The Best Movie of the Year

Rating: Null/10 (3 December 2001)

What is a film's responsibility if not to make us feel something? Whether we laugh, cry, or get angry, movies are the inert roller coasters of our cultures, functioning best when hearts begin to beat faster, for whatever reason. After having made an extremely opaque film in 1997 ("Lost Highway"), only to be followed by an extremely simple film in 1999 ("The Straight Story"), David Lynch returns in 2001, happy balance in hand, with "Mulholland Drive", a film that manages to play to every one of his strengths, again and again and again. At once both a scathing expose and a gushing love letter to the machine of Hollywood, Lynch unfurls a dark, choppy ocean of contempt, lust, fame, and hope with the precision of a brilliant magician, withholding his hand until the viewer is ready to find it. There are concrete, logical explanations to be found in all of the fog and mist, but unlike the other L.A.-set noir of 2001 ("Memento"), the pay-off isn't in the twist ending, but rather in the body of the film itself. This is a two-hour plus Thanksgiving dinner for film fans, full of the sort of rich, sensual imagery that only the medium of film can offer. In the hazy walls of the movie, it may not be absolutely clear at all times who is who and what is what, but what is clear with "Mulholland Drive" is that in a year's worth of new releases, it extracts emotions from its audience so strong, there can be no question as to which performs it's basic task with the greatest aptitude. Hilltop, Lynch's magnum opus succeeds on every cinematic level, meeting all the necessary hallmarks to qualify as the best movie of the year.