My Writings
Review - Mullholland Drive (2001)
David Lynch's ode to the vulnerability of pure love is a hypnotic and twisted journey that follows the awakening of two women in the movie business in modern day Hollywood. On the one hand, Betty Elmes (Naomi Watts) is pure of spirit, fresh faced and unspoilt as she arrives from the backwater of Deep River, Ontario for a screen test arranged by her aunt, but becomes exposed to the obsessions of tinseltown. On the other, Rita (Laura Elena Harring) is already established as a movie actress, but has the enemies to prove it. After she narrowly survives being murdered because joyriders crash into her limousine to prevent the gun held against her from going off, the trauma causes her to lose her memory. She escapes the crash scene and hides out in Betty's aunt's apartment, where the two meet.
Betty, who sees the good in people, feels sorry for Rita, even after she discovers that she is an intruder and not a friend of her aunt's as she had assumed, and the two set out to try to unravel the mystery of who she is, using snippets of information that she has retained in her damaged memory banks. She recognises the name 'Diane Selwyn' for example, but after they find her address in the phone book, and break into her apartment, Lynch switches tack, and the plot becomes non-linear, increasingly symbolic and complex.
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In a parallel story, Adam Kesher(Justin Theroux) is a Hollywood director who is being forced into casting an unknown actress called Camilla Rhodes (Melissa George) by mobsters (including Dan Hedaya) for his new picture. When he refuses, he finds his credit line cancelled and he becomes effectively broke. To extricate himself from this position he agrees to meet The Cowboy (Lafayette Montgomery) who gives him one more chance to cast Camilla Rhodes at the next audition, using the words 'This is the girl'.
If the seductive qualities of the mysterious Rita binds the audience to the plot, Lynch further engages us using Betty's screen test. We feel nervous for her beforehand, but a deeply impressive scene reveals Betty's acting talent and we are in for the duration. Except we are not going to get away that lightly.
Lynch begins to manipulate the audience, using an organ soundtrack that sounds like a hymn for the dying, and by introducing non-linear plot changes, strange clues such as a blue box and keys, weird characters that visit, or live behind a burger joint called Winkies, a bungling hit man, and mime artists in a club called Silencio. These clues may or may not help to explain what is going on, but to keep us guessing he even has his main actresses change names. So Betty becomes Diane Selwyn, and Rita becomes Camilla Rhodes. This is the girl? Not any more! We even have a scene where both Melissa George and Laura Harring appear to be playing Camilla Rhodes at the same time. However certain elements of the plot remain tangible amongst the wreckage...