"Silencio.... Silencio.. Silencio!"
When I began watching David Lynch's Mulholland Drive last night, I had no idea what kind of ride I was in for. It was pitch black outside, everyone else in the house had gone to sleep, and I had no clue what this movie was about or who the director was; all I knew was that it was supposed to be good. About five minutes into the movie though, I suddenly realised something strange; I had goosebumps. After five minutes. Five.
Mulholland Drive is directed and written by David Lynch, and it stars Naomi Watts and Laura Harring in the two leading roles. The movie starts out with Harring's character being in a terrible car accident, from which she is the only survivor. She's hit her head badly and can't remember anything that has happened up until the accident, not even her own name, and after having wandered about for a few hours, she stumbles into a random apartment and falls asleep in the floor. Instead of calling the police and having her thrown out, the resident of the apartment, Naomi Watts' character, befriends her, and the two young women begin a search for Harring's character's lost memories. Their journey eventually takes them through the deepest and darkest corridors of the city of Los Angeles, and along the way, things start to get out of hand. Fact and fiction seem to become the same thing, and Mulholland Drive, a movie that seemed fairly straight forward in the beginning, turns into a twisted blur of city lights and fever dreams.
Describing how I feel about Mulholland Drive is gonna be a tough task, because I've never really been affected or moved by a piece of cinema, or any other kind of art for that reason, in the same way that I was by this film. Sure, I've been mystified, taken aback and emotionally overwhelmed before by movies such as Drive, Black Swan and Take Shelter, but none of those movies had me completely and utterly transfixed and hypnotised in the same way that Mulholland Drive had last night. That being said though, this movie definitely is the most abstract and artsy of all the movies I've seen since I started blogging, which automatically makes it one of those movies that only one out of ten people is going to like. It's a very long movie as well; it falls three minutes short of being two and a half hours long, which is yet another reason why it's never gonna be a mainstream hit. However, if you're one of those people that are able to sit down and "lock in" on a movie and let it absorb you completely, and if you don't require everything to make perfect sense in order for you to enjoy a piece of art, I swear on everything that's sacred and holy that you'll love Mulholland Drive as furiously as you've ever loved anything before.
To me, the most important thing about this movie is its atmosphere and its moods. The musical score always plays an incredibly important role in this regard, and Mulholland Drive is lucky enough to have one the most haunting and effective ones I've ever heard. There's one specific scene in this movies that exemplifies this perfectly, and it also just happens to be one of the most incredible and powerful ones I've ever seen. What I'm talking about is the scene in the theatre where Rita and Betty go to watch a play in the middle of the night. When the dark and mystifying score started rolling in the background about three fourths into this particular scene and I realised what was going on, the widest grin I've ever produced slowly spread across my face, and no matter how much I've tried and how hard I've been thinking, I can't remember being as impressed by anything as I was by the pure genius of this particular moment, and the musical score is an incredibly important part of the movie magic that is this scene.
Another thing that plays an infinitely important role in creating this movie's ghostly environment and spellbinding atmosphere, is its characters and their personalities and individual traits. The one character that springs to mind in this regard is Rita, Laura Harring's character. Even though she's supposed to seem vulnerable and innocent, I found her absolutely terrifying as well, and I have no idea why. I can't explain this feeling any better without spoiling an important part of the movie and her character, but she's a picture perfect example of how vital well created and mysterious characters are to the success of an arthouse movie. Betty, played by Naomi Watts, is the more symbolically important of the two main characters, and an argument could be made that this character's thought process and naive look on the twisted world of Hollywood is the main theme of the entire movie. There are a lot of surprisingly funny moments associated with Betty's disneyfied ideas of how the glorified movie-world of Hollywood is, and David Lynch included a few minor plot lines about an unlucky director and a dim witted hitman, that serves to exemplify this element that ultimately is Mulholland Drive's main theme.
The thing about this movie that surprised me the most, is how terrifying it actually is. The fact that I started watching it at one o'clock in the AM in a dark room might have a part in this, but the fact of the matter is that I was legitimately terrified for a large portion of the film. Not only is it filmed in a way that makes is extremely intense and mystifying, but Mulholland Drive does something that 99% of all horror movies aren't capable of, which is to make its audience fear the unknown and the unsaid. Even though the horror genres' sole purpose is to frighten its audience, its extremely rare to find one that manages to be legitimately scary without the use of cheap jump scares and an infuriatingly high amount of shakycam. With Mulholland Drive however, David Lynch managed to create a movie that is insanely scary and nerve wracking at some points, but at the same time so enchanting and unique that looking away or closing your eyes simply isn't a possibility. This is writing and directing at its absolute finest in my opinion, and never have I seen a movie that demands attention in the same way that Lynch's Mulholland Drive does.
I don't know how it happened, but David Lynch and his movies had just completely gone under my radar up until yesterday. I've gained a tremendous amount of respect for this talented individual over the last twelve hours though, and based on the incredible experience I had watching Mulholland Drive, I absolutely can't wait to see his other movies. The fact that this man managed to create a movie that blurs the line between dream and reality as much as Mulholland Drive does is very impressive, but the fact that he also was capable of giving it such an incredible amount of emotional and thematical power is a true feat of directorial greatness. Had the academy not been as afraid of wholly original and groundbreaking movies as it is, Lynch would have won the 2002 oscars for best writing and best directing, and that's a guarantee. I've never had my mind blown as much and as violently as it was when I watched this piece of true cinematic art for the very first time, and I know for a fact that homeless demons, blue haired ladies and slow panning shots of people walking down dark hallways will haunt my thoughts for weeks to come. In my opinion, Mulholland Drive is the very quintessence of movie magic, and if you're a fan of this kind of artistic and mysterious film creation, you'll know exactly what I mean. (6/6)
Mulholland Drive IMDb page here
Mulholland Drive trailer here
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