MULHOLLAND DR. d: David Lynch

Mulholland Dr. (2001)

Direction and screenplay: David Lynch. Cast: Naomi Watts, Justin Theroux, Laura Elena Harring, Dan Hedaya, Ann Miller, Robert Forster, Lee Grant, Chad Everett, Billy Ray Cyrus

AN UNBALANCED MIND

Mulholland Dr., David Lynch’s nightmarish take on Hollywood and on the pursuit of the "American Dream," is impossible to pigeonhole as belonging to a particular genre. The film is part black comedy, part mystery thriller, part psychological drama — and it boasts one of the most horrific endings ever filmed. The final result is a long, bizarre journey through an ambitious actress’ psyche; the most haunting and most tragic such journey since Norma Desmond’s in Sunset Blvd. more than half a century earlier.

Essentially the story of two women, Betty (Naomi Watts), a young Canadian who dreams of becoming a great actress and a big movie star, and Rita (Laura Elena Harring), a woman who lost her memory after a deadly car accident on you-know-where, Mulholland Dr. frequently branches off into the universe of several disparate characters of the Los Angeles underbelly. Those include an incompetent hired killer (Mark Pellegrino), an arrogant film director (Justin Theroux) at odds with the Mafia, a Hispanic entertainer on her last legs, and a creepy (and cryptic) cowboy. Ultimately, all of those figures are merely dreamlike hallucinations in the deteriorating mind of Diane Selwyn (also Watts), a disillusioned actress wannabe who is about to get thrown into the bottomless abyss of broken dreams.

Mulholland Dr. was to have become a TV-series, but it got cancelled because ABC was displeased with the pilot. Enter Studio Canal with the necessary funds to allow David Lynch to transform his failed pilot into a feature film. Taking a radically different path from Twin Peaks, Lynch’s successful TV-series that was turned into a poorly received feature film in 1992, Mulholland Dr. went from failed TV-series to major critical success upon its 2001 big-screen release.

For this cautionary Hollywood tale, director-writer Lynch takes a step back from the corny, linear style of The Straight Story, reverting to the old surreal approach he had used in Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. Actually, "surreal" is not quite the right word in this case. The dream sequences in Mulholland Dr. should be labeled "hyper-real" for they are (usually) grounded on reality — but an overblown reality, displayed in caps, bold letters, and underlined. Everything, from Betty’s over-the-top goody-goody persona to the bomb-like sound of both car crashes and punches, is an exaggeration of reality itself. This not-quite-real-nor-totally-unreal atmosphere is immeasurably enhanced by Lynch’s frequent collaborator, Angelo Badalamenti, who composed the picture’s haunting score, and by Peter Deming’s luscious though slightly off-kilter cinematography. But despite all the talent involved, Mulholland Dr. would have been a pale version of its brilliant self without the presence of British-born, Australian actress Naomi Watts.

Watts, in her first important role in a major motion picture, is a revelation. She manages to make her psychotically nice Betty a likable, three-dimensional character — and that is no small feat. The fact that Diane looks, sounds, and acts so differently from Betty earns Watts even more points, though the most astounding aspect of her performance is that the innocent Betty is clearly discernible underneath Diane’s bitterness and disillusion. Therefore, instead of coming across as a vindictive villainess, Diane is turned into a tragic victim of her own ambition. She is Betty through the looking glass — or vice-versa. Whichever the case may be, Watts’ Diane stands next to Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond as two of the greatest and most tragic representations of deluded actors on film.

Other directors who have aimed for Lynch’s style of hyper-realism, from Spike Jonze to Paul Thomas Anderson, might want to watch (and rewatch) Mulholland Dr. for inspiration. Admittedly, the acting of some of the supporting players is hardly top notch (though it is a pleasure to watch Ann Miller in what turned out to be her last feature-film role) and David Lynch does let his old self-indulgence get in the way every now and then. But even if certain scenes could have been shorter and others could have been excised, those sequences do not detract from the whole. That is because the director-writer never loses sight of the psychological undercurrents of his characters or of the purpose of his tale. "I’m in this dream place," Betty exclaims shortly after her arrival in Los Angeles. Lynch then spends the next two and a half hours showing us that L.A., Hollywood, the luxurious Mulholland Drive, and all they represent are in fact the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Synopsis:

Following a horrific car crash in the Hollywood Hills, a woman (Harring) gets out of her wrecked limo leaving two dead men behind. Walking aimlessly, she ends up in an apartment complex where she meets a young, otherworldly wholesome Canadian, Betty Elms (Watts), an aspiring actress who has just arrived in Los Angeles. Suffering from severe amnesia, the mysterious woman adopts the name "Rita," after noticing a poster of Rita Hayworth in Gilda.

While Betty and Rita try to figure out Rita’s real identity, the picture cuts back and forth to other disparate characters: A hitman (Pellegrino) who has a tougher than expected time while trying to kill an obese woman. Two men talking about a strange dream at a coffeeshop. An obnoxious film director, Adam Kesher (Theroux), who is being pressured by the Mafia to use the leading lady of their choice for his next film.

Things start getting creepier when Betty and Rita begin investigating Rita’s mysterious background. First, they find a semi-decomposed body at an apartment complex. An eerie cowboy appears to Adam and gives him a cryptic warning. And finally, the two women go to a nightclub called Silencio in which a zombie-looking woman sings "Crying" in Spanish and then collapses.

And then the nightmare begins. . . Betty wakes up, and she’s neither Betty Elms nor an aspiring actress, but Diane Selwyn, a perennial movie-star wannabe. Rita, actually Camille Rhodes, is her former lover, an ambitious actress who had jilted Diane for the arrogant up-and-coming director Adam Kesher. The hitman we see in Diane’s dream has in fact been hired by her to kill both Camille and Adam. Lost, guilty, and alone Diane falls into an emotional abyss that will lead to the inevitable tragic finale.

Notes on the DVD:

At the request of David Lynch himself, the Mulholland Dr. DVD does not offer a chapter-by-chapter breakdown. If you try to skip a full chapter, you will be taken to the very end of the DVD, long after the film’s final fadeout. Lynch supposedly believes that by not having any chapters, viewers will be coerced into watching the whole film in one sitting, as if there’s no such thing as a "pause" button. Repeat viewers who want to return to a particular scene are also out of luck.

If that silliness weren’t enough, the Region 1 Mulholland Dr. DVD offers no real extras (ok, it has subtitles in French and Spanish, though it is not close-captioned in English). And if ever there was a movie that begged for an audio commentary, Mulholland Dr. is it. Here’s hoping that either Lynch or Naomi Watts or someone will grant us that wish in some future special edition. And we’d also like to see some alternate versions and delete scenes included in the package, too.

Also, Lynch has allegedly tampered with the DVD and VHS versions of Mulholland Dr. by having an additional blurring effect added to Laura Elena Harring’s crotch in her nude scene. According to some reports, Lynch feared that nude photos of Harring would find their way onto the Internet. In fact, blurred or not blurred, the Web’s got them.

Notes on the Production:

Mulholland Dr. was originally filmed as a made-for-television pilot in 1999, but ABC was not pleased with the results, and the deal fell through. On a US$7 million budget provided by the French film company Studio Canal, new scenes were added one year later for the big-screen release.

The drive is named after William Mulholland (1855-1935), a ruthless Irish-born engineer who conspired with other local entrepreneurs to rob inland communities of their water, so as to irrigate the semi-arid San Fernando Valley. This historically important act of deceit inspired the 1974 film Chinatown. Today, Mulholland Drive meanders from the top of the Hollywood Hills all the way into the Santa Monica Mountains. It serves as a sort of dividing line between the Los Angeles basin and the San Fernando Valley.

Composer Angelo Badalamenti appears in a cameo role as the movie executive drinking espresso near the beginning of the film. Singer Billy Ray Cyrus and former TV heartthrob Chad Everett also have brief roles.

Mulholland Dr. marked the final film appearance of dancer-actress Ann Miller (1923-2004), whose acting career spanned sixty-five years. "I don’t understand one damn thing about that crazy movie," she told journalist and Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne, "but isn’t it a hoot that I’m in it!"

The film is dedicated to Jennifer Syme, who at one time worked as David Lynch’s production assistant. Syme also had a small role in Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997). She died in April 2001, when her car crashed into a row of parked cars in Los Angeles.

ABOUT A BOY

EL ABUELO / THE GRANDFATHER

BIG EDEN

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

CAST AWAY

LES CHORISTES / THE CHORUS

CRASH

FINDING NEVERLAND

INSIDE MAN

KING KONG (2005)

by Andre Soares | October 17, 2004 | Filed Under American Cinema / Hollywood, European Cinema, Film Reviews, French Cinema, Gay & Lesbian

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