Ode to, biting criticism of Hollywood

Rating: 9/10 (19 October 2001)

No, none of it makes a bit of sense. None of it. Not until the end. Not until you're walking out shaking your head. THAT's when you start to get it. At least that's when I got it.
Watching this film is like a number of things. The metaphor I've been selling to friends and relatives is that it's rather like slipping away from a cocktail party on the 80th floor, stripping off all of your clothes and walking all the way around the building on the ledge outside before dressing again and slipping back into the party like nothing ever happened. Weird analogy? Yeah, well you haven't seen weird 'til you've seen this film.
*** SPOILER WARNING, NEXT PARAGRAPH ONLY ***
*** Though no one may ever accurately decipher the movie's true story, my assessment is the only one I've read that fits with all the plot points given in the film ***
Imagine that you are a floundering actress and that your soul is being crushed by these three regrets: First, you've been dumped by your movie-star-beautiful lover who, additionally, beat you out for the lead in a movie and who also seems intent on rubbing your losses in your face. Second, you've hired a lowlife to have her killed and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Third and worst, you're still in love with her. What kind of dream would you dream? What thoughts would pass through your mind just before you finally make the decision to blow your brains out? Would you wish that somehow, in fine Hollywood fashion, your lover is saved in the nick of time but loses her memory and returns to you humbled and vulnerable, giving you, essentially, a second chance at true love? Would you dream that you embark on a mission to help her and, in the process, prove yourself an unfailing, unselfish and lion-hearted companion who is also an incredible actress. That's the movie. Your dream, your last crazy Hollywood wish is the vessel containing the entire film and it's myriad sub-plots. Lynch just turns the whole thing inside-out so we don't know the reality of her plight until the very end.
*** END SPOILER WARNING ***
The myriad sub-plots seem to me to be where people lose track of this picture. And you really can't blame them because what Lynch does is use the dying dreams of our sorrowful actress as a landscape which he proceeds to populate with the real-life experiences and intention-infused dreamworlds of a host of other characters. How can anyone dream someone else's dream?
Many of these other dreamworlds of perception and intention are left dangling and hint vaguely at what could have been made of them if the movie had been made into a TV series as was originally intended. An ordinary filmmaker, had he wanted to show us the heartless nature of fame beneath Hollywood's shiny exterior, would have directed a standard narrative start-to-finish story about a small-town girl who comes to LA, succumbs to corrupt relationships, and loses the role of her lifetime to her lover because her lover has mob connections. This kind of film would have put members of the earliest movie-going audiences -- those of the 40s and 50s -- in that tragic character's head. The experiences of these audiences forged Hollywood's reputation as the dream-factory. But the jaded 21st century audience has seen a million such tales on TV and in the movies by the time they've bought a ticket to "Mulholland Drive." In his masterful way, though, and because you aren't expecting it to be done to you in this way, Lynch does to you what the Hollywood-of-old did to those first movie-goers. He puts you in another world. In another head. In another set of experiences. In another soul. In this respect, Lynch's film is a most sublime homage to that Hollywood that has brought so much magic into so many lives. How can anyone dream someone else's dream? We've been doing it in theatres for years, thanks to Hollywood. But Lynch pays his homage by making more real to us than has ever been done before the miserable plight of one of its countless victims. In this respect, he is Hollywood's sharpest critic yet.
By entertaining us with his exquisite insights, and framing them in such a way that we become the story, Lynch has proved himself a true artist and a very new kind of filmmaker. "Mulholland Drive" probably won't win the Academy Award for best picture; but only because Hollywood, sexy old gypsy that she is, won't have the courage to hold the mirror that close.
This movie review by Erik Gloor