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Mulholland Drive ***

You're running down Lombard street naked, except for a pair of wobbly platform sandals, your old boss is chasing you and he's yelling out "where's your status report?!" You find yourself safely hidden and clothed in the local Starbucks where they're putting on a fashion show to benefit elderly pets, who now have voting rights (this is San Francisco!). Suddenly you remember you're late for a test, it's the GMAT, you better hurry!

Ok, so you're reading this and thinking it could only be one thing, it's just got that weird incongruous feeling to it. I'll try not to give anything major away here about the movie, just keep that feeling in mind when you see the new David Lynch film, Mulholland Drive, and everything will make sense. Well, almost everything. Otherwise you'll come out of it as confused and irritated as you were when you saw Memento; and you'll conclude that Memento was easily decipherable in comparison.

When I first left the movie I was so sure about my opinion of it; I thought it was an annoying pile of shit. I mean, how hard is it to string together a bunch of seemingly unrelated scenes, random characters, mysterious boxes with keys, crusty homeless people with magic powers, add a huge plot twist, and leave everyone guessing at the end? Playing mind games with people is easy--throw in random stuff and don't tie it together in any way, it doesn't take genius to do that.

I went into the film cold--with no background knowledge of David Lynch styles or themes. I wasn't into Twin Peaks - when it aired back in the early nineties I was living in a dorm with no TV and was either too drunk or too busy nursing a nasty long-distance relationship that sucked the life out of me like a festering wound to ever watch it-- so I don't know Lynch's obsessions. I'm still entitled to an opinion. If you have a Lynch background, that might help. Without that context, the first two thirds of the movie can come across as choppy, poorly acted and poorly written.

The movie revolves around Rita, an amnesia victim, and Betty, the woman who finds Rita in Betty's Aunt's apartment after Rita wandered away from the automobile accident that left her with no memory. In the process of trying to help Rita remember who she is and what happened in the accident, Betty and Rita stumble upon wads of cash in Rita's purse, as well as a mysterious blue key. Sleuthing and sex ensue. Weirdness follows. Scenes and characters are introduced, you ignore their apparent irrelevance, you assume it will all tie together eventually. Weirdness comes to a pinnacle. Movie ends. Note there is no satisfying dénouement, so if you like happy endings and everything wrapped up nice, you're out of luck.

But once the movie is over and it starts to sink in you'll find yourself thinking, yeah, yeah, it does make sense now. And yeah, even before I realized why the acting seemed to suck, I was somehow enthralled by the movie. Despite the embarrassingly B-quality of the first three-quarters--which you'll later learn is a purposeful mechanism Lynch uses to convey something--you'll find the movie strangely entertaining.

But before figuring out "the big secret" the acting does seem horrid and the writing even worse. Betty's line to Rita, the amnesia victim she JUST MET showering UNINVITED in her aunt's Hollywood apartment: "I'll be back soon, don't drink all the coke" was absurd. How about "don't invite all your crack addict friends over or torch the place while I'm gone" or "I'll be counting the silverware when I get back."

The scene with the hit man and the other guy (a guy who's never really explained) is also a mess. Bad lines, bad acting. The hit man accidentally shooting the gratuitously fat woman in the next room was just obvious humor. Don't pay attention to the indie-film-lemmings around you busting a gut over this stuff, you don' t have to laugh at this part if you don't find it funny.

But the 'bad acting' and the 'bad lines' make sense later in the film, and yes, I reluctantly have to hand it to Lynch for capturing "the look and feel of three A.M." Not that I wanted to see it captured, but there it was, on film. Neato.

All the confusion and weirdness aside, I have to say I did enjoy the film. I'd see it again if I thought it would actually help explain anything. The parts that still don't make sense to me would probably remain unresolved even through a second viewing. That's Lynch's secret to appearing highly talented.
 

Some reviewers who agree with me:

"A puzzle with too few useful clues and too many silly tangents that scramble all the pieces into chaos."
-- Bruce Kirkland, JAM! MOVIES

"A load of moronic and incoherent garbage."
-- Rex Reed, NEW YORK OBSERVER

"It's just too annoyingly incomprehensible to recommend."
-- William Arnold, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

"This is an infuriating film."  -- Eric Lurio, GREENWICH VILLAGE GAZETTE

"A puzzle deliberately without a solution--a movie that will appeal only to its maker's most diehard fans, those who will follow him even to an artistic dead end."
-- Frank Swietek, ONE GUY'S OPINION

and some other reviewers who just sound foolish:

"It's everything you ever wanted from a David Lynch movie -- visually arresting, thematically overripe, bleakly hilarious, deliberately shocking, willfully obscure."
-- Robert W. Butler, KANSAS CITY STAR

"I love this movie, and can't wait to have epiphanies about it."
-- Bill Chambers, FILM FREAK CENTRAL


10.25.01