Mulholland Drive
(2001)
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David Lynch strikes again with this literal nightmare of a motion picture--a brilliant, scathing, hysterical, and haunting ode to Hollywood. In the film, a mysterious dark-haired woman (Laura Elena Harring) emerges from an accident with a purse full of cash and a head full of amnesia. Meanwhile, Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), a wide-eyed gal from Deep River, Ontario, has just landed in Los Angeles with dreams of movie stardom. When Betty finds the nameless beauty in her aunt's apartment, she is deeply intrigued by the situation and offers to help her. This sends the two women on a bizarre search for the truth through the macabre, sun-soaked streets of the City of Angels, where the mob, a young film director (Justin Theroux), a studio executive with a tiny head, and an enigmatic figure named the Cowboy all float into the picture, then out again, until there is no longer any distinction between what is dream and what is reality. |
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As twisted as the Los Angeles road it takes its name from, David Lynch's Mulholland Dr is a typically weird and wonderful rumination on the American Dream, the Hollywood nightmare and the mysterious grey area in between. Easily his most demanding work since Fire Walk with Me, Lynch's dazzling thriller reaches new heights of mesmeric fascination thanks to scintillating visuals and an offbeat emotional intensity. Although many plot strands are thrown into the suspenseful mix — betraying its original genesis as an intended follow-up TV series to Twin Peaks — the main focus is on the bizarre relationship between amnesiac movie star Laura Elena Harring and wannabe actress Naomi Watts. Unfolding like “The Anne Heche Story” as viewed through a kinky kaleidoscope, Lynch's surrealist fantasia does go over familiar territory — trademark dwarves, camp retro pop songs, symbolic imagery — but never with such incisive observation. With a sensational performance by Watts, it's a triple-strength masterpiece that will more than satisfy the die-hard Lynch mob and may even gain a receptive new audience for the Sultan of Strange.