Mary Sands

 

Review of Mulholland Drive
Director/writer: David Lynch

Last September, on a lazy, late-summer day, California-style, I was walking with friends post French lunch, past a small theater in Irvine, and saw a poster of an upcoming David Lynch movie: Mulholland Drive. I can liken my excitement to this news of when I was younger, seeing flyers for the next Who concert--but even moreso, since some of Lynch's past breakthroughs such as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me are movies that have affected me deeply, if not dramatically, during the past decade or so.

From that afternoon forward until mid-October, when the movie came out nearby, I was excited, for once in this year of no-return, for something new, some breath of fresh air, coming my way to take me out of the doldrums. It had been a long time since I'd been excited about much. It's dangerous to set your expecations too high, but what the hell, my intuitions said that this movie would be the thing to make me get into something again. And I was right; the movie even far surpassed my own hopes.

I spent the weekend before seeing MD re-watching some of my old Lynch favorites. Then, kind of hyped, I went to see the movie in an older theater in Santa Ana, with a friend. About two and a half hours later, we walked out of the theater, into hot Pacific sunshine, and we were both very shaken up. His views: he noted later that the movie made him want to cry. My reaction was the same way, though I'm sure we both had transcended into our own memories, our own worlds, and related this masterpiece work of art to our own lives in some way. It didn't make matters easy when we drove past a neighborhood that had been the first neighborhood I'd happily lived in upon my arrival to California, with very big dreams, a neighborhood that was hidden from the sappy, seedy gang-infested surroundings, with a lot of trees, flowers, and thick foliage--so that one cannot see in. Memories grappled hard, longing took place, and then we went over to a Coco's, a-la Winkie's in the movie, and people were very strange, just like in the movie: there was a man-girl, or something and a woman with a huge pompadour. The lights in the restroom buzzed on and off. What the hell?

There's a lot of narratives seemingly going different directions in Mulholland Drive. We have a cute, bright, and at-first very innocent woman, Betty Elms, played by Naomi Watts, descending into Los Angeles for the first time in her life. She hails from Ontario Rivers, Canada, which is, incidentally, the same place Dorothy Vallens (Blue Velvet) is from. Betty is sufficiently holly-woed and plans to become a great actress. Then there is a dark beauty (played by Laura Harring) who later names herself Rita after seeing an old Gilda poster of Rita Hayworth, and who has climbed down into the quaint Hollywood neighborhood after having barely survived a car accident, a near death, and bout of amnesia, which slowly begins to unravel itself, with Betty's uber-cool and almost humorous dective work, into a tragic reality. Other narratives: a midget in a red-curtained room who's some kind of myserious headman that is overseeing a couple goons' demand that a certain upcoming movie casts Camilla Rhoads (this is the girl) as the lead actress; said movie's director Adam Kescher having all these unreal things happen at once--being told who to cast in the movie, finding his wife in bed with the poolman, losing all his credit, and having to meet some pale-faced cowboy at midnight in a roundup that is only shadowed by the cowboy's warnings and a buzzing overhead light; a skanky hitman foiling a murder in a hilarious way; a blue box and a blue key; a bum behind a restaurant called Winkie's; a bed with a dead woman; a strange place at wee-morning seedy L.A. called Club Silencio; a man talking to his agent/shrink/whatever about a dream that has haunted him; and so on. It really isn't until perhaps the second viewing of the movie, and a lot of reading reviews that things begin to fall into place, but not really. It's almost better to just watch this movie once, allow it to leave the mystery in your subconscience so that cohesive surfaces enough to rattle your emotions, and then go forth in life feeling that you can ever get rid of that faint David Lynch tick that has submerged itself just beneath the skin.

What's important to remember when seeing this movie is that Lynch does not feed you a logical story on a silver spoon. You just have to kind of experience things and not spend too much effort forcing things to make sense. But it does help to remember that unlike the predictable movie director or writer, Lynch uses tools that function as symbolism, allusion, and other stylish tactics. Like in Lost Highway, when Lynch manipulated the idea of musical fugue to get across the nature of dialog--as instruments (Angelo Badalmenti's classic works of art)--actually talked back and forth and exchanged themselves, much like the characters in the movie exchanged between themselves. It's like this in Mulholland Drive, too. Pay attention to metaphysical scenes, or even lighthearted touches like old-tyme Hollywood, with notable props, decor, and ways of getting around. See, Lynch is a time manipulator. He swings time around so that it doesn't come across as linear. You think it does, you want it to, but Lynch is playing a joke on you. Perhaps the opening scene of Mulholland Drive, a jitterbug competition, though reminiscent of a simple Gap advertisement, is really just a big tease, because the whole scene's lit with past, present, and future possibilities. A face, Betty's face, is transposed over the dancers at the end of the scene. Omnipresence deluxe: some sort of freaky stuff is going to happen. You can tell. Badalmenti's musical score, which started happy and bouncy, takes on an evil melody that lurks beneath the covers of young people having a good time. Shadows enter. Time implodes upon itself.

 

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