Mulholland Drive” is like a Rubik’s cube: Some people will love to spend hours figuring it out, and others will get pissed off and throw it away.
The newest film from writer/director David Lynch (“Lost Highway,” “Twin Peaks”) is a puzzle with an unknown number of solutions. The ambiguity is lost after Lynch turns reality on its head halfway through the film. The pleasure of this movie is not in watching it but in piecing together fragments that Lynch presents.
The story revolves around a road in both physical and allegorical ways. The title is associated with Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles, where the story takes place, but it is also about a journey that has some hints of linear progression — though not in the way the film is disclosed.
The film opens with a car crash on Mulholland Drive, and a woman named Rita survives. After the crash, she wanders to an apartment that is not her own. It turns out to be owned by an aging movie star whose young niece, Betty, is coming to stay while she pursues her fledgling acting career.
When the two women meet, Betty doesn’t suspect anything is wrong and thinks Rita is another one of her aunt’s guests. However, she eventually finds out that Rita has lost her memory as a result of the accident and doesn’t even know why she came to this apartment. Instead of being freaked out that an amnesiac stranger is in her aunt’s apartment, Betty decides to help Rita unravel the mystery of her identity.
As this duo sleuths through the film, reality drifts away. Like side thoughts to their search, seemingly unrelated scenes are interjected along the way such as a hilarious scene where a director, Adam, is told by two men to cast a certain girl in his movie. These scenes are confusing, especially because this movie is not comical, but they become important in making connections later.
The film falls into complete surrealism after Betty and Rita visit an avant-garde theater called “Silencio” where the performances are mimed to a recorded soundtrack. There, the showman tells the audience (both the avant-garde audience and the movie’s audience) to be on its toes because “it is all an illusion.” Keeping this in mind will ultimately lead the viewer to a manageable conclusion.
After seeing the film, it must be defined or dismissed. To leave the movie in the form Lynch leaves it would cause many sleepless nights haunted by frustration and confusion. Not everyone may want to take up the task Lynch sets forth. Watching the movie is more work than entertainment, especially during the painfully slow first hour. The best thing to do is watch the movie with an open mind and not expect any answers.
Questions are left for the audience because not all ends of the plot are tied together. Lynch went way out there and wasn’t capable of taking the audience all the way with him. If the plot strands of this movie were represented by actual string and spread on the floor, the resulting lines would look like the road maps of 10 major cities laid on top of one another.
The New York Times review by Stephen Holden stated correctly that if this movie is looked at lightly, it is silly. But, Holden says, if it is looked at with intrigue, its reward is a feeling of accomplishment that won’t be found in any cookie-cutter Hollywood flick. Other films that resonate with “Mulholland Drive” are “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Memento”– though those films seem so simple when compared to this one.