It is fun to compare this movie to "Jacob's Ladder."

Rating: Null/10 (7 May 2005)

Spoilers - The only difference between a dream and a hallucination is that in the latter we think we are awake. But are we, really? In David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" there are only two short moments of consciousness. Near the beginning, after the jitterbug montage, we see an out of focus image in a bedroom, the same bedroom where the film ends, Betty/Diane (Naomi Watts) has just shot herself to finally get away from her guilt and her drug-induced demons. Except for those two brief shots of reality, the whole film is a semi-conscious dream, part grotesque exaggeration and part seeing your life flash before you as you are dying. In that sense it is similar to "Jacob's Ladder", where that whole movie is a dream during the few minutes they are trying to save the wounded soldier before he finally dies. I suspect that Lynch consciously borrowed this idea, and adapted it to the world he knows, Hollywood.
I thoroughly enjoyed the film, my wife just got up and left when it was over. suspect she felt cheated. I think she was expecting more closure. I was happy with witnessing the craft displayed. My absolute favorite scene in "Mulholland Drive", and one of my favorites in any movie, is when the director is told to meet the Cowboy in the corral. We know now it was a dream, but it shows how lucid Betty's subconscious was at times. "If you pick the right girl for the part, you'll see me one more time. If you don't, you'll see me two more times." It doesn't have to make sense, but it was a superb scene.
For those viewers looking for a simple, straight line narrative, here it is. Betty/Diane is a small town girl who won a contest and goes to Hollywood to strike it big. It is more difficult than she thought, has to ultimately resort to prostitution to stay alive, but gets involved in drugs too. Her paranoia leads her to feel the system is conspiring against her, other actresses get jobs because they either know someone or charm the director. So she arranges a hit on her perceived nemesis, but as she turns to booze and drugs to try and forget her guilt results in her own suicide. All those dreams we see in the film are happening in her mind during the few minutes between the time she shoots herself and the time she dies. Tragic, but it happens all the time.
The DVD is real funky. While I admire its having both DTS and Dolby Digital sound tracks, it has no meaningful extras. Plus, it is not organized in chapters, in essence it is one long 145 minute chapter. So you cannot, for example, jump to the middle of the film to re-watch a scene, your only choice is to start from the beginning and fast-forward to get to your desired spot. That is a terrible, terrible cheating trick to play on DVD owners. It negates one of the nice benefits of DVD.