A One Hell of a Strangely Twisted Ride
I wouldn’t call it eerie. I wouldn’t call it weird. I wouldn’t call it oddball. Those terms and their equivalent would be an understatement.
While I was enjoying a somewhat typical film-noir, seemingly detective-style narrative, I was kind of caught up in the middle I asked myself, “Where the hell is Lynch taking me this time?” It was the first time I saw the movie and when you say Lynch you’d really expect a totally different (and when I say different I mean really different in things you can’t imagine) experience. All those images of Eraserhead came flashing in like a whirlwind and I was so eager to click on Play and be twisted by Mulholland Drive.
Honestly, the opening, though it didn’t fail to introduce an out-of-placed meaningless scene, was homage to the film-noir style. The introduction was simple, an amnesiac woman involved in a night-time car accident somewhere in Mulholland Drive made her way out of the wreck and finding herself waking up in the garden of famous movie star.
So the story continues with the amnesiac befriending another woman who helped her figuring out her real identity. And it struck me, “Where is this going?” The story suddenly changed and everything was disrupted, intertwined, juxtaposed, mixed, and I don’t know where I was.
No matter how many times you’ll watch this movie, even a hundred times; it won’t stop you to ask questions. The movie doesn’t have a definite interpretation and if one be daring enough to try a constructive interpretation; David Lynch would just laugh at it.
Lynch’s method of infusing film-noir techniques into his Lynchian style of filming was effective in taking me to the beginningless endless movie. Everything in the film was pure symbolism and the story bloats from there. The red lamp, the accident, the blue key, the characters, the music — they’re purely symbols of something unfathomable and if you put them together in film, with Fellini’s style of lighting and framing, they just dance together perfectly in a strange and mesmerizing way.
No doubt this launched the careers of Naomi Watts (who played both Betty Elms and Diane Selwyn) and Laura Elena Harring (who played both the amnesiac Rita and Camilla Rhodes). Their characters really destroyed their identities, stripping them away of their real identities they just got lucky they didn’t end up seeing a shrink. Well, to say the least, their characters were part of a dream universe inside a dream universe much like of Eraserhead. And their acting was superbly exemplary to make the movie even more beautiful.
Mulholland Drive is one hell of a strangely twisted ride and David Lynch is one hell of a director. I believe this is his finest since Eraserhead. And I know I got to see this again and again and again…
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