By Seth Lukas Hynes
Mulholland Drive
Starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux
M
3.25/5
Renowned filmmaker David Lynch passed away on January 15, so this week I thought I’d take a new look at Mulholland Drive, his most acclaimed film but one I’ve never liked very much.
In this surreal 2001 exploration of Hollywood’s seedy underbelly, aspiring actress Betty (Naomi Watts) meets an amnesiac woman who calls herself Rita (Laura Harring), and director Adam (Justin Theroux) clashes with powerful people over a casting choice.
Mulholland Drive features some brilliant vignettes but a severe lack of structure, no doubt resulting from its origins as a rejected TV pilot.
The acting is somewhat stilted, which Lynch often uses to aid a sense of eerie unreality; Watts’ acting is unnaturally perky early on, but grows more grounded as she helps Rita investigate her identity.
Betty’s audition is a knockout show of acting prowess; she discards her ditziness and conjures an unknown sincerity from her cheesy old scene partner.
Adam’s subplot has several funny or intense scenes, but is disconnected from Betty and Rita’s journey and carries little tension, hinging on him acquiescing to an actress we don’t know.
The nearly 2.5-hour narrative wanders along, offering glancing commentary on the exploitation of women in Hollywood, creators compromising their vision under pressure and the inherent prerecorded artifice in film (the latter through a beautiful but blunt sequence in Club Silencio), until it resets for the final half-hour.
Rita’s past and Betty’s stories are unresolved, and the implied ‘it was all a dream’ twist is an unsatisfying cop-out.
Lynch fans let his trademark dreamlike atmosphere wash over them, but I just can’t do that when it overwhelms the storytelling, and Mulholland Drive remains the same slack, poorly-structured, intermittently-thrilling film as ever.
