Triple threads - spoilers in last section

Rating: Null/10 (14 October 2004)

Hollywood has traditionally been very good at making films about itself and Mulholland Drive nudges ahead of even the other street name title, Sunset Boulevard (1950). Both films are effective because, in contrast to usual Hollywood fare, cynicism is given an unremitting free reign.
Mulholland is about the use and abuse of both sex and money in power and personal politics. It is ironic that Naomi Watts is given an actress's script to kill for and she makes the very best of it. Could Julia have done it? No. What about Gwyneth? Possibly. And Cate? OK, well yes, but even she would have had to be at her peak to match Watt's range which is breathtaking. She so effectively counterpoints the naivety of the Hollywood dream with the reality.
Non-spoiler guide
One way of making sense of this film is to consider it as having three interwoven perspectives; the reality storyline (in so far as the cinema can ever represent reality); the wish-fulfilment storyline; and the Lynchian nightmare or exaggerated grotesque. The difficulty comes with picking which scenes fall into which category especially as the Lynch fantasy elements overlay both the narrative story lines. Even with this in mind things only begin to coalesce in the final 20 minutes and are only fully apparent in the hours after viewing or on subsequent viewings.
Spoiler guide (read in conjunction with non-spoiler guide)
The reality perspective includes the break-up of the lesbian affair; the executive powerplays; the black book/contract killer scenes; prostitution-just-below-the-surface; and the faltering career, disintegration, humiliation and suicide of Diane. The wish-fulfilment angle is primarily the heavenly (in both senses) fantasy of Diane and deals with her Hollywood arrival as 'Betty'; Coco as caretaker; a generous Aunt and her flat; the crash/amnesia of 'Rita' (which allows Diane to be wholly in control of her relationship with Camilla which in reality has ended); and the blue box and triangular key whose contents could be said to be the secret of Hollywood.
Even Diane's fantasy will not permit Betty to be present when Rita discovers that the box is empty. In the Lynch nightmare, introduced via the psycho and his tramp vision, the box contains the escaping miniature star-struck couple whose pedestalisation of Betty cannot be attained, and so they become Diane's final demons.
The two narrative story lines converge (1) in the Silencio Club where the Betty/Rita relationship ends and the dream begins to unravel (2) the meeting of eyes between Betty and director Adam when she misses out on her 'big break' and (3) the discovery of the dead Diane by Camilla & Betty.