tired

Rating: Null/10 (26 March 2002)

As a tremendous Lynch fan-- one who has seen the full body of his work several times over-- I found Mulholland Drive tired and anticlimactic. It had its moments (e.g., the Castigliane brothers coffee tasting, the first cowboy scene, etc.), but, overall, I found its gimmickry rather old hat. I walked out feeling like Lynch had let me down... like he'd run out of ideas and released this film as an excuse to increase his output. Basically, in my view, he spent the first part of the film creating his usual series of quirky, disconnected characters. So far, so good. Then, when the proverbial Pandora's box was opened, he slid them all around like puzzle pieces. As usual, the female characters proved to be insipid and interchangeable, where the males were more distinct.
Woohoo! A lesson in the "multiverse." This is an old and academic theme. Borges wrote about this stuff over a half century ago (e.g., "The Garden of Forking Paths".) Those who find the device exhilarating might also refer to my essay entitled "What I Did for Summer Vacation," at the end of which... I wake up.
Maybe Lynch ought to stop watching his daughter's two-dimensional flicks. I honestly think he's past the peak of his creativity.