What The Heck Did I Just Watch?

Rating: 8/10 (13 February 2005)

That David Lynch, one has to wonder if he even knows what his films and TV shows are about. The man who brought us Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, and Eraserhead directs Mulholland Drive, a movie that makes no sense what-so-ever, and any attempt to figure out what exactly happens is an exercise in madness. There is no point in me describing the plot, it is too difficult to explain, it just has to be experienced. Naomi Watts plays a peppy twenty-something year old from the Midwest who goes to LA to become an actress. Laura Harring plays some woman who was in an accident while in a limo and loses her memory. She doesn't even know who she is. Beyond that, what is real and what is not is hard to figure out, but Dan Hedaya, Robert Forster, and Ann Miller are featured as background players. There is loads, let me repeat LOADS of symbolism in Mulholland Drive, but what everything means is open to interpretation. I think the last half of the movie is a dream, and if you remember your dreams, sometimes time and space are warped, nothing is linear. That is what makes the most sense to me. Also, I think the first half of the movie is about how Hollywood is a horrible place to make a living, but that could only be one way at looking at it. Mulholland Drive is not a movie in the sense most people think of movies. Instead, Mulholland Drive is a piece of art that has to be looked at critically, interpreted as the meaning that the painter hides deep in the movie is hard to finger. David Lynch has always worked in symbolic, strange, out-there methods, and Mulholland Drive is no different. The lasting part of the movie that stayed with me the longest was the soundtrack. Very little music, instead deep, almost so low you can't hear it noises make up the background, as if the boom mikes were sitting too close to amplifiers or some other interfering device. It is unsettling to have to listen to that for the entire movie, and adds to the uneasiness that is the movie. It is a difficult movie to get through, but by the end of it, perhaps you have learned something about yourself, or you could turn to your friend and ask "what the heck did I just watch?"