A splendid masterpiece by David Lynch

Rating: 10/10 (15 April 2014)

I personally think 'spoiler alert' has nothing to do with this film. Nobody can make a 'spoiler' for this film, I swear. Hence I deliberately avoid spoiler alert here.
Mulholland Drive is one of the phenomenal work of David Lynch. It proclaims the brilliant direction of Lynch and I feel a trifle uneasy to find out a suitable genre for this movie apart from neo-noir. Since this is an ambiguous movie, viewers are given the freedom to decrypt it according to the didactics of their subconscious mind. Apparently the director hesitated to impart the gist of this movie thinking that the audience should criticize it without his assistance and certainly, this is what that distinguishes Lynch from the other directors. His movies are far beyond the standard perspective of Hollywood film-noir thus I feel a trifle uneasy to tag it as neo-noir or film-noir. David Lynch is renowned for his surreal style applying to the general precis of genres like film-noir, neo-noir, thriller, mystery and so on. Rather than exerting the graphical aspects of surrealism, he utilizes the epistemological angle of surrealism by means of the complicated story. The chronological order of the story turns indefinite as it proceeds and especially when the viewer start confounding what reality is. Even with a reasonable chronological story line, the logic of the events is still very illusive. He presents a film that challenges viewers to suspend belief of what they are experiencing through his juxtaposition of cinematography, cliché, surrealism, background music, lighting, nightmares/fantasies and nonlinear story lines. Apparently he avoided dramatic dialogues deliberately out of the film.
Naomi Watts achieved an outstanding performance. It's really challenging to impersonate two mutually exclusive personae (Betty/Diane). Laura Harring supported her well taking the role of Rita as well as Camila and she had a great chemistry with Naomi. The other actors did their role very well regardless of the importance of their roles. The intensity of light has been wisely utilized in order to scale their emotive status. Diane's dreams were shown in bright light especially during her arrival at the apartment. Also her emotional breakdown was rendered with darkness. Lynch used different camera positions throughout the movie most of then were hand-held point of view, so that the viewer identify with the suspense of the character in his or her particular space. Discrete style was also adopted to make deviations from the expected hand-held views, so that the multiple perspectives keep contexts from merging, significantly troubling our sense. Also sound-mixing and editing was excellent. Mild background-scores enhanced situations.
Apart from the eerie and mysterious atmosphere of a set of problems, the objective of this movie is to bring out the language of an unconscious mind. The objects we see in our dreams have a relation to our real life, some of them would be easy to interpret while some may be metaphorical representing some qualities or emotional aspects. The tagline for Mulholland Drive is "A love story in the City of Dreams." As we can see, Diane's struggle to love herself is what gives the film its poignant power, even more so than her doomed struggle to love Camilla. And that is as it should be, because we do not get much help understanding why Camilla is the person whom she is, but Diane's mind is laid open to us. In the end, Diane shoots herself and it shows Betty and Rita beaming at each other after which a woman in the Club Silencio balcony whispers "Silencio" as the screen fades to black. These images float in an indeterminate zone between fantasy and reality, which is perhaps the genuinely metaphysical dimension of the cinematic image. This indeterminate zone ended up by 'Silencio' which makes it hypothetical. I felt an indirect fatalism from that scene as if an external authority suppressing her unconscious mind to be silent. I felt it uncomfortable to watch such a pessimistic ending where everything became static and dark. I believe that the ending scene can be interpreted pessimistically as well as optimistically depending on the subconscious of audience. For me, it was pretty much pessimistic. I should not have said that. Erase it. Unleash your mind and enjoy the eternal ride to world of David Lynch. Good luck!