"And Getting Stranger ..."

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 2001)

David Lynch's predilection for elusive storytelling still has the potential to be mighty frustrating, but ten years after Twin Peaks, it may be wise just to sit back and enjoy the ride. Adhering to the same sort of non-linear script structure he has all but trademarked, Lynch spends two hours and twenty-six minutes unraveling Mulholland Drive, a dense film that is mostly a brilliant noir, with various bits of meaningless bulls*** peppered throughout. All of it, though, is frequently nothing short of enthralling, with Lynch's pure ability as an interesting filmmaker taking precedence over virtually everything else. Normally with a mystery, it's difficult to go into detail about the plotline for fear of giving things away. In Mulholland Drive's case however, it seems the only way to even relate the most basic events of the story is to describe them as a conjunction of scenes starring Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, and Justin Theroux that only make sense upon hindsight. It is a dazzling, self-assured jigsaw puzzle of a movie, a continual mindbender that appears to take great satisfaction in its own slithering ambiguity, confident of where it's eventually going. Much has been made of how Mulholland Drive was salvaged from the ashes of an aborted ABC television pilot and restructured into a feature. Obviously, David Lynch had planned to stay with these characters and situations for a while longer than he eventually did, it's fascinating how it achieves the sort of slow-creep plot twist that is best suited for the long-term medium of T.V. In the end, it can be assumed that the writer/director has accomplished in a few hours what he was going to try to accomplish in multiple years of episodes. Demanding and rewarding, Mulholland Drive is sure to be one of the best films of 2001.