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Saturday, November 19, 2011

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Watching a David Lynch’s movie is like taking a test in your resistance to stay sane. This gets particularly true with time down the calendar (Julian calendar I mean, not Lynch’s calendar, of which nobody know how it looks or works): Blue Velvet, Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive. The latter particularly reminds of Twin Peaks not only because of Lynch’s unique filming style (which is pretty much the same for all his productions), but because of a bunch of charming women plus the spooky curtained halls and the doppelganger (Michael J. Anderson) from the cult TV serial (though in this movie, you won’t enjoy his twist).

The movie starts with a road accident that injures a beautiful dark-haired woman (Laura Harring), affecting her memory. She sneaks inside a house and meets the new beauty (Naomi Watts), an aspiring actress who is in Los Angeles for her Hollywood audition and has been allowed by her aunt (at least that is what she appears to be at that time) to stay in her house while she is leaving. Trying to find the identity of the accident’s victim, the two girls start discovering bizarre things, including the dead body of a woman who was supposedly no else than the girl involved in the accident. The film gets more mysterious and mind-boggling as identities shuffle and we learn that the aspiring actress is actually the dead girl (but who knows).

Those who have watched Lost Highway can tell how similar it all sounds—shuffling of identities and bizarre experiences that challenge the existence of a single, chronologically-linear consciousness. So what’s really new in Mulholland Drive? Hard to tell, except that Lynch has decided to show a homosexual relationship between his lead characters (perhaps for the first and only time). It would have been more interesting a film if it had appeared before Lost Highway. But those who have watched the latter are likely to find Mulholland Drive pretty much a rehash, albeit more neatly done (in a manner of speaking).