It couldn't have been more perfect! *May include some spoilers*

Rating: 10/10 (9 August 2006)

What an amazing achievement! The film just oozes class, atmosphere, sensuality and layers and layers of intrigue. It's one thing to make a film like this, and make it really work, but it's another to salvage a project that was intended to follow in the footsteps of "Twin Peaks" and create something like this.
From an initial viewing with a casual eye, the film looks like it is about Betty, a plucky young actress, who befriends 'Rita', a mysterious woman with amnesia, who seems to have a dark and mysterious background. For a large part of the film, the two women help Betty to achieve success after success in Tinseltown, while Betty helps 'Rita' to try to find out who she really is. During the main storyline, there are several seemingly unconnected scenes elsewhere involving a movie director who sees his wife cheating on him, a strange dwarf in a wheelchair pulling some very major strings, and a scene in which a guy confides a dream to his psychiatrist, then discovers something horrific.
Then, just as the audience is lulled by the viewer-friendly and (mostly) generic progress of the film, the whole movie gets tilted on its axis, and it becomes very strange. The actors are all different, with different roles. The cutesy Betty becomes the down-and-out Diane. Rita's helpless damsel-in-distress character changes to a manipulative femme fatale. Major players become minor roles and vice versa. Things get surreal, confused and jumbled, and the movie plays out to a devastating finale, guaranteed to leave most audience members thinking "What just happened?" Now, here's the genius of David Lynch. He has done exactly the same trick as his other film, "Lost Highway". The audience is not watching a film in the conventional sense. For the majority of the film, they are watching a dream, and the final third, are watching a series of guilt-ridden flashbacks and confused recollections, all in the mind's eye of a desperate and deluded woman, who'se jealousy and disillusionment have driven her to commit a desperate act. "Mulholland Drive" is the nearest one could possibly get to sticking a film reel in someone's mind, recording their thoughts, dreams and memories, then playing the whole thing back on screen. There are clues there in the film, and viewed in the right perspective, the entire film really does make perfect sense. It just takes a shift in perception to see the whole thing, a bit like focusing on a jumble of dots and being able to see a 3D image.
"Mulholland Drive" is as much a visual and aural delight as it is an ingenious movie taken from a unique perspective. The film is full of 'Lynchisms' that any fan will instantly recognize and associate with his other films. Satin draped curtains, singers miming Roy Orbison songs, vintage '50's Americana, mysterious dwarfs and an atmosphere that is so thick, it's tangible even in scenes where not much is happening. (Full credit to Angelo Badlamenti) The sets are stylish, and the acting incredibly polished (Naomi Watts deserves particular mention, being able to turn out a character that goes from 'Brady Bunch meets Nancy Drew' right through the spectrum).
Even if a viewer walked away from the film without understanding it (and no doubt, there will have been a fair few), they are still treated to some amazing cinema, and some very memorable scenes. Very few people who watch the film will forget the 'Club Silencio' scene, and even people who probably hated the film must admit, albeit grudgingly, that the scene is one that's difficult to shake from memory.
Final comments. The film is a challenging film to watch (and all the better for it, in my opinion). It probably has a fairly even division of people who love it and people who hate it, and I can understand there would be some frustration from people who see the film without fully grasping what is going on, but for me, the film is everything I would truly expect from a movie. Something that actually switches my brain on instead of turning it off, and having a very distinct and unique style and flavour that very few directors are ever capable of achieving.