Life is But A Dream (after a reviewing)

Rating: 10/10 (12 October 2001)

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive brings him in the territory of Twin Peaks, Eraserhead, but more-so a highly-charged form of surrealist thinking singular only to Lynch regarding Hollywood to make the best films of the year, and of his career. The film is a twisting, meticulously crafted and acted cinema piece about many a lot of things. At FIRST, the basic plot: a woman (Laura Elean Haring) survives a car crash and stumbles down the hill next to Mulholland drive and walks into a woman's house she has never met before. She also has amnesia, and when the woman (Naomi Watts), an actress, who is currently occupying the place lets her stay for a few days to get her memories together, the plot unfolds. Other side stories are interestingly blended into the rest of the movie involving a troubled director (Justin Theroux) who is forced into things he didn't intend on, the woman living in the house who tries and goes for auditions, etc.
But the plot (even the part involving Haring) isn't even the big part of the movie. Lynch, like he did in Eraserhead, exposes the audience to logical and realistic (er, in Lynch's sense) scenes and then sidesteps into a surreal and dreamlike world...or what one might THINK is the dreamworld. Yet it's really about dreaming, one might think, as reality and fantasy become part of the pieces of Lynch's method. What is it to have a dream, anyway, Lynch may be essentially asking the audience? And what is it to have things both idealized and ugly in equal measure, reflected in the subconscious, and drifted back during sleep like some kind of wavelength that is personal but psychologically sound, more or less? And, most importantly, why do we need fantasy? Well, there needs to be a divide, Lynch may be supposing, between fantasy and reality, but at the same time, for the sake of art and cinema, the line needs to be blurred as well to reach underlying truths about what it is to create, what it is to act, what it is to be controlled in the measures of creation and reinterpretation.
These might be pretentious points presented by another filmmaker, but Lynch, for all of his abandoning of conventions (albeit with a firm, knowing embracing of the intent in conventions, archetypes and clichÃ©s from Hollywood films), is nevertheless a superlatively entertaining writer/director/sound editor, who makes some of the most profound and everlasting statements ever about Hollywood and the illusions created from reality (whether manufactured ala 50s singers in a booth then put on film, or in some capacity regarding a dirty dude behind the Winkies) while never losing the power to make it one hell of a ride. And by 'ride' I mean the ride of a filmmaker overwhelmingly yet carefully confident in what he wants to convey: of the corny light and contorted ideals that comes out of the darkness of Diane's dreams (I'll relent and say that it makes the most sense, even though I'd love it just as much if it didn't go so easily for sense), and that, of course, it's all about emotional response.
In short, it's one of the must-see films from the 2000s, not just for Lynch fans but for those who might never think of going near a Lynch film: it's funny, it's tragic, it's mysterious, and it's both dense and simple in equal measure. Like music, it'll either rock your boat or leave you dry and for me it still rocks my boat to this day.