Who is the subject of Mulholland Drive?

Rating: 5/10 (4 July 2007)

Imagine someone sits beside you on a bus, train or plane and begins to tell you a story. After a while you realise that the story is a bit confused. What do you think? The narrator has a problem? That he/she is hiding or evading something? Would there come a point when you might ask yourself if that person is a threat to you? That's what I thought about while watching Mulholland Park. More specifically, I thought: What is David Lynch afraid of? OK. The film/movie is made by the central lesbian scene. Very powerful first time round, less so after that, until you reach the point of understanding a major feature of internet porn: the male interest in supposedly lesbian sex. Have you ever visited a lesbian site? Nothing in the world more earnest and boring (from the masturbator's point of view, that is). So, what is it with this male interest in lesbo porn? Simple, the women serve to make each other real to the viewer, and so add what is most lacking in all porn: the real thing, the actual woman.
OK. David Lynch gives us lesbo voyeurism dressed up as art-house cinema. So, what is David Lynch afraid of? You got it. And therein lies the power of this film. We start with the nice suburban blond - brilliantly acted - and the headless (amnesiac) brunette. Now, instead of the usual Hollywood fun and games with the man caught between the virtuous Mid West blond and the dirty, implicitly Latin, brunette (in which, of course, he commits himself ultimately to virtue - because man and woman is about children in the western world and not about sex - and the unfortunate whore will die for love of (read lust for) him.
So, where is the man in Mulholland Drive. He's behind you in the director's chair. So what happens when the man is taken out of the plot? It collapses on itself. The whore turns the blond into a killer.
It's remarkable how frustrating the film is. Compare it with Blue Velvet. OK, there are some confusing bits, but it is about the young man's discovery of sex and the overthrowing of the reigning sexual man (not quite the father). That the brunette in this case likes a bit of rough simply betrays Lynch's immaturity (or impotence?). That our hero is content to tie himself to the more conventional blonde indicates Lynch's underlying submissive nature. But you are left at least with the presence of the far more exciting brunette, who is now a family friend (safely tied up with a husband AND a child). Like having a dirty picture hidden in the loo, isn't it?
I had to buy the two-disk package, which cost more than the film is worth. The interesting thing, though, is how the women in the interviews praise Lynch, even his editor. There is another layer to this subject, then. What use is an impotent or reluctant man to a woman? Well, he can create images of her. And as any woman will tell you: there is nothing like sex for making a women take an interest in herself. And as the man discovers, if you want to keep your woman, groom her image. And that, dear reader, tells you something of just how destructive sex actually is.