8. MULHOLLAND DR. (2007)
Directed by David Lynch
David Lynch has had an extraordinary career, so it’s fitting that his best film is one of the most sensationally strange and beautiful films ever made. MULHOLLAND DR. is the sort of film where you can enjoy it even while it flummoxes you completely. The only true thing about this movie is that anyone who tells you that they definitely know what it means is lying to you, which of course, presents me a problem, as I’m about to tell you what it’s about, or, more accurately, what it means to me.
The first, immediately obvious thing about MULHOLLAND DR. is that it carries a number of brilliant performances. Laura Elena Harring, for example, who was best known before being cast in this, as one of the mainstays of SUNSET BEACH, a cult US soap, is superb as Rita, with whom our heroine, Betty (Naomi Watts) shares a love affair after a car accident leaves her with amnesia. Offering superb support are Justin Theroux, Dan Hedaya, and another soap alumni, HOME AND AWAY’s Melissa George.
The best performance of the film, though, and in fact, the best female performance of the decade comes from Watts. Her portrayal of Betty is simply awesome, she exhibits a phenomenal range in this one performance. In fairness, it’s a role to die for. Betty goes through enough in this film to have occupied some actresses’ entire careers. After approximately two-thirds of MULHOLLAND DR., the film changes tack, completely. The woman that we previously knew as Betty is now known as Diane, and those that were previously part of her life, no longer know who she is. It’s down to the dexterity and openness of Watts’ performance that this change is accepted by the audience, even though it makes no sense to us, at least at the time.
Lynch has done similar things before (LOST HIGHWAY) and since (INLAND EMPIRE), but here he has created something that is evidently the work of a genius. One of the things that I love about the film is that there are several different, and equally valid, responses to what it all means, to what the plot twists and turns could possibly represent, and to what each character’s timelines in the film actually are. It’s a rare piece of cinema that can inspire such a myriad of interpretations, each of which gives some depth to every other reading of the film.
For my part, I think my reading of it is the most common. That is that the first two-thirds of the film represent the dying dream of Diane, a frustrated actress, turned prostitute. She has a connection to Rita, which she fantasises about, the result of which is an ideal, although one that keeps getting slightly skewed more and more by her ‘reality’ impinging on her subconscious. Within the two parts of the film, we see mirrored scenes, such as the audition sequences, the first of which is absolutely remarkable. In it Betty is trying out for a part, and our expectation is that it will be an unpleasant experience for her, yet she absolutely aces it. It’s a spine-chilling scene, featuring some of the best acting of Watts’ career to date. In the flipside, Diane witnesses another character – Camilla (Melissa George), who by this time has begun to blur slightly with Rita, go through an audition. Though a much different scene, the resonance is unavoidable and, clearly, deliberate.
Betty’s audition scene is one of the film’s best scenes, others include the introduction of a mysterious cowboy, a scene in which Angelo Badalamenti drinks an espresso really slowly a terrifying sequence behind a diner and the film’s highpoint, the pivotal nightclub scene. In it, Betty and Rita are watching a woman sing Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’ in Spanish (Llorande) at the club Silencio. It’s a staggering sequence, one which makes the hairs on the back of your neck dance to attention. It’s a spine-tingling moment, rife with sadness and tension. At its conclusion, Betty becomes Diane, and we enter the devastating denouement of Lynch’s masterpiece.
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