Greek Mythology?

Rating: 9/10 (2 November 2002)

I'm a film student and in our studygroup this film has been analysed already for over 7 weeks and very, very interesting things came out. First of all, the film is really stuffed with Greek Mythology. For instance, the blue box is a straight reference to pandoras box. Second, the names Diane and Camilla are very important in one Greek mythology (i can't remember which one, I'll ask). Third, there is the myth of 'Olympus rock','where all the heroes live'. Hollywood Hills is where all the stars live, under the Hills lays LA. And guess what road leads from LA to the Hills? Yes, Mulholland Drive, exactly were the accident happens which sort of symbolizes that reaching stardom is all an illusion. There's a lot of more Greek stuff in it, like Medusa, but you should really read a book about it to figure it out. The concept of '(Hollywood) it's all an illusion' is definitely a big theme; think of the Silenziotheatre, the failed love between Adam and his girl and of course Camilla and Diane. Actually the whole point of the film is that it's all an illusion, cause you can't quite figure out what is dreamed and what is 'real'. You could also say that the sequence after the opening of Pandoras box is a reconstruction of Rita's/ Camilla's memory, but probably a misleading one; the myth says that when Pandora's Box is opened all the bad things come out. This might be an explanation that we get to see the reconstruction trough DIANE's eyes, who's clearly sort of insane and bad because she hires a guy to kill Camilla. About the opening sequence; we see that 'Camilla' is supposed to get shot by highly professional do-ers; certainly not the one Diane hooked up with. That sort of stuff makes we wonder again if it's all just a dream or psychosis of Diane to try to forget the fact that she murdered Camilla. Anyway, I'm definitely not out of this thing yet, actually I have to write my first assignment now about MH Drive, so I'll stop for now. Still one thing left to say; I think the whole name thing with Camilla, Diane, Betty,etc. is one of Lynche's way to confront the fact that the name of the actor, like Tom Cruise, makes the movies nowadays, it guarantees success for the studio's. This is all disregarded of the persons they are..they're totally replaceable;the same point is made in 'Simone'. This sort off stuff establishes the fact that MH Drive is totally postmodern, like there's no real truth, and if there were then it's definitely not to be found in Hollywood. There's a dark 'something' under the thin fake Hollywood surface which has more truth in it than the things we see and take for real...