Mulholland Dr.
by David Lynch
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Justin Theroux, Laura Harring, Naomi WattsDirector: David Lynch
Brand: Universal Studios
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 147 minutes
Published: 2002-04-01
DVD Release Date: 2002-04-09
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of Mulholland Dr.
Movie Review: 10 New Clues for Understanding MULHOLLAND DR.
Summary: 5 Stars
But first, a quick and honest review: One of the best films ever (certainly Lynch's best, and this is really saying something) - mysterious, sexy, tragic, surreal, horrifying, hilarious, and well worth your money. Go buy. Now.
OK, and now the clues:
CLUE 1: Pay special attention to the colors of the bedsheets and pillow we see very early in the film, just after the jitterbug scene fades out. We will see this bed again at a key moment, two hours later in the film. There is no way to overstate the significance of this simple clue.
CLUE 2: A pair of brief and virtually identical scenes bookend the Winkie's scene with Dan, Herb, and the bum. These two quick frame shots tell us something very important about the nature of the beguiling Winkie's sequence.
CLUE 3: A good deal of information can be gleaned from the succession of phone calls made shortly after Rita's disappearance. There are many avenues to explore here, but don't overlook this brief sequence. For instance, why do you think that first call was initially made? What sort of pattern can we see from the first call to the last? And where might that last call have been made to?
CLUE 4: The message on the answering machine when Betty and Rita call Diane Selwyn at her Sierra Bonita residence. Whose voice do we hear on the answering machine? Do we ever hear this message again? If so, when? And what light does all this cast on the mystery of the dead woman whom Betty and Rita find at Diane Selwyn's Sierra Bonita apartment?
CLUE 5: Camilla Rhodes briefly speaks in Spanish to Adam at their dinner party on Mulholland Dr. What is she saying? Who is she talking about? What is Adam's reaction? Lynch packs in a lot of information very quickly here.
CLUE 6: At the dinner party, a mysterious blonde (IN TREATMENT's Melissa George)kisses Camilla Rhodes on the lips when Adam isn't looking. Why does this kiss distress Diane so profoundly? And what does it reveal about Camilla's relationship to Adam?
CLUE 7: Dan makes a second appearance in the film, when Diane and Joe the hitman are arranging to have Camilla Rhodes murdered. Do you see how Dan fits into the plot here? Do you understand why Lynch included him in this later scene? Give you a hint: it has to do with something stupid Diane does while cutting her deal with Joe. Very few people ever seem to make the necessary connection here.
CLUE 8: Joe the hitman laughs at Diane when she asks him what his blue key opens. This is the key that Joe will leave for Diane after the execution of Camilla Rhodes is carried through. Anyways, why did Lynch include this seemingly pointless scene with Joe mocking Diane? Big hint: it explains the very next scene - one of the most widely misunderstood scenes in the entire film - with the bum behind Winkie's. And have you ever wondered whose perspective (POV) we are watching this latter scene from?
CLUE 9: The gesticulating old couple at the end of the film horrify Diane; they appear to symbolize something unspeakably painful to her. Pay special attention to the sounds (yes, the sounds!) we hear as the tiny oldsters crawl under Di's door to torment her. What might these sounds tell us about what the old couple represent to Diane? And is there any significance to the specific room where they ultimately corner Diane in?
CLUE 10: And finally, something is rather peculiar - even incongruous - about the very last scene with the Blue Haired Lady at Club Silencio. What might this apparent incongruity tell us about the nature of this woman, the club, and the entire story of MULHOLLAND DR. itself? Also, is this a familiar paradox we've seen at the end of other Lynch mind-benders like ERASERHEAD, the TWIN PEAKS television series, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME, LOST HIGHWAY, and INLAND EMPIRE? There is a very definite pattern here, so what do you think Lynch is trying to tell us?
I'll eventually post the complete answers to these clues and questions below.
In the meantime, good luck...and enjoy.
(3 years later...Ooops)
(Actually, in all fairness, I posted all of the answers years ago, but they were deleted. Long story)
*SPOILERS AHEAD*
OK, here are the complete "answers" to the clues. And remember - don't look if you don't want to know!
CLUE #1: Very early in the film, just before the two-hour story of Betty and Rita begins, an unseen person climbs into a bed with pink and green sheets. Immediately after this person's head hits the big pink pillow, the story of Betty and Rita begins.
Flash-forward two hours later. After finding and opening the mysterious blue box, Betty and Rita - the film's heroines, thus far - literally disappear into thin air, never to be seen again. And remember - there are still about 25 minutes left in the film!
Anyways, this is the precise moment when we clearly see Diane Selwyn (not Betty!) wake up in the bed with pink and green sheets.
And so we learn that it was Diane Selwyn who was getting into bed at the beginning of the film, and that it is Diane Selwyn who dreamed the entire story of Betty and Rita.
(let that sink in for a moment)
The character of Betty Elms was a sort of idealized - i.e. dream-version - surrogate for Diane in the dream.
But here's the most important thing to remember: understanding that Diane dreamed the story of Betty and Rita is only the beginning of your journey into the incomparable cinematic labyrinth that is MULHOLLAND DR. This is only your first necessary step towards understanding the film.
CLUE #2: The two quick shots which deliberately bookend the widely misunderstood Winkie's scene are close shots of Rita sleeping.
Thus, Rita is dreaming the Winkie's scene. More specifically, the Winkie's scene is a dream within a dream - Rita's dream within Diane's. Diane reduced Dan and the frightening "Bum" to being mere figments of Rita's imagination because these two characters are so disturbing to her in real life. So in her dream, they do not even really exist - they are nothing more than the stuff of troubled dreams.
CLUE #3: The succession of phone calls begins with the sinister Mr. Roque, shortly after Rita goes missing.
With every phone call, it becomes obvious that we are descending further and further down the economic food-chain.
Thus, Mr. Roque is delivering a message concerning Rita's disappearance to someone at the bottom of this food-chain, but is carefully distancing himself from the call by relaying the message through a series of middle-men.
This series of phone calls will ultimately result in the hiring of Joe the hitman to find and kill Rita, and this is why Roque needs to distance himself from the call - he's orchestrating a murder!
Also: it appears that the two limo drivers who attempted to kill Rita were also hired by Roque, and their failed effort necessitated the hiring of Joe to finish the job.
Because the mobster-like Castigliani brothers also work for Roque, we can easily deduce that Roque wanted Rita dead because she was an actress who had already landed - or who was likely to land - the lead role in Adam Kesher's film, The Sylvia North Story. We know this because Roque and the Castigliani's make it clear that they will never allow Adam to make his film unless it stars a specific blonde named Camilla Rhodes (a.k.a. "The Girl").
Oh, and incidentally, it seems likely that the final phone call - the one answered by the hairy-armed dude - was to Winkie's. This makes obvious sense when you consider that Winkie's is Joe the hitman's frequent hangout (all of his scenes - even a deleted one - take place at Winkie's, with the sole exception of the hilarious triple-murder scene).
CLUE #4: When Betty calls Diane Selwyn (and remember, this is all happening in the real Diane Selwyn's dream), the answering-machine message Betty and Rita hear is the very same answering-machine message that the real Diane Selwyn has on her actual telephone in real life.
Anyways, the most important thing this tells us is that the dead woman Betty and Rita find when they sneak into the Sierra Bonita apartment is in fact a woman named Diane Selwyn. Remember, Diane's dream-surrogate is Betty - NOT the dead woman named Diane Selwyn. Bearing in mind that the central purpose of the dream is to construct an elaborate "dream place" for Diane to forget herself and escape into, it only makes sense that she takes on a new name (Betty Elms) and sheds her proverbial skin by giving her real-life name to the dead woman.
And by the way, it is no coincidence that the Diane Selwyn in the dream meets with the very same fate that the real Diane will soon meet - death by gunshot. In this way it becomes clear that the dead Diane in the dream is a direct manifestation of the real Diane's suicidal state of mind at the time of her dream. Diane will in fact shoot herself less than 24 hours after awakening from the dream.
CLUE #5: Camilla's Spanish dialogue at Adam's party reveals there is animosity between Adam and Luigu Castigliani, just as there was in the dream. This becomes much more significant when you consider the meaningful glance which passes between Luigi and Diane at the party. The implication being that Diane may have hooked up with Joe the hitman through Luigi's mobster connections.
CLUE #6: The kiss between Camilla and the unnamed blonde (played by IN TREATMENT's Melissa George) reveals that Camilla is a lesbian (something we already knew, to be honest) and that she is only marrying clueless Adam for his money and power. But more importantly, from Diane's perspective, it reveals that she - Diane - has officially been replaced in Camilla's life. Not by Adam, as she once suspected, but by the unnamed blonde. Camilla truly has it all now - a Hollywood sugar-daddy and a sweet new blonde piece on the side.
Btw, Camilla's new girlfriend - the blonde - appears in Diane's dream, but under the name...Camilla Rhodes! A.k.a "The Girl." Just as Diane sloughed off her real-life identity onto the dead woman, she also passes off Camilla's real-life identity onto the woman whom Mr. Roque, the Castigliani brothers, and The Cowboy force Adam to cast as the lead actress in his film.
Are you starting to really see how the dream logic in this remarkably mysterious and complex film works? Let's keep going.
CLUE #7: OK - Dan. The vast majority of viewers are left utterly baffled by the notorious Winkie's scene early in the film, and tend to write it off as pure random weirdness. But Dan's second appearance, much later in the film, reveals who he really is to Diane and why she killed him off so quickly in her (and Rita's) dream.
If you watch that second Winkie's scene again, take note of how understandably aggravated Joe gets when Diane whips out a big glossy photograph of Camilla and lays it flat on the table for him - and for anyone else who happens to be passing by - to look at. Joe quickly stashes the picture out of sight and gruffly reprimands Diane.
So the question worth asking is: why did Lynch include this scene? How could this brief interaction between Di and Joe possibly be relevant to the plot? Well, that's where our boy Dan comes in.
Shortly after Joe scolds her, Diane looks up and sees nervous Dan looking right at her. GASP! Did Dan see the picture of Camilla, as Joe insinuated someone might? And did he overhear any of their conversation? Could he even be...an undercover cop? Or simply an ordinary citizen who overheard two whackos plotting a murder? These are some of the questions that must have flashed through Diane's increasingly paranoid and unhinged mind when she looked up and locked eyes with Dan.
I should also point out that Diane may not necessarily have been wrong or crazy to intuit that Dan accidentally or intentionally overheard and/or oversaw her plot to execute Camilla. After all, there really are two detectives hot on her trail, and who's to say that Dan isn't the one who put them there?
But regardless of what Dan actually knew about the plot about to kill Camilla - and he may not have known anything - Diane obviously became somewhat fixated on the possibility that he might have reported whatever he may have seen or heard to the police.
So, bearing all of this in mind, little wonder that Diane killed Dan off so quickly in her dream, after having already reduced him to being nothing more than a figment in the dream of an amnesiac!
On a final note, I'd like to quickly address Herb, the man Dan is talking to at Winkie's in the dream. Remember that Diane suspects Dan is "causing it" - that he is the one behind the two detectives pursuing her for the execution of Camilla Rhodes. Well, as I suggested earlier, she may consciously or subconsciously believe that Dan himself is one of the detectives. If so, then she somehow conjured up Herb to be his partner in detection, and ultimately left Herb stranded in Rita's dream with nothing more than a dead partner who apparently had some really awful nightmares.
So, recap: the early Winkie's scene effectively eliminates the three most problematic figures in Diane's real life - the detectives and the bum. More on the bum soon. Very soon. Like right now.
CLUE #8: Listen: the later scene with the fire-lit bum in the alley is seen from Diane's perspective. This is important.
This scene occurs shortly before Diane has her dream, and on the very night she finally locates Joe's blue key in the alley behind Winkie's. Here, she appears to unexpectedly encounter a homeless scavenger who happens to be in the process of inspecting a blue box he must have recently found.
Two things about this brief encounter are important when it comes to understanding Diane's dream. One: the frightening bum obviously scared Diane so much that he appears in her dream as a nightmarish figure whose very presence is terrible enough to strike a man (Dan) dead.
And Two: Diane attaches undue significance to the blue box the bum was turning over in his hands. In her dream, she transforms this empty little box into an object of enormous mystery and supernatural power. And remember - Diane was confused about Joe's blue key, and was probably still puzzling over what it was meant to open (it wasn't meant to open anything). So either her conscious or subconscious mind connected Joe's blue key with the bum's blue box - two things which in reality have absolutely nothing to do with each other...except for the insignificant fact that they are both blue.
It's also worth noting that there is a second way to effectively interpret the character of the bum behind Winkie's, one which casts him in a far more sinister and supernatural light. According to this theory, the bum is a sort of otherworldly demonic figure - the exact same sort of figure we've seen in so many Lynch films before - who grants Diane the power to temporarily escape into an actual alternate/parallel reality of her chosing, but at the eventual cost of her very soul. Diane was certainly desperate and crazy enough to cut such a deal with a Devil.
So...how do YOU see it? Watch the film again and let me know.
CLUE #9: I think we can all agree that the cackling, gesticulating, and size-shifting old couple are not actually real, but are aspects of Diane's psychosis, and that they represent something absolutely awful and horrifying to her.
The first key to understanding what specific role they may have played in Diane's life is to pay strict attention to a peculiar sound we hear as they infiltrate her apartment. The sound we hear is laughter. At first we hear the co-mingled laughter of adults and a child, but soon enough the child's laughter turns to screaming, while the adults laughter continues unabated. So the trauma appears to be one that occured - or began - in childhood, and involved adults who were probably family members.
The second key to understanding the specific significance of the old couple is to notice which specific room the oldsters pursue Diane into. The bedroom, of course.
So the old couple somehow seem to represent an unfathomable horror for Diane, one that occurred in childhood, involved a betrayal, and took place in the sacred space of her own bedroom.
CLUE #10: The final scene with the Blue Haired Lady at Club Silencio reveals that the Lady and the Club were not mere figments of Diane's dreaming imagination, as one might have presumed them to be. In fact, there is a strong suggestion that the entire drama of Diane's tragic life served as a sort of amusement played out on the otherworldy stage of Club Silencio. The Lady and the Club are real, but they exist on another plane of reality - perhaps even a sinister sort of afterlife.
But before you scoff, think of the endings of several of Lynch's other films. ERASERHEAD ends with Henry embracing the Singing Lady, whom we previously believed was probably just a figment of Henry's disturbed imagination. But in fact it turns out that she is not only real, but that she appears to be a figure connected with the afterlife - a literal Angel of sorts.
TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME ends in an almost identical fashion, with the deceased Laura Palmer reuniting with the literal Angel she thought she lost, as well as the figurative Angel (Dale Cooper) who watches over her.
Even Sailor (Nicholas Cage) meets with his guardian Angel while in a state of delirium at the end of WILD AT HEART.
Anyways, it seems to me that Diane's soul meets with a similar - if decidedly darker - ending in MULHOLLAND DR. In short, the final scene is not a dream or a fantasy or just Lynch being weird - it is a glimpse into the place where Diane's tormented soul goes after she commits suicide. A sort of between-worlds Purgatory, I'd say.
And a final note: The Blue Haired Lady's parting word - "Silencio" - makes more sense when you consider that Diane, like TWIN PEAKS' Laura Palmer, appears to have been a victim of sexual abuse (see CLUE #9). From this perspective, the Blue Haired Lady and Bondar the Magician may be seen as symbols of - or surrogates for - Diane's curiously absent and potentially abusive parental figures. Bondar, the father-figure, is the secret violator who "magically" disappears after leaving Diane traumatized and in tears. The Blue Haired Lady, the mother-figure, sits above it all and turns a blind eye to the incestuous proceedings, speaking only once to voice a single malignant command to her devastated daughter: "Silencio."
And the rest is indeed silence.
Summary of Mulholland Dr.
MULHOLLAND DRIVE - DVD MoviePandora couldn't resist opening the forbidden box containing all the delusions of mankind, and let's just say David Lynch, in Mulholland Drive, indulges a similar impulse. Employing a familiar film noir atmosphere to unravel, as he coyly puts it, "a love story in the city of dreams," Lynch establishes a foreboding but playful narrative in the film's first half before subsuming all of Los Angeles and its corrupt ambitions into his voyeuristic universe of desire. Identities exchange, amnesia proliferates, and nightmare visions are induced, but not before we've become enthralled by the film's two main characters: the dazed and sullen femme fatale, Rita (Laura Elena Harring), and the pert blonde just-arrived from Ontario (played exquisitely by Naomi Watts) who decides to help Rita regain her memory. Triggered by a rapturous Spanish-language version of Roy Orbison's "Crying," Lynch's best film since Blue Velvet splits glowingly into two equally compelling parts. --Fionn Meade
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