Mulholland Drive (Special Edition) (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Outstanding
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Unmemorable
How does it compare to similar films?	Outstanding

Advantages:	One of David Lynches best films .
Disadvantages:	Confusing .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

- MULHOLLAND DRIVE.-

Mulholland Drive was released in the UK in 2002. Directed and written by David Lynch. Starring Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Justin Theroux and Ann Miller. - Genre: Drama/ Mystery/Thriller. - Running Time: 146 Minutes. - BBFC Rating: 15. -

As the credits roll we are treated to a display of 50's dancing. There are many couples doing the jitterbug, bunnyhop, and the Jive. This is a lively sequence and all concerned are having a lot of fun. Suddenly a face surges to the fore cloaked in a white mist and she is featured alone and disjointed from all the others. She wavers, and then disappears back through the crowd again. The whole scene is shot very basically and the colours are subdued. This is an strange opening sequence with very little impact and I began to wonder if this is not going to be one of David Lynches best efforts.-

Then the music changes to a sombre mood. The film begins with a black limousine driving slowly up through the hills of Hollywood. There are two men at the front of the car and a lone woman seated to the back. Suddenly the car pulls over and the woman says "were not meant to stop here". As the man in the passenger seat comes round to open her door for her, we are giving glimpses of joy riders coming in the opposite direction, as the film cuts to them driving at breakneck speed and back to the woman again, you just know that something is about to happen. - The joyriders collide head-on with the stationary limo. All goes quiet. Suddenly the woman who was the passenger in the black limousine crawls out from the wreckage, in shock and confused. She staggers to her feet and you can tell from her face that she is very scared of something. She looks down the hills and sees the lights from the nearest town sparkling, so she makes her way, down through the bushes keeping the lights in her sight, to reach safety. She is unsettled and filled with a sense of foreboding but she doesn't know why. Eventually she reaches the town and slips into a house while the door is left open and she falls into a deep sleep.

In the shower the next day she hears someone entering the room. It is the niece (Betty Elms), of the occupants who have gone away on holiday. Betty has come to the big city to make a name for herself as an actress. She is a wide eyed innocent who has no idea how Hollywood can eat you up and spit you out. All she can see through rose tinted glasses, is her name in lights. She finds the woman in the shower and asks who she is. The woman replies Rita, seeing Rita Hayworth's picture on a poster in the washroom. Later she breaks down and confesses that she doesn't know who she really is and explains about the car crash. It is apparent that 'Rita' is suffering from amnesia… After seeing a waitress in a diner with a name tag, Rita feels for some reason that might be 'her' name. She wants to find out where she lives and she also remembers the name of Mulholland Drive and she decides to go to see if the answer lies there. Betty is compassionate and feels sorry for 'Rita' and wants to help her and she devises a plan to become a sleuth and ring the hospital to see if there was indeed a car crash last night on Mulholland Drive. -

This is another dreamy offering from David Lynch. From the opening credits I wasn't too sure if I was going to like this film. How wrong could I be? It was superb. This is by no means an easy film to follow, but then David Lynch's films are much more complex than that. This film actually started its life as a prospective two hour TV pilot and the ending was written in later after the TV Company declined to take up the offer of producing it. So this may add to the disjointed feeling that I got about three quarters of the way through. I think this was deliberate though and that Lynch has purposely left the film open to personal interpretation. I love his work and pride myself on understanding his films well. But as I say I kind of lost the plot at the point I mentioned. However it did all come together for me at the end…I think.

From the very start of Mulholland Drive there are quite a few sub plots which seem unconnected at the time though they do all come together through a series of events during the film. They are just snippets of a life and remembering back can sometimes be hard when you want to connect them later on in the film. The way in which Lynch chooses to offer such small pieces of information is the one of the major reasons why I like his work so much. He likes to leave many clues throughout and I like to use my brain during a film. I cannot watch a film that has a simple premise I just get bored and avoid such films at all costs. His make you think, maybe not always on a conscious level. But they certainly play on your mind and long after I have watched one of Lynches films I am still debating if I have come to the right conclusion and not missed anything. I always want and need to watch it again quite soon after the first viewing and I think his films need to be watched in such a fashion.

The music was fantastic once again within Mulholland Drive, as it always is with his work. His long collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti brings sombre dark and dreamy music woven between sweet and innocent bubble gum tunes. The total highlight of the film for me was the breath taking, staggeringly haunting rendition of Roy Orbisons 'I'm Crying' sung in Spanish, in a capella by Rebekah Del Rio. This was a total show stopper and took the film to another level of stripped emotion. David Lynch seems to have a fondness for Roy Orbison songs and used 'In Dreams' in Blue Velvet. Roy Orbison has a strange and dreamy tone to his voice that compliments scenes within David Lynch films well.

The music is very much at the core of most of his films and he tends to use atmospheric, jazzy lounge music or mid century pop, which works really well with the strange, surreal nature of his films. Songs such as: I've told every little star' seem to defy by their sweetness the scenes which they are used in. 'Bring it on home' and Diane and Camilla are other such examples. The impact lies in the context in which they are used and also the switching from light to dark is used to unsettle and confuse. There are even tracks by David Lynch himself here, being a guitar player and singer and his 'Mountains falling' is the most incredible musical display of erotic, dark and insidious electric guitar that I have experienced in a long while.

The plot is an enigma and he narrative within the film is highly cryptic and the New York Times wrote "while some people might consider the plot an "offence against narrative order, the film is an intoxicating liberation from sense, with moments of feeling all the more powerful for seeming to emerge from the murky night world of the unconscious." The film sits uneasily upon you with an eerie undertone running right through the heart of it. It is on a very surreal plane and doesn't reach earth for a moment. It is sublime and dark, delicious and dreamy. The acting is superb from all concerned. The cinematography is stunning. It is used to perfection. The close ups are staggering and the subdued palates are beautiful placed. The film is bizarre and the feel is nightmarish. A dream captured on film, which must be viewed that way. But which parts are in fact the dream and which parts are the reality? You decide. - Mulholland Drive has to be David Lynch's best film to date. I loved Blue Velvet, one of his early films but I love this more. It is a visual masterpiece. Enigmatic and entirely elusive, it is the best two hours and twenty six minutes worth of cinema that I have seen.-

"The film was strongly acclaimed by many critics and earned Lynch the Prix de la mise en scène (Best Director Award) at the Cannes Film Festival as well as an Oscar".

Directed by
David Lynch
Written by
David Lynch

-Starring-
Naomi Watts
Laura Elena Harring
Justin Theroux
Ann Miller
Cinematography
Peter Deming