon appears now unquestioned, above Blue Velvet and er Dune. All the more mysterious that this was his last film that in any way could be called a mainstream feature film. Inland Empire, his next, was shot on digital film and independently distributed.

The basic structure of Mulholland Dr. is straightforward: after a car crash a nameless young woman wanders through LA in shock, eventually ending up at new-actress-in-town Betty’s flat. Staring at a poster the amnesiac calls herself Rita and the two women investigate the circumstances behind her crash. In a parallel plot, maverick film director Adam is trying to prevent a mysterious gang taking control of his current movie, including insisting that an unknown actress called Camilla Rhodes play the lead.

As ‘Rita’ and Betty follow the trail, there are a host of familiar Lynch tropes, including the small man who spoke backwards in Twin Peaks , a nightclub with mysterious acts and diva singers, a strange object (blue key), several diner restaurants, and flashes of horrendous monsters and ultraviolence. That and Billy Ray Cyrus.

What evolves as an amnesic noir thriller takes a truly sharp and Lynchian left-turn two hours in, in an apartment where Betty and Riita find a dead body. The remainder of the film tells an alternate story: Watts/Betty is now a struggling actress called Diane, in a relationship with a successful actress called Camilla Rhodes – played by Harring. No more spoilers as to how this version of the story ‘ends’.

So why is it so highly regarded?

It’s incredibly well-acted. Not something that several of Lynch’s movies can say. Watts gives a career-making performance first as newbie Betty, and then as down-on-her-luck Diane. Harring floats through the movie giving off full enigmatic vamp vibes as Rita/Camille. Justin Theroux is hilariously needy and up himself as the ‘why me’ Adam. Old Hollywood Royalty Anne Miller is great as a faded landlady, again picking up an alternate role in the last reel. There’s a full supporting cast in typical Lynch style, though the absence of Harry Dean Stanton feels like a loss – as room was made for Billy Ray Cyrus.

The script is tight, twisty and engrossing. Hard to credit that it started life as a TV pilot and appears to be some sort of assemblage. Actually not hard to credit at all for the Lynch-heads. The film sub-plot and a brief sub-sub-plot incompetent hitman appearance both cry out for follow-ups they don’t really get, though we find out how they link into the main Rita/Betty plot.

The film business doesn’t half love a film about the film business. If films are dreams at 35 frames per second, then Mulholland Dr puts us squarely in the position of judging what is reality and what is dream. There are reams and reams of online theorising about this film – including that the whole film may be a dream of the unseen person in bed at the very start of the film. Or ‘reality’ is the first story and the dream the second story, or vice versa (the most conventional explanation). There are theories on the queerness of the film, and on whether it is a love letter or poison pen to the movie business. There are a lot of theories.

Might appeal to people who enjoyed:

Other Lynch obviously, but also the ‘dark Hollywood’ movie from Sunset Boulevard and A Star is Born to Maps to the Stars.

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Comments

  1. I tremendously enjoyed this rewatch – two hours twenty flew past – not something I could say about Inland Empire. Is it a fantastic movie? Yes it is. Is it ‘better’ than Seven Samurai, The Godfather or others just below it. Not sure. But it’s perhaps as close as we’re going to get to the perfect Lynch movie. Blue Velvet saw his surrealism a little too reined in, Lost Highway and Eraserhead by converse are too cryptic. Elephant Man and the Straight Story are great but don’t really lean into the Lynch tropes enough (come at me). Wild at Heart is too overwrought and poorly acted, at times laughably so. It’s Mulholland Dr. that is the definitive statement of the Lynch cinema.

    • I was like you, Baron – heard a lot of good things but never got round to watching it. I’m very glad I did, as I thoroughly enjoyed it.

      Did I understand all of it? No. Would Lynch benefit from a producer or someone else going “Could you tone down the weirdness/surrealism just a *tad*, DL?” Yes, probably. Did it have an actual plot that made some sort of sense (unlike, say, Lost Highway)? Yes, surprisingly. And are the two leads absolutely riveting? Yes indeedy.

      For those who haven’t taken the plunge, give it a try. But you’ve only got yourself to blame if you’re kept up at night wondering what it all means, man…

  4. It is an excellent movie and I am delighted the film club I belong to is showing it later this year.

    I think the scene where Naomi Watts auditions for a part in a movie is just brilliant. Here is an actor already in a role (as Betty) acting out another role before our very eyes. And in both roles she is totally convincing. What a sublime actress.

    • I think its rise to prominence is in large part due to the fact that he has three leads (Watts, Harring, Theroux) who are all utterly convincing, and able to carry off the sometimes absurd and bizzarre demands of the script perfectly. Though I love Kyle Mclachlan he’s not quite in the same league.

      • I remember being irritated by LA Confidential as well. At the time James Ellroy could do no wrong for me so I just thought ‘you’ve left half the book out’. As it’s now 20+ years since I’ve read one of his books and am never likely to again I should probably revisit LAC as well.

        • @Guiri

          Oddly enough, having just bought American Tabloid for 99p during one of Amazon’s Kindle Deals of the Month promo, I was thinking about giving old James a long overdue go around again, too.

          Sadly, I found the choppy, repetitive style of the writing in final two books in the LA quartet – Cold Six Thousand and Bloods a Rover -incredibly hard going..that my chances of reading anything he’s written since then are about as rare as commas in CST

          • I can’t be much doing with Ellroy’s style of writing. I still have to finish The Cold Six Thousand (it’s not in the LA Quartet, but is the follow up to American Tabloid), but the thought of doing so doesn’t enthuse me. American Tabloid is another matter altogether. I’ve read it three times and will happily read it again one day. Stunning novel.

    • Inland Empire for me. That description could very well apply. Though am almost through the third series of Twin Peaks and its tremendous – providing you don’t worry about whether the narrative has any sense.

        • There’s an argument that Twin Peaks: The Return is really a very long film. It was shot as a piece, all directed by one person (unlike most TV series), and then chopped up into episodes. It’s a magnificent achievement, as is Mulholland Dr., which remains one of my top 3 all-time movies.

  9. Remember once taking a young lady I had the hots for to see Eraserhead in Manchester when it first came out in the late 70s.

    Not sure whether it was the nature of the film (possibly DL’s most disturbing) or the location of the cinema (the old repertory cinema in Moss Side) that did it, but every time I called her from that point on her hair seemed to be in urgent need of shampoo

        • Amazingly I got married to the woman I saw the remake of Lolita with on our first date. Her choice, but afterwards she was shellshocked and refused to speak to me for days after.

          Then, 20+ years later I went to see Blade Runner 2049(is it?) as one of my very first post-divorce dates. Had a couple of beers beforehand to calm my unpracticed nerves and apparently within 5 minutes I was fast asleep and snoring. She found it as boring as I did so woke me up and we left and parted ways. I’m such a catch.

    • Excellent. Bad movie date top trumps. I will raise you an early date with an early girlfriend where I persuaded her to see a Jean Luc-Godard at Cornerhouse as was on Oxford Road. I’ve just checked and it was either Prenom Carmen (Godard on Carmen) or Hail Mary (Godard on the Virgin Birth). Pretentious moi?

        • haha only just catching up with this thread, i took my then girlfriend to see Nic Roegs Insignificance at the Cornerhouse, now that was weird!!! Thankfully we are still together 38 years after (although she oftens refers to “that rubbish film you took me to see)

      • The future Mrs F and I stepped out to La Haine at the Bracknell South Hill Park arts centre.

        Black and white? Check. Subtitles? Check (although she didn’t need them). Drug-related death and murder? Check. What larks!

        Spoiler alert: she still married me.

      • Our second date I took the future Mrs. T to the Everyman in Hampstead to see “Belle de Jour”. Around 10 minutes in when they throw mud at Catherine Deneuve, tired to a tree in her white satin dress I felt I might have made a slight misjudgment. Got away with it though.

      • It was indeed.

        Spent many happy weekend afternoons there.

        Some terrific pubs in Manchester back then, too.
        Toppers Bar, the two Conti Clubs,

        Only been back once since leaving in summer 1981

  10. My take on Lynch is terrible pseud beginnings, a purple patch where he probably was curtailed by the money men (MD and TP basically) then wandered into the “I’ll do what I like, can you invest a lot of money for me based on my past glories” zone.

    I loved MD and if I can persuade Mrs E will watch it this weekend.

  12. A pedant writes: 25 frames per second. Or did you mean 35mm?

    I had a lovely time in Vienna, when Inter-railing, watching the Twin Peaks film dubbed into German with English subtitles. I had no idea what was going on, but it was pissing down outside and the cinema was warm and dry.

  13. I like a fair few of his films and MD is probably his best along with Blue Velvet. Never managed to sit through more than about half of Inland Empire as it just lost me. When Twin Peaks was originally shown on the Beeb I did start watching it every week but other things in my life cropped up and I never got to the end. There’s a box set of series 1 and 2 sitting on the shelf so I’m going to sit down and watch it at some point.

    No mention in the comments at all for the Elephant Man? I watched it recently for about the first time in 30 years. A brilliantly made but quite upsetting film and should be recognised as one his better films although it sits aside from them a bit. How it never won the Oscar for cinematography is a bit baffling to me

  14. A terrific review MM, & one that prompts me to undertake to revisit MH.
    I found 2 previous sittings very frustrating and unsatisfying experiences, leaving me with the keen sense that under its gorgeous visuals and sense of atmosphere, there was essentially ‘no there, there’ and it’s in the ‘deep and meaningless’ category of films.
    I confess I fell deeply out of love with Lynch after Twin Peaks was rolled up ( understandably, due to declining viewing figures) and the subsequent movie ‘Fire Walk With Me’ was trailed by him as a resolution to the myriad loose ends that fans were left with when the TV series died.
    I remember wanting to stand up in the cinema & yell ‘Bullshit!’ at the time as I was incensed at the half baked drivel served up.
    My conclusion, which I’ve never shaken off, is that Twin Peaks was brilliant at setting a scene & characters that hinted at a huge dark hidden reality, that once revealed would unify all the aspects that had been teased out over seasons, but actually nothing had been worked out & they’d been winging it all along. The show, which was all about intrigue and enigma, ultimately depended on eventual reveals that at the very least were consistent within the world it created, and Lynch completely failed to deliver.
    That’s tainted my view of him since and whilst I wouldn’t ever describe him as a charlatan, I also don’t rate him as a genius surreal auteur – suspecting as much waffle as talent at work much of the time.
    Personally, I think ‘Erazerhead’ is his masterpiece, followed by ‘Blue Velvet’. Both fully realised and still capable of disturbing.
    MH is widely regarded as his best work, including by many people whose opinions I respect greatly, so I will give it another spin. I find I’m increasingly intrigued to at least investigate work that doesn’t land with me at all but is celebrated by others, just to try to see what’s going on. It’s not a matter of preferences or taste, but I guess more of a curiosity to identify the mechanisms at play.

  15. We watched it last night. Overall I thought it was good, especially after digging into WTF is going on for the last 20 mins. I will rewatch it as I suspect it is better 2nd time around. Naomi Watts is really superb, playing 3 different characters brilliantly. Mrs. T was less charitable then me – she is less surrealist tolerant.

  16. I saw MD at the London Film Festival at the time, followed by a Q&A with Watts (tiny) and Harring (movie-star stunning), neither of whom admitted to having any idea about what any of it means, only that David Lynch was amazing to work with, and that the whole cast and crew were happy to come back months after filming the supposed TV pilot to finish it off as a standalone movie (Lynch said he dreamt the whole final hour…)

    (Also, a shout out to Rebekah Del Rio’s acappella performance of “Llorando” (Crying), supposedly the first rehearsal take with no click track; Lynch said “that’s it” and sent her home…)

  18. Great to see this film getting a bit of discussion and a lot of praise on here.

    I remember seeing it when it came out in 2001, and it really felt like one of those Event Movies. You could tell straight away it was a film that would linger and haunt you for years, and it solidified Lynch’s reputation as a genius for me. It has a unique atmosphere. I also very much love Twin Peaks, Inland Empire, Lost Highway and even The Straight Story.

    I have to say that I never fully understood the widespread bafflement about the final portion of the film after the big twist. Maybe I’m wrong, but even the first time I saw it it felt clear to me that the whole thing was nothing more complicated than a portrayal of an anxiety dream: a jilted lover arranges a hitman to take out her ex-girlfriend, then has a long night of the soul where she has a nightmare (the first two thirds of the film) and the real world events start to bleed into the nightmare But when she wakes up, the blue key is the agreed sign left by the hitman that the job has been completed and it’s too late. So the framing story (or at least my view of it) is fairly straightforward, and the creeping dread that builds up in the first part of the film is simply that feeling you get in the middle of an anxiety dream, just before you wake up sweating and full of terror. Brr.

    • Xactly. Almost an homage to Dallas, I thought, for that director’s arch manipulation of the viewers expectations in the memorable shower scene, where the whole meaning of the reality versus dream interface is subtly etc etc etc.

  20. I just noticed this story… There is a secret to Mullholland Drive… a simple one sentence key that totally solves the puzzle. I realized it a couple of hours after seeing it and wondered if there was any mention of it in reviews. There wasn’t. Then I found an Italian interview with Lynch where they straight out asked him if that was the secret. He admitted that it was, but he didn’t want to say because he wanted people to figure it out for themselves.

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