MOVIE REVIEW: Mulholland Drive (2001)

David Lynch has always been a weirdo, in my opinion, as far as his treatment of film goes. However, he has a cult following that's just as strong as that of someone like Stanley Kubrick. While his work is strange, there's a certain poetry to his cinema that I find very engaging. After ten years of hearing nothing but how great it is, I finally got around to seeing Mulholland Drive. And while it is quite an epic story at length, it is well-worth watching if you are interested in good mysteries.

A car accident on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles results in one surviving woman, who makes her way into an isolated apartment. Betty, a young, up-and-coming actress moves in and finds the woman in her new home, who has now taken on the alias "Rita". It turns out, Rita has amnesia, so Betty resolves to help her get back on her feet and find out what happened to her before accident occured on Mulholland Drive. What starts out as a conventional mystery/thriller, takes some interesting turns and subplots, before throwing convention completely out the window in a fascinatingly ambiguous finale.

Amidst the idiosyncratic characters that populate the film, Mulholland Drive has a wonderfully hypnotic, almost dreamlike quality that really drew me in. There's a lot of interpretations going on out there, as far as what the story means, but I'm personally with the camp that believes in dreams playing a huge role in the story. David Lynch apparently is keeping his mouth shut on the matter, as is evidenced through many interviews I found. While he definitely leaves a lot of the film up for open interpretation, I have slight concern over this technique being a bit divisive. Acting-wise, it's all good. Laura Elena Harring is mesmerizingly beautiful, and I wish she did more movies. Being my favorite performance, she brings a great noir-like quality to Rita, in the film. Although I'm not a huge fan of the ambiguity put in place by the film's final act, I respect it as a creative choice, as it brings about a unique quality to the film's story. If you can muster the will-power to handle the hypnotic nature of Mulholland Drive, this is a film definitely worth seeing again.

8/10

Peace,
- Jon