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You have to congratulate David Lynch, when you see one of his films you really have no idea what will
happen next. In an age of predictability & dumbing down where mediocrity passes for sublimity, Lynch is the
antithesis. His films confound critics because they speak a different celluloid language. His success
comes from a virtual impossibility to pin him down. Everyone has their own opinion & only Lynch
knows which is right. His decision to evade discussions of meaning has only mushroomed their appeal.
Recently though Lynch has embarked on a dialogue of sorts with his audience (peers & critics alike).
Following the critical slaughter of Fire walk With Me he answered accusations of being deliberately
weird by making The Straight Story (pun intended). Then he came back
with Lost Highway, a film that dares you to make coherent sense of its surreal landscape, effectively completing
it's narrative circuit before speeding out of sight. As recent films have betrayed this tussle with
Hollywood & the increasing spotlight on this auteur - one hand seeming to welcome while the other strangles
every artistic truth, Tinsletown happy to bestow him awards, top actors lining up to work with him
while every project is met with scorn & funding must be found elsewhere - it is therefore no suprise
that Hollywood itself comes under the twisted microscope in Lynch's latest opus, Mulholland Drive.
The film follows on from the noirish echoes of Lost Highway (longtime musical collaborator Badalamenti
even recycles part of the score) quite literally with a tale of ebullient LA newcomer Naomi Watts
searching for fame & happiness & finding a concussed starlet in her shower. As the two set about unravelling
her amnesia Lynch sprinkles in the usual non-narrative hijinks, double takes & comedy as inept hitmen
provide the light relief & characters turn up only to disappear forever, names & identities switch
like musical chairs to wittle away the plot and even Billy Ray Cyrus gets an ironic cameo as an adultering
pool cleaner. There are clever satires, artistic nods to Picasso & Hockney and symbolism aplenty,
from magical cabarets to lesbian fantasy. As usual there's much too much to pick up first time around
but this is where Lynch excels, in the age of disposable entertainment, his films always needs a third or
fourth or tenth viewing to begin to fully understand the whole beautiful fiasco. Watts has been praised
aplenty but it is Harring that shines through as the sometime damsel-in-distress, sometime femme fatale.
In typical Lynch fashion we are kept on tenterhooks until the final scene when the whole thing, or
rather threads of it, come together to form a finale. Through the smoke & magic we receive our just
deserve & this is the key to Lynch of late: despite seeming to be against his audience at times, his
adeptness as a filmmaker (extraordinaire) has taught him to give us what we want in the end, after
all, we've worked for it.
RATING: (c)Limer 2002
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In the Mezzanine Odeon on Leicster Square, people laughed at the end of Mulholland Drive... not
at the final scene... but when the credits began rolling. From where I sat, I could understand why...
It's funny you see, because it's what David Lynch does, and he's done it again, and he's done it
to me....but I wasn't laughing. Granted, I wasn't grumbling either, but I did feel cheated. Not that
I blame Lynch exclusively, far from it. My annoyance was based on a very clear vision of what
Mulholland could have been, and indeed should have been. The main reason for this lies in the fact
that Mulholland drive was supposed to be a TV series for ABC. Twin Peaks writ large, in the big
city of Los Angeles rather than the back woods of Washington State.
Those viewers who felt the inexplicable nature of many of the films scenes was consistently
deliberate, are fooling themselves, or letting Lynch make them patsies. These scenes were supposed
to be part of a slowly unfolding narrative, not just a mood setting vignette within a lesbian
melodrama.
Those threads that can be tied together, form a haphazzard spiders web of potential plot lines,
that hint at the wonder the TV series could have been. My gut feeling is that Lynch allowed many
sequences from the TV show into the film because he loved them, not because they furthered the
films narrative, enhanced its mood or complimented its style.
It's this situation that weakens Mulholland Drive, at the very least in a narrative sense. For
his fans, Lynch's integrity is crucial, as it keeps us beliveing that there is method in the
madness, meaning in the mayhem. Beyond the alluring visuals, and evocative sound engineering,
bizarre behaviour and quirkyness, there is real depth, that we are looking at an original oil
painting with it's creases and folds, ridges and troughs, and not some Athena poster print. The
lesbian storyline is the only one that even has the basics of a beginning, middle and end, with
its "end" being vaporous at best. The detectives, the office shooting, the diner, the tramp, the
box, the film, Mr. Roque... all of these were dipped into, and given every indication of being part
of a plot that was going to be drawn togther, if not sewn up. But no, and their inclusion was pretty
much pointless to the film. It could be argued that these scenes have a purpose in creating a
"Lynchian" version of Hollywood, adding breadth to the story, but they are clearly suposed to be
related to the narrative.
While the Lesbian relationship was an interesting subject to hang the film on, it wasn't until the
relationship begain to crumble/had crumbled that the two lead actresses had much to really work
with. Their initial friendship, eventually courtship made for pleasant viewing, and the physical
scenes were I'm sure, worth the price of admission for many viewers.
Photography and Cinematography were hard to fault with incredible use of darkness and contrast,
and richly saturated colours, very reminiscent of the better sections of Lost Highway (Those in
Fred and Renee's house).
Editing together a pilot episode of a TV series with new footage created for the full length
feature would be daunting under any circumstances, but when David Lynch is the writer and director,
the task becomes Herculean. Whilst the editing doesn't really help tell a story which is
deliberately obtuse, it did allow for new and old scenes to be mixed together with very few obvious
"seams." The films slow pace, give it the dream like quality that Lynch can do so well, and
ironically complimented it's lack of narrative cohesion. If the film ain't goin nowhere... why
would you hurry through it...
The film is however enjoyable, provocative, distinctly (predictably?!) Lynch material although
managing to feel quite fresh... but i can't help but return to the suspicion, that I, and millions
of others, could have been hooked into an erotic, mysterious, troubling, intelligent piece of
television, returning religiously on some regular weekday night, only to wax lyrical in the
workplace the following day.
ABC: you missed out on this one, as did we all...
RATING: (c)Patrick T 2002
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Mulholland Drive (Cinema: February 2002)
