Mulholland Drive: Weird Scenes Inside A SURREAL Goldmine …

You know, I HAVE to admit, two movies, this week … ?

Is possibly overdoing it.

Possibly … !

Although given there’s little on telly, tonight, I might just drag something else out of the collection.

At ANY rate … ?

At any rate, I have to admit that, with little else to do, last night … ?

I managed to catch the 2001, David Lynch film, Mulholland Drive: on a dimly remembered favourable mention from both Debbi Mack and long-time reader, Kaiju.

And I’m not sure what’s just hit me … 

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Mulholland Drive opens with a montage of the central character, Betty (Naomi Watts), watching a dance contest.   We then see the mysterious Rita — Laura Herring — losing her memory, after being involved in a car accident on the eponymous road, suffering amnesia as a result, and ending up in the apartment used by Betty: who, it seems is an aspiring Hollywood actress.

The result … ?

The result being that the girls decide to try and find out more about Rita’s background.

A search that — this IS a David Lynch film, after all — goes in some very STRANGE directions.

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Now, I said I wasn’t sure what hit me … ?

Too right … !

Now, I’ve said it before — and will no doubt say it again, at some point — that I feel David Lynch is a genius.   If for no other reason that any of his films that I’ve seen are some of the most beautifully shot  I’ve ever seen.

In fact, if I remember rightly, I think I saw or read David Lynch saying that he’d originally trained up as a cinema lighting man.

Don’t quote me on that.

But it would explain the depth of colour that his films seem to me to have: including the black and white ones like Eraserhead  or The Elephant Man*.

That’s one thing Mulholland Drive shares with the films in Lynch’s œuvre: that sheer beauty.

There’s another … !

You notice I use the word ‘surreal’ in the title of the post … ?

That’s justified, I think.

In common with other Lynch films I’ve seen, I think we can definitely say Mulholland Drive is a touch surreal: with twists, characters and dreamy scenes floating across your sight in a way that — of any other director I know of — only Peter Greenaway could catch.

And again, much like Eraserhead, the original series of The Prisoner and any three paintings by Salvador Dali, I’m also thinking something else.

I’m thinking that Mulholland Drive has a very slippery sense of meaning.

I’ll tell you what.

I’ll leave you seeing stars.

I’ll let you tell me what you think

Mulholland Drive
★★★★

*        Personally … ?   I happen to think that The Elephant Man is the high point of the Lynch films I’ve seen.