Mulholland Dr.
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Movie Reviews of Mulholland Dr.
Movie Review: "...just another lost angel.....city of light"- The Doors
Summary: 5 Stars
"Love, only in my dreams....as real as it may seem..it was only in my dream."- D. Gibson"Just a dream, just a dream... all our plans and all our schemes. How could I think you'd be mine...? The lies I tell myself each time."- old 50's song
Haunting, Beautiful, Compelling, Addictive, Heartbreaking, Oh so Hearbreaking.
Genius
Mulholland Drive is equal parts film-noir mystery, a camp Hollywood parody, a comedy, a drama, and most of all and central to everything else: a love story- Hollywood style.
Of course, director David Lynch(known for his inclination towards a Fun-House mirror warping sense of reality) then takes all these equal parts, adds a heavy dash of surrealism and TB full of DMT(thats acid to you innocents) to serve up a masterpiece. Everyone talks about making a film that is also a work of art, but few are the real McCoy. Forget 'The Hours', 'A Beautiful Mind' or the dreaded 'Chicago'. Mulholland Drive is the genuine article, and probably one the most well crafted and truly artistic commercial film in years. Open up the notebook kids, Mr. Lynch has officially announced that school is in session.
"Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real?"-Neo
Muholland Drive is..lucid dreaming, or the kind of intense dreams you have when you have a fever- part hallucination, part dream, part fantasy. Sleepwalking in your sleep. Its not so much a film or a movie, but to sound cliche, it truly is an experience. Sensations, emotions, impressions, and reactions are as important( or maybe moreso) than the who what why and where of things. Making love is about more than the concrete mechanics. The abstract feelings and emotions must compliment the kinetics. The sum is greater than its parts.
There is not one wasted shot or misplaced direction in this film; everything falls into place masterfully. Mosaic, tapestry, loom, whatever cliche you can think to illustrate this point, it applies. I liken it to Jackson Pollack and his paintings about which he used to say that there were never any 'accidents' in his painting ea random element had the freedom to become whatever the painting wanted it to be in the end; methodical madness. David Lynch shows the same seemingly open-ended , but deceptively crafted control. Of course, some elements are more(or less) concrete than others, but even vagueness has its place in a film like this. There is no obfuscation, no befuddlement for the sake of befuddlement(or more to the point, b/c the writer or director had no real resolution for a troublesome plot element). The importance of symbolism and totems in a film like this cannot be understated.
"Speak to me in riddle, Speak to me in rhyme"
Some art or artists can speak to your on a cerebral level and still manage to inflame the imagination. Theories on the nature of physics and the origins of the universe can be awe inspiring- humbling. Unfathomable. The theory of relativity as poetry. A moon shuttle launch as an allegory to the story of Prometheus and Fire.
Other works of art or artists beckon you with words and images that flout logical explanation, but speak to you on a more emotionally immediate level; a visceral jolt, an intuitive understanding. Plath with her declaration " I rise with my red hair, and I eat men like air". A Monet painting. Still photography. These elicit an emotive, primitive response- which compels you to search for meaning; to analyze, deconstruct and as the 'Cowboy' says, to "Think".
David Lynch shows his genius with this film- he does both.
A.N.
Movie Review: Not Baedeker in Hollywood
Summary: 5 Stars
I must admit I have not yet had a chance to look at the DVD of this movie. But the last time I was comparably impressed by a new release dates back a couple years now, when I saw Eyes Wide Shut for the first time. The New York Film Critics chose Mulholland Drive as best picture of the year and I certainly don't think they erred in doing so. Two films came out last year that employed unconventional narrative techniques, Memento and this picture, yet who could be in doubt about which work is the more challenging of the two? Memento has an arresting premise, but no one who watches the beginning of the movie closely should miss the premise or experience difficulty in following what comes after. By contrast, in Mulholland Drive David Lynch is constantly throwing the viewer off balance. It would be going a bit far to compare Lynch's new creation with Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, but hardly any movie of equivalent narrative complexity,visual richness, and difficulty has been made in the United States for years.I have reviewed Mulholland Drive on my Web site (davesothermovielog.com), but I wanted to record some additional comments here. First of all, the movie is not a crossword puzzle to be deciphered by filling in the blank spaces. To his credit, Lynch leaves some of his spaces permanently void--not to be filled in at all, not even by the most ingenious exegete. Second, the film does have a recognizable subject, which is not Hollywood so much as the act of making motion pictures itself. The nearest thing to a narrative Ariadne's thread through the labyrinth of Mulholland Drive concerns the planned production of a new movie in Hollywood that even affords Lynch an opportunity to throw in a brilliant production number with 1950s decor that puts to shame anything in Moulin Rouge!
This highly fluid story line allows Lynch to cover a lot of territory, including a devastatingly funny look at present day movie financing as experienced by an arrogant, wannabe auteur. (I have the feeling the director was settling old scores in some of these scenes.) But what Mulholland Drive is "about," is none of the areas the film passes through en route to its conclusion. Several famous movies about the movie industry--among them, not only Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, but also George Cukor's A Star Is Born, and Robert Mulligan's Inside Daisy Clover, based on the novel by Gavin Lambert--have dealt with the way stars become alienated in their screen images. Norma Desmond ends up acting out offscreen the goofy roles she played onscreen at the height of her fame, and at the end of A Star Is Born, the viewer might well want to ask, "Who is the 'real' Mrs. Norman Maine?" Esther Blodgett? Vicky Lester? But Lynch, I think, pushes the dialectic of images and identity considerably farther than any American director has done since Orson Welles made Citizen Kane and The Lady from Shanghai.
Revision is a characteristic mode of postmodernism. But often what starts as a homage--for example, to a traditional genre like the musical--almost involuntarily degenerates into parody, as Moulin Rouge! well illustrates. In the past, Lynch has not, in my opinion, always succeeded in walking this particular tightrope with the greatest of aplomb--the end of Wild at Heart seems to me an absolute disaster in that regard. But the "revision" here is truly "re-vision," seeing over again film genres and Hollywood history, in a very large sense of the word, but most importantly "re-viewing" the ever problematic task of telling a story with images.
Movie Review: Blisteringly Brilliant
Summary: 5 Stars
Bergman, Fellini, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Welles. A week ago, I would never have thought to have included David Lynch among these visionary masters. But then I purchased the DVD for Mulholland Drive on a whim (something I rarely do for films Ive never seen). I sat one night in front of the flat screen in my LA home, put the disc into the player, and was held captive for two and a half hours by a work of startling cinematic genius. It was, like all great films, a work that haunted me for days afterwards; a work that I wanted to immediately share with those closest to me -- but only those who would be willing, and able, to work through a very difficult film to the harrowing truths that glowered beneath the surface like a brilliant blue light.There are many good filmmakers. There are some great filmmakers. But those handful who are considered true masters, true geniuses of the cinema, all share one trait: they adhere almost religiously to the idea of film as a Visual art form. Simply put, they allow the images, and the arrangement of those images, to tell the story. They arent content, as most mainstream filmmakers are, with allowing a linear written narrative to wholly dictate the visual presentation of their films. Rather, they respect the raw, organic nature of an idea, they allow that idea to spread its roots, and they cull the images and the sounds together that will bend to the inclinations of that idea. Thus, these films, like Mulholland Drive, do not follow the simplistic but comforting A-B trajectory of most films, which are usually nothing more than cinematic renderings of novels. (Film and Literature are equally important artistic mediums; but the masters understand that they are essentially very distinct animals and should be treated as such.)
And so it is that Mulholland Drive, like Bergmans Persona, Fellinis 8 1/2, and Kurosawas Rashomon, decidedly turns traditional linear narrative upside down and inside out, and does so gleefully. Lynchs film is like a prolonged fever dream of the most intense human emotions: paranoia, anger, grief, jealousy, remorse and a soul-wrenching despair. It is a work that transcends its film noir underpinnings and becomes, ultimately, an incisive examination of Hollywood as Dream Factory and of the troubling implications that arise from our unquestioning willingness to embrace its position as such. Lynch seems to suggest that our willingness to surrender to the dream that is Hollywood makes us complicit in the crimes that Hollywood then commits to further sustain that dream. And he doesn't exclude himself from this complicity (the brash young filmmaker Adam Kesher is arguably a self-parody).
I will not discuss the specifics of the plot because I think that would be a true injustice for those who have not yet had the privilege of working through this masterpiece. All I will say is that of all of the films from all over the world that I have had the honor of taking into my mind and my heart, few have shaken me as much as Mulholland Drive. I cannot emphasize enough how brilliant Naomi Watts performance is in this film. To even call it a performance seems like an insult. I have rarely, if ever, seen a young actress so fully inhabit the skin of her character as Ms. Watts does here. Her character arc in this film is not simply A to B to C. It is more like BA to AB to C, and what a heartbreaking C it is. Those of you who have seen and understood the heart of the film will know what I mean.
Mr. Lynch and Ms. Watts, if you are reading this, one lowly cinephile salutes you.
Movie Review: One of the Most Thought Provoking Movies I Have Ever Seen
Summary: 5 Stars
"Mulholland Drive" is a haunting and surreal trip through the curvy streets of dreamland, on par with the expressionist masterpiece Das Cabinet de Dr. Caligari and the Dada surrealism of Le Chien Andalou. Mulholland is not meant to be a movie completely understood but more or less felt, not in an emotional sense, but on a more intellectual level. Like a dream, Mulholland has many interpretations, and I humbly submit mine.Have you ever had a dream so beautiful and perfect that the dream begins to feel like reality. May be it is a dream of wealth, may be one of fame, may be one of love lost, found or discovered but never conquered. Elements of the real world start to blend into those of the dream state until it seems as though the real and the unreal have blended into one. But it is always in the crescendo of the dream, the estacy, that the dream ends. There is a point when you are half asleep, half awake, wanting to dream more of your utopian fantasy, but realizing that the dream is lost. You wake up with an extreme sadness that such a perfect world is not meant for you to possess. What you are left with is bitter reality. May be the dream has given you a larger sense of your reality, a brief moment of clarity. You think about your past, what might have caused you to dream this dream, what is the reality and how can the fantasy be achieved or some fragment salvaged. But it can also fixate a deeper sense of despair if the reality and fantasy are so far apart that there is no hope for the two to meet, even in the movies.
In essence, this is Mulholland Drive.
Lynch has always been a master at showing the grimy underbelly of a seemingly perfect world (aka Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks). There are elements of this in Mulholland Drive, in the constant majestic views of Los Angeles including the Hollywood sign (LA LA Land...the dream factory). But they are always accompanied by a deep growling soundtrack, full of menance and foreboding. Back room deals, strange characters or caricatures of Hollwood or underworld figures, they are all here.
In a more linear sense, Lynch is critiquing Hollywood, the emotionless, aging, cripple in wheelchair of a town that dictates the next big thing and then chews up and spits out the others. Hollywood changes not only our realities but also changes the names and faces of those they make into stars and harletts, those they pay to force feed us our fantasies.
But in a more cubist sense, Lynch is showing us different views of who we are. We long for the fantasy, it fulfills something empty in us all. We are consumed by it. What are our desires? What have we achieved? What do we long to achieve? What are our desires, our fantasies and how do me meet these or how do we fail? WHAT IS IT!!
Most people will recall the audition scene, the lesbian scenes, the latin version of Roy Orbison's crying, or the quirky moments of comedy and weirdness that punctuate the film. But I will be most haunted by the last scene in the film, with that haunting theme music, the two stars alight with innocent delight, the visual embodiment of Gloria Swanson's last line in Sunset Boulevard (where one of our protaganists ends up...or is it starts up)..."I'm ready for my close-up." Then, "Silencio."
They are forever in their dream, their unreality together, via that dark, twisty, dangerous road that curves through the hills of Hollywood called Mulholland Drive.
Movie Review: Blue box explained
Summary: 5 Stars
It is startling that after 7 years no one really figured out what this movie is all about. If for any reason you have not watched this movie then please watch it first and then read my explanation. Spoilers coming:
Movie is about last days of Marilyn Monroe and her tragic death in 1962. Lynch originally intended to start with her death and go back in the past to explain it similar to Twin Peaks series. Someone powerful (like that midget) didn't like it and series was canceled.
Who is who in this movie?
1. Betty, Diane and Rita are all Marilyn. Betty represents Marilyn in movies (angelic naive look), Diane is real life (paranoid and obsessed) Marilyn, Rita is glamorous movie star Marilyn.
2. Movie "Sylvia North Story" is actually never finished movie "Something's Got to Give".
3. Cowboy is Dean Martin. He had exclusive right of leading lady approval. When Marilyn was fired he said: "No Marilyn, no picture." Remember words from the movie: "This is the girl." Dean Martin was also associated with mafia.
4. Betty is from Deep Rivers, Ontario. Marilyn's first big budget movie that made her a worldwide star was "Niagara" in 1953. Plot of the movie involves Marilyn planning a murder.
5. For role of Rita, Lynch chose Laura Elena Harring, the first Latina to be crowned Miss USA in 1985. Is it coincidence why she takes name Rita? No, because Monroe family was believed to have been Anglo-Spanish in origin. Rita Hayworth was actually Margarita Carmen Cansino, daughter of Spanish flamenco dancer Eduardo Cansino and English/Irish-American Ziegfeld girl Volga Hayworth.
6. When Betty and Rita enter Diane's apartment, Diane is found dead lying on her side just as Marilyn was found in 1962.
7. At the beginning of the movie you can hear someone snorting drugs and then falling to the pillow. Marilyn was declared dead by acute barbiturate poisoning.
8. In the weeks before her death, Marilyn called DOJ where Bobby Kennedy worked eight times. All phone calls from the night that she died are missing. This explains sinister phone calls throughout the movie.
9. Crash scene on Mulholland Drive is very important. It represents collision of glamorous movie star Marilyn full of money and fame with sweet 16 Norma Jeane represented as cheering young girl in the other car. The result is total amnesia. After the crash she takes name Rita (her true Anglo-Spanish origin and real life role model) and remembers the name of Diane Selwyn (real life paranoid and obsessed Marilyn). She also chose blonde wig (Marilyn was not real blonde, she dyed her hair). Glamour movie star Marilyn is lost after the crash.
10. And finally the blue box explained. It relates to famous Blue Book modeling agency. This is where all started. One of Fox's talent scouts noticed her in 1946 and offered a 6-month contract. After Rita opens the box she disappears and Diane wakes up. After remembering how everything started, movie star Marilyn is gone and all that is left is real Marilyn.
Key to the box in the dream sequence is triangular in shape indicating 3 different personalities of Marilyn.
I have watched UK import HD-DVD version with superb DTS-HD MA sound. Chapters are available but not in the menu. Highly recommended movie for all those interested in mysteries and suspense.