Is there any point recapping a film where the ‘real story’ is open to so much interpretation?
Mulholland Drive begins by introducing several characters in semi-standard, semi-interesting predicaments: An aspiring, over-trusting actress arrives in Hollywood from the heartland. A damsel in distress escapes a harrowing attempt on her life with a bout of amnesia. A stuffy director fights with a shadowy studio system over a mysteriously weighty casting decision. Our two main female characters befriend each other and try to piece together the damsel’s story. One Hollywood audition and one spooky scene together, and soon they’re having sex and attending a surrealist performance art theatre. For the last 45 minutes the film absolutely spirals, attempting to connect the disparate characters and realities in a tangled mess that has the audience pondering who are the real characters? What is the real story? And what is the takeaway?
My takeaway? This film was a steaming turd.
Learning the film’s production history gave more context than its confusingly positive critical fanfare. Mulholland Drive was shot to be a TV pilot. Full of mysterious character introductions, I could see the potential for their stories to continue. But when the pilot wasn’t picked up, David Lynch cauterized the third act and called it art. The real magic trick is that audiences and major critics everywhere are so busy looking for meaning in the film’s vibrantly hollow symbols and a messy tangle of themes that they’ve convinced themselves that the film is interesting. It’s not. It‘s a slow, wooden, self-satisfying critique of the Hollywood in-crowd, or lesbian jealousy, or reality ITSELF, or WHATEVER—with so many false conclusions that the ending credits appear merciful and liberating.
Reading through all the film’s praise, I was dumbfounded. But I did agree with a quote from film theorist Ray Carney: “You wouldn't need all the emotional back-flips and narrative trap doors if you had anything to say. You wouldn't need doppelgangers and shadow-figures if your characters had souls.”