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David Lynch's new movie meanders through a surreal landscape, mesmerizing in its confusion. It's a welcome detour in this year of stale filmmaking.
By STEVE PERSALL
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 18, 2001
Mulholland Drive is unmistakably a David Lynch film, a densely brooding potboiler, nearly incomprehensible and arresting enough to make a viewer keep trying.
There is no point A to begin with and no point Z to reach, just delirium with the scantest plot to guide it. Lynch confuses with absolute confidence that everything makes sense, if only to himself.
Such audacity in this risk-free movie year is something to celebrate. At least somebody with a camera has more than box office numbers in mind. After his detour into sweetness with The Straight Story, Lynch has refocused the weirdness that gilded Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and TV's Twin Peaks before it ran amok.
Mulholland Drive is loaded with Lynch's trademark flourishes: oddly composed scenes propelled by Angelo Badalementi's jazz-twang music, dialogue that dead-ends until later, walls with floor-to-ceiling curtains, and a hint of extraterrestrial intrusion. The narrative builds slowly and disintegrates immediately. Nothing means anything until it's all over and you decide for yourself.
We know this much: An auto accident leaves a woman (Laura Elena Harring) with amnesia. She wanders into a Los Angeles suburb and hides in an unlocked apartment. Meanwhile, a perky aspiring actor named Betty (Naomi Watts) arrives in town seeking stardom. Betty meets the accident victim, now calling herself Rita, and pledges to help her rediscover her identity.
From there, you're on your own. Mulholland Drive veers in several directions, with new mysteries at each turn. The women become golly-gee Nancy Drews, following a dark trail and becoming lovers. A hotshot movie director (Justin Theroux) wants Betty for a plum role, but mobsters insist without reason that he hire another actor. Various freaks and meanies pop up, then disappear, like the end of a dream state when the snooze alarm keeps buzzing.
Nobody handles such arbitrary material with as much flair as Lynch. The skeleton of a film noir melodrama is fleshed out with memorable set pieces that are as impossible to shake off as they are to piece together.
Lynch reportedly intended Mulholland Drive as a pilot for another network television series, got turned down by ABC, then shot new footage to create some semblance of conclusion. That may contribute to the film's confusion, posing mysteries that wouldn't be solved for several episodes, if ever. The final act is so out of left field that it must be a late creation. The same goes for two erotic sex scenes with Betty and Rita.
However, those jarring narrative shifts seem right at home in Lynch's surreal, indescribable scheme. Mulholland Drive is a puzzle without the courtesy of hinting how the picture is supposed to look when assembled. That's a blessing in this movie year, to find a piece of work both frustrating and exhilarating when so many movies don't even try.
Grade: A-
Director: David Lynch
Cast: Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller
Screenplay: David Lynch
Rating: R; profanity, violence, sexual situations, nudity
Running time: 146 min.