A mesmerising melange of shaggy-dog stories

Rating: 10/10 (8 January 2004)

Stupidly enough, I didn't get round to seeing this movie at the cinema when it was on general release. With some qualifications (e.g. "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me") I regard myself as a reasonably devoted David Lynch fan, albeit not an uncritical one. I bought the DVD of "Mulholland Drive" some months ago, and found all kinds of excuses not to make the mental and emotional effort to watch it. Until yesterday.
I thought about refraining from writing a review until I had seen the movie in its entirety several times, but it seems more honest to write a review based on my single viewing.
I can't pretend to complete innocence, however. I did read the first twenty or so of the 1200-odd IMDb reviews, in the hope of gaining some illumination.
It seems to me that there are two basic ways to miss the point with "Mulholland Drive":
1) Be so devoted a David Lynch fan that you kill the wonderful, haunting mystery of the film with explanation;
2) Be so bone-headedly anti-intellectual in general, and hostile to Lynch in particular, that you dismiss the film as "pretentious rubbish" or the like.
We can, I think, dismiss the latter group of reviewers; they'll never "get it". It's the first group who bother me.
I watched the film in complete innocence. I had no idea, for instance, that it was cobbled together from footage for a rejected TV pilot, and some new footage intended to turn it into a feature film. Knowing this would have completely altered my response. I'd've been looking for the "joins", and would have expected some incoherence and haste in the plot development.
Some reviewers regret that the TV series was not made. I have some sympathy with this, but perhaps it was better this way after all. The sainted "Twin Peaks", wonderful as it was overall, was more uneven than gilded memory might suggest; it had its longueurs, and suffered from having, by necessity, to be directed not merely by Lynch, but by others, leading to an inconsistency of style and viewpoint.
Even the tacked-on "the first half of the movie is all Diane Selwyn's dream" explanation doesn't take us VERY far, and robs the movie of much of its characteristically Lynchian suggestiveness. Lynch likes to set up situations that suggest rich possibilities of resolution, and then to withhold such resolution. You can feel cheated, as many doubtless do; you can attempt to defend Lynch by pretending that the plot has more coherence than is actually the case; or you can just accept that if you want what the pop-psych babblers call "closure" you'll either have to do some of the work yourself, learn to live with uncertainty, or stick to simpler cinematic fare.
So, it's all Diane Selwyn's dream? Maybe I've missed something, but this doesn't, so far as I can make out, explain the following:
1) There are three basic forces of evil in the movie:
i) The hermetically sealed Mr Roque (the Twin-Peaks midget!), who seems to give the Mafia-types and the latino manager of Cookies their orders;

ii) The Cowboy. Is the Cowboy (one of the weirdest and most sinister villains ever to appear in a Lynch movie) simply an enforcer for the Mr Big, or is he an emissary of:
iii) The Winkies Garbage Demon? This demon, who dwells among the junk behind the Sunset Blvd Winkies, literally scares a man to death. This same man has had a pair of prophetic dreams, and informs another man (a police officer?) that the Garbage Demon (as I shall call him) is responsible for all the evil that occurs in his dream. The Demon later also unleashes the airplane oldsters (clearly his satanic underlings) from the sinister blue box in pursuit of Diane Selwyn.
2) If "Betty" is really Diane Selwyn (or vice versa), how does she dream the earlier parts of the movie? She has already killed herself in response to the attack of the airplane oldsters.
3) How is Diane Selwyn privy to the experiences of Adam Kesher? Did she dream all of these? Why?
4) Why are hermetically-sealed Mr Roque (the Mr Big) and/or the deadpan, riddling Cowboy (under orders from the Garbage Demon?) so keen that Camilla Rhodes be cast in the female lead of Adam's bizarre nostalgia movie?
5) Who is the Blue-Haired Lady in Silencio? Why is blue so sinister in this movie (the blue box and its clunky key; the conventional blue key given to Diane by the hit-man)?
6) Why Silencio?
There are lots of other unanswered questions in my mind. Maybe other IMDb reviewers have the answers (or THINK they have!). As usual with Lynch, I think it's better just to accept that the whole thing is several interlocking shaggy-dog stories that aren't really going anywhere, but we can, if we like, hitch along for part of the ride. (I am reminded of the enigmatic Cowboy's reference to the "buggy" he is driving; it's the same with Lynch's narrative.)
If none of this appeals, you can always enjoy just looking at the pretty women! (Lynch never underestimates the sheer entertainment value of beautiful ladies and good music.)
I'll give it 10/10