Review: Mulholland Drive

Seen twice and 4/10/15

3.5/4

Mulholland Drive is filled with beauty and insanity--- it has many layers, as is focused entirely on experience. Coherency is secondary, if there even is any. I view this as an experiment into how David Lynch can make his audience feel. I can almost guarantee that not all parts fit together cleanly-- sure, all of the stories are interwoven, and maybe there is one great idea that structures the film, but how can things like the the man behind the wall or the personality of the cowboy or the scene with Billy Ray Cyrus be explained such that they have a purpose for being here, other than to play with the viewer's conceptions?

With the idea that experience is the driving force behind this movie, some of my favorite experiences are as follows:
"Llorando". The women enter a secluded theater just after their love scene, when Naomi Watts is revealed to be much more than she is. They experience a performance telling them that nothing is real; it is all a tape recording. Then a woman comes out and starts singing in Spanish. Her expression and voice are breathtaking, and the melody devastatingly sad, and the two women start crying. It's as if we know the whole backstory, like some tragedy has occurred, and we are experiencing the grief with Betty and Rita. That's how authentic this part of the scene feels. Then the woman falls over and her voice continues. Betty finds a blue box in her purse and the scene ends.
As I think more about this scene, I realize how profoundly valuable the actress chosen to play the singer was. It was not just singing a melody; it was a performance. A facial and vocal ensemble of emotion. I give serious acting props to her.
"The Cowboy". Adam follows a winding road up a hill to a spot overlooking Los Angeles, where he meets with The Cowboy. The Cowboy seems to appear out of nowhere, and has a terrifyingly direct way of speaking. His face looks like a porcelain doll's, adding to his eerie effect. His lines are fantastic, and his time onscreen ends with a mysterious premonition: "you will see me one more time if you do good. You will see me two more times if you do bad."
The dream outside Winkie's. This comes early in the film, and is the first foreshadowing that this seemingly-conventional noir film is something much more. A man describes his recurring nightmare to another man inside the diner. He begins smiling about its absurdity to avoid looking insane, but gradually his tone darkens and he can't even try to escape the dream's hold on him. As the two men walk outside to confront the crux of the nightmare, he is sweating. This walk is legitimately frightening to me. Then we think there's no way the man appears, not this early in the film, and this is just a dream anyways. And he appears. The first time I saw this, I thought I was bracing myself, but my subconscious thought there was absolutely no way this was going to happen. So when it did, I was not prepared.
Every scene with Diane Selwin. After Betty and Rita disappear into the box, the movie phases back to the girl on the bed, but this time it's the new Betty-- restless, haunted, much darker. Naomi Watts puts on a fantastic new face, carrying this new darkness through scenes relentlessly horrible, such as the new Camilla kissing other people with malice right in front of the heartbroken Diane, and of unbridled horror, such as the scenes in her apartment. Watts is absolutely terrifying when in one shot her face turns from a joyous smile to shivering fear as her hallucination turns from the woman she's in love with to her own self, staring straight back at her. In the scenes at Adam's flat, her eyes and quivering mouth tell the whole disturbing story. She is perfect the entire movie through.

Naomi Watts is perfect, and the direction is perfectly unsettling. When I last saw this movie, four years ago, I had the thought that "it turns from a dream into a wet dream into a nightmare". I agree with that now--- none of it is reality, it's all some haunting delusion. It is an unforgettable movie experience, trying to assemble all the parts amidst the rising terror. It's a mental and emotional game unlike any other in film.
My first viewing, 4 years ago, I loved. Second viewing I felt I hated. Now, for good, I love it.