Beautiful, spontaneous and satisfying through effort on viewers part

Rating: 9/10 (18 January 2007)

I came to this with no previous experience of David Lynch films and I have to say 'Mulholland Drive' is a wholly fascinating film, although incredibly difficult to decipher. Many fans have come up with multiple theories about what the film is about, but nobody knows what exactly. David Lynch gives a set of 10 clues along with the DVD to keep audiences going back to the film to think about it, but the clues would appear to be trivial, or are they? Although the film is completely unconventional and surrealist through its lack of conventional plot, non-chronological time order and mixture of realistic events and events that suggest the supernatural/unrealistic, for example the concept of the blue box seemingly being a portal between fantasy/dreams and real life, it can still be greatly appreciated as a recent masterpiece. Where earlier films that didn't conform to conventions were shunned and disliked by audiences, the audience satisfaction here comes from the process of unravelling your own personal interpretation of the film. The film is also emotionally involving through the lead character Diane, who very convincingly reaches a huge state of despair at the loss of her lover Rita. This film is a wonderful attempt at portraying a spontaneous surrealist vision of the director, which some would argue is a fundamental paradox because how can film-making be spontaneous, but from watching 'Mulholland Drive', it's hard to think that it isn't exactly how Lynch imagined it to be. This is a wonderful piece of art, thoroughly worth watching and will provide a focal point for fascinating theory debates. I personally think one of the major themes that the director is portraying through this film is the way people deal with rejection in one form or another. There are no right or wrong answers as such, and I feel that Lynch wants us all to feel satisfaction from our own interpretations, however different from the next persons, but I also feel he wanted to create a film that wouldn't just be seen as a piece of everyday entertainment that is just consumed, replaced by the next film and forgotten, but as art, that stays in the mind and people can return to again and again.