Mulholland Drive Explained

Rating: 9/10 (21 September 2002)

**SPOILERS**I finally saw David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. on DVD last night (9/15/02), and do not know what all the controversy is about regarding the plot. Really it is quite simple.
First of all, it is one of Lynch's better films, after Fire Walk With Me and Wild at Heart.
The real story begins in the last third of the film, when blonde Diane (Naomi Watts) wakes from the bed (remember the 'Cowboy' telling her to "wake up now"?) and involves a story of a lesbian romance gone terribly wrong. The character of Diane is obsessively in love with an amoral brunette actress named Camilla (Rita in the earlier part of the film). Diane hires a hit man to have Camilla killed.
SPOILERS
The Cowboy is like Chronos, resetting the clock so the hellish dream can be lived over and over again - hence the last third of the film actually occurs BEFORE the descent into hell of the first two-thirds of the film.
The old couple are gateway demons, ushering Diane into hell for her crime, and leading her to her suicide in the 'real' part of the story.
The blue box is a stand-in for Pandora's box, which the crime Diane sets into motion causes to be opened by Pandora - the evil looking bum behind the wall of the diner. Don't forget that hope was the one good thing unleashed with all the evils contained within Pandora's box, hence the hopeful tone of the dreamlike descent into hell for Diane (now Betty).
All of the characters and circumstances of the first two-thirds of the film are idealized representations of what went on in Diane's life in the 'real' part of the story.
The aunt is alive, helpful, concerned but still distant in the hell story. The director suffers all manner of torments in the hell story - Betty's imagination creating these torments for what he did to her (Diane) in the 'real' story - stealing her girl and humiliating her at the party. Coco, the director's mother, is the only person who is nice to Diane in the 'real' story - politely asking her questions about herself at the party while everyone else seems to ignore or be cruel to her, hence in the hell story Coco is helpful and kind - and now the apartment building manager. The hit man is a bungler and a buffoon in the hell story, a far cry from the crisp efficiency of the murderer in the 'real' story, who very quickly leaves the receipt for the murder - a conventional blue key - for Diane to find it. Rita (Camilla) is a blank: vulnerable, and even kind - the opposite of the amoral and self-serving Camilla of the 'real' story. Betty meets Rita naked, foreshadowing the lesbian relationship. The strangely shaped blue key and the black bag stuffed with money in the hell story link back to the real blue key and the money (a lesser amount) of the 'real' story ... and just when the mystery is to be solved, the blue box for the blue key found at the strange basement club where the singer dies but the song of love goes on (and the devilish MC intones that it is "all recorded") ... they open the box only to ... DISAPPEAR ... Cowboy appears and tells Betty/Diane to "wake up now," starting the endless cycle all over again. The man in the diner who had the vision of evil behind the wall had been paying his check at the register in the diner when Diane contracted for the murder and sensed the evil unleashed, and in the hell story he is represented as a customer, sitting exactly where Diane had sat, and recounts his dream of seeing evil behind the wall behind the diner.
Recap: Lesbian love story gone wrong. Spurned lover hires hitman to kill her movie star lover. Blue key found is receipt for the murder and causes her to go insane. She kills herself. Awakens in hell to relive her life over and over, but it is representational and not an exact accounting - and just as she is about to attain all that she wants - her lover, money, and a solution to the mystery of Rita ... Cowboy resets the clock to start it over again.