David Lynch's film, Mulholland Drive, has been called "confusing," "a mess," "a descent into chaos," and worse. But I submit that it's a beautifully structured great work of art.
I have not previously been a Lynch fan. To me it seemed that he cultivated gratuitous weirdness, weirdness for weirdness' sake. But in this film, in my opinion, he transcends all that. Every frame counts; nothing is gratuitous.
In order to appreciate this film, it is helpful to understand that the first 100 of its 147 minutes are a dream—completely a dream. The director provides a visual clue for this by filming the entire first 100 minutes through a diffusion filter, which makes white areas of the frame especially bright and sparkly.
The dreamer is Diane Selwyn (played superbly by Naomi Watts), a washed-up Hollywood wannabe. In "real life," Diane is numb, fearful and desperately unhappy following the break-up with her lesbian lover Camilla Rhodes (played as a smoldering femme fatale by Laura Elena Harring).
Diane's life, in her own eyes, has failed. She has lost her great love Camilla, she has lost her passionate vision of making it in Hollywood, and she has a malignant secret that she cannot live with much longer.
Of course, in the dream she is the opposite of all these things. In the dream she takes on the identity of "Betty" (a waitress she saw at a crucial moment), who is beautiful, cheerful and extremely upbeat. Not only that, but when Betty goes to her first audition she is immediately acclaimed as a great actress.
Through Betty in the dream, Diane is able to live the life that she had hoped to lead. She has a lovely and very hot romance with Camilla (called "Rita" in the dream), and has the potential for a glowing future. In the dream, Diane is making everything new and bright.
In "real life," though, we learn that Camilla beat out Diane in an important audition and then went on to become a Hollywood star. In contrast, Diane went on to merely bit parts—in Camilla's films. Moreover, Camilla has now fallen in love with her director in the new film, Adam.
Naturally, in the dream Diane takes revenge on Adam. In the dream, Adam is having a very bad day indeed. He comes home to find his wife in bed with another man (in a very funny scene), the mob shuts down his film, and he finds out that he is mysteriously and suddenly "maxed out" at the bank.
Naturally too, in the dream, when Adam sees Betty for the first time, he is immediately intrigued and attracted to her. Everyone loves "Betty." Think Doris Day on steroids solving a mystery with her new best friend.
In "real life," which takes place during the last 47 minutes of the film, Diane's break-up with Camilla is told in a series of flashbacks. Especially searing is the dinner party where Camilla and Adam announce their engagement. Diane's rage and grief is shown only in her eyes, without words.
In another flashback, we are shown Diane's hiring of a sleazy hitman to kill Camilla. The hitman informs her that when she sees a blue key, she'll know that the deed is done. In the dream, a blue key becomes a symbol of magic.
In "real life," that key is a symbol of death. Diane looks at the key and understands the finality of what she has done. She understands that she has killed her great love, and that Camilla can never under any circumstances come back. Diane is haunted now by voices, and in a final moment of desperation, commits suicide.
The film conveys with tremendous power the tragedy of Diane Selwyn. Only tangentially is the film about Hollywood. At a much deeper level, it is about revealing the human condition in its complexity, beauty and grief.
The visual imagery alone of Mulholland Drive is worth the price of admission. Many shots from the film will stay with you for a long time. The music, by Angelo Badalamenti, plumbs the depths at times and scales the heights at other times.
The acting is spot on in every scene. Naomi Watts is the most gifted actress to come along since Cate Blanchette, but all the performances are vivid and precise. When the acting in a film is uniformly examplary, we feel then the influence behind-the-scenes of a great director at work.
Mulholland Drive does not follow normal dramatic logic. It follows the logic of dreams, of feelings, of human imagination. In the dream, for instance, a singer croons Roy Orbison's song Crying. Why? Because it perfectly expresses how the dreamer—Diane—feels. The film is filled with many wonderful and revealing touches like this.
What matters in the end is that Mulholland Drive holds together beautifully as an emotional de-construction of a human being, as a window into the fragile human condition.
In my opinion, this great film can be spoken of in the same breath with such transcendent works as Fellini's 8 1/2 or Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line. It is not often that the film world presents us with a genuine masterpiece. I believe this is one of those times.
—jim sloman, for 11/3/01
|
