Mulholland Dr. (2001)

Naomie Harris (28 DAYS LATER, POTC) is black. You mean Watts.

With that out of the way, I love this flick. Partly that's due to the nightmare logic for which Lynch is famous. It's not straight up horror per se like Coscarelli, Cronenberg, or Fulci, but is so unsettling nevertheless. Especially in normal day stuff as you say. Even the famous love scene carries over that vibe. Lynch is able to get under yous skin with mere line delivery and soundscape. It's true mastery of the medium.

I remember the very reason I went out and bought the dvd. I had a strange dream about the flick the night before (year + after actually seeing it). The WTF perplexing quality is palpable and it sticks with you.

The Winkies scene alone is enough to send someone over the brink.

Since the first hour or so of the movie is a proposed pilot that HBO rejected, I'm guessing Kesher's stuff early in the film got short shrift.

Still my favorite Lynch film, and Watt's performance is phenomenal. Her work in the audition scene is ridiculously good.

The Winkies scene is both a harrowing suspense sequence and one of the best jump scares you'll ever see...but I'm more creeped out by the Club Silencio scene.

                                                        NO. HAY. BANDA!!!

Lynch loves his strobe lights and he loves his creepy lip syncs, but no matter how many times I see them and recognize them as tropes, this still unsettles the fuck out of me.

I get most creeped out by the sheer passion on the face of Rebecca del Rio singing "Crying".  Then she just collapses as the song continues.  Shudder...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mangy 

 

Since the first hour or so of the movie is a proposed pilot that HBO rejected, I'm guessing Kesher's stuff early in the film got short shrift.

 

Still my favorite Lynch film, and Watt's performance is phenomenal. Her work in the audition scene is ridiculously good.

It was actually rejected by ABC, the same network that got behind Twin Peaks initially anyway. If it was HBO I think the original material would have possibly been more 'out there'.

Anyway this is without doubt my favourite David Lynch, film although it took a while for me to absorb. I always make a point of seeing his films on a cinema screen but on first viewing this really didn't click for me. Since then I watched it on DVD and it fell into place come the third viewing. I would have to disagree with earlier comments on this thread as I think this is David Lynch's most emotional work (excluding maybe Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me, which is a whole different kind of emotionally fucked up) this is why it is my fave film by Lynch. The actual core love story gone wrong aspect of it really strikes a chord. I'm sure everyone has done something they regret out of jealousy but you always recognise when things go too far and thats the tragedy at the core of the film.

On another note; I read a theory somewhere that the man/thing behind winkies is actually another version of Betty/Diane just one that obviously lives on with the heartbreak and guilt. When I watched it recently with this in mind it took on a whole other dimension of scary. Just putting that out there....

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcnooj82 

I get most creeped out by the sheer passion on the face of Rebecca del Rio singing "Crying".  Then she just collapses as the song continues.  Shudder...

Agreed, that scene is so filled with emotion and you get the sense that there's this whole tragic story behind this person and you just don't know what it is. An amazing movie, one of my favourites.

This is a movie consumed with existential dread. 

Getting in the mood for Halloween season, I decided to Netflix an unconventional sort of flick. I didn't even expect to be scared, but I was left shocked and unnerved. It's not just the scene behind Winkies (I was unprepared), but the low humming that permeates even the simplest of scenes. It's the artificiality of the majority of the cast, the plasticity of their faces and the way scenes of conversation seem to involve other unheard bits of dialogue. 

This truly is a film that can be felt but is not meant to be understood. Like Roger Ebert said in his review, it's pointless to analyse in the conventional sense, in the narrative sense, because the point is not the plot. There is a feeling that the plot is on loop, that it doesn't matter that Betty and Diane are played (rapturously) by Naomi Watts because their story is the same without their necessarily being the same character. This is a similar plot device to the Bill Pullman/Balthazar Getty switchup in Lost Highway, but here we're forced to follow the same actress as she's spread across the emotional spectrum. The actor switch in the former movie created a disconnect, on my part, but in this movie it had me fully engaged, attempting connections between the characters and their lives and wondering at Watts' command of the subtle nuances of each performance.

The third act could be a dream, it could be Diane's death rattle, but Lynch's cynicism and nihilism about how his town chews up and spits out young talent are all over this film. J. Hoberman of the Village Voice said It's a poisonous Valentine to Hollywood, and I couldn't agree more. 

So how did Mulholland Drive make me feel? Uneasy. It's telling that the box Rita has been striving to open is either empty or denied to the audience. I love the idea that Rita serves as an audience-identification character, allowing us to learn about this world as she does. Laura Herring is truly mysterious and engrossing, playing naive and aloof alternatively. Her being forced into the role of detective is engrossing as we're detectives right along with her, trying to piece this hodge podge of a movie together. Scattered and broken, the whole structure is like a puzzle intentionally designed to not fit together. 

I related to Justin Thoreux as Adam Kesher, and felt that a fleshed out version of his story could have worked in a more conventional manner. Like, if Lynch wanted to use him again in another picture that would be cool because I love his outbursts of temper and his compromised artistic integrity. He exudes tortured artist and skeptical every man simultaneously, and I loved the little hints we get about his life. In fact, the world building on display here is magnificent as these characters are implied to have very rich interior as well as exterior lives, but the audience is left relatively in the dark. 

What do you make of the claims that this is THE movie of the 21st century, so far? Coming out just a month after September 11, could it really have anticipated the fears and doubts of a once great nation now lost in the wilderness? There's a tension being negotiated here between an idealized past and a hyperbolic present, with an underlying rot revealing the dishonesty, dissolution, and delusion of the contemporary United States. 

What a great post, Bartelby.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bartleby_Scriven  There's a tension being negotiated here between an idealized past and a hyperbolic present, with an underlying rot revealing the dishonesty, dissolution, and delusion of the contemporary United States. 

This is a very smart and succinct way of describing one of the most predominant themes in Lynch's films.  And I think it works even better in a story of Hollywood than it does in a story about small town America... which is why I prefer Mulholland Dr. even to Blue Velvet.

I don't know if it's the American film of the young century, but it is certainly among the very few.

I love Mulholland Dr. sfm.  After Blue Velvet it's my favorite Lynch movie as well.  Everyone's observations in this thread are really pretty great.

One of the great films of the early century for sure, although I think There Will Be Blood is equally striking, if more overt, as a mirror of contemporary America. Also, like TWBB, it features one of my all-time favorite performances.