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| David Lynch gives us a Hollywood somewhere between dreams and reality |
The Basics:
Who made it? David
Lynch (writer and director)
Who’s in it? Naomi
Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, others
Synopsis: After a car wreck on the winding Mulholland Drive renders a
woman amnesiac (Laura Harring), she and a perky Hollywood-hopeful (Naomi Watts)
search for clues and answers across Los Angeles in a twisting venture beyond
dreams and reality. Trailer
Mild Spoilers
Mulholland Drive, like classic film noir, is disillusioned with the picture
of life and the American Dream that Hollywood films show. The shiny ideal of
the Los Angeles life is torn to shreds, shown to be nothing more than a
fantasy. The classic idea of an unknown actress moving to Hollywood and
becoming a star, meeting a lover, and solving the mystery is shown to be
nothing but the drug-induced dream of a failed actress whose lover has left her
for someone else. Failure doesn’t come from not being given a fair shot; it
comes from not being good enough. This Hollywood is full of lust, greed, betrayal,
grief, and desperation.
Lynch
gives Mulholland a dream-like
quality throughout, constantly challenging the audience to figure out what’s
real and what’s fantasy. It has some of the one most oddly mesmerizing scenes I’ve
seen, and his use of POV shots shoots a sense of dread into the ordinary.
Scene of the film: Harring’s and Watts’s characters visit a mysterious theater
and watch a performance that’s not quite real.
Watch it if you like: film noir, I don’t know how else to describe what’s it’s
like, but it’s really good.
My Rating: 9/10
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