A puzzle well worth exploring

Rating: 9/10 (5 July 2006)

"Mulholland Drive" is one of the most critically acclaimed movies of this decade, as well as one of the most talked-about. Its dreamlike ambiguity and refusal to explain itself (director David Lynch will only discuss the movie in the most cryptic terms) guarantees that viewers will always debate it. Not bad for something that started out as a failed TV pilot.
At first, "Mulholland Drive" has standard mystery elements to it, such as the gorgeous amnesiac brunette (Laura Elena Harring) who calls herself "Rita" after Rita Hayworth, and the sparkly blonde aspiring actress, Betty (Naomi Watts) who thinks it would be fun to make like Nancy Drew and help Rita discover her true identity. You can easily see how this set-up could have become a TV show, which only makes the movie's twists more astonishing. But even in the earlier, sunnier parts of the movie, things lurk in the shadowsbehind dumpsters, in corporate offices or cheap apartmentsand eventually these physical and psychological demons take control. Characters switch identities, people and objects return in surprising ways, and the already complicated puzzle becomes about ten times stranger.
I won't say too much more about "Mulholland Drive"'s mysteries, because you can easily find theories, explanations, and debates online. (What did people ever do when they watched these kinds of ambiguous movies before the Internet?) Perhaps the biggest clue is one of the movie's themes: this is Los Angeles, a city where fantasy seems more real than reality does.
Watts made her name with her accomplished performance here. She goes from over-the-top wholesomeness to romantic passion to self-loathing despair, and succeeds at the tricky task of being an actress playing an actress in Betty's stunning audition scene. But I'm surprised that Harring hasn't found comparable success: not only is she beautiful, she makes for a touchingly vulnerable Rita.
The baffling nature of "Mulholland Drive" is not alone what makes it a great movie. Rather, the best part of the movie is that it is captivating and entertaining enough to make you want to decipher it. Sequences such as the "Club Silencio" centerpiece are so vivid and haunting that it's a pleasure to try to figure out how they fit into the overall scheme.