Mulholland Dr.
Directed by David Lynch
Released in 2001
You can “solve” this
film, I know, because Lynch thought of everything, plot-wise and otherwise,
while making it. I also know that I do not want to piece together every little
detail, align every event in chronological order and scrutinize what one blue
key means against another blue key. The rush one feels watching this film —
especially returning to it again and again, once the initial shock of the late-act
reversal has worn off — comes from the act of “working things out” yet
accepting that the fullness of Lynch’s vision remains beyond your grasp.
I
just revisited Mulholland Dr.,
this being I believe my fifth visit. Cornell Cinema screened this on their
brand-new screen with updated speakers and projection equipment. After watching
this on big HDTVs, small screens and 480p projectors, I am now convinced it
must be seen, at least once, across as large a canvas as possible, in the
darkest and largest room you can find. This is a movie about movies, yes, but
this is also a movie that downright cherishes the effect watching a movie can
have on a person.
As
far as breaking Mulholland Dr. down and grasping for formal,
narrative meaning, a little of this effort is necessary to at least ground
yourself. You can go from there how you please, either pausing the film and
taking notes upon every shot, or accepting that things just work out and that
you will elect to bask in Mulholland
Dr.’s greatness only when watching it - which you do again and again,
because you cannot stay away.
But,
as for the film’s construction, I think most veterans accept that the first
two-thirds are some sort of projection/fantasy of Diane (Naomi Watts). When she experiences this series of
scenes is a good question, as well as whether or not she ever does. After the
first scene (the bizarre, obviously nostalgia-tinged “Jitterbug”), we catch a
quick glimpse of, ostensibly, Diane’s POV on the bed with red sheets. She is
sobbing, or at least gasping heavily, yet we don’t see her body. I don’t know
what, exactly, happens during this shot, but I know it provides a tragic
bookend for the film. This must be a moment, either before or, maybe, after (?)
her suicide at the end, and the ambiguity of this one shot serves to remind us
that this film works through mood much more than it does through cause+effect,
plot-motivated narrative.
Picking
apart the rest of the movie is a joy to be had in the cinema, while watching
it. However, I have gleaned much from the film by keeping one thing in mind,
regarding the first two-thirds of the film: The characters, prior to the ‘blue
box switch-up,’ live how Diane (in “real life”) wants them to live, yet stay at
a distance because they also embody Diane’s worst tendencies. Like in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Betty (Diane’s
innocent, plucky ideal of herself, or of how life should be lived, if it only
could) molds Rita (Laura Harring) from a tabula rasa - courtesy of an
amnesia-inflicting car crash - into the perfect lover, and not to mention
mother, too. (The line between depiction and voyeurism of lesbian acts that
some accuse Abdellatif Keciche of crossing in Blue
Is the Warmest Color is not
in question here. Lynch sort of lingers the camera on Rita’s breasts during
that beautiful love scene, but it’s from Betty’s perspective and connotes some
mother attachment). Yet Rita lacks an interiority throughout much of the film,
and acts like this obsequious doll that just so happens to have this ability
for second sight. That is not a criticism, but a symptom of the fantasy and a
telling sign that this fiction Diane constructs for herself will be
short-lived, for Rita is the one that ends it.
Adam
(Justin Theroux) is having the worst day of his life because he stole Camilla
(or Rita) from Diane, and you can bet Diane subconsciously transfers her awful
life onto Adam’s. “This is the girl,” Adam declares, accepting an actress (named “Camilla
Rhodes”) he does not want for his movie (a.k.a. his life). Diane must suffer this feeling every day knowing she cannot have the one, the real Camilla,
she wants. “This is the girl,” Diane says to the hitman who, very likely, kills
Camilla sometime off-screen, before the demons (that unforgettable old couple)
drive her to suicide. She tries to rationalize the murder, of course, by
staging the hitman’s daily work as some slapstick farce, where one kill means
two collateral deaths, a fire alarm and a whole lot of DNA evidence (I mean, he
just throws his cigarette butt onto the fire escape!).
I
should catch myself. As fun as the process of writing is, I should abstain from
spending too much time dissecting Mulholland
Dr. The gut feeling churning
in one’s gut while watching this is proof enough that Lynch not only knows what
he is doing but, like, knows close to everything,
as in in life. The movie makes sense because it works on that subconscious,
surreal level, where “sense” is more like nonsense but lodges into our brains
and bodies cleaner and quicker than the most lucid of narrative prose.
In
that sense, Mulholland Dr. is a movie I cherish above so many
others because it lets me have it both ways: The visceral experience - of music
complementing image, camera movement embodying the feeling of dreams and
moments of silence swallowing us into the suffocating limbo of nightmares - is
unmatched. Yet Mulholland Dr. also knows that you are watching it to
work it out, so it presents a mountain of clues and somehow reveals their
secrets throughout its duration. When we finish watching it, we grasp for
meaning and catch some of it — but not all. There is so much more in there, and
that is why we return.
No comments:
Post a Comment