Mulholland Drive (2001)

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Mulholland Drive is not an easy film to sit through and one might even get tempted to get up midway and leave. But if you understand David Lynch and his mind you'll find a lot to appreciate here. At the top of my head is the stunning atmosphere. This film reeks of a certain "vibe" and even though the film is long it keeps this vibe all throughout. The soundtrack only helps and the acting from everyone involved is exactly what David Lynch likes it. The story is too convoluted to mention here but all I can say is this film is something of a challenge and you should definitely give it a shot.

To be honest, I was sceptic about seeing this movie since I've heard that so many people hadn't understood it at all. But I gave it a shot. I must say some parts of the movie are really disturbing (I am not really into scary movies or scenes). However, I've seen the movie only once but I can say that I understood it pretty well. Of course there were couple of minor questions but I got the picture of what it was. And this is my first Lynch movie ever.

In this era where movies with profound context are really hard to find, we begin the 21st century with a movie that represents it's genre for good. Mulholland Dr. is not a movie to get just relaxed and watch it. It gets you on your toes from the very beginning to the end of the movie. It's one of those double-watch movies, which you have to watch twice or even more to get a general understanding of lies beneath the whole scenes. No matter how you watch it, It WILL make sense from each aspect you look through the movie. It could get you as a love story, a confound surreal movie, aesthetic thriller or else. What really got me the first time I watched it was the color use in scenes. The three famous Red, White and Blue shades and the color Black. Certainly the colors are correlated to the Story. An enthusiastic young girls who chases her dreams and comes to Hollywood to get them, Which reminds us of all "American Dream" where your dreams become true and the red white and blue colors used in the scenes are representations of the American flag i.e America itself. But what is more interesting is the use of the Black color. The black usually reminds us of darkness and impurity and the bad things. It is highly possible that what the Director wanted to say- or at least one of the things he wanted to say!- is that beneath all the shiny enormous industry of Hollywood there's lies, There's darkness, And there's resented things that only you realize when you deal with them yourself. And of course there's other messages in the movies but they're out of our time to be explained now. So we leave it to here and let YOU find the all that is going on in the plot to say to us. Or even don't bother and forget all the hidden things and just enjoy the movie itself. It's a surreal movie after all, It doesn't have to make sense to enjoy!

The entire movie from the aftermath of car crash to the opening of blue box is not real. The couple at the beginning are strangers she met on a train. Their laughing represents what people say about a failure. The waitress with the tag of Betty either signifies her failure from acting and the eventual waitressing for sustenance or just the source of inspiration of Betty for her dream. Maybe Camilla and Rita of the end are the same person, maybe not, doesn't change a thing. Not really sure what the black figure symbolises, maybe the blacknes if heart of the Hollywood industry in general which is not easily seen. The party sequence at the end is THE most important sequence to understand the whole movie, which is about the lives of newcomers who try to break into the Hollywood scene. Very good direction. Truly exceptional.