Mulholland Drive

One of my favorite films of all-time Mulholland Drive a masterpiece by the uncomparable, stylistic auteur and the master of suspense of his generation David Lynch. I am posting this review in avid anticaption and excitement about his newest film Inland Empire (which will also get a review posted after 12/12 and comparing it to Mulholland Drive the second part of the apparent Hollywood shattered dreams trilogy)

To call Mulholland Drive a complex film narrative doesn't do justice to Lynch's complex screenplay. In the simplest terms the narrative structure of Lynch's screenplay breaks down as such: the first 2 hours are in the dream world of Diane Selwyn (played by Naomi Watts), Diane is awoken from her dream and then there is a quick 5 minute flashback sequence followed by the ending of the film Diane paying a hit man to kill Camilla (Laura Elena Harring) and the ending is Diane unable to bear life commits suicide. Stopping a 2 hr dream sequence (a gigantic bulk of the screenplay) to begin a 5 min. flashback sequence is not the easiest transition but the way Lynch executes it, it seems smooth.

Lynch's film (in writing and directing) is precise, specific, symbolic, and impossible to read and grasp only in one sitting. The light-dark contrast in the film is significant. The scenes in the dream sequence with Betty and Camilla are mostly dark, i.e Club Silencio, The Bedroom scenes.
The light (blond) hair of Betty / Diane contrasting Rita / Camilla's dark hair. Another active motiff in the film is the omni-present color red: a) the lampshade - signaling the beginning and end of the dream, b) Rita's towel (with Aunt Ruth's note on it), c) Betty's pink shirt (red's little sister), d) the red door at Adam's hotel, e) Everything at Club Silencio. I think red is symbolic of the blood, despair, the entirety of Diane's shattered dream of becoming a great actress.

The framework of Lynch's career can be described as his drama's (Elephant Man, The Straight Story) and Noir's (Blue Velvet-A Neo-Classical Detective Noir, Lost Highway-Fragmented Neo-Noir, Mulholland Drive - Neo-Post Modern Noir). Reading Mulholland Drive as a neo-noir. The detective archetype is modernized Betty is not a typical detective but fulfills the character expectancies. Rita is the classical femme-fatale. She is an amnesiac. The danger of the femme-fatale is never knowing what she will do or who she is and an amnesiac femme-fatale is the most dangerous of all because she doesn't even know who she is. Atypical for a film noir the dramatic narrative is built around a dream. Like the majority of classical noir's the detective succumbs to the femme-fatale and is killed by her treachery.

One small note concluding the review: the scene early in the movie when Betty asks the Laura Elena Harring character what her name is and she pauses but then sees the Rita Hayworth poster of Gilda and takes on the Rita name. Rita Hayworth went under a drastic physical change in the beginning of her career to make her look less Latino and more American. It raised on a eyebrow for me and knowing Lynch's attention to detail that he specifically chose the name Rita and the insertion of the Gilda poster aware of the transformation Rita Hayworth went through and parallels the transformation we see Rita / Camilla experience.

Grade: 9/10