Get ready for Mulholland Drive, a drive you won't easily forget

Rating: 10/10 (30 September 2002)

David Lynch's never finished TV project/pilot turned into this movie, Mulholland Drive (2001) after more money was given by new producer and additional scenes filmed and the whole thing re-edited. I agree with Lynch that it is perhaps better not quite understand everything completely in the mystery, because if so, we lose something inside ourselves even if we don't know it. I won't go into trying to explain what exactly happens in the story and who is after all who, I will write about this piece of cinema and what Lynch has managed to give us this time with the magic of his art; his films are much more than just solving new and complex mysteries.
Without spoiling anything, I can only tell that Betty (Naomi Watts) and Rita (Laura Elena Harring) are the two leads here. Betty is a young and excited girl traveling to Hollywood for hope of the film role of her life as she arrives to her aunt's apartment in the City of Dreams..Or nightmares? Soon after she meets the mysterious Rita unexpectedly in an unexpected place, the latter state of the City seems more valid. More characters are introduced all the time, many think it is gratuitous and just mixing the viewer's mind little more but that's not the case: if the viewer accepts to sit through the film with care and really concentrate on it, it all makes sense and all the happenings and characters are given explanations for their existence and motives, no matter how mysterious they seem, look and are.
Of course the two leads are incredible and beautiful as angels again. Lynch loves beauty and purifying and relieving elements in his films, and usually they are in the form of a beautiful and sensitive female. Betty's light on the top of her head in the beginning really tells who is going to be the angel of the show in that side of the reality and consciousness. But what's the strongest element of beauty and stunning atmosphere in the film is the music by Angelo Badalamenti and how the camera goes with the music and sounds already familiar with Badalamenti from the earlier films he's composed for Lynch. It is not hard to shed some tears during these scenes of cinematic magic and sensitivity, and Twin Peaks also is a great example of this. Lynch and Badalamenti really are extraordinary couple giving power to each other's work and effort, and the result is always larger than life and worth the shed tears and moments of total amazement.
The cinematographer Peter Deming has shot also films like Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) and more recently From Hell (2001) for the Hughes brothers and their Jack the Ripper adaptation with some gorgeous images and settings in the London in which Hell and terror was on the loose in the form of human being. Deming's work in Mulholland Drive is also extraordinary with the incredible scenes shot at night and especially inside apartment(s). The scene in which Rita and Betty suddenly experience "something" which makes them wake at night is among the most outstanding bits of camera work I've ever seen as the "living darkness" is completely under control of Lynch and the cinematographer. It is about little things that the whole scene would go into a messy blur and nonsense, but not in this case, because in Lynch's films, darkness and menacingly empty and lightness rooms are important characters even though the film's human characters don't necessarily know it, and most importantly, Lynch controls this darkness and emptiness all the time so there's nothing there which isn't supposed to be there.

Lost Highway has some incredibly shocking and frightening images and segments even though it is not any horror film. Lynch can create menacing and scary images and illusions of things which are not menacing or scary themselves, normal old human beings for example. But in Lynch's world, even the most familiar and safe things may turn into threatening monsters who will haunt you if they are not kept in the darkness and in the other side. Some scenes in Mulholland Drive are also stunningly powerful and scary with the strong usage of soundtrack and other elements which give Lynch's cinema its power. A dead body itself isn't necessarily scary or evil, but if human nature's evil sides have been activated and used, then nothing is safe or trustworthy and definitely not dead and harmless.
That is again one theme in the film, or one theme I managed to find after just one theatrical viewing. Mulholland Drive has bad thoughts and deeds by its characters because selfish and bitter human being is weak and grabs a gun. This element of evil is strong, but it is also (occasionally, not all the time) handled with almost surprisingly obvious irony as, for example, one little criminal loser really messes things up at the beginning of the film! That cannot be seen seriously nor it is meant to be; During these scenes, Lynch really wants to smile at himself in the mirror, and also the brief discussion between Robert Forster and other police officer at the beginning isn't the less memorable bit of that irony! Maybe..
Mulholland Drive is also a film about sweet love which turns into a series of jealousy and wicked thoughts which lead to wicked deeds. Love can be a beautiful thing, but human nature and world can destroy it and its participants. Even in that situation man should know what "love" is as he/she decides how to react to the situation, but in Lynch's world humans can be and are as rotten inside as in real world and thus the nightmare has its roots created. In Lynch's films there are always the characters who seem to be completely good and pure (Betty) so all his characters are not necessarily evil and wicked, not even inside and "un-actively." Still the message from his films about humans and our nature comes very clearly visible through those elements of wickedness and evil which are contrasted with the elements of purity, how things fortunately can and could be.
Mulholland Drive is another piece of Lynch magic which can be and desires to be seen and experienced several times without losing any of its power and importance as an achievement of cinematic surrealism. This should be seen definitely on big screen but sadly too often after the theatrical run that is not possible, but if in the future the possibility occurs, then I'd warmly recommend to take advantage of it for all those who understand and appreciate Lynch's work, as he, too, did and does his films to be seen in the theatre, because there his soundtrack and imagery achieves their full impact and level of the beyond, which cannot fully be achieved in home on video. Lynch takes us every time to his weird and wonderful (and often very horrific) world which isn't too far away from our safe and familiar place we live in every day. Another 10/10 miracle for David Lynch.