What Mulholland Drive Means to Me

Rating: 10/10 (16 April 2002)

Let me try to sum up this twisted masterpiece.
(****Plot Giveaway****)
To understand it, you must begin at the scene between Camilla and Diane as they are topless on Diane's couch (I just love to say that, by the way). Diane is madly in love with Camilla and can not stand to be rejected. We then learn that Camilla is using Diane for her own pleasures. Camilla invites Diane to Adam's party and Adam is about to propose to Camilla. This pushes Diane over the edge and she decides to have Camilla killed. If she can't have her, then no one can. She hires a killer with money that her aunt gave her, which she has been saving. The blue key opens a Pandora's Box, which signifies the evil that will be brought out by Diane's actions. Diane realizes that she has ordered someone to kill her true love and can not live with the consequences. She, therefore, kills herself.
Now, we must return to the beginning of the movie. The first scene is the jitterbug scene- Diane is remembering what brought her to L.A. in the first place. She is dying. They say that people can see their lives flash before their eyes when they think they are about to die. Diane is seeing her life the way she would like it to be. In the next scene, we hear heavy breathing in the same bed where Diane shot herself. Was Camilla killed? Diane has no knowledge of this. She invents a scenario where Camilla avoids the death by the most outrageous of circumstances- a car crashing into the back of Camilla's limo. The remainder of the movie is Diane's dream before death. She takes pieces of her real world, distorts them and makes them part of the dream. Betty is the waitress, Bob Booker is the director of the movie where Camilla and Diane meet, Coco is Adam's mother, etc. How many times have we had a dream where people in our consciousness become other characters in our subconscious?
Rita is really Diane. Diane has identified herself as the one that she is in love with. When Betty says that she loves Rita, it is really Camilla telling Diane that she loves her. This, of course, is what Diane is longing for. Camilla wears the blond wig to emphasize the point that Camilla is really Diane.
The rest is just pure David Lynch at his best - an image and audio feast master.
I might be way off base, but I could be right on.