Beware what you dream for... Silencio...

Rating: 10/10 (2 June 2017)

David Lynch (One of my personal favourite directors) is a true indie film maker. He makes his movies his way and never seems too concerned with whether or not they're accessible or will find an audience. But every few years, one breaks through and goes beyond his own cult audience, hitting hard with mainstream success. Movies like Blue Velvet (1986 movie) and Lost Highway (1997 movie) will pop up, and remind regular movies goers that the dude who made Twin Peaks (TV series) is still around. The last movie of his that I remember breaking through big, was Mulholland Drive the 2001 movie.
Lynch's themes are wild and unconventional: dreams materialised; crazy thought bubbles brought to life. Whereas Orson Welles' great film begins with a brief moment of surrealism – involving a snow globe and the cryptic word "Rosebud" – but then proceeds in a more straight-forward manner, Lynch maintains the surreal atmosphere throughout. In this sense Mulholland Drive picks up where Citizen Kane left off.
Its dream-like qualities give rise to many confusing and unexplained things that naturally encourage interpretation. But as critic Roger Ebert, one of the film's greatest champions noted: "There is no explanation. There may not even be a mystery."
The best explanation is a long one which would suggest the old couple are judges of the jitterbug contest that Betty won and then at the end, signs of her innocent past come back to terrorise her. It answers some of the smaller puzzles, too, such as: who is Jennifer Syme, the woman the film is dedicated to? (An actress who appeared in Lost Highway, who died in a car accident.) The movie is hypnotic; we're drawn along as if one thing leads to another but nothing leads anywhere, and that's even before the characters start to fracture and recombine like flesh caught in a kaleidoscope. Mulholland Drive isn't like Memento, where if you watch closely enough you can hope to explain the mystery. There is no explanation. There may not even be a mystery.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that David Lynch's mind-bending mystery-drama Mulholland Drive has been named by BBC Culture's critics' poll as the best film of the century so far. Its very roots lie in television: the film began as a failed TV pilot and was salvaged into feature-length format.
If you've seen David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, chances are you've been arguing about it ever since. How is Diane, the failed actor, related to Betty, the fresh-faced wannabe? Was the end really the beginning? What was the significance of the creepy nightclub Silencio, and what was in that mysterious blue box? Who were the laughing elderly couple, and what did the cowboy have to do with anything? Is there a deeper meaning – or is it a mistake to try too hard to decipher anything that David Lynch does?
'Mulholland Drive,' is such a film which even its most ardent fans admit is as maddeningly baffling as it is mesmerising, despite being named the greatest film of the 21st century by BBC, just to let you guys know: that it took me 4 months to figure out the plot.
Sorry for the spoiler. It's also a reason why it's one of the 'Weirdest films of all time!'
Silencio...