It's about the performances everyone gives as we walk through life ...

Rating: Null/10 (28 September 2002)

Mulholland Drive steps above and around normal linear logic of movie making. Lynch leads us down a winding path of dreams buried deep within Betty's (protagonist's) subconscious. At first, he serves up a series of linear (apparently disconnected) plot lines which make sense on their own. No overall pattern surfaces (that I could see anyway). Two drop dead gorgeous female characters endear themselves to us so completely that - by the time the film turns psychotic in those last 30 minutes - I was so attached to them I'd follow them wherever the film led me.
Then those last 30 minutes. When Lynch shuffles the deck . he re-orders reality so that all of my opening assumptions are completely reversed or erased (depending on the scene). On the surface things make less sense; but on a deeper, emotional level, you see that it makes `profound' sense. The genius is depicting on film that purgatory space between consciousness and sleep, reason and psychosis. I can never quite remember my dreams, but a Lynch film provides the elusive record of the universal dream world lurking within us all (I hope).
It's about the performances everyone gives as we walk through life, driven by our needs, wants and fears. Hollywood favors the caricature life and likely drives the odd actor-wannabe to psychotic depths. This is that waking nightmare imaginatively delivered on film. (It may be autobiographical, but that is for Lynch to reveal on Oprah or Today).
A love story gracefully develops within the story's pre-psychotic twists and turns. Sure it becomes darker than most; but then again, some do. This director knows how to strike the base human chord in all of us.

It's not for someone looking for standard Hollywood fare. It's a film the Nick character in the Big Chill would have counseled `has to flow over you'. Except here, you've got to be at least reasonably analytical.
Naomi Watts - a newcomer to my radar screen holds the film together brilliantly. She has a tremendous future in Hollywood, an unintended oxymoron for the film's main character no doubt. It demands a second watching. I'll submit to the call. For surreal, it beats the daylights out of Vanilla Sky.