Yet Another Hollywood Smile Victim

Rating: 9/10 (16 May 2002)

This movie shines all by itself. Together with 'Blue Velvet', 'Wild at Heart' and 'Lost Highway' it's forming a starry constellation of brilliant David Lynch movies, all succeeding in the hard task of making entertaining art.
There's two contrasting worlds in this movie - the hopeful dream and the cruel reality of a young girl that has come to Hollywood. It must be confusing to director Lynch, that after the remarkable success of Twin Peaks, his brand of surrealism is still not accepted as commercial. So he built Mulholland Dr. out of the scraps of what would have been a thrilling television series. These two year old scenes are what make the dream story. Late in the movie it's cruel 'reality' time. Lynch really makes an effort to show how each dream element has a correspondence in 'reality'. There's plenty left to ponder though, for a viewers mind that is compelled to make sense of the plot. But it is this compulsion for rationality that is the *engine* of surrealism, without it the absurdity that makes the surreal would not be able to appear. And it will linger in your mind for weeks, together with the brutal sadness of the story. In the end, the Hollywood sunshine smile that took the girl in, is mocking her as haunting demons.

We can only be grateful that a remarkable artist like David Lynch still insists on taking on the disguise of an industrial-strength craftsman. Just like the girl in the movie, he's a victim of the sunshine smile of Hollywood. I guess that's what he really wanted to tell us.