One Step Forward and Two Steps Back

Rating: Null/10 (7 October 2001)

Mulholland Drive is the kind of flick that the term 'odd duck' was coined to describe. The David Lynch film, which began life as a pilot for ABC Television in the US, and was subsequently canned by the network, was then saved by the power of the Eurodollar when Le Studio Canal+ and Alain Sarde stepped in and offered to finance an ending so that the piece could be given theatrical distribution and Lynch could pick up a Best Director award at Cannes. Whew. Believe it or not, that was far less long-winded than I expected.
There will inevitably be all kinds of discussions as to what Mulholland Drive is about. People will try to crack this mystery - most probably not with much success. The real mystery surrounding this piece is not to be found on the celluloid itself, but rather in its troubled production history. Why oh why did David Lynch ever trust a network - the same network, no less - after what ABC did to both Twin Peaks and On The Air? Gut feeling tells me that Lynch is basically just a really, really nice guy who believes so much in his own vision that he can't help but scratch his head in befuddlement when the suits don't 'get it'. I do hope he never makes this mistake again.
Why? The root of Mulholland Drive - the first hour and 45 minutes or so - is quite brilliant and I'm certain the TV series it could have spawned would have been as well. The great irony of the piece is that this is Lynch's big anti-Hollywood statement - the same Hollywood that said, 'Uhhh.sorry Dave, but we're just not interested.' Did it hit too close to home? Did they not read the script?? The idea that some covert, all-powerful and mysterious organization controls all the moves made in Hollywood is perhaps the stuff of fiction. But in the hands of Lynch, he makes it work, and in that unsettling David Lynch fashion, too.
Our principal characters are three: Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), an aspiring, wide-eyed actress wannabe who's just moved to LA; Rita (Laura Harring), an amnesiac with a stunning figure; and Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), an artsy film director trying to keep a firm grip on his film production, only to watch it quietly slip away. Their lives will intersect and then dissect before this 2 and a half hour Sunset Boulevard on acid comes to an end. The film is chock full of cool cameos - far too many to list; a good example is Hollywood veteran Ann Miller playing a landlady named Coco - and she'll tell you this a few times before the film is over. Who ever would've guessed that Ann Miller would be in a David Lynch film? Only Lynch himself, I suspect.
Suspect. That's what the final 45 minutes of this film are, I'm afraid to report. They're not bad - they're simply Lynch at his most Lost Highwayish. The entire piece, which has been pretty straightforward up to this point, even by Lynch standards, veers off into left field and becomes completely nonlinear. If you've spent enough of your life with this man's work, you'll easily spot where Mulholland Drive switches gears from TV pilot to R-rated feature film. Suddenly our two heroines, who've been relatively sweet and innocent up 'til this point, are engaged in an explicit, psychosexual lesbian relationship. As Howard Stern always says, 'What gets the ratings? Lesbians.' And ol' Dave has taken note. There are a few scattered attempts to 'de-pilotize' the first section - one that leaps to mind is an f-bomb looped into a character's dialogue when he's off-screen.
Perhaps comparing this film to Lost Highway is too easy, and probably erroneous as well. This brings to mind, more than anything else, the European theatrical version of the Twin Peaks pilot - the one with the extra twenty minutes where Cooper and Truman solve the case in a cellar; the one that seemed rushed and odd, especially when compared to the entire series that was green lit and produced. Only this time around we don't have the benefit of an entire series to which we can compare and contrast.
There's nothing in Mulholland Drive to alienate Lynch's fans. There's nothing to lessen his body of work. At the same time, however, it's hard to say that this does anything to build on his body of work either (unlike, say, The Straight Story). It exists. We should be glad that it does, even in this bizarre form, and that it isn't collecting dust on a shelf somewhere. Most distressing though, is the 'could've-been-TV-series' we'll never get the opportunity to see.