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The following is my original, unedited article written in August, 2017.
Plus some pictures for added pizzazz.
The final, finished & edited version can be found in the Moviejawn zine
(Vol. 3, #9; September 2017) which may be available in the Moviejawn shop.
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Moviejawn: Change
Hunter Bush
August 2017
I was wrong about Mulholland Drive and wrong about David Lynch.
(Trigger warning: This article contains the recounted opinions of a know-it-all nineteen year old film aficionado, notoriously the worst kind of all three of those things.)
I was nineteen when David Lynch's Mulholland Drive was released to theaters. I'd never seen any of Lynch's works but had been assured, both in real life and by film professionals via interviews and articles, that I would like them. Words like weird, dark, complicated, hypnotic, and seductive were used quite a bit; it all seemed very adult, very grown up. On a few occasions, I had the experience of someone attempting to explain to me what made a piece of Lynch's back catalog so great, only to have them sputter out midway and close with some version of "...you've just gotta see it." To be completely honest, a lot of the explanations sounded like total gobbledygook, but I figured that the fault there was mine, and that seeing would indeed be believing.
Moviejawn: Change
Hunter Bush
August 2017
I was wrong about Mulholland Drive and wrong about David Lynch.
(Trigger warning: This article contains the recounted opinions of a know-it-all nineteen year old film aficionado, notoriously the worst kind of all three of those things.)
I was nineteen when David Lynch's Mulholland Drive was released to theaters. I'd never seen any of Lynch's works but had been assured, both in real life and by film professionals via interviews and articles, that I would like them. Words like weird, dark, complicated, hypnotic, and seductive were used quite a bit; it all seemed very adult, very grown up. On a few occasions, I had the experience of someone attempting to explain to me what made a piece of Lynch's back catalog so great, only to have them sputter out midway and close with some version of "...you've just gotta see it." To be completely honest, a lot of the explanations sounded like total gobbledygook, but I figured that the fault there was mine, and that seeing would indeed be believing.
My mother is a big fan of David Lynch, and in the autumn of 2001, it was at her insistence that I saw Mulholland Drive in theaters. My mom has great taste in movies, it should be noted and I've grown up learning to trust her instincts. She operates on a "gut feeling" level where she will usually not know much about a flick but strongly feels she or I or we should see it. "I've heard good things" she will say, citing possibly imaginary sources. But nebulous though her informants might be, she's rarely wrong. So imagine my surprise when I saw Mulholland Drive and kind of hated it. And subsequently got angry at David Lynch for that.
I know, I know. What can I say? I was a kid and kids are ...kinda dumb. But I'm an adult now, who tries to learn from his mistakes, and a big part of that is admitting they happened and trying to move forward. So here we are.
I know, I know. What can I say? I was a kid and kids are ...kinda dumb. But I'm an adult now, who tries to learn from his mistakes, and a big part of that is admitting they happened and trying to move forward. So here we are.
In case you are unfamiliar with Mulholland Drive, I kind of have to spoil it for you here, but it's been out for 15 years so I kinda feel like if you really wanted to see it, you would have by now. Just giving fair warning.
The film begins following a young woman (Laura Harring) stumbling away from a car accident at night (on the titular road) and ending up in an empty apartment. The next day she meets another young woman (Naomi Watts), who is staying in the apartment while her aunt is away. Watts realizes that Harring has amnesia and offers to help her get her memory back. The two become close while investigating Harring's identity, and begin a sexual relationship. Meanwhile, a secondary plot follows a film director (Justin Theroux) as he suffers one bad break or indignity after another. There is one scene where two men (Patrick Fischler and Michael Cooke) meet in a diner to discuss the nature of a dream Fischler has had. It ends with the dream seemingly coming true and Fischler collapsing in fright. We also occasionally follow the misadventures of a somewhat inept, though ultimately successful hitman. There are also an unusual looking blue key and a box; equally unusual, equally blue and a nightclub called Club Silencio where the host instructs the audience (and likewise the audience) in the subjective nature of reality.
The link between these somewhat disparate elements seems to be Harring and just when it seems like things are coming to a head (2 hours in, with 27 min remaining) Harring uses the key to open the box and a new narrative starts. The cast is mostly the same; some of the locations and names are even familiar but not in the context that we'd come to know them. For instance: during Harring and Watts' investigation, Harring had recalled that her name was Diane Selwyn, but when they had found and called the phone number listed under than name, the outgoing message featured a different woman's voice. When they went to investigate this other Diane Selwyn's apartment, they had found her lying dead in her bed. After the box is opened, Naomi Watts wakes up in that apartment and with the name Diane Selwyn (a neighbor with whom Diane Selwyn had switched apartments is apparently a constant in both stories/realities/narratives). Confusing, right?
We learn that in this reality, Watts/Diane Selwyn was the lover of Harring/Camilla Rhodes (another familiar name) but that split over a perceived affair with Theroux's film director (another constant). Harring/Rhodes then invites Watts/Selwyn to a dinner party at the director's house where their apparent open relationship seems to taunt Watts/Selwyn, who ultimately hires the hitman (another constant) to kill Harring/Rhodes. He informs her that she will be given a blue key as a signal that the job has been completed. The film ends with Watts/Selwyn tormented by hallucinations, shooting herself in the head.
I left the theater livid with the kind of ignorant righteous indignation that only the truly uninformed can have. I remember walking out into a very cold, very windy night and complaining loudly that it made no sense, was weird just for the sake of being weird, completely cheats its audience, and etc. I compared it to the fable of The Emperor's New Clothes, saying everyone was too afraid to seem like they didn't get it, so they called Lynch a auteur.
(I know, I know...)
Over the next week or so, a lot of people asked me what I'd thought of the movie (I had mentioned it to a lot of people; I was very excited). They asked me what I thought and I told them. In detail. Like, serious detail. The kind of detail that would make the above synopsis seem brief. I would spend an obnoxiously long time explaining the plot and detailing how it featured fairly standard Film Noir cliches like the amnesia, struggling film starlets, shady Hollywood-adjacent goings-on, (and etc.) just to drive home how out-of-nowhere things like The Diner Scene and The Blue Box were.
And then. I was in the middle of my umpteenth recitation of the plot (to my aunt, this time) and I just... got it. I had a major lightbulb-overhead-clicks-on moment. Here's where it gets kind of embarrassing. The lynch-pin (pun only slightly intended) to understanding Mulholland Drive lies in having had your heart broken and understanding the size of the need that creates in you. You'll find yourself constructing elaborate revenge scenarios in your head where the person you lost comes back into your life; where the person they left you for ends up humiliated and destitute; where you get to start over and feel whole again. The embarrassing part? I had just gone through that myself but didn't want to address those feelings until Mulholland Drive, essentially, made me.
Naomi Watts/Diane Selwyn, having lost the love of her life to Justin Theroux's film director, envisions a world where he ends up ruined, emasculated and humiliated. Her lost love (Laura Harring/Camilla Rhodes) literally stumbles back into her life and doesn't just want her, but comes to need her. Where the movie gets... hairy, comprehension-wise, is when Watts/Selwyn's real life bleeds into her fantasy. The hitman, the dead body in "Diane's" apartment, the blue key (and etc.) are all signs of her deteriorating mental stability in the wake of an emotional breakdown brought on by the guilt of hiring a man to murder her ex. It all (mostly) made sense. I just had to look closer than I was used to.
That was then, this is now. I have rarely had such a tangible epiphanic moment. I can recall all the details of that instant so clearly: standing by the kitchen sink, holding the corded rotary phone because I'd talked so long on the cordless that its battery had died and needed to be recharged. I can remember hearing my aunt's dog Violet barking in the background in the dead air while the gears in my head all locked into place. I wanted to rush back to the theater to watch it again immediately, but I didn't get the chance.
It ended up being a few years until I saw Mulholland Drive again. In the interim I had absorbed a lot more Lynch. Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Eraserhead, Wild at Heart (my favorite) the Elephant Man and Dune (which doesn't really count but still) and had begun to understand what those people had told me from the beginning about Lynch and about his films: weird, dark, complicated, hypnotic, seductive, et al. These days a Lynch film (or with Twin Peaks: The Return, Lynch TV) is what I refer to as a "just-take-my-money-and-tell-me-where-to-sit" situation.
To be fair to 19-year-old Hunter, Mulholland Drive is a bit of a stacked deck. It's not meant to be a movie you understand as you walk out of the theater. It is entirely designed to invite scrutiny and contemplation as the audience is too busy playing an impossible game of catch-up to do any real analysis before it ends. And, honestly, having just rewatched it (to make sure I had all my ducks in a row for this article), I'm not even sure my read on it is "the right one" anymore. There may not be a "right one", or there may be several.
I was wrong about Mulholland Drive and wrong about David Lynch (who has become a favorite person of mine beyond just the art he has created), but the knowledge that I was so far off-base about a film and its creator has helped me keep an open mind when absorbing other media. So not only did I change my mind about both film and director, they helped me change the way I view and think about movies, which is a big deal for me.
So thank you, David Lynch. And I'm sorry.
* * *
The film begins following a young woman (Laura Harring) stumbling away from a car accident at night (on the titular road) and ending up in an empty apartment. The next day she meets another young woman (Naomi Watts), who is staying in the apartment while her aunt is away. Watts realizes that Harring has amnesia and offers to help her get her memory back. The two become close while investigating Harring's identity, and begin a sexual relationship. Meanwhile, a secondary plot follows a film director (Justin Theroux) as he suffers one bad break or indignity after another. There is one scene where two men (Patrick Fischler and Michael Cooke) meet in a diner to discuss the nature of a dream Fischler has had. It ends with the dream seemingly coming true and Fischler collapsing in fright. We also occasionally follow the misadventures of a somewhat inept, though ultimately successful hitman. There are also an unusual looking blue key and a box; equally unusual, equally blue and a nightclub called Club Silencio where the host instructs the audience (and likewise the audience) in the subjective nature of reality.
The link between these somewhat disparate elements seems to be Harring and just when it seems like things are coming to a head (2 hours in, with 27 min remaining) Harring uses the key to open the box and a new narrative starts. The cast is mostly the same; some of the locations and names are even familiar but not in the context that we'd come to know them. For instance: during Harring and Watts' investigation, Harring had recalled that her name was Diane Selwyn, but when they had found and called the phone number listed under than name, the outgoing message featured a different woman's voice. When they went to investigate this other Diane Selwyn's apartment, they had found her lying dead in her bed. After the box is opened, Naomi Watts wakes up in that apartment and with the name Diane Selwyn (a neighbor with whom Diane Selwyn had switched apartments is apparently a constant in both stories/realities/narratives). Confusing, right?
We learn that in this reality, Watts/Diane Selwyn was the lover of Harring/Camilla Rhodes (another familiar name) but that split over a perceived affair with Theroux's film director (another constant). Harring/Rhodes then invites Watts/Selwyn to a dinner party at the director's house where their apparent open relationship seems to taunt Watts/Selwyn, who ultimately hires the hitman (another constant) to kill Harring/Rhodes. He informs her that she will be given a blue key as a signal that the job has been completed. The film ends with Watts/Selwyn tormented by hallucinations, shooting herself in the head.
* * *
I left the theater livid with the kind of ignorant righteous indignation that only the truly uninformed can have. I remember walking out into a very cold, very windy night and complaining loudly that it made no sense, was weird just for the sake of being weird, completely cheats its audience, and etc. I compared it to the fable of The Emperor's New Clothes, saying everyone was too afraid to seem like they didn't get it, so they called Lynch a auteur.
(I know, I know...)
Over the next week or so, a lot of people asked me what I'd thought of the movie (I had mentioned it to a lot of people; I was very excited). They asked me what I thought and I told them. In detail. Like, serious detail. The kind of detail that would make the above synopsis seem brief. I would spend an obnoxiously long time explaining the plot and detailing how it featured fairly standard Film Noir cliches like the amnesia, struggling film starlets, shady Hollywood-adjacent goings-on, (and etc.) just to drive home how out-of-nowhere things like The Diner Scene and The Blue Box were.
And then. I was in the middle of my umpteenth recitation of the plot (to my aunt, this time) and I just... got it. I had a major lightbulb-overhead-clicks-on moment. Here's where it gets kind of embarrassing. The lynch-pin (pun only slightly intended) to understanding Mulholland Drive lies in having had your heart broken and understanding the size of the need that creates in you. You'll find yourself constructing elaborate revenge scenarios in your head where the person you lost comes back into your life; where the person they left you for ends up humiliated and destitute; where you get to start over and feel whole again. The embarrassing part? I had just gone through that myself but didn't want to address those feelings until Mulholland Drive, essentially, made me.
Naomi Watts/Diane Selwyn, having lost the love of her life to Justin Theroux's film director, envisions a world where he ends up ruined, emasculated and humiliated. Her lost love (Laura Harring/Camilla Rhodes) literally stumbles back into her life and doesn't just want her, but comes to need her. Where the movie gets... hairy, comprehension-wise, is when Watts/Selwyn's real life bleeds into her fantasy. The hitman, the dead body in "Diane's" apartment, the blue key (and etc.) are all signs of her deteriorating mental stability in the wake of an emotional breakdown brought on by the guilt of hiring a man to murder her ex. It all (mostly) made sense. I just had to look closer than I was used to.
That was then, this is now. I have rarely had such a tangible epiphanic moment. I can recall all the details of that instant so clearly: standing by the kitchen sink, holding the corded rotary phone because I'd talked so long on the cordless that its battery had died and needed to be recharged. I can remember hearing my aunt's dog Violet barking in the background in the dead air while the gears in my head all locked into place. I wanted to rush back to the theater to watch it again immediately, but I didn't get the chance.
It ended up being a few years until I saw Mulholland Drive again. In the interim I had absorbed a lot more Lynch. Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Eraserhead, Wild at Heart (my favorite) the Elephant Man and Dune (which doesn't really count but still) and had begun to understand what those people had told me from the beginning about Lynch and about his films: weird, dark, complicated, hypnotic, seductive, et al. These days a Lynch film (or with Twin Peaks: The Return, Lynch TV) is what I refer to as a "just-take-my-money-and-tell-me-where-to-sit" situation.
To be fair to 19-year-old Hunter, Mulholland Drive is a bit of a stacked deck. It's not meant to be a movie you understand as you walk out of the theater. It is entirely designed to invite scrutiny and contemplation as the audience is too busy playing an impossible game of catch-up to do any real analysis before it ends. And, honestly, having just rewatched it (to make sure I had all my ducks in a row for this article), I'm not even sure my read on it is "the right one" anymore. There may not be a "right one", or there may be several.
I was wrong about Mulholland Drive and wrong about David Lynch (who has become a favorite person of mine beyond just the art he has created), but the knowledge that I was so far off-base about a film and its creator has helped me keep an open mind when absorbing other media. So not only did I change my mind about both film and director, they helped me change the way I view and think about movies, which is a big deal for me.
So thank you, David Lynch. And I'm sorry.
