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DVD and Video Review: Mulholland Drive

© Kelcey Woolsten

David Lynch is a master of the surreal, the bizarre, and often the completely illogical. Some appreciate this talent and others shake their head in confusion and frustration. As a former die hard fan of Lynch's television show "Twin Peaks" I have experienced both, fascinated by some of his better work such as Blue Velvet and disappointed by movies like Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and Lost Highway, not to mention the last few episodes of "Twin Peaks." However, Lynch's latest film, Mulholland Drive exhibits the same level of brilliance as the first season of "Twin Peaks." Mulholland Drivewas originally conceived as a television series like "Twin Peaks," but was ultimately rejected. Film fans were blessed. Lynch was able to convert his original pilot into an amazingly unusual and delightfully bizarre film which explores mysteries that never get solved.

Mulholland Drive delves into the dark and mysterious side of Hollywood. It opens with a beautiful woman in a car heading toward Mulholland Drive, who is intended for assassination by two thugs, but instead walks away with amnesia when the car is involved in an accident and the men are killed. She seeks refuge in the apartment of a woman leaving on a trip. Meanwhile, Betty, a wannabe actress from Ontario, Canada arrives in Hollywood to live in her aunt's apartment. Betty discovers the mystery woman in the shower, and the woman tells her she is a friend of her aunt's and that her name is Rita, a name she pulls from a poster of Rita Hayworth in Gilda hanging in the bathroom. Eventually it comes out that Rita not only does not know Betty's aunt but does not know her own identity. The only clues Rita has to her identity are a bag full of money and a blue key. Betty in her naivete embarks on a quest with Rita to solve the mystery of Rita's identity, at many points resembling Nancy Drew. The search for Rita's identity brings Betty and Rita to the apartment of a dead woman named Diane Selwyn that Rita supposedly knew, into each other's arms, and eventually to a strange nightclub where the singing and the playing of the instruments isn't real.

While Betty and Rita are the focus of the film, there are also several subplots. One involves a young director named Adam Kesher who is being forced by two imposing thugs, a dwarf, and a mysterious man named the Cowboy to cast a woman named Camilla Rhodes in his film. "This is the girl" they tell him repeatedly and his way of life is threatened until he says the same thing. There is also a mysterious man having dreams about a creature living behind a diner and who dies when he discovers his dreams may be real.

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