Mulholland Dr.
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Movie Reviews of Mulholland Dr.
Movie Review: what cinema should be
Summary: 5 Stars
I have hesitated to write a review of this film for several years now. The chief reason for this is that "Mulholland Drive" is my favorite film ever, and I despaired of ever getting the proper emotional distance required to review the film.However, it has now been several months since I've had a chance to see the film, and I think its strengths and weaknesses have settled fairly well in my memory. This film is quite simply a triumph of expert filmmaking. I will admit that David Lynch's record was spotty up to this point. I found "Blue Velvet" captivating but thought "Eraserhead" was too deliberately misanthropic and offputting. But Lynch has finally found the right idiom and plot for his unique style of filmmaking.
The first strength you notice about this film is that it is positively dripping with atmosphere. Lynch's strong use of color drenches every frame in a wash of film-noir paranoia; it is obvious just from looking at the screen that something is not right here. Fabrics and wallpaper are just never THAT bright; foliage and jewelry leaps off the screen with its vividness. The film's second strength is incredible acting, particularly from Naomi Watts. Her failure to receive an Academy Award for this performance was the beginning of my current distrust for the Academy's choices. Watts is here required to play two different roles, one vastly different from the other. It is a feat she accomplishes flawlessly, shifting from one character to the other so completely that at first I didn't realize it was the same actress playing both roles. Laura Harring lends capable support, her face and acting style a throwback to a thirties melodrama. It is only appropriate that she chooses her character's name from a Rita Hayworth poster.
And now, for what I consider to be the final strength, but what some will call the first weakness: the plot. (I will attempt not to spoil the film for those who haven't seen it.) The plot is what has caused this to be a hotly-debated film among my fellow film junkies. There are numerous ways of interpreting the plot, but you'll have to watch the film at least twice to get a grasp on anything that's going on. As the film opens, we meet Betty (Watts), a Canadian fresh off the plane to become a famous Hollywood actress. Meanwhile, Rita (Harring) escapes an attempted assassination and a car crash with amnesia but no physical injuries and wanders into the apartment where Betty is staying. Once Betty gets over the shock of finding Rita in her apartment, she decides to play detective and help Rita find out who's after her and why. After a few scenes of typical movie detective work, the film takes a 180-degree turn and you are forced to question whether any of what you've just seen even happened. Wound into this complex plot are threads dealing with an uber-hip movie director, a sinister cowboy, a dreadlocked monster living behind a tacky diner, and a film whose casting is directly controlled from above by a Mafia midget. (Hey, it's a Lynch film; you knew the midget had to turn up eventually!)
The film is not easy to follow. As I mentioned, it requires multiple viewings before sense can be hammered out of the film. The list of plot elements above will give you a fairly good idea of how eclectic and challenging this film is. It is also disturbing, with themes and occasional images of death abounding. Lynch has made a serious movie for people who are serious about their movies, and therein I believe lies the reason why so many are put off by this film. Although I love it dearly, it is probably one of the least purely entertaining films I have ever seen. The first few times you see it, you will be hunched beside the screen with a furrowed brow, piecing it all together. It becomes more entertaining once you have your interpretation of the events and can simply sit back and watch. It is not a film that will make you relax. It will quite possibly disturb you. It is a powerful film. And yet, if you let it, it can be the most rewarding viewing experience you will have.
Movie Review: Mulholland Dr. is brilliant...
Summary: 5 Stars
The most complicated film of 2001, Lynch's Mulholland Dr. is brilliant, surreal, and hypnotically gripping. Mulholland Dr. is one of the few movies that won't let you just sit down and ignore it. It involves you so utterly, and requires your attention all the way...similar to 2001's second most complicated film, Memento. Like Memento, Mulholland Dr. is a movie that assumes from the beginning that the audience is intelligent enough to get what happens. The difference between Memento and Mulholland Dr.? In Memento's case, everything is explained at the end. In Mulholland Dr., you don't get the luxury of an explanation.
The majority of the movie plays out much like a film noir. The movie is set up at the beginning with the car accident, and proceeds to play out eerily, set off by an old couple who seem so happy, it's almost chilling. The characters all seem to be somewhat cliche'd, but there is a reason for this. Then, suddenly, the movie takes an unexpected turn close to two hours into the movie, a point in the movie in which many may sit in their seats and utter one word collectively. "HUH?"
In fact, for this last thirty minutes or so, things just seem utterly confusing. The director tries to help with some small clues (whenever he zooms in on an object, that should be a hint that that is a clue), but the majority will not figure out the brilliance of the movie, even after the credits are finished rolling. Unfortunately, there will be those that just walk out, and won't even bother thinking about it. That is a large percentage of the audience, and these people will unfortunately walk away from this movie hating it, and never knowing the utter genius of this piece of art. There will be another percentage of the audience that will love it, but never understand it. And finally, there will be that audience that will hopefully try to figure out the answers, and will get the full impact of the movie. As well, for some this movie may just simply be too weird to like - which is perfectly understandable. Like Moulin Rouge, this is an acquired taste.
Don't be afraid to check the internet after this movie. If you don't get the movie right after, remember this: YOU ARE NOT ALONE. A famous example would be Roger Ebert, who in his review hinted that he thought the entire movie was just a bunch of random images thrown together (it is not, everything fits together), yet he still loved it all the same.
Beautiful performances enhance this haunting puzzle. Laura Elena Harring has this quality to her that just seems to engross the viewer...it's hard to explain, but when she talks, it feels like she's one of those classic movie stars you see in the brilliant old film noirs. And Naomi Watts...she was just amazing. There is one part in the film when she auditions for a part in a movie, and her entire demeanor transforms, and she is suddenly an entirely different person...sure to become a classic scene.
This is a movie that requires you to rack your brain afterwards to figure out just what the hell happened in the last two and a half hours. It's even more of a mystery than Memento, because the movie won't tell you the answers. Hell, it took me forever, and I figured out some of the puzzle, but it took a trip onto the computer and the internet, before I fully understood what happened in the movie.
And when I did understand what happened in the movie, I was in awe. It's probably not going to hit you as hard as Memento, but it is equally as complex as Memento in some ways. Many have accused Memento of having no heart, and of being a movie that shows no emotion. Even though I disagree with those accusations, Mulholland Dr. is like Memento with a heart. David Lynch shows us in this movie the very heart of the human soul, and could almost be labelled a character examination, as it reveals to us the hopes, losses, and dreams of one woman in a truly gripping experience.
Reviewer's note: By the way, as a sidenote, Deep River, Ontario is a real place, and in fact, I lived there for about ten years.
Movie Review: A great film by America's foremost Surrealist
Summary: 5 Stars
God I loved this movie! David Lynch isn't for everyone. If you want your movies to "make sense," move on. His films feel both natural and heavily stylized at the same time, and if someone doesn't care for a mildly artificial treatment of things, they will not like this movie. Myself, I like heavy stylization if it is done well. And in my book, Lynch does it very, very well indeed. David Lynch is, in many ways, the last great master of surrealism. Many of his moments seem to be tied to everyday reality, but instead reveal a different, stranger reality under girding our perceptions. As behooves a true surrealist, this comes out in many odd and strange moments. For instance, the two main female characters go to a club, and a woman there comes out and sings Roy Orbison's "Crying" . . . only, in Spanish. Yet, we discover that she isn't singing at all, despite all the tears she engenders in our two heroines. It is all a recording. And at the end of the song, one of the two pulls a bizarre, square cube out of her purse, which we hadn't seen before, and which she evidently hadn't seen before, either. That is on the micro level. On the macro level, the film is even more surreal, but I couldn't explain that without given away a great deal of the plot. One of the themes of the original surrealists was that truth is revealed in dreams. And MUHOLLAND DRIVE functions not like nothing so much as a dream.
One of the things that stands out about this film is Lynch's very, very strange sense of humor. The humor is sharp, but almost always in what would normally be considered highly inappropriate moments. For instance, there is a very strange scene in which a character murders a person, and then tries to fake it as a suicide, but manages to botch it so badly that he ends up killing others as well. But what is paramount in the scene is not the killing of additional individuals, but the hysterically funny way in which things keep going wrong. Mass murders shouldn't (and, in real life, aren't), but I found myself shrieking with laughter in the entire scene, all the way up to the moment when the killer "murders" a vacuum cleaner. Or when a character, suffering from amnesia, goes through her own purse in hopes of discovering who she is, encounters one thick stack of one hundred dollar bills after another. Or, Billy Ray Cyrus, in a small part, after having had sex with another man's wife, explaining morality to the man after he has caught him with his wife. Or (how's this for product placement), when Naomi Watts is departing for a movie audition, she calls out to "Rita", "Don't drink all the Coke."
Some have commented on how good the acting is, but I find that hard to understand. On one level, the acting is utterly dreadful. One example is Naomi Watts when she first comes into her aunt's apartment. She walks about it, with this absurdly open-eyed wonderment and delight at everything that she sees. I suspect the badness of the acting in the scene isn't her fault. Instead, I think it is an intentional effect requested by David Lynch. Indeed, I suspect that most of the really bad acting in the movie is more a result of the particular style demanded by Lynch than by innate inability on the part of the actors and actresses.
As the opening credits were playing, one name I noticed was "Ann Miller," and I thought to myself, "Just like the great tap dancer from the thirties and forties." Well, it WAS the great tap dancer from the thirties and forties! Ann Miller was easily one of the two or three great female dancers from Hollywood's Golden Age, and it was really exciting to see her in a small role here as "Coco," the manager of the apartment complex. How marvelous that she is in this movie! Tragically, musicals went out of style and Ann Miller's career was cut tragically short (her last major role previous to this was 1953's KISS ME KATE), when she was only 30 years old. That was far too young to have a talent of her caliber to be cut short.
Movie Review: Open the box and let it eat you alive...
Summary: 5 Stars
Here's the deal; David Lynch is an acquired taste, so much so that many, many people will never acquire the taste needed to appreciate him. The best thing about Lynch is the fact that he doesn't care. From the very beginning, with his BRILLIANT debut film `Eraserhed', Lynch proved that he has a unique visionary style and point of view that he is not willing to bend or compromise just to receive commercial success. `Mulholland Drive' is about as unconventional a film as you can get, and because of that many people are scared of it or turned off by its complexity.
Don't be afraid.
What I admire about Lynch is that he is very willing to use his talent to make a statement, no matter how bold it may be. In `Mulholland Drive', Lynch makes many statements and layers them with enough mystery to keep the audience baffled from beginning to end, which only adds to the importance of a film like this. It will keep you guessing, which will keep you talking, which will keep you interested.
Some have claimed this to be boring. I think they need to watch it again.
Part of me is chomping at the bit to get into just what this film `means', but I really fear that someone who has yet to experience this film will find my rambling to divulging and may in turn feel the need to watch this film null and void. There is so much to say about this film but what can you say without giving away too much of the experience.
The film has been dissected numerous times on this site.
The basic plot is this:
Betty is a young and beautiful aspiring actress who moves to Hollywood and is currently staying in her Aunts home while she is away. After a car accident (portrayed in the films open) a young and beautiful woman named Rita shows up, cursed with amnesia, and Betty decides that she is going to help Rita regain her memory. Rita only remembers two things, `Diane' and `Mulholland Drive'.
Unlocking those secrets is going to take you places you never imagined.
I idea of mirrored dreams is very prominent in this film, for everything you think you see is a stark contrast to the realities the final 30 minutes unveil to us. Exact scenarios and situations appear reversed as Diane's identity is revealed and her life is examined for us. What we are left with is a harrowing discovery that may leave questions unanswered for the `first time viewer', but those questions are easily answered upon repeat viewings. This is a film that really demands your time in order to appreciate it. Lynch feels that it must be seen in one viewing, not paused or stopped for any reason, and I concur, for taking yourself away from the film for merely a moment can cause you to leave the world Lynch is drenching you in. There is a moment, in the film, where a woman sings the song `Crying' and that moment is really the crux for the entire film, explaining so much while seemingly saying so little.
When you watch the film for a second time it will make so much more sense, I promise.
But, truth be told, it is the mystery that makes this film so startling. The interpretations of this film and the personal feelings towards Diane's predicament really play heavily into how much you will or won't accept the film. Your love and hate will depend entirely on your willingness to explore the many twists and turns presented in this film. If you like your entertainment quick and easy then stay away, but if you enjoy taking a film apart, frame for frame, in order to uncover tiny trinkets of deeper meaning then this film will fascinate you.
Oh yeah, and Naomi Watts is a revelation here, and don't let anyone convince you otherwise!
Movie Review: "Here's to love."
Summary: 5 Stars
It begins with a jitterbug, ends with a suicide, and seems to spike through everything both hopeful and hopeless about L.A.'s film industry in between.David Lynch's Mulholland Dr. may very well be his single best achievement in noiresque narrative mixed with his trademark skips and jumps in logic. Brilliantly acted, shot, edited, mixed and scored, Mulholland Dr. may or may not make sense to what no doubt will be a bewildered viewer, but the images conveyed in the interim prove unforgettable.
Read about the plot in the "Plot Outline" link or in the external reviews by Roger Ebert, David Edelstein or Kenneth Turan. I want to present something else here: the notion that what you're seeing does, in fact, exhibit a logic and brilliantly plays on so many emotional levels that, taken as a whole, Mulholland Dr. can unsettle not just those who don't get it but, worse still, those who do.
So many reviewers use the term "dream" to describe this film, and Lynch himself cleverly quips the tagline "A love story in the city of dreams." I won't go into every detail in order to completely spoil someone else's first-time enjoyment of the film, but let me go far enough to ask that you consider that what's shown is a dream through most of the movie and that the rest is a mix of imagination, delusion, memory, guilt, and sheer disgust, all made to counter the illusions just shown to you.
Consider that much of what you're seeing isn't just coming from the mind of Lynch as filmmaker but from the dreamer as the one sometimes incorrectly interpreting L.A.'s lifestyle. Even Betty, the movie's heroine, refers to where she is as a "dream place."
Consider that the Club Silencio is where the dreamer reaches the closest point to realizing the truth without being told it, where the environment of the dream is revealed, where the song elucidates more than just a point about the dimensions of sight and sound when they're not real: it uncovers a true feeling underscoring the entire dream. The song is sung in Spanish, one more way to show that it's not completely real or understandable while, at the same time, it teems with a very real, underlying feeling that brought the dreamer to her dream and, later, to her unflinching, gruesome reality. It's as if the Spanish singer is speaking the emotion but in a way that keeps the dreamer from fully realizing it.
Consider that Betty and Rita, as the critics put it, are archetypes of the dream but that Laura Elena Harring's and Naomi Watts' characters in the end, after a jarring switch in identities, are also archetypes but, unfortunately, pale-faced reflections of what we know and what is true not just about Hollywood but about life in general. The movie isn't just about image or illusion. It embodies the always contradictory but yet congregational experiences of lust, greed, hatred, ambition, luck, vengeance, guilt, manipulation, storytelling, love, and silence. It shows us how one person's fortune can become another person's aching, how one person's jealousy can be another's nourishment. It also forces us to consider how you can be jealous of the one you love.
And, just as important, Mulholland Dr. should not merely be looked at as a puzzle whose pieces one can connect if one reads David Lynch's primer on the rear of the insert in the DVD package. Voluptuous images should be taken in and felt without deconstruction. The emotions being played out are very real whether or not the viewer truly understands the plot.
In all, David Lynch has created not just a memorable motion picture but a truly emotional experience.