Mulholland Dr.
Amazon.co.uk Review
Pandora couldn’t resist opening the forbidden box containing all the delusions of mankind, and let’s just say in Mulholland Drive David Lynch indulges a similar impulse. Employing a familiar film noir atmosphere to unravel, as he coyly puts it, “a love story in the city of dreams”, Lynch establishes a foreboding but playful narrative in the film’s first half before subsuming all of Los Angeles and its corrupt ambitions into his voyeuristic universe of desire. Identities exchange, amnesia proliferates and nightmare visions are induced, but not before we’ve become enthralled by the film’s two main characters: the dazed and sullen femme fatale, Rita (Laura Elena Harring), and the pert blonde just-arrived from Ontario (played exquisitely by Naomi Watts) who decides to help Rita regain her memory. Triggered by a rapturous Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying”, Lynch’s best film since Blue Velvet splits glowingly into two equally compelling parts. –Fionn Meade
Bit of a public service announcement here. Great movie, obviously, and if you don’t already have it, this is certainly the edition to buy. BUT, if you have the previous DVD and you’re thinking of upgrading to the new edition, I really wouldn’t bother. The main selling point to me was chapter selections, which were notoriously absent previously, but notice that the new chapter divisions are “David Lynch approved”… There are now six chapters, four of which are in the last half hour (of a two and a half hour movie). They’re only accessible from the menu (so you still can’t skip ahead when the film is running, as you couldn’t before), and the menu itself gives you absolutely no clue as to what the chapters actually are. So the main disc is really no more user-friendly than before. I think that’s quite funny, but I wish I hadn’t paid 14 quid to find out. As for the second disc of extras, the “making of” is not a documentary but just a lot of raw footage from the shoot and not very interesting, and the Cannes press conference isn’t very illuminating either – not that I was expecting answers or explanations, but Lynch just looks bored and uncomfortable, and the rest of the cast just gush about how wonderful he is. Plus, the questions from the audience have been edited out, so the panel are replying to questions you haven’t heard. The rest of the extras were already on the original release.
You DO get a booklet of the Mulholland Drive chapter from Lynch on Lynch, but that book is so good I’m guessing most Lynch fans – like me – have it already. For those who don’t, but who do have Mulholland Drive from the previous release, spend your tenner on that book instead.
Rating: 4 / 5
My first introduction to Mulholland Drive came when my family went to see it. Upon their return I asked them what the film was about. Their response? ‘You can’t describe it’. So I went with a friend to the cinema to see for myself. The film was trully stunning and one of the greatest cinematic experiences of my life. But I could not understand what the Hell had just happened! We spent the next two hours walking through town, eventually sitting down by a basketball court with a couple of cokes trying to work out just what is supposed to have happened.
The film is incredible on so many levels; its unusual structure to the plot allows for many, otherswise impossible occurances like the creepy meeting in the coral with the ‘Cowboy’, the strange, crippled mobster and the eccentric, espresso loving gangsters, the ‘monster’ behind Winkies and many others. The best scenes in the film are the terrifying discovery in Diane Selwyn’s house, the audtion for the singers (with the dream Camilla singing a cheesey 50s style lover song that makes me shiver now), the scene in the bedroom (hey, I’m only a man) and the shudderingly powerful part in Club Silencio.
The directing is unique and very innovative, the acting is outstanding, especially Naomi Watts (not since Al Pacino had an actor changed so subtely, so much in one film) and the plot (both before you understand it but even more so after) is amazing. Without doubt, the best film so far this millenium, I believe, that like Citizen Kane, Shawshank Redemption and others overlooked at the time, it will be remembered as a trully great film. Watch it, then watch it again, and again until you get it, trust me , it’s worth it!
Rating: 5 / 5
This is the film which David Lynch has been heading towards since the TV series ‘Twin Peaks’. ‘Fire Walk With Me’ and ‘Lost Highway’ now seem to be the musings and note taking for this film, and, it could be said, are all worth watching again in this order – ‘Fire Walk With Me’, ‘Lost Highway’ and then ‘Mulholland Drive’.
Similarities exist between all three. There are echoes of ‘Twin Peaks’ / ‘Fire Walk With Me’ in the red curtained room of the man in the wheelchair in ‘Mulholland Drive’ and the characters becoming different people that was seen in ‘Lost Highway’.
If you are a David Lynch fan then you’ve probably already seen this movie and be hailing it as the best thing he’s ever done. I would agree. This is a true modern masterpiece. With a soundtrack which ranks alongside ‘Pi’, ‘Requiem For A Dream’ and ‘Fight Club’ as the best in modern, original soundtracks. Essential listening.
David Lynch, along with Darren Aronofsky, proves he is the master at modern film making. Whether you ‘get’ the movie or not is beside the point- with enthralling characters, exquisite direction, it doesn’t matter. Just allow it to swallow you into its dream world of chaos and darkness and hope you reappear again. Definetly a film you can watch again and again and again.
If this is where Lynch has been heading, where does he go now?
Rating: 5 / 5
If you like films that require little in the way of concentration, than this definitely isn’t the film for you. David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” is in my opinion the best film he has ever produced, “Lost Highway” (although marvellous) is let down in places by poor acting and looking rather on the cheap side, but Lynch appears to have rectified this by selecting two tremendous actresses in the lead roles for this particular film.
Mulholland drive is confusing from the start, offering fragments of stories for the characters with sinister undertones. Three quarters of the way through the story takes a dizzying shift, leaving the viewer totally confused and desperately trying to recall the former part of the film in an attempt to make sense of the final scenes. It is almost impossible to pass judgement or appreciate the film in its totality on a single viewing – one of the reasons why it is such a great film to buy is that you’ll always be able to return to it and notice something different.
I’ve heard many people’s views on what they believe the film may or may not represent, and that is the beauty of this masterpiece by Lynch, nothing is totally explained and it is up to you the viewer to form your own interpretation of the events. It isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea (you either love it or hate it) but it definitely gets you thinking,and with such amazing cinematography and a truly haunting soundtrack, if you do take to this film it is one you will return to time and time again. Stunning!
Rating: 5 / 5
Diane, an unsuccessful actress, has a sexual relationship with Camille, a rising star. But Camille tires of the affair, trying to call it off and getting engaged to Adam, a director. Diane, in a jealous rage, engages the services of a hitman, telling him to kill Camille. He says that she will know the deed has been done when a blue key appears in her apartment. Having hired the man, Diane repents and has a dream*. When the blue key turns up, she is tormented by hallucinatory guilt and kills herself.
* The dream.
The dream occupies the first three-quarters of the film. It is Diane’s wish-fulfilment fantasy, embodying the following desires:
1. The failure of the hitman to kill Camille.
2. The continuation of her sexual relationship with Camille.
3. Her own success as an actress.
4. Revenge on Adam, for having stolen Camille from her.
In the dream Diane sheds her identity and becomes Betty, fresh-faced, naïve, happy, and – crucially – a very talented actress, whose ability is acknowledged by everyone she meets. She only fails to get the starring part in Adam’s film because the mafia have coerced him into giving the part to Camille. When Diane and Adam first clap eyes on each other it is obvious that he is thinking, “This is the girl.” So Camille’s success is not the result of any talent she may have. Moreover, Camille herself becomes transformed in Diane’s dream into a nobody, an amnesiac who needs her help.
The developing relationship between the two women in this part of the film is classic, unimaginative wish-fulfilment stuff: two people thrown together by circumstances share a bed for the sake of practicality and end up as lovers.
In fact, the whole of the dream sequence reveals the paucity of Diane’s imagination. So immersed is she in the unreality of Hollywood, her dream resembles a vacuous film, in which the characters speak as if reciting rehearsed lines. Diane herself, as Betty, is an unconvincing character, cartoonish and false. The audition scene is ludicrously cosy and mannered, and ironically the only hint of an emotional reality beneath the surface comes when Diane (playing Betty) performs her audition piece. Similarly, towards the end of the dream sequence, it is in the theatre, during a mimed performance, that genuine feeling is manifest, in the form of the swooning singer and the reactions of Diane and Camille in the audience.
The blue key turns up in the dream, no longer as a mundane object but as something strange, fantastic. The box perhaps represents the consequences of the action symbolised by the key. Thus, at the end of the dream sequence, Diane’s fantasy gives way to the ineluctable reality of what she has done. The box opens and Camille (as “Rita”) is destroyed, sucked into the void. There is also some silly Freudian symbolism in all this box-and-key imagery.
Why does the dream come first in the film, when chronologically it occurs between the hiring of the hitman and the accomplishment of the deed? Because one of the purposes of the film is the deconstruction of the discourse of Hollywood. The dream represents this discourse (based on sentimentality and unreality) and what follows in the film is its refutation and subversion.
Naturally, there are complications. If Diane as Betty seems unreal in the first half of the film (the dream), Camille is equally glacial and one-dimensional in the second half (“reality”), pouting and manipulating like an empty femme fatale. But maybe this is what her success in Hollywood has done to her; perhaps the price of celebrity is unreality.
Rating: 5 / 5