Mulholland Drive (2001)

Mulholland Drive is only confusing as a film because the plot is sustained in different forms of time. It possesses the genius direction of David Lynch (much debated) who forces the film to stay coherent in some respects, and strange in many others. No one is debating that Lynch has a flair, a contemporary feeling unmatched by others, but everyone is wondering what it all means, what we're supposed to take away from a film with no discernible plot, a strange set of characters who do things and feel things that make very little sense in the grand spectrum of life and reality, yet give this film an eerie dream logic. You can't watch this as a true neo-noir or a thriller in any sense. It's that, but without a denouement, or any true climax. The plot transitions between the story of an amnesiac who was going to be the victim of a homicide before being in a car accident, and stumbles across Betty, an aspiring actress who has just moved to Hollywood and lies around her aunt's apartment with stars in her eyes. At the same time we see a director get pushed around on his casting by some mob ties, and his wife cheat on him with the pool boy, lending to an unexpected cameo from Billy Ray Cyrus. Though these two events are supposedly linked, I see very little in the way of a constructed plot. We never find out why the amnesiac was going to be killed, there isn't much investigation into her actual set of events before the accident, and we're never sure if the last twenty minutes (where the real mindf***kery begins) is a dream sequence, a strange prologue that begins in the end, or the real set of events around the mysterious Diane but with different key players. Beside the way you feel about being made a fool of, it's the odd experience of the film that everyone either loves or hates. The reason Lynch has as many followers in cult film as Kubrick, the Coens, and Wes Anderson is because, like them, he has a form and function within his films while still being quirky, or having appropriate atmosphere. Lynch's films, and his work in television, always has a strange tone, a moody atmosphere that you can't place in real life but works well with these scenes, these anachronisms within time and space. I am not sure if I personally can get past the plot to look within the mood, because it unsettles me, and with not having a plot to cling to it's very difficult to have a certain opinion about a film without that knowledge, that qualification of good or bad. Mulholland Drive is good, but in a way that can't be explained, and in that lies the genius of Lynch. Besides that the cast was brilliant: Watts transformed seamlessly between different personas with ease, proving she truly is one of the best actresses working today. Harring looks confuzzled throughout while still retaining a blank sensuality, and Theroux is aimless and intractable. The best sense of humor in the film is a short scene with Mark Pellegrino as a bumbling convict, which lends to the narrative and the sense of danger, but is also appropriately funny. I found this film delightful in some senses and unsettling in so many others. No matter what, it's a film worth watching.