The American Dream, the dangling carrot before every Yankee’s nose. It’s the ideal that one will achieve success through sheer will and determination. Hollywood, the grand illusionist, has peddled this fantasy for over a century by showing audiences that they will be happy and live a prosperous life if you work hard enough. Enter David Lynch—a maverick of American cinema—to throw away the rose-coloured glasses and expose the façade of the Hollywood dream factory with his 2001 film Mulholland Drive. Naomi Watts stars as Betty, an unassuming idealist who comes to Los Angeles bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to become a movie star. By the third act, Betty unravels into her true self, Diane—a shattered soul crushed by the weight of Hollywood’s machinations.
Clocking in at a hefty yet justified 147 minutes, Mulholland Drive transcends logic, diving headfirst into the murky depths of the subconscious. Lynch spurns the Hollywood conventions and instead exposes the horror lurking behind hope’s metaphorical dumpster.
If Alfred Hitchcock is the master of suspense, then David Lynch is the master of surrealism. One of the major tenets of the surrealist movement is the idea that the rational mind suppresses the power of imagination. At first glance, Mulholland Drive may seem illogical with its labyrinth of a plot and disjointed sequences. Like most of his filmography, attempting to decode Lynch with rational thought will result in completely missing the point. Cinematographer Peter Deming creates wistful, stardust imagery to masquerade the ugliness of Hollywood. The atmosphere is ethereal, dreamy, but a stark reality looms underneath.
A canon of surrealist art is symbolic recurring motifs, which Lynch uses throughout his work. In Mulholland Dr, the red lampshade, the blue key, and the monster behind Winkie’s, serve as breadcrumbs to Betty/Diane’s fractured psyche. Taking a note from the father of surrealism, Sigmund Freud, Lynch exposes the raw unconscious of human desire and expression, specifically repressed sexuality. In Betty’s idealistic fantasy, she is a blossoming starlet in love with the other neighbourhood muse, Rita (Laura Harring). Rita accepts her and loves her back, bliss ensues. But in Diane’s bitter reality, she is forced to stifle her identity because she will be rejected by Rita and exiled by Hollywood. Lynch isn’t here to hold our hands, he’s here to slap us awake from the dream of cinema’s placating lies.
Ranked as the crowned jewel of 21st-century cinema by the BBC, Mulholland Dr isn’t just a movie; it’s a mind game orchestrated by Lynch’s genius. Like a mischievous puppeteer, he pulls the strings of his audience’s expectations that have been conditioned by cinema’s past. The definition of expectation is a strong belief that something will happen. Betty, our unassuming heroine, dances on the razor’s edge of innocence and danger, luring viewers into an expectation that she will be exploited. Then, just as they’re poised for a grand revelation, Lynch yanks the rug from beneath them. The monotonous first act is an intentional deception that smuggles reality past the audience’s defences. The audience is unsuspecting, unprepared, and incredibly susceptible to the emotions that society craves and fears. The classic Hollywood narrative they are so accustomed does a 180° right in front of their eyes. Right before the switch, they believe they’re finally getting a key— literally— to unlock the mystery set up in the first two acts, instead they are faced with the brutal reality of Diane’s unfulfilling life. It’s a masterclass in cinematic sleight of hand, leaving viewers spellbound and shell-shocked in equal measure.
Every film hinges on having something at stake, whether it’s the hero’s family or a damsel in distress. In Mulholland Drive’s case, the audience’s beliefs are at stake. In the infamous Club Silencio scene, the Magician (Richard Green) repeats, “No Hay Banda.” There is no band. It’s all an illusion, just like the allure of Hollywood and just like the American Dream. Diane’s journey from small-town Canada to the bright lights of Los Angeles was meant to be a fairy tale, but real life had other plans. Instead of red carpets and glamour, she found a city where women are commodities, where artistic integrity takes a backseat to profit margins. In the unfeigned Hollywood, monsters lurk behind every corner disguised as ordinary faces, and the pursuit of art is just a thinly veiled chase for fame and fortune.
Prepare to leave this movie speechless, challenging your mind and forcing you to confront the realities you’ve been avoiding. It will make you ask all those existential questions you dread: What is true success? What is true failure? What is a dream really? What even is reality? What Lynch does in this film, and his entire oeuvre, remains unmatched in filmmaking. He is one of the few artists willing to unearth the demons and skeletons in the very industry he creates in. While other directors tinker with the classics, Lynch forges a path to a new cinematic frontier, shattering the illusion of false hope peddled by his peers. Instead of perpetuating the American dream, he dismantles it.
*originally published on flipscreened.com on 07/29/2020