BFI Top 50: Mulholland Drive, Released in 2001, Directed by David Lynch

What I know going in

I am familiar with some of David Lynch’s most well-known works. I marathoned all of Twin Peaks a few years ago and would Blue Velvet as one of my favorite films. Mulholland Drive is widely recognized as one of Lynch’s greatest works, and is perhaps even more critically acclaimed than Blue Velvet. I am very excited, and a bit hesitant, to watch the film.

Immediate reaction

For its first 90 minutes, Mulholland Drive appears to be exploring the same space as Blue Velvet. Several parallels can be drawn between the two films. Naomi Watts main character, Betty, has an almost too sunny disposition and is incredibly eager to dive headfirst into a seemingly dark mystery. Her can-do attitude is reminiscent of the boy scout know-how that Kyle MacLachlan displays as Jeffrey Beaumont in Blue Velvet. Furthermore, Laura Harring’s main character, Rita, is similar to Isabella Rosselini’s character, Dorothy Vallens, in the same film. Rita contrasts Betty’s optimism with a dark, unknowable sexuality and draws Betty into the dark side of Hollywood, much like Dorothy Vallens pushes Jeffrey into the hidden depths of his seemingly innocuous hometown. In addition, the plot of both films is structured as a neo-noir/mystery beginning with the identification of an enigmatic woman.

Even the general atmosphere of both films is similar. Mulholland Drive gains it power through the clash of a nostalgic, sun-dappled version of Hollywood with its dark, shadowy nighttime reality. In the world of Mulholland Drive, a typical fifties diner, Winkies, serves as the host for a disfigured, homeless monster who haunts nightmares of the diner’s patrons. The casting decisions for a poppy, throwback musical seem to be up to a secret cabal of disfigured businessmen who hide themselves in shadows. And, in one of the film’s best scenes, two actors find the hidden sexuality in a scene that had previously seemed like a piece of over-the-top melodrama. Blue Velvet thrives off a similar contrast between the cheery surface of a small every-town and its dark underbelly.

However, all of those similarities disappear in the film’s final section, during which MulhollandDrive somehow becomes more cryptic and psychologically distressing than Blue Velvet. For the purpose of this article, I’ll try to lie out what I think actually happens in the film, but I think the later events are much more interesting if taken as intentionally ambiguous. At the end of the film, it is revealed that all prior events were simply the dying dream of a failed actress, Diane Selwyn, also played by Watts, after she puts out a hit on the lover who spurned her, Camille Rhodes, also played Harring. The previous events now make sense as a kind of tragic dream. Diane’s mind filters pieces of her real life into the mystery we saw play out earlier. Her dream character’s name is Betty, taken from a waitress she meets at Winkie’s. Her Aunt has simply left for the weekend, instead of dying. Finally, Mulholland Drive, in reality the location of swanky party, servers as ground zero for the initial mystery.Diane even uses her dream to craft an elaborate fantasy for herself where she is not only a fantastic, optimistic actress, again see the audition scene, but also the dominant partner in her relationship with Camille, a reversal on reality. In fact, in Betty’s dream, Camille is an amnesiac and literally has no personality. With this interpretation, the movie serves as a comment on how Hollywood grinds up and spits out aspiring ingénue’s with glee.

But what if my interpretation is incorrect? What if the final moments of Mulholland Drive suggest something far more insidious? What if we have entered a world where personality, memory, identity, and reality have all been jostled to the point where one ends and the next begins can no longer be discerned? This thought is what makes the film so terrifying. Diane/Betty seems to be completely lost. Her emotions and subconscious desires have begun bumping against reality to the point where her only solution is to end it all.

Of course, all of my philosophizing about the film wouldn’t mean much if it wasn’t viscerally horrifying. Lynch always knows how to create an image that is off in the just the right way to stick itself in the back of your mind forever. The man behind Winkie’s, the tiny people, and the elderly couple who attack Diane at the end are all burned into my skull. Lynch is also helped immensely by Angelo Badalamenti’s sinister score. It’s menacing enough to make a simple walk through a sunny courtyard one of the tensest sequences in the film. Mulholland Drive is thematically deft enough to be analyzed over and over, but the highest compliment I can give it is that after its last few seconds, I sat in the dark afraid to move due to what my own subconscious might conjure up.

Further thoughts

One of the key aspects I missed after my first viewing of MulhollandDrive was how the film deals with artifice, particularly of the kind created by cinema. There are several scenes in the film that establish character or emotional depth that are filtered that involve multiple layers of reality. The first come when Harring chooses her character’s name. Harring is sitting in front of a mirror and her reflection is filmed. From this point of view, Harring looks at another mirror that is reflecting a poster of Glenda starring Rita Hayworth. This scene involves three layers (both reflections and the poster), four if you count the film itself, and five if you see the main thrust of the film as a dream. A similar analysis can be applied to the scene during Betty’s audition and the scene where Rebeka del Rio lip syncs to a passionate recording of a Spanish version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying.” Even though it can mind-bending to think about the true nature of these scenes, they are still passionately felt by both the audience and the characters in the film. Perhaps Lynch is suggesting that when the artificial is this powerful, it’s not really Betty’s fault that she becomes mentally lost.

In addition, Lynch uses these many surfaces to trick the viewer. Several scenes have a false start that is carefully hidden by tricky editing and sneaky framing. When the film initially cuts to Rita and Betty rehearsing a scene, it seems they are having an argument. The falsity of that first opinion is revealed when the camera pans back to reveal Rita holding a script. There is a similar cut during the latter half of the film. A group of old brownstone’s comes into a view, and, for a split second, the film seems to have moved across country to New York. After another cut, the scenery is revealed to be a backdrop for another film.

Finally, to anyone complaining that is Betty and Rita’s romance is unrealistic due to the blankness of Harring’s character, is it really that far-fetched that would someone would fall in love with beautiful image in the age when everyone has celebrity fuck-list?

Why the film is on the list

Mulholland Drive is a modern, psychological spin on the movies about movies genre. Sunset Boulevard, Singin’ in the Rain, and F for Fake all deal with similar themes, but none with the same visceral terror of Mulholland Drive. That makes it a modern classic.