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Mulholland Drive (film)

January 14, 2023

Not to be confused with the 1996 film Mulholland Falls.

Mulholland Drive (stylized as Mulholland Dr.) is a 2001 surrealist neo-noir[6][7] mystery film written and directed by David Lynch and starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, Mark Pellegrino, and Robert Forster. It tells the story of an aspiring actress named Betty Elms (Watts), newly arrived in Los Angeles, who meets and befriends an amnesiac woman (Harring) recovering from a car accident. The story follows several other vignettes and characters, including a Hollywood film director (Theroux).

Mulholland Drive
Theatrical release poster
Directed byDavid Lynch
Written byDavid Lynch
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyPeter Deming
Edited byMary Sweeney
Music byAngelo Badalamenti
Production
companies
Distributed by
Release dates
  • May 16, 2001 (2001-05-16) (Cannes)
  • October 12, 2001 (2001-10-12) (US)
  • November 21, 2001 (2001-11-21) (France)
Running time
146 minutes[2]
Countries
LanguageEnglish
Budget$15 million[4]
Box office$20.1 million[5]

The American-French co-production was originally conceived as a television pilot, and a large portion of the film was shot in 1999 with Lynch's plan to keep it open-ended for a potential series. After viewing Lynch's cut, however, television executives rejected it. Lynch then provided an ending to the project, making it a feature film. The half-pilot, half-feature result, along with Lynch's characteristic surrealist style, has left the general meaning of the film's events open to interpretation. Lynch has declined to offer an explanation of his intentions for the narrative, leaving audiences, critics, and cast members to speculate on what transpires. He gave the film the tagline "A love story in the city of dreams".

Categorized as a psychological thriller, Mulholland Drive earned Lynch the Prix de la mise en scène (Best Director Award) at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, sharing the prize with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There. Lynch also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. The film boosted Watts' Hollywood profile considerably, and was the last feature film to star veteran Hollywood actress Ann Miller.

Mulholland Drive is often regarded as one of Lynch's finest works and as one of the greatest films of all time. It was ranked 8th in the 2022 Sight & Sound critics' poll of the best films ever made and topped a 2016 BBC poll of the best films since 2000.

Plot

A dark-haired woman is the sole survivor of a car crash on Mulholland Drive, a winding road high in the Hollywood Hills. Injured and dazed, she makes her way down into Los Angeles by foot and sneaks into an apartment. Later that morning, an aspiring actress named Betty Elms arrives at the apartment, which is normally occupied by her Aunt Ruth. Betty is startled to find the woman, who has amnesia and calls herself "Rita" after seeing a poster for the film Gilda starring Rita Hayworth. To help the woman remember her identity, Betty looks in Rita's purse, where she finds a large amount of money and an unusual blue key.

At a diner called Winkie's, a man tells another about a nightmare in which he dreamt of encountering a horrific figure behind the diner. When they investigate, the figure appears, causing the man who had the nightmare to collapse in fright. Elsewhere, director Adam Kesher has his film commandeered by mobsters, who insist he cast an unknown actress named Camilla Rhodes as the lead. Adam refuses and returns home to find his wife Lorraine cheating on him. When the mobsters withdraw his line of credit, Adam arranges to meet a mysterious cowboy, who cryptically urges him to cast Camilla for his own good. Meanwhile, a bungling hitman attempts to steal a book full of phone numbers and leaves three people dead.

While trying to learn more about Rita's accident, Betty and Rita go to Winkie's and are served by a waitress named Diane, which causes Rita to remember the name "Diane Selwyn". They find Diane Selwyn in the phone book and call her, but she does not answer. Betty goes to an audition, where her performance is highly praised. A casting agent takes her to a soundstage where a film called The Sylvia North Story, directed by Adam, is being cast. When Camilla Rhodes auditions with the song I've Told Every Little Star, Adam capitulates to the mob by casting her. Betty locks eyes with Adam, but she flees before she can meet him, saying she is late to meet a friend. Betty and Rita go to Diane Selwyn's apartment, where a neighbor answers the door and tells them she has switched apartments with Diane. They go to the neighbor's apartment and break in when no one answers the door. In the bedroom, they find the body of a woman who has been dead for several days. Terrified, they return to Betty's apartment, where Rita disguises herself with a blonde wig. That night, she and Betty have sex.

At 2 a.m., Rita awakes suddenly, insisting they go right away to a theater called Club Silencio. There, the emcee explains in different languages that everything is an illusion; Rebekah Del Rio comes on stage and begins singing the Roy Orbison song "Crying" in Spanish, then collapses, unconscious, while her vocals continue in playback. Betty finds a blue box in her purse that matches Rita's key. Upon returning to the apartment, Rita retrieves the key and finds that Betty has disappeared. Rita unlocks the box, and it falls to the floor. Aunt Ruth enters the room to find nobody.

Diane Selwyn wakes up in her bed in the same apartment Betty and Rita investigated, where her neighbor informs her that two police officers have been looking for her. She looks exactly like Betty, but is a struggling actress driven into a deep depression by her failed affair with Camilla Rhodes, who is a successful actress and looks exactly like Rita. At Camilla's invitation, Diane attends a party at Adam's house on Mulholland Drive. At dinner, Diane states she came to Hollywood from Canada when her Aunt Ruth died and left her some money, and she met Camilla at an audition for The Sylvia North Story. Another woman who looks like the previous "Camilla Rhodes" kisses Camilla, and they turn and smile at Diane. Adam and Camilla prepare to make their marriage announcement, but they devolve into laughter and kiss while Diane watches, crying. Later, Diane meets the hitman at Winkie's, to hire him to kill Camilla. He tells her she will find a blue key when the job is completed. The figure from the man's dream is revealed to have the matching blue box. In her apartment, Diane looks at the blue key on her coffee table, when someone unceasingly knocks on the door. Distraught, she is terrorized by hallucinations and runs screaming to her bed, where she shoots herself. A woman at the theater whispers, "Silencio".

Cast

Production

Development

Originally conceived as a television series, Mulholland Drive began as a 90-minute pilot produced for Touchstone Television and intended for the ABC television network. Tony Krantz, the agent who was responsible for the development of Twin Peaks, was "fired up" about doing another television series. Lynch sold the idea to ABC executives based only on the story of Rita emerging from the car accident with her purse containing $125,000 in cash and the blue key, and Betty trying to help her figure out who she is. An ABC executive recalled, "I remember the creepiness of this woman in this horrible, horrible crash, and David teasing us with the notion that people are chasing her. She's not just 'in' trouble—she is trouble. Obviously, we asked, 'What happens next?' And David said, 'You have to buy the pitch for me to tell you.'" Lynch showed ABC a rough cut of the pilot. The person who saw it, according to Lynch, was watching it at six in the morning and was having coffee and standing up. He hated the pilot, and ABC immediately cancelled it. Pierre Edleman, Lynch's friend from Paris, came to visit and started talking to him about the film being a feature. Edleman went back to Paris. Canal+ wanted to give Lynch money to make it into a feature and it took a year to negotiate.[8][9]

Lynch described the attractiveness of the idea of a pilot, despite the knowledge that the medium of television would be constricting: "I'm a sucker for a continuing story ... Theoretically, you can get a very deep story and you can go so deep and open the world so beautifully, but it takes time to do that."[10] The story included surreal elements, much like Lynch's earlier series Twin Peaks. Groundwork was laid for story arcs, such as the mystery of Rita's identity, Betty's career and Adam Kesher's film project.[11]

Actress Sherilyn Fenn stated in a 2014 interview that the original idea came during the filming of Twin Peaks, as a spin-off film for her character of Audrey Horne.[12]

Casting

 
Naomi Watts, David Lynch, Laura Elena Harring and Justin Theroux at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival

Lynch cast Naomi Watts and Laura Harring by their photographs. He called them in separately for half-hour interviews and told them that he had not seen any of their previous works in film or television.[13] Harring considered it fateful that she was involved in a minor car accident on the way to the first interview, only to learn her character would also be involved in a car accident in the film.[14] Watts arrived wearing jeans for the first interview, direct from the airplane from New York City. Lynch asked her to return the next day "more glammed up". She was offered the part two weeks later. Lynch explained his selection of Watts, "I saw someone that I felt had a tremendous talent, and I saw someone who had a beautiful soul, an intelligence—possibilities for a lot of different roles, so it was a beautiful full package."[15] Justin Theroux also met Lynch directly after his airplane flight. After a long flight with little sleep, Theroux arrived dressed all in black, with untidy hair. Lynch liked the look and decided to cast Adam wearing similar clothes and the same hairstyle.[16]

Filming

Filming for the television pilot began on location in Los Angeles in February 1999 and took six weeks. Ultimately, the network was unhappy with the pilot and decided not to place it on its schedule.[17][18] Objections included the nonlinear storyline, the ages of Harring and Watts (whom they considered too old), cigarette smoking by Ann Miller's character and a close-frame shot of dog feces in one scene. Lynch remembered, "All I know is, I loved making it, ABC hated it, and I don't like the cut I turned in. I agreed with ABC that the longer cut was too slow, but I was forced to butcher it because we had a deadline, and there wasn't time to finesse anything. It lost texture, big scenes and storylines, and there are 300 tape copies of the bad version circulating around. Lots of people have seen it, which is embarrassing, because they're bad-quality tapes, too. I don't want to think about it."[19]

One night, I sat down, the ideas came in, and it was a most beautiful experience. Everything was seen from a different angle ... Now, looking back, I see that [the film] always wanted to be this way. It just took this strange beginning to cause it to be what it is.

David Lynch, 2001

The script was later rewritten and expanded when Lynch decided to transform it into a feature film. Describing the transition from an open-ended pilot to a feature film with a resolution of sorts, Lynch said, "One night, I sat down, the ideas came in, and it was a most beautiful experience. Everything was seen from a different angle ... Now, looking back, I see that [the film] always wanted to be this way. It just took this strange beginning to cause it to be what it is."[20] The result was an extra eighteen pages of material that included the romantic relationship between Rita and Betty and the events that occurred after the blue box was opened. Watts was relieved that the pilot was dropped by ABC. She found Betty too one-dimensional without the darker portion of the film that was put together afterward.[21] Most of the new scenes were filmed in October 2000, funded with $7 million from French production company StudioCanal.[13]

Theroux described approaching filming without entirely understanding the plot: "You get the whole script, but he might as well withhold the scenes you're not in, because the whole turns out to be more mystifying than the parts. David welcomes questions, but he won't answer any of them ... You work kind of half-blindfolded. If he were a first-time director and hadn't demonstrated any command of this method, I'd probably have reservations. But it obviously works for him."[22] Theroux noted that the only answer Lynch did provide was that he was certain that Theroux's character, a Hollywood director, was not meant to be Lynch. Watts stated that she tried to bluff Lynch by pretending she had the plot figured out, and that he delighted in the cast's frustration.[13]

"I'm not going to lie: I felt very vulnerable," Laura Harring said of filming the sex scene between Harring and Watts' characters. "I was in my dressing room and was on the verge of tears. It's hard. There are a lot of people there ... Naomi and I were friends. It was pretty awkward."[23]

Themes and interpretations

Contained within the original DVD release is a card titled "David Lynch's 10 Clues to Unlocking This Thriller". The clues are:

  1. Pay particular attention in the beginning of the film: At least two clues are revealed before the credits.
  2. Notice appearances of the red lampshade.
  3. Can you hear the title of the film that Adam Kesher is auditioning actresses for? Is it mentioned again?
  4. An accident is a terrible event—notice the location of the accident.
  5. Who gives a key, and why?
  6. Notice the robe, the ashtray, the coffee cup.
  7. What is felt, realized and gathered at the Club Silencio?
  8. Did talent alone help Camilla?
  9. Note the occurrences surrounding the man behind Winkie's.
  10. Where is Aunt Ruth?

2002 DVD edition insert[24]

Giving the film only the tagline "A love story in the city of dreams",[20] David Lynch has refused to comment on Mulholland Drive's meaning or symbolism, leading to much discussion and multiple interpretations. The Christian Science Monitor film critic David Sterritt spoke with Lynch after the film screened at Cannes and wrote that the director "insisted that Mulholland Drive does tell a coherent, comprehensible story", unlike some of Lynch's earlier films like Lost Highway.[25] On the other hand, Justin Theroux said of Lynch's feelings on the multiple meanings people perceive in the film, "I think he's genuinely happy for it to mean anything you want. He loves it when people come up with really bizarre interpretations. David works from his subconscious."[22]

Dreams and alternative realities

An early interpretation of the film uses dream analysis to argue that the first part is a dream of the real Diane Selwyn, who has cast her dream-self as the innocent and hopeful "Betty Elms", reconstructing her history and persona into something like an old Hollywood film. In the dream, Betty is successful, charming, and lives the fantasy life of a soon-to-be-famous actress. The last one-fifth of the film presents Diane's real life, in which she has failed both personally and professionally. She arranges for Camilla, an ex-lover, to be killed, and unable to cope with the guilt, re-imagines her as the dependent, pliable amnesiac Rita. Clues to her inevitable demise, however, continue to appear throughout her dream.[26]

This interpretation was similar to what Naomi Watts construed, when she said in an interview, "I thought Diane was the real character and that Betty was the person she wanted to be and had dreamed up. Rita is the damsel in distress and she's in absolute need of Betty, and Betty controls her as if she were a doll. Rita is Betty's fantasy of who she wants Camilla to be."[21] Watts's own early experiences in Hollywood parallel those of Diane's. She endured some professional frustration before she became successful, auditioned for parts in which she did not believe, and encountered people who did not follow through with opportunities. She recalled, "There were a lot of promises, but nothing actually came off. I ran out of money and became quite lonely."[27] Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune found that "everything in 'Mulholland Drive' is a nightmare. It's a portrayal of the Hollywood golden dream turning rancid, curdling into a poisonous stew of hatred, envy, sleazy compromise and soul-killing failure. This is the underbelly of our glamorous fantasies, and the area Lynch shows here is realistically portrayed".[28]

The Guardian asked six well-known film critics for their own perceptions of the overall meaning in Mulholland Drive. Neil Roberts of The Sun and Tom Charity of Time Out subscribe to the theory that Betty is Diane's projection of a happier life. Roger Ebert and Jonathan Ross seem to accept this interpretation, but both hesitate to overanalyze the film. Ebert states, "There is no explanation. There may not even be a mystery." Ross observes that there are storylines that go nowhere: "Perhaps these were leftovers from the pilot it was originally intended to be, or perhaps these things are the non-sequiturs and subconscious of dreams."[29] Philip French from The Observer sees it as an allusion to Hollywood tragedy, while Jane Douglas from the BBC rejects the theory of Betty's life as Diane's dream, but also warns against too much analysis.[29]

Media theorist Siobhan Lyons similarly disagrees with the dream theory, arguing that it is a "superficial interpretation [which] undermines the strength of the absurdity of reality that often takes place in Lynch's universe".[30] Instead, Lyons posits that Betty and Diane are in fact two different people who happen to look similar, a common motif among Hollywood starlets. In a similar interpretation, Betty and Rita and Diane and Camilla may exist in parallel universes that sometimes interconnect. Another theory offered is that the narrative is a Möbius strip, a twisted band that has no beginning and no end.[31] Or the entire film is a dream, but the identity of the dreamer is unknown.[32] Repeated references to beds, bedrooms and sleeping symbolize the heavy influence of dreams. Rita falls asleep several times; in between these episodes, disconnected scenes such as the men having a conversation at Winkie's, Betty's arrival in Los Angeles and the bungled hit take place, suggesting that Rita may be dreaming them. The opening shot of the film zooms into a bed containing an unknown sleeper, instilling, according to film scholar Ruth Perlmutter, the necessity to ask if what follows is reality.[33] Professor of dream studies Kelly Bulkeley argues that the early scene at the diner, as the only one in which dreams or dreaming are explicitly mentioned, illustrates "revelatory truth and epistemological uncertainty in Lynch's film".[34] The monstrous being from the dream, who is the subject of conversation of the men in Winkie's, reappears at the end of the film right before and after Diane commits suicide. Bulkeley asserts that the lone discussion of dreams in that scene presents an opening to "a new way of understanding everything that happens in the movie".[34]

Philosopher and film theorist Robert Sinnerbrink similarly notes that the images following Diane's apparent suicide undermine the "dream and reality" interpretation. After Diane shoots herself, the bed is consumed with smoke, and Betty and Rita are shown beaming at each other, after which a woman in the Club Silencio balcony whispers "Silencio" as the screen fades to black. Sinnerbrink writes that the "concluding images float in an indeterminate zone between fantasy and reality, which is perhaps the genuinely metaphysical dimension of the cinematic image", also noting that it might be that the "last sequence comprises the fantasy images of Diane's dying consciousness, concluding with the real moment of her death: the final Silencio".[35] Referring to the same sequence, film theorist Andrew Hageman notes that "the ninety-second coda that follows Betty/Diane's suicide is a cinematic space that persists after the curtain has dropped on her living consciousness, and this persistent space is the very theatre where the illusion of illusion is continually unmasked".[36]

Film theorist David Roche writes that Lynch films do not simply tell detective stories, but rather force the audience into the role of becoming detectives themselves to make sense of the narratives, and that Mulholland Drive, like other Lynch films, frustrates "the spectator's need for a rational diegesis by playing on the spectator's mistake that narration is synonymous with diegesis". In Lynch's films, the spectator is always "one step behind narration" and thus "narration prevails over diegesis".[37] Roche also notes that there are multiple mysteries in the film that ultimately go unanswered by the characters who meet dead ends, like Betty and Rita, or give in to pressures as Adam does. Although the audience still struggles to make sense of the stories, the characters are no longer trying to solve their mysteries. Roche concludes that Mulholland Drive is a mystery film not because it allows the audience to view the solution to a question, but the film itself is a mystery that is held together "by the spectator-detective's desire to make sense" of it.[37]

A "poisonous valentine to Hollywood"

 
The view of Los Angeles from Mulholland Drive has become an iconic representation of the city's opportunities.

Despite the proliferation of theories, critics note that no explanation satisfies all of the loose ends and questions that arise from the film. Stephen Holden of The New York Times writes, "Mulholland Drive has little to do with any single character's love life or professional ambition. The movie is an ever-deepening reflection on the allure of Hollywood and on the multiple role-playing and self-invention that the movie-going experience promises ... What greater power is there than the power to enter and to program the dream life of the culture?"[38] J. Hoberman from The Village Voice echoes this sentiment by calling it a "poisonous valentine to Hollywood".[39]

Mulholland Drive has been compared with Billy Wilder's film noir classic Sunset Boulevard (1950), another tale about broken dreams in Hollywood,[20][40][41] and early in the film Rita is shown crossing Sunset Boulevard at night. Apart from both titles being named after iconic Los Angeles streets, Mulholland Drive is "Lynch's unique account of what held Wilder's attention too: human putrefaction (a term Lynch used several times during his press conference at the New York Film Festival 2001) in a city of lethal illusions".[42] The title of the film is a reference to iconic Hollywood culture. Lynch lives near Mulholland Drive, and stated in an interview, "At night, you ride on the top of the world. In the daytime you ride on top of the world, too, but it's mysterious, and there's a hair of fear because it goes into remote areas. You feel the history of Hollywood in that road."[20] Watts also had experience with the road before her career was established: "I remember driving along the street many times sobbing my heart out in my car, going, 'What am I doing here?'"[15]

Critic Gregory Weight cautions viewers against a cynical interpretation of the events in the film, stating that Lynch presents more than "the façade and that he believes only evil and deceit lie beneath it".[43] As much as Lynch makes a statement about the deceit, manipulation and false pretenses in Hollywood culture, he also infuses nostalgia throughout the film and recognizes that real art comes from classic filmmaking as Lynch cast thereby paying tribute to veteran actors Ann Miller, Lee Grant and Chad Everett. He also portrays Betty as extraordinarily talented and shows that her abilities are noticed by powerful people in the entertainment industry.[43] Commenting on the contrasting positions between film nostalgia and the putrefaction of Hollywood, Steven Dillon writes that Mulholland Drive is critical of the culture of Hollywood as much as it is a condemnation of "cinephilia" (the fascination of filmmaking and the fantasies associated with it).[44]

Harring described her interpretation after seeing the film: "When I saw it the first time, I thought it was the story of Hollywood dreams, illusion and obsession. It touches on the idea that nothing is quite as it seems, especially the idea of being a Hollywood movie star. The second and third times I saw it, I thought it dealt with identity. Do we know who we are? And then I kept seeing different things in it ... There's no right or wrong to what someone takes away from it or what they think the film is really about. It's a movie that makes you continuously ponder, makes you ask questions. I've heard over and over, 'This is a movie that I'll see again' or 'This is a movie you've got to see again.' It intrigues you. You want to get it, but I don't think it's a movie to be gotten. It's achieved its goal if it makes you ask questions."[45]

Romantic content

The relationships between Betty and Rita, and Diane and Camilla have been variously described as "touching", "moving", as well as "titillating". The French critic Thierry Jousse, in his review for Cahiers du cinéma, said that the love between the women depicted is "of lyricism practically without equal in contemporary cinema".[46] In the pages of Film Comment, Phillip Lopate states that the pivotal romantic interlude between Betty and Rita was made poignant and tender by Betty's "understanding for the first time, with self-surprise, that all her helpfulness and curiosity about the other woman had a point: desire ... It is a beautiful moment, made all the more miraculous by its earned tenderness, and its distances from anything lurid."[32] Stephanie Zacharek of Salon magazine stated that the scene's "eroticism [was] so potent it blankets the whole movie, coloring every scene that came before and every one that follows".[47] Betty and Rita were chosen by the Independent Film Channel as the emblematic romantic couple of the 2000s. Writer Charles Taylor said, "Betty and Rita are often framed against darkness so soft and velvety it's like a hovering nimbus, ready to swallow them if they awake from the film's dream. And when they are swallowed, when smoke fills the frame as if the sulfur of hell itself were obscuring our vision, we feel as if not just a romance has been broken, but the beauty of the world has been cursed."[48]

Some film theorists have argued that Lynch inserts queerness in the aesthetic and thematic content of the film. The non-linear film is "incapable of sustaining narrative coherence", as Lee Wallace argues that, "lesbianism dissolves the ideological conventions of narrative realism, operating as the switch point for the contesting storyworlds within Lynch's elaborately plotted film".[49] The presence of mirrors and doppelgangers throughout the film "are common representations of lesbian desire".[50] The co-dependency in the relationship between Betty and Rita—which borders on outright obsession—has been compared to the female relationships in two similar films, Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966) and Robert Altman's 3 Women (1977), which also depict identities of vulnerable women that become tangled, interchanging and ultimately merge: "The female couples also mirror each other, with their mutual interactions conflating hero(ine) worship with same-sex desire".[51] Lynch pays direct homage to Persona in the scene where Rita dons the blonde wig, styled exactly like Betty's own hair. Rita and Betty then gaze at each other in the mirror "drawing attention to their physical similarity, linking the sequence to theme of embrace, physical coupling and the idea of merging or doubling".[50] Mirroring and doubles, which are prominent themes throughout the film, serve to further queer the form and content of the film.

Several theorists have accused Lynch of perpetuating stereotypes and clichés of lesbians, bisexuals and lesbian relationships. Rita (the femme fatale) and Betty (the school girl) represent two classic stock lesbian characters; Heather Love identifies two key clichés used in the film: "Lynch presents lesbianism in its innocent and expansive form: lesbian desire appears as one big adventure, an entrée into a glamorous and unknown territory".[52] Simultaneously, he presents the tragic lesbian triangle, "in which an attractive but unavailable woman dumps a less attractive woman who is figured as exclusively lesbian", perpetuating the stereotype of the bisexual "ending up with a man".[52] Maria San Filippo recognizes that Lynch relies on classic film noir archetypes to develop Camilla's eventual betrayal: these archetypes "become ingrained to such a degree that viewers are immediately cued that "Rita" is not what she seems and that it is only a matter of time before she reveals her duplicitous nature."[53] For Love, Diane's exclusively lesbian desire is "between success and failure, between sexiness and abjection, even between life and death" if she is rejected.[52] Diane is the tragic lesbian cliché pining after the bisexual in the heterosexual relationship. Love's analysis of the film notes the media's peculiar response to the film's lesbian content: "reviewers rhapsodized in particular and at length about the film's sex scenes, as if there were a contest to see who could enjoy this representation of female same-sex desire the most."[52] She points out that the film used a classic theme in literature and film depicting lesbian relationships: Camilla as achingly beautiful and available, rejecting Diane for Adam. Popular reaction to the film suggests the contrasting relationships between Betty and Rita and Diane and Camilla are "understood as both the hottest thing on earth and, at the same time, as something fundamentally sad and not at all erotic" as "the heterosexual order asserts itself with crushing effects for the abandoned woman".[52]

Heterosexuality as primary is important in the latter half of the film, as the ultimate demise of Diane and Camilla's relationship springs from the matrimony of the heterosexual couple. At Adam's party, they begin to announce that Camilla and Adam are getting married; through laughs and kisses, the declaration is delayed because it is obvious and expected. The heterosexual closure of the scene is interrupted by a scene change. As Lee Wallace suggests, by planning a hit against Camilla, "Diane circumvents the heterosexual closure of the industry story but only by going over to its storyworld, an act that proves fatal for both women, the cause and effect relations of the thriller being fundamentally incompatible with the plot of lesbianism as the film presents it".[49] For Joshua Bastian Cole, Adam's character serves as Diane's foil, what she can never be, which is why Camilla leaves her. In her fantasy, Adam has his own subplot which leads to his humiliation. While this subplot can be understood as a revenge fantasy born from jealousy, Cole argues that this is an example of Diane's transgender gaze: "Adam functions like a mirror – a male object upon which Diane might project herself".[54] Diane's prolonged eye-contact with Dan at Winkie's is another example of the trans gaze. For Cole, "Diane's strange recognition of Dan, which is not quite identification but something else, feels trans in its oblique line, drawn between impossible doubles" and their similar names (Dan/Diane) which is no mistake.[54] He stresses that the lesbian understanding of the film has overshadowed potential trans interpretations; his reading of Diane's trans gaze is a contribution to the queer narrative of the film.

Media portrayals of Naomi Watts's and Laura Elena Harring's views of their onscreen relationships were varied and conflicting. Watts said of the filming of the scene, "I don't see it as erotic, though maybe it plays that way. The last time I saw it, I actually had tears in my eyes because I knew where the story was going. It broke my heart a little bit."[55] However, in another interview Watts stated, "I was amazed how honest and real all this looks on screen. These girls look really in love and it was curiously erotic."[27] While Harring was quoted saying, "The love scene just happened in my eyes. Rita's very grateful for the help Betty's given [her] so I'm saying goodbye and goodnight to her, thank you, from the bottom of my heart, I kiss her and then there's just an energy that takes us [over]. Of course I have amnesia so I don't know if I've done it before, but I don't think we're really lesbians."[56] Heather Love agreed somewhat with Harring's perception when she stated that identity in Mulholland Drive is not as important as desire: "who we are does not count for much—what matters instead is what we are about to do, what we want to do."[52]

Characters

 
Betty (Watts) arrives in Los Angeles; pictured with Irene (Jeanne Bates). Betty is bright and optimistic, in contrast to Diane—also played by Watts—in the later part of the film.

Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) is the bright and talented newcomer to Los Angeles, described as "wholesome, optimistic, determined to take the town by storm",[32] and "absurdly naïve".[57] Her perkiness and intrepid approach to helping Rita because it is the right thing to do is reminiscent of Nancy Drew for reviewers.[57][58][59] Her entire persona at first is an apparent cliché of small-town naïveté. But it is Betty's identity, or loss of it, that appears to be the focus of the film. For one critic, Betty performed the role of the film's consciousness and unconscious.[57] Watts, who modeled Betty on Doris Day, Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak, observed that Betty is a thrill-seeker, someone "who finds herself in a world she doesn't belong in and is ready to take on a new identity, even if it's somebody else's".[21] This has also led one theorist to conclude that since Betty had naïvely, yet eagerly entered the Hollywood system, she had become a "complicit actor" who had "embraced the very structure that" destroyed her.[36] In an explanation of her development of the Betty character, Watts stated:

I had to therefore come up with my own decisions about what this meant and what this character was going through, what was dream and what was reality. My interpretation could end up being completely different, from both David and the audience. But I did have to reconcile all of that, and people seem to think it works.[60]

Betty, however difficult to believe as her character is established, shows an astonishing depth of dimension in her audition.[41][61] Previously rehearsed with Rita in the apartment, where Rita feeds her lines woodenly, the scene is "dreck"[32] and "hollow; every line unworthy of a genuine actress's commitment", and Betty plays it in rehearsal as poorly as it is written.[61] Nervous but plucky as ever at the audition, Betty enters the cramped room, but when pitted inches from her audition partner (Chad Everett), she turns it into a scene of powerful sexual tension that she fully controls and draws in every person in the room. The sexuality erodes immediately as the scene ends and she stands before them shyly waiting for their approval. One film analyst asserts that Betty's previously unknown ability steals the show, specifically, taking the dark mystery away from Rita and assigning it to herself, and by Lynch's use of this scene illustrates his use of deception in his characters.[61] Betty's acting ability prompts Ruth Perlmutter to speculate if Betty is acting the role of Diane in either a dream or a parody of a film that ultimately turns against her.[33]

Rita (Harring) is the mysterious and helpless apparent victim, a classic femme fatale with her dark, strikingly beautiful appearance. Roger Ebert was so impressed with Harring that he said of her "all she has to do is stand there and she is the first good argument in 55 years for a Gilda remake".[58] She serves as the object of desire, directly oppositional to Betty's bright self-assuredness. She is also the first character with whom the audience identifies, and as viewers know her only as confused and frightened, not knowing who she is and where she is going, she represents their desire to make sense of the film through her identity.[62] Instead of threatening, she inspires Betty to nurture, console and help her. Her amnesia makes her a blank persona, which one reviewer notes is "the vacancy that comes with extraordinary beauty and the onlooker's willingness to project any combination of angelic and devilish onto her".[32] A character analysis of Rita asserts that her actions are the most genuine of the first portion of the film, since she has no memory and nothing to use as a frame of reference for how to behave.[31] Todd McGowan, however, author of a book on themes in Lynch's films, states that the first portion of Mulholland Drive can be construed as Rita's fantasy, until Diane Selwyn is revealed; Betty is the object that overcomes Rita's anxiety about her loss of identity.[63] According to film historian Steven Dillon, Diane transitions a former roommate into Rita: following a tense scene where the roommate collects her remaining belongings, Rita appears in the apartment, smiling at Diane.[44]

 
Harring as the dark-haired woman
 
Gilda poster (1946)
The dark-haired woman assumes the name "Rita" after seeing the name on a poster. Her search for her identity has been interpreted by film scholars as representing the audience's desire to make sense of the film.

After Betty and Rita find the decomposing body, they flee the apartment and their images are split apart and reintegrated. David Roche notes that Rita's lack of identity causes a breakdown that "occurs not only at the level of the character but also at the level of the image; the shot is subjected to special effects that fragment their image and their voices are drowned out in reverb, the camera seemingly writing out the mental state of the characters".[37] Immediately they return to Betty's aunt's apartment where Rita dons a blonde wig—ostensibly to disguise herself—but making her look remarkably like Betty. It is this transformation that one film analyst suggests is the melding of both identities. This is supported by visual clues, like particular camera angles making their faces appear to be merging into one. This is further illustrated soon after by their sexual intimacy, followed by Rita's personality becoming more dominant as she insists they go to Club Silencio at 2 a.m., that eventually leads to the total domination by Camilla.[42]

Diane Selwyn (Watts) is the palpably frustrated and depressed woman, who seems to have ridden the coattails of Camilla, whom she idolizes and adores, but who does not return her affection. She is considered to be the reality of the too-good-to-be-true Betty, or a later version of Betty after living too long in Hollywood.[38] For Steven Dillon, the plot of the film "makes Rita the perfect empty vessel for Diane's fantasies", but because Rita is only a "blank cover girl" Diane has "invested herself in emptiness", which leads her to depression and apparently to suicide.[64] Hence, Diane is the personification of dissatisfaction, painfully illustrated when she is unable to climax while masturbating, in a scene that indicates "through blurred, jerky, point of view shots of the stony wall—not only her tears and humiliation but the disintegration of her fantasy and her growing desire for revenge".[35] One analysis of Diane suggests her devotion to Camilla is based on a manifestation of narcissism, as Camilla embodies everything Diane wants and wants to be.[65] Although she is portrayed as weak and the ultimate loser, for Jeff Johnson, author of a book about morality in Lynch films, Diane is the only character in the second portion of the film whose moral code remains intact. She is "a decent person corrupted by the miscellaneous miscreants who populate the film industry".[66] Her guilt and regret are evident in her suicide, and in the clues that surface in the first portion of the film. Rita's fear, the dead body and the illusion at Club Silencio indicate that something is dark and wrong in Betty and Rita's world. In becoming free from Camilla, her moral conditioning kills her.[67]

Camilla Rhodes (Melissa George, Laura Elena Harring) is little more than a face in a photo and a name that has inspired many representatives of some vaguely threatening power to place her in a film against the wishes of Adam. Referred to as a "vapid moll" by one reviewer,[68] she barely makes an impression in the first portion of the film, but after the blue box is opened and she is portrayed by Harring, she becomes a full person who symbolizes "betrayal, humiliation and abandonment",[32] and is the object of Diane's frustration. Diane is a sharp contrast to Camilla, who is more voluptuous than ever, and who appears to have "sucked the life out of Diane".[52] Immediately after telling Diane that she drives her wild, Camilla tells her they must end their affair. On a film set where Adam is directing Camilla, he orders the set cleared, except for Diane—at Camilla's request—where Adam shows another actor just how to kiss Camilla correctly. Instead of punishing Camilla for such public humiliation, as is suggested by Diane's conversation with the bungling hit man, one critic views Rita as the vulnerable representation of Diane's desire for Camilla.[69]

Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) is established in the first portion of the film as a "vaguely arrogant",[70] but apparently successful, director who endures one humiliation after another. Theroux said of his role, "He's sort of the one character in the film who doesn't know what the [hell's] going on. I think he's the one guy the audience says, 'I'm kind of like you right now. I don't know why you're being subjected to all this pain.'"[16] After being stripped of creative control of his film, he is cuckolded by the pool cleaner (played by Billy Ray Cyrus), and thrown out of his own opulent house above Hollywood. After he checks into a seedy motel and pays with cash, the manager arrives to tell him that his credit is no good. Witnessed by Diane, Adam is pompous and self-important. He is the only character whose personality does not seem to change completely from the first part of the film to the second.[71] One analysis of Adam's character contends that because he capitulated and chose Camilla Rhodes for his film, that is the end of Betty's cheerfulness and ability to help Rita, placing the blame for her tragedy on the representatives of studio power.[42] Another analysis suggests that "Adam Kesher does not have the control, he wants and is willing to step over who or what is necessary to consolidate his career. Hungry for power, he uses the appearance of love or seduction only as one more tool. Love for power justifies that everything else is forgotten, be it pride, love or any other consideration. There are no regrets, it is Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles."[72]

Minor characters include The Cowboy (Monty Montgomery), the Castigliani Brothers (Dan Hedaya and Angelo Badalamenti) and Mr. Roque (Michael J. Anderson), all of whom are somehow involved in pressuring Adam to cast Camilla Rhodes in his film. These characters represent the death of creativity for film scholars,[65][73] and they portray a "vision of the industry as a closed hierarchical system in which the ultimate source of power remains hidden behind a series of representatives".[57] Ann Miller portrays Coco, the landlady who welcomes Betty to her wonderful new apartment. Coco, in the first part of the film, represents the old guard in Hollywood, who welcomes and protects Betty. In the second part of the film, however, she appears as Adam's mother, who impatiently chastises Diane for being late to the party and barely pays attention to Diane's embarrassed tale of how she got into acting.[65]

Style

 
Dwarf actor Michael J. Anderson, as Mr. Roque, was fitted with oversized prosthetic limbs to give him the appearance of an abnormally small head.

The filmmaking style of David Lynch has been written about extensively using descriptions like "ultraweird",[47] "dark"[42] and "oddball".[74] Todd McGowan writes, "One cannot watch a Lynch film the way one watches a standard Hollywood film noir nor in the way that one watches most radical films."[75] Through Lynch's juxtaposition of cliché and surreal, nightmares and fantasies, nonlinear story lines, camera work, sound and lighting, he presents a film that challenges viewers to suspend belief of what they are experiencing.[41] Many of the characters in Mulholland Drive are archetypes that can only be perceived as cliché: the new Hollywood hopeful, the femme fatale, the maverick director and shady powerbrokers that Lynch never seems to explore fully.[52] Lynch places these often hackneyed characters in dire situations, creating dream-like qualities. By using these characters in scenarios that have components and references to dreams, fantasies and nightmares, viewers are left to decide, between the extremes, what is reality. One film analyst, Jennifer Hudson, writes of him, "Like most surrealists, Lynch's language of the unexplained is the fluid language of dreams."[31]

David Lynch uses various methods of deception in Mulholland Drive. A shadowy figure named Mr. Roque, who seems to control film studios, is portrayed by dwarf actor Michael J. Anderson (also from Twin Peaks). Anderson, who has only two lines and is seated in an enormous wooden wheelchair, was fitted with oversized foam prosthetic arms and legs in order to portray his head as abnormally small.[76] During Adam and Camilla's party, Diane watches Camilla (played by Harring) with Adam on one arm, lean over and deeply kiss the same woman who appeared as Camilla (Melissa George) before the blue box was opened. Both then turn and smile pointedly at Diane. Film critic Franklin Ridgway writes that the depiction of such a deliberate "cruel and manipulative" act makes it unclear if Camilla is as capricious as she seems, or if Diane's paranoia is allowing the audience only to see what she senses.[65] In a scene immediately after Betty's audition, the film cuts to a woman singing without apparent accompaniment, but as the camera pulls backwards, the audience sees that it is a recording studio. In actuality, it is a sound stage where Betty has just arrived to meet Adam Kesher, that the audience realizes as the camera pulls back further. Ridgway insists that such deception through artful camera work sets the viewer full of doubt about what is being presented: "It is as if the camera, in its graceful fluidity of motion, reassures us that it (thinks it) sees everything, has everything under control, even if we (and Betty) do not."[65]

According to Stephen Dillon, Lynch's use of different camera positions throughout the film, such as hand-held points of view, makes the viewer "identify with the suspense of the character in his or her particular space", but that Lynch at moments also "disconnects the camera from any particular point of view, thereby ungrounding a single or even a human perspective" so that the multiple perspectives keep contexts from merging, significantly troubling "our sense of the individual and the human".[77] Andrew Hageman similarly notes that the camera work in the film "renders a very disturbing sense of place and presence", such as the scene in Winkie's where the "camera floats irregularly during the shot-reverse shot dialogue" by which the "spectator becomes aware that a set of normally objective shots have become disturbingly subjective".[36] Scholar Curt Hersey recognizes several avant-garde techniques used in the film including lack of transitions, abrupt transitions, motion speed, nontraditional camera movement, computer-generated imagery, nondiegetic images, nonlinear narration and intertextuality.[78]

 
An emotionally troubled Diane exchanges words with Camilla. Diane's scenes were characterized by different lighting to symbolize her physical and spiritual impoverishment.

The first portion of the film that establishes the characters of Betty, Rita and Adam presents some of the most logical filmmaking of Lynch's career.[31][79] The later part of the film that represents reality to many viewers, however, exhibits a marked change in cinematic effect that gives it a quality just as surreal as the first part. Diane's scenes feature choppier editing and dirtier lighting that symbolize her physical and spiritual impoverishment,[42] which contrasts with the first portion of the film where "even the plainest decor seems to sparkle", Betty and Rita glow with light and transitions between scenes are smooth.[80] Lynch moves between scenes in the first portion of the film by using panoramic shots of the mountains, palm trees and buildings in Los Angeles. In the darker part of the film, sound transitions to the next scene without a visual reference where it is taking place. At Camilla's party, when Diane is most humiliated, the sound of crashing dishes is heard that carries immediately to the scene where dishes have been dropped in the diner, and Diane is speaking with the hit man. Sinnerbrink also notes that several scenes in the film, such as the one featuring Diane's hallucination of Camilla after Diane wakes up, the image of the being from behind Winkie's after Diane's suicide, or the "repetition, reversal and displacement of elements that were differently configured" in the early portion of the film, creates the uncanny effect where viewers are presented with familiar characters or situations in altered times or locations.[35] Similarly, Hageman has identified the early scene at Winkie's as "extremely uncanny", because it is a scene where the "boundaries separating physical reality from the imaginary realities of the unconscious disintegrate".[36] Author Valtteri Kokko has identified three groups of "uncanny metaphors"; the doppelgänger of multiple characters played by the same actors, dreams and an everyday object—primarily the blue box—that initiates Rita's disappearance and Diane's real life.[81]

Another recurring element in Lynch's films is his experimentation with sound. He stated in an interview, "you look at the image and the scene silent, it's doing the job it's supposed to do, but the work isn't done. When you start working on the sound, keep working until it feels correct. There's so many wrong sounds and instantly you know it. Sometimes it's really magical."[10] In the opening scene of the film, as the dark-haired woman stumbles off Mulholland Drive, silently it suggests she is clumsy. After Lynch added "a hint of the steam [from the wreck] and the screaming kids", however, it transformed Laura Elena Harring from clumsy to terrified.[70] Lynch also infused subtle rumblings throughout portions of the film that reviewers noted added unsettling and creepy effects.[82] Hageman also identifies "perpetual and uncanny ambient sound", and places a particular emphasis on the scene where the man collapses behind Winkie's as normal sound is drowned out by a buzzing roar, noting that the noise "creates a dissonance and suspense that draws in the spectator as detective to place the sound and reestablish order".[36] Mulholland Drive's ending with the woman at Club Silencio whispering is an example of Lynch's aural deception and surreality, according to Ruth Perlmutter, who writes, "The acting, the dreams, the search for identity, the fears and terrors of the undefined self are over when the film is over, and therefore, there is only silence and enigma."[33]

Soundtrack

The album progresses much like a typical Lynch film, opening with a quick, pleasant Jitterbug and then slowly delving into darker string passages, the twangy guitar sounds of '50s diner music and, finally, the layered, disturbing, often confusing underbelly of the score.

Neil Shurley, 2002[83]

The soundtrack of Mulholland Drive was supervised by Angelo Badalamenti, who collaborated on previous Lynch projects Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks.[84] Badalamenti, who was nominated for awards from the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) for his work on the film,[85][86] also has a cameo as an espresso aficionado and mobster.

Reviewers note that Badalamenti's ominous score, described as his "darkest yet",[87] contributes to the sense of mystery as the film opens on the dark-haired woman's limousine,[88] that contrasts with the bright, hopeful tones of Betty's first arrival in Los Angeles,[84] with the score "acting as an emotional guide for the viewer".[87] Film music journalist Daniel Schweiger remarks that Badalamenti's contribution to the score alternates from the "nearly motionless string dread to noir jazz and audio feedback", with "the rhythms building to an explosion of infinite darkness."[89] Badalamenti described a particular technique of sound design applied to the film, by which he would provide Lynch with multiple ten- to twelve-minute tracks at slow tempo, that they called "firewood",[89] from which Lynch "would take fragments and experiment with them resulting in a lot of film's eerie soundscapes."[87]

Lynch uses two pop songs from the 1960s directly after one another, playing as two actresses are auditioning by lip synching them. According to an analyst of music used in Lynch films, Lynch's female characters are often unable to communicate through normal channels and are reduced to lip-synching or being otherwise stifled.[90] Connie Stevens's "Sixteen Reasons" is the song being sung while the camera pans backwards to reveal several illusions, and Linda Scott's version of "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star" is the audition for the first Camilla Rhodes, that film scholar Eric Gans considers a song of empowerment for Betty.[91] Originally written by Jerome Kern as a duet, sung by Linda Scott in this rendition by herself, Gans suggests it takes on a homosexual overtone in Mulholland Drive.[91] Unlike "Sixteen Reasons", however, portions of "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star" are distorted to suggest "a sonic split-identity" for Camilla.[90] When the song plays, Betty has just entered the sound stage where Adam is auditioning actresses for his film, and she sees Adam, locks eyes with him and abruptly flees after Adam has declared "This is the girl" about Camilla, thereby avoiding his inevitable rejection.

 
Rebekah Del Rio performing "Llorando", popularized in the film's Club Silencio sequence

At the hinge of the film is a scene in an unusual late night theater called Club Silencio where a performer announces "No hay banda (there is no band) ... but yet we hear a band", variated between English, Spanish and French. Described as "the most original and stunning sequence in an original and stunning film",[42] Rebekah Del Rio's Spanish a cappella rendition of "Crying", named "Llorando", is praised as "show-stopping ... except that there's no show to stop" in the sparsely attended Club Silencio.[57] Lynch wanted to use Roy Orbison's version of "Crying" in Blue Velvet, but changed his mind when he heard Orbison's "In Dreams".[20] Del Rio, who popularized the Spanish version and who received her first recording contract on the basis of the song, stated that Lynch flew to Nashville where she was living, and she sang the song for him once and did not know he was recording her. Lynch wrote a part for her in the film and used the version she sang for him in Nashville.[92] The song tragically serenades the lovers Betty and Rita, who sit spellbound and weeping, moments before their relationship disappears and is replaced by Diane and Camilla's dysfunction. According to one film scholar, the song and the entire theater scene marks the disintegration of Betty's and Rita's personalities, as well as their relationship.[42] With the use of multiple languages and a song to portray such primal emotions, one film analyst states that Lynch exhibits his distrust of intellectual discourse and chooses to make sense through images and sounds.[31] The disorienting effect of the music playing although del Rio is no longer there is described as "the musical version of Magritte's painting Ceci n'est pas une pipe".[93]

Release

Mulholland Drive premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival in May to major critical acclaim. Lynch was awarded the Best Director prize at the festival, sharing it with co-winner Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There.[94] It drew positive reviews from many critics and some of the strongest audience reactions of Lynch's career.

The film was publicized with cryptic posters bearing the abbreviation "Mulholland Dr."

Box office

Universal Pictures released Mulholland Drive theatrically in 66 theaters in the United States on October 12, 2001, grossing $587,591 over its opening weekend. It eventually expanded to its widest release of 247 theaters, ultimately grossing $7,220,243 at the U.S. box office. TVA Films released the film theatrically in Canada on October 26, 2001. In other territories outside the United States, the film grossed $12,897,096, for a worldwide total of $20,117,339 on the film's original release, plus much smaller sums on later re-releases.[5]

Reception and legacy

Since its release, Mulholland Drive has received "both some of the harshest epithets and some of the most lavish praise in recent cinematic history".[95] On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 85% based on 186 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "David Lynch's dreamlike and mysterious Mulholland Drive is a twisty neo-noir with an unconventional structure that features a mesmerizing performance from Naomi Watts as a woman on the dark fringes of Hollywood."[96] On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 85 out of 100 based on 35 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[97]

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, who had often been dismissive of Lynch's work, awarded the film four stars and said, "David Lynch has been working toward Mulholland Drive all of his career, and now that he's arrived there I forgive him for Wild at Heart and even Lost Highway ... the movie is a surrealist dreamscape in the form of a Hollywood film noir, and the less sense it makes, the more we can't stop watching it".[58] Ebert subsequently added Mulholland Drive to his "Great Films" list.[98] In The New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote that the film "ranks alongside Fellini's 8½ and other auteurist fantasias as a monumental self-reflection" and added: "Looked at lightly, it is the grandest and silliest cinematic carnival to come along in quite some time ... on a more serious level, its investigation into the power of movies pierces a void from which you can hear the screams of a ravenous demon whose appetites can never be slaked."[38] Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle called it "exhilarating ... for its dreamlike images and fierce, frequently reckless imagination" and added, "there's a mesmerizing quality to its languid pace, its sense of foreboding and its lost-in-time atmosphere ... it holds us, spellbound and amused, for all of its loony and luscious, exasperating 146 minutes [and] proves that Lynch is in solid form—and still an expert at pricking our nerves".[99]

In Rolling Stone, Peter Travers observed, "Mulholland Drive makes movies feel alive again. This sinful pleasure is a fresh triumph for Lynch, and one of the best films of a sorry-ass year. For visionary daring, swooning eroticism and colors that pop like a whore's lip gloss, there's nothing like this baby anywhere."[100] J. Hoberman of The Village Voice stated, "This voluptuous phantasmagoria ... is certainly Lynch's strongest movie since Blue Velvet and maybe Eraserhead. The very things that failed him in the bad-boy rockabilly debacle of Lost Highway—the atmosphere of free-floating menace, pointless transmigration of souls, provocatively dropped plot stitches, gimcrack alternate universes—are here brilliantly rehabilitated."[39] A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote that, while some might consider the plot an "offense against narrative order", the film is "an intoxicating liberation from sense, with moments of feeling all the more powerful for seeming to emerge from the murky night world of the unconscious".[101]

Mulholland Drive was not without its detractors. Rex Reed of The New York Observer said that it was the worst film he had seen in 2001, calling it "a load of moronic and incoherent garbage".[102] In New York, Peter Rainer observed, "Although I like it more than some of his other dreamtime freakfests, it's still a pretty moribund ride ... Lynch needs to renew himself with an influx of the deep feeling he has for people, for outcasts, and lay off the cretins and hobgoblins and zombies for a while."[103] In The Washington Post, Desson Howe called it "an extended mood opera, if you want to put an arty label on incoherence".[104] Todd McCarthy of Variety found much to praise—"Lynch cranks up the levels of bizarre humor, dramatic incident and genuine mystery with a succession of memorable scenes, some of which rank with his best"—but also noted, "the film jumps off the solid ground of relative narrative coherence into Lynchian fantasyland ... for the final 45 minutes, Lynch is in mind-twisting mode that presents a form of alternate reality with no apparent meaning or logical connection to what came before. Although such tactics are familiar from Twin Peaks and elsewhere, the sudden switcheroo to head games is disappointing because, up to this point, Lynch had so wonderfully succeeded in creating genuine involvement."[79] James Berardinelli also criticized it, saying: "Lynch cheats his audience, pulling the rug out from under us. He throws everything into the mix with the lone goal of confusing us. Nothing makes any sense because it's not supposed to make any sense. There's no purpose or logic to events. Lynch is playing a big practical joke on us."[105] Film theorist Ray Carney notes, "You wouldn't need all the emotional back-flips and narrative trap doors if you had anything to say. You wouldn't need doppelgangers and shadow-figures if your characters had souls."[106]

Later, Mulholland Drive was named the best film of the decade by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association,[107] Cahiers du cinéma,[108] IndieWire,[109] Slant Magazine,[110] Reverse Shot,[111] The Village Voice[112] and Time Out New York, who asked rhetorically in a reference to the September 11 attacks, "Can there be another movie that speaks as resonantly—if unwittingly—to the awful moment that marked our decade? ... Mulholland Drive is the monster behind the diner; it's the self-delusional dream turned into nightmare."[113] It was also voted best of the decade in a Film Comment poll of international "critics, programmers, academics, filmmakers and others",[114] and by the magazine's readers.[115] It appeared on lists among the ten best films of the decade, coming in third according to The Guardian,[116] Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers,[117] the Canadian Press,[118] Access Hollywood critic Scott Mantz,[119] and eighth on critic Michael Phillips's list.[120] In 2010 it was named the second best arthouse film ever by The Guardian.[121] The film was voted as the 11th best film set in Los Angeles in the last 25 years by a group of Los Angeles Times writers and editors with the primary criterion of communicating an inherent truth about the L.A. experience.[122] Empire magazine placed Mulholland Drive at number 391 on their list of the five hundred greatest films ever.[123] It has also been ranked number 38 on the Channel 4 program 50 Films to See Before You Die.[124] In 2011, online magazine Slate named Mulholland Drive in its piece on "New Classics" as the most enduring film since 2000.[125]

In the British Film Institute's 2012 Sight & Sound poll, Mulholland Drive was ranked the 28th greatest film ever made, and in the 2022 poll, its ranking rose to 8th. [126][127] Having received 40 critics' votes, it is one of only two films from the 21st century to be included in the list, along with 2000's In the Mood for Love. In a 2015 BBC poll, it was ranked 21st among all American films.[128] The following year, Mulholland Drive was named as the greatest film of the 21st century in a poll conducted by BBC Culture.[129] In July 2021, Mulholland Drive was shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival.[130]

Home media

The film was released on VHS and DVD by Universal Studios Home Video on April 9, 2002,[131] in the United States and Canada, with few special features. It was released without chapter stops, a feature that Lynch objects to on the grounds that it "demystifies" the film.[132]

In spite of Lynch's concerns, the DVD release included a cover insert that provided "David Lynch's 10 Clues to Unlocking This Thriller", which were:

"1) Pay particular attention to the beginning of the film: At least two clues are revealed before the credits.

2) Notice appearances of the red lampshade.

3) Can you hear the title of the film that Adam Kesher is auditioning actresses for? Is it mentioned again?

4) An accident is a terrible event... notice the location of the accident.

5) Who gives a key, and why?

6) Notice the robe, the ashtray, the coffee cup.

7) What is felt, realized, and gathered at the club Silencio?

8) Did talent alone help Camilla?

9) Note the occurrences surrounding the man behind Winkies.

10) Where is Aunt Ruth?"[133]

One DVD reviewer noted that the clues may be "big obnoxious red herrings".[82]

Nick Coccellato of Eccentric Cinema gave the film a rating of nine out of ten and the DVD release an eight out of ten, saying that the lack of special features "only adds to the mystery the film itself possesses, in abundance".[134] Special features in later versions and overseas versions of the DVD include a Lynch interview at the Cannes Film Festival and highlights of the debut of the film at Cannes.

Optimum Home Entertainment released Mulholland Drive to the European market on Blu-ray as part of its StudioCanal Collection on September 13, 2010.[135] New special features exclusive to this release include: an introduction by Thierry Jousse; In the Blue Box, a retrospective documentary featuring directors and critics; two making-of documentaries: On the Road to Mulholland Drive and Back to Mulholland Drive, and several interviews with people involved in making the film.[136] It is the second David Lynch film in this line of Blu-rays after The Elephant Man.[137]

On July 15, 2015, The Criterion Collection announced that it would release Mulholland Drive, newly restored through a 4K digital transfer, on DVD and Blu-ray on October 27, 2015, both of which include new interviews with the film's crew and the 2005 edition of Chris Rodley's book Lynch on Lynch, along with the original trailer and other extras.[138][139] It was Lynch's second film to receive a Criterion Collection release on DVD and Blu-ray, following Eraserhead which was released in September 2014.[140]

On August 11, 2021, Criterion announced their first 4K Ultra HD releases, a six-film slate, will include Mulholland Drive. Criterion indicated each title will be available in a 4K UHD+Blu-ray combo pack including a 4K UHD disc of the feature film as well as the film and special features on the companion Blu-ray.[141] Criterion confirmed on August 16, 2021, that Mulholland Drive will be released on November 16, 2021, as a 4K and Blu-ray disc package.

Awards and honors

Lynch was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for the film.[142] From the Hollywood Foreign Press, the film received four Golden Globe nominations, including Best Picture (Drama), Best Director and Best Screenplay.[143] It was named Best Picture by the New York Film Critics Circle at the 2001 New York Film Critics Circle Awards and Online Film Critics Society.

Award Category Recipient Result
Academy Awards Best Director David Lynch Nominated
British Academy Film Awards Best Music Angelo Badalamenti Nominated
Best Editing Mary Sweeney Won
Golden Globe Awards Best Motion Picture – Drama Nominated
Best Director David Lynch Nominated
Best Screenplay Nominated
Best Original Score Angelo Badalamenti Nominated
AFI Awards AFI Movie of the Year Nominated
Director of the Year David Lynch Nominated
Actor of the Year (Female) Naomi Watts Nominated
Composer of the Year Angelo Badalamenti[85] Nominated
Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or David Lynch Nominated
Best Director David Lynch (shared with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn't There) [94] Won
César Awards Best Foreign Film David Lynch[144] Won
ALMA Awards Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture Laura Harring[145] Won
Chicago Film Critics Awards Best Film Won
Best Director David Lynch Won
Best Actress Naomi Watts[146] Won
Independent Spirit Awards Best Cinematography Peter Deming[147] Won
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Best Director David Lynch[148] Won
National Society of Film Critics Best Film Won
Best Director David Lynch Nominated
Best Actress Naomi Watts[149] Won
Best Cinematography Peter Deming Nominated
New York Film Critics Circle Awards Best Film Won
Online Film Critics Society Best Picture Won
Best Director David Lynch Won
Best Original Screenplay Won
Best Actress Naomi Watts Won
Best Breakthrough Performance Won
Best Original Score Angelo Badalamenti Won
Best Cinematography Peter Deming Nominated

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c "Mulholland Dr. (2001)". British Film Institute. Retrieved July 18, 2018.
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Bibliography

  • Dillon, Steven (2006). The Solaris Effect: Art and Artifice in Contemporary American Film. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-71345-1.
  • Filippo, Maria San (2013). The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-00892-3.
  • Johnson, Jeff (2004). Pervert in the Pulpit: Morality in the Works of David Lynch. McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-1753-7.
  • McGowan, Todd (2007). The Impossible David Lynch. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-13955-7.
  • Odell, Colin; Le Blanc, Michelle (2007). David Lynch. Kamera Books. ISBN 978-1-84243-225-9.
  • Sheen, Erica; Davison, A., eds. (2004). The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions. Wallflower Press. ISBN 978-1-903364-85-7.
  • Woods, Paul, ed. (2000). Weirdsville USA: The Obsessive Universe of David Lynch. Plexus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85965-291-9.

External links

  • Mulholland Drive at LynchNet.com – includes interviews, press kit, film clips
  • Mulholland Drive at Critics Round Up
  • Mulholland Drive at IMDb
  • Mulholland Drive at AllMovie
  • Mulholland Drive at Box Office Mojo
  • Mulholland Drive at Metacritic  
  • Mulholland Drive at Rotten Tomatoes
  • Lost on Mulholland Drive – comprehensive analysis and resource center
  • . Archived from the original on January 26, 2007. Retrieved February 1, 2005. – found within the DVD [archived link; original dead]
  • David Lynch' Interview on Mulholland Drrive

January 14, 2023
mulholland, drive, film, confused, with, 1996, film, mulholland, falls, mulholland, drive, stylized, mulholland, 2001, surrealist, noir, mystery, film, written, directed, david, lynch, starring, naomi, watts, laura, harring, justin, theroux, miller, mark, pell. Not to be confused with the 1996 film Mulholland Falls Mulholland Drive stylized as Mulholland Dr is a 2001 surrealist neo noir 6 7 mystery film written and directed by David Lynch and starring Naomi Watts Laura Harring Justin Theroux Ann Miller Mark Pellegrino and Robert Forster It tells the story of an aspiring actress named Betty Elms Watts newly arrived in Los Angeles who meets and befriends an amnesiac woman Harring recovering from a car accident The story follows several other vignettes and characters including a Hollywood film director Theroux Mulholland DriveTheatrical release posterDirected byDavid LynchWritten byDavid LynchProduced byMary Sweeney Alain Sarde Neal Edelstein Michael Polaire Tony KrantzStarringNaomi Watts Justin Theroux Laura Elena Harring Ann Miller Robert ForsterCinematographyPeter DemingEdited byMary SweeneyMusic byAngelo BadalamentiProductioncompaniesLes Films Alain Sarde Asymmetrical Productions Babbo Inc Le Studio Canal 1 The Picture FactoryDistributed byUniversal Pictures United States BAC Films France Release datesMay 16 2001 2001 05 16 Cannes October 12 2001 2001 10 12 US November 21 2001 2001 11 21 France Running time146 minutes 2 CountriesUnited States 3 1 France 3 1 LanguageEnglishBudget 15 million 4 Box office 20 1 million 5 The American French co production was originally conceived as a television pilot and a large portion of the film was shot in 1999 with Lynch s plan to keep it open ended for a potential series After viewing Lynch s cut however television executives rejected it Lynch then provided an ending to the project making it a feature film The half pilot half feature result along with Lynch s characteristic surrealist style has left the general meaning of the film s events open to interpretation Lynch has declined to offer an explanation of his intentions for the narrative leaving audiences critics and cast members to speculate on what transpires He gave the film the tagline A love story in the city of dreams Categorized as a psychological thriller Mulholland Drive earned Lynch the Prix de la mise en scene Best Director Award at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival sharing the prize with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn t There Lynch also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Director The film boosted Watts Hollywood profile considerably and was the last feature film to star veteran Hollywood actress Ann Miller Mulholland Drive is often regarded as one of Lynch s finest works and as one of the greatest films of all time It was ranked 8th in the 2022 Sight amp Sound critics poll of the best films ever made and topped a 2016 BBC poll of the best films since 2000 Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 3 1 Development 3 2 Casting 3 3 Filming 4 Themes and interpretations 4 1 Dreams and alternative realities 4 2 A poisonous valentine to Hollywood 4 3 Romantic content 5 Characters 6 Style 7 Soundtrack 8 Release 8 1 Box office 8 2 Reception and legacy 8 3 Home media 9 Awards and honors 10 See also 11 References 12 Bibliography 13 External linksPlot EditA dark haired woman is the sole survivor of a car crash on Mulholland Drive a winding road high in the Hollywood Hills Injured and dazed she makes her way down into Los Angeles by foot and sneaks into an apartment Later that morning an aspiring actress named Betty Elms arrives at the apartment which is normally occupied by her Aunt Ruth Betty is startled to find the woman who has amnesia and calls herself Rita after seeing a poster for the film Gilda starring Rita Hayworth To help the woman remember her identity Betty looks in Rita s purse where she finds a large amount of money and an unusual blue key At a diner called Winkie s a man tells another about a nightmare in which he dreamt of encountering a horrific figure behind the diner When they investigate the figure appears causing the man who had the nightmare to collapse in fright Elsewhere director Adam Kesher has his film commandeered by mobsters who insist he cast an unknown actress named Camilla Rhodes as the lead Adam refuses and returns home to find his wife Lorraine cheating on him When the mobsters withdraw his line of credit Adam arranges to meet a mysterious cowboy who cryptically urges him to cast Camilla for his own good Meanwhile a bungling hitman attempts to steal a book full of phone numbers and leaves three people dead While trying to learn more about Rita s accident Betty and Rita go to Winkie s and are served by a waitress named Diane which causes Rita to remember the name Diane Selwyn They find Diane Selwyn in the phone book and call her but she does not answer Betty goes to an audition where her performance is highly praised A casting agent takes her to a soundstage where a film called The Sylvia North Story directed by Adam is being cast When Camilla Rhodes auditions with the song I ve Told Every Little Star Adam capitulates to the mob by casting her Betty locks eyes with Adam but she flees before she can meet him saying she is late to meet a friend Betty and Rita go to Diane Selwyn s apartment where a neighbor answers the door and tells them she has switched apartments with Diane They go to the neighbor s apartment and break in when no one answers the door In the bedroom they find the body of a woman who has been dead for several days Terrified they return to Betty s apartment where Rita disguises herself with a blonde wig That night she and Betty have sex At 2 a m Rita awakes suddenly insisting they go right away to a theater called Club Silencio There the emcee explains in different languages that everything is an illusion Rebekah Del Rio comes on stage and begins singing the Roy Orbison song Crying in Spanish then collapses unconscious while her vocals continue in playback Betty finds a blue box in her purse that matches Rita s key Upon returning to the apartment Rita retrieves the key and finds that Betty has disappeared Rita unlocks the box and it falls to the floor Aunt Ruth enters the room to find nobody Diane Selwyn wakes up in her bed in the same apartment Betty and Rita investigated where her neighbor informs her that two police officers have been looking for her She looks exactly like Betty but is a struggling actress driven into a deep depression by her failed affair with Camilla Rhodes who is a successful actress and looks exactly like Rita At Camilla s invitation Diane attends a party at Adam s house on Mulholland Drive At dinner Diane states she came to Hollywood from Canada when her Aunt Ruth died and left her some money and she met Camilla at an audition for The Sylvia North Story Another woman who looks like the previous Camilla Rhodes kisses Camilla and they turn and smile at Diane Adam and Camilla prepare to make their marriage announcement but they devolve into laughter and kiss while Diane watches crying Later Diane meets the hitman at Winkie s to hire him to kill Camilla He tells her she will find a blue key when the job is completed The figure from the man s dream is revealed to have the matching blue box In her apartment Diane looks at the blue key on her coffee table when someone unceasingly knocks on the door Distraught she is terrorized by hallucinations and runs screaming to her bed where she shoots herself A woman at the theater whispers Silencio Cast EditNaomi Watts as Betty Elms Diane Selwyn Laura Harring as Rita Camilla Rhodes Justin Theroux as Adam Kesher Ann Miller as Coco Mark Pellegrino as Joe Robert Forster as Detective McKnight Brent Briscoe as Detective Domgaard Dan Hedaya as Vincenzo Castigliane Angelo Badalamenti as Luigi Castigliane Michael J Anderson as Mr Roque Monty Montgomery as The Cowboy Lee Grant as Louise Bonner James Karen as Wally Brown Chad Everett as Jimmy Katz Richard Green as The Magician Rebekah Del Rio as Herself Melissa George as Camilla Rhodes Geno Silva as Cookie Emcee Billy Ray Cyrus as Gene Lori Heuring as Lorainne KesherProduction EditDevelopment Edit Originally conceived as a television series Mulholland Drive began as a 90 minute pilot produced for Touchstone Television and intended for the ABC television network Tony Krantz the agent who was responsible for the development of Twin Peaks was fired up about doing another television series Lynch sold the idea to ABC executives based only on the story of Rita emerging from the car accident with her purse containing 125 000 in cash and the blue key and Betty trying to help her figure out who she is An ABC executive recalled I remember the creepiness of this woman in this horrible horrible crash and David teasing us with the notion that people are chasing her She s not just in trouble she is trouble Obviously we asked What happens next And David said You have to buy the pitch for me to tell you Lynch showed ABC a rough cut of the pilot The person who saw it according to Lynch was watching it at six in the morning and was having coffee and standing up He hated the pilot and ABC immediately cancelled it Pierre Edleman Lynch s friend from Paris came to visit and started talking to him about the film being a feature Edleman went back to Paris Canal wanted to give Lynch money to make it into a feature and it took a year to negotiate 8 9 Lynch described the attractiveness of the idea of a pilot despite the knowledge that the medium of television would be constricting I m a sucker for a continuing story Theoretically you can get a very deep story and you can go so deep and open the world so beautifully but it takes time to do that 10 The story included surreal elements much like Lynch s earlier series Twin Peaks Groundwork was laid for story arcs such as the mystery of Rita s identity Betty s career and Adam Kesher s film project 11 Actress Sherilyn Fenn stated in a 2014 interview that the original idea came during the filming of Twin Peaks as a spin off film for her character of Audrey Horne 12 Casting Edit Naomi Watts David Lynch Laura Elena Harring and Justin Theroux at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival Lynch cast Naomi Watts and Laura Harring by their photographs He called them in separately for half hour interviews and told them that he had not seen any of their previous works in film or television 13 Harring considered it fateful that she was involved in a minor car accident on the way to the first interview only to learn her character would also be involved in a car accident in the film 14 Watts arrived wearing jeans for the first interview direct from the airplane from New York City Lynch asked her to return the next day more glammed up She was offered the part two weeks later Lynch explained his selection of Watts I saw someone that I felt had a tremendous talent and I saw someone who had a beautiful soul an intelligence possibilities for a lot of different roles so it was a beautiful full package 15 Justin Theroux also met Lynch directly after his airplane flight After a long flight with little sleep Theroux arrived dressed all in black with untidy hair Lynch liked the look and decided to cast Adam wearing similar clothes and the same hairstyle 16 Filming Edit Filming for the television pilot began on location in Los Angeles in February 1999 and took six weeks Ultimately the network was unhappy with the pilot and decided not to place it on its schedule 17 18 Objections included the nonlinear storyline the ages of Harring and Watts whom they considered too old cigarette smoking by Ann Miller s character and a close frame shot of dog feces in one scene Lynch remembered All I know is I loved making it ABC hated it and I don t like the cut I turned in I agreed with ABC that the longer cut was too slow but I was forced to butcher it because we had a deadline and there wasn t time to finesse anything It lost texture big scenes and storylines and there are 300 tape copies of the bad version circulating around Lots of people have seen it which is embarrassing because they re bad quality tapes too I don t want to think about it 19 One night I sat down the ideas came in and it was a most beautiful experience Everything was seen from a different angle Now looking back I see that the film always wanted to be this way It just took this strange beginning to cause it to be what it is David Lynch 2001 The script was later rewritten and expanded when Lynch decided to transform it into a feature film Describing the transition from an open ended pilot to a feature film with a resolution of sorts Lynch said One night I sat down the ideas came in and it was a most beautiful experience Everything was seen from a different angle Now looking back I see that the film always wanted to be this way It just took this strange beginning to cause it to be what it is 20 The result was an extra eighteen pages of material that included the romantic relationship between Rita and Betty and the events that occurred after the blue box was opened Watts was relieved that the pilot was dropped by ABC She found Betty too one dimensional without the darker portion of the film that was put together afterward 21 Most of the new scenes were filmed in October 2000 funded with 7 million from French production company StudioCanal 13 Theroux described approaching filming without entirely understanding the plot You get the whole script but he might as well withhold the scenes you re not in because the whole turns out to be more mystifying than the parts David welcomes questions but he won t answer any of them You work kind of half blindfolded If he were a first time director and hadn t demonstrated any command of this method I d probably have reservations But it obviously works for him 22 Theroux noted that the only answer Lynch did provide was that he was certain that Theroux s character a Hollywood director was not meant to be Lynch Watts stated that she tried to bluff Lynch by pretending she had the plot figured out and that he delighted in the cast s frustration 13 I m not going to lie I felt very vulnerable Laura Harring said of filming the sex scene between Harring and Watts characters I was in my dressing room and was on the verge of tears It s hard There are a lot of people there Naomi and I were friends It was pretty awkward 23 Themes and interpretations EditContained within the original DVD release is a card titled David Lynch s 10 Clues to Unlocking This Thriller The clues are Pay particular attention in the beginning of the film At least two clues are revealed before the credits Notice appearances of the red lampshade Can you hear the title of the film that Adam Kesher is auditioning actresses for Is it mentioned again An accident is a terrible event notice the location of the accident Who gives a key and why Notice the robe the ashtray the coffee cup What is felt realized and gathered at the Club Silencio Did talent alone help Camilla Note the occurrences surrounding the man behind Winkie s Where is Aunt Ruth 2002 DVD edition insert 24 Giving the film only the tagline A love story in the city of dreams 20 David Lynch has refused to comment on Mulholland Drive s meaning or symbolism leading to much discussion and multiple interpretations The Christian Science Monitor film critic David Sterritt spoke with Lynch after the film screened at Cannes and wrote that the director insisted that Mulholland Drive does tell a coherent comprehensible story unlike some of Lynch s earlier films like Lost Highway 25 On the other hand Justin Theroux said of Lynch s feelings on the multiple meanings people perceive in the film I think he s genuinely happy for it to mean anything you want He loves it when people come up with really bizarre interpretations David works from his subconscious 22 Dreams and alternative realities Edit An early interpretation of the film uses dream analysis to argue that the first part is a dream of the real Diane Selwyn who has cast her dream self as the innocent and hopeful Betty Elms reconstructing her history and persona into something like an old Hollywood film In the dream Betty is successful charming and lives the fantasy life of a soon to be famous actress The last one fifth of the film presents Diane s real life in which she has failed both personally and professionally She arranges for Camilla an ex lover to be killed and unable to cope with the guilt re imagines her as the dependent pliable amnesiac Rita Clues to her inevitable demise however continue to appear throughout her dream 26 This interpretation was similar to what Naomi Watts construed when she said in an interview I thought Diane was the real character and that Betty was the person she wanted to be and had dreamed up Rita is the damsel in distress and she s in absolute need of Betty and Betty controls her as if she were a doll Rita is Betty s fantasy of who she wants Camilla to be 21 Watts s own early experiences in Hollywood parallel those of Diane s She endured some professional frustration before she became successful auditioned for parts in which she did not believe and encountered people who did not follow through with opportunities She recalled There were a lot of promises but nothing actually came off I ran out of money and became quite lonely 27 Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune found that everything in Mulholland Drive is a nightmare It s a portrayal of the Hollywood golden dream turning rancid curdling into a poisonous stew of hatred envy sleazy compromise and soul killing failure This is the underbelly of our glamorous fantasies and the area Lynch shows here is realistically portrayed 28 The Guardian asked six well known film critics for their own perceptions of the overall meaning in Mulholland Drive Neil Roberts of The Sun and Tom Charity of Time Out subscribe to the theory that Betty is Diane s projection of a happier life Roger Ebert and Jonathan Ross seem to accept this interpretation but both hesitate to overanalyze the film Ebert states There is no explanation There may not even be a mystery Ross observes that there are storylines that go nowhere Perhaps these were leftovers from the pilot it was originally intended to be or perhaps these things are the non sequiturs and subconscious of dreams 29 Philip French from The Observer sees it as an allusion to Hollywood tragedy while Jane Douglas from the BBC rejects the theory of Betty s life as Diane s dream but also warns against too much analysis 29 Media theorist Siobhan Lyons similarly disagrees with the dream theory arguing that it is a superficial interpretation which undermines the strength of the absurdity of reality that often takes place in Lynch s universe 30 Instead Lyons posits that Betty and Diane are in fact two different people who happen to look similar a common motif among Hollywood starlets In a similar interpretation Betty and Rita and Diane and Camilla may exist in parallel universes that sometimes interconnect Another theory offered is that the narrative is a Mobius strip a twisted band that has no beginning and no end 31 Or the entire film is a dream but the identity of the dreamer is unknown 32 Repeated references to beds bedrooms and sleeping symbolize the heavy influence of dreams Rita falls asleep several times in between these episodes disconnected scenes such as the men having a conversation at Winkie s Betty s arrival in Los Angeles and the bungled hit take place suggesting that Rita may be dreaming them The opening shot of the film zooms into a bed containing an unknown sleeper instilling according to film scholar Ruth Perlmutter the necessity to ask if what follows is reality 33 Professor of dream studies Kelly Bulkeley argues that the early scene at the diner as the only one in which dreams or dreaming are explicitly mentioned illustrates revelatory truth and epistemological uncertainty in Lynch s film 34 The monstrous being from the dream who is the subject of conversation of the men in Winkie s reappears at the end of the film right before and after Diane commits suicide Bulkeley asserts that the lone discussion of dreams in that scene presents an opening to a new way of understanding everything that happens in the movie 34 Philosopher and film theorist Robert Sinnerbrink similarly notes that the images following Diane s apparent suicide undermine the dream and reality interpretation After Diane shoots herself the bed is consumed with smoke and Betty and Rita are shown beaming at each other after which a woman in the Club Silencio balcony whispers Silencio as the screen fades to black Sinnerbrink writes that the concluding images float in an indeterminate zone between fantasy and reality which is perhaps the genuinely metaphysical dimension of the cinematic image also noting that it might be that the last sequence comprises the fantasy images of Diane s dying consciousness concluding with the real moment of her death the final Silencio 35 Referring to the same sequence film theorist Andrew Hageman notes that the ninety second coda that follows Betty Diane s suicide is a cinematic space that persists after the curtain has dropped on her living consciousness and this persistent space is the very theatre where the illusion of illusion is continually unmasked 36 Film theorist David Roche writes that Lynch films do not simply tell detective stories but rather force the audience into the role of becoming detectives themselves to make sense of the narratives and that Mulholland Drive like other Lynch films frustrates the spectator s need for a rational diegesis by playing on the spectator s mistake that narration is synonymous with diegesis In Lynch s films the spectator is always one step behind narration and thus narration prevails over diegesis 37 Roche also notes that there are multiple mysteries in the film that ultimately go unanswered by the characters who meet dead ends like Betty and Rita or give in to pressures as Adam does Although the audience still struggles to make sense of the stories the characters are no longer trying to solve their mysteries Roche concludes that Mulholland Drive is a mystery film not because it allows the audience to view the solution to a question but the film itself is a mystery that is held together by the spectator detective s desire to make sense of it 37 A poisonous valentine to Hollywood Edit The view of Los Angeles from Mulholland Drive has become an iconic representation of the city s opportunities Despite the proliferation of theories critics note that no explanation satisfies all of the loose ends and questions that arise from the film Stephen Holden of The New York Times writes Mulholland Drive has little to do with any single character s love life or professional ambition The movie is an ever deepening reflection on the allure of Hollywood and on the multiple role playing and self invention that the movie going experience promises What greater power is there than the power to enter and to program the dream life of the culture 38 J Hoberman from The Village Voice echoes this sentiment by calling it a poisonous valentine to Hollywood 39 Mulholland Drive has been compared with Billy Wilder s film noir classic Sunset Boulevard 1950 another tale about broken dreams in Hollywood 20 40 41 and early in the film Rita is shown crossing Sunset Boulevard at night Apart from both titles being named after iconic Los Angeles streets Mulholland Drive is Lynch s unique account of what held Wilder s attention too human putrefaction a term Lynch used several times during his press conference at the New York Film Festival 2001 in a city of lethal illusions 42 The title of the film is a reference to iconic Hollywood culture Lynch lives near Mulholland Drive and stated in an interview At night you ride on the top of the world In the daytime you ride on top of the world too but it s mysterious and there s a hair of fear because it goes into remote areas You feel the history of Hollywood in that road 20 Watts also had experience with the road before her career was established I remember driving along the street many times sobbing my heart out in my car going What am I doing here 15 Critic Gregory Weight cautions viewers against a cynical interpretation of the events in the film stating that Lynch presents more than the facade and that he believes only evil and deceit lie beneath it 43 As much as Lynch makes a statement about the deceit manipulation and false pretenses in Hollywood culture he also infuses nostalgia throughout the film and recognizes that real art comes from classic filmmaking as Lynch cast thereby paying tribute to veteran actors Ann Miller Lee Grant and Chad Everett He also portrays Betty as extraordinarily talented and shows that her abilities are noticed by powerful people in the entertainment industry 43 Commenting on the contrasting positions between film nostalgia and the putrefaction of Hollywood Steven Dillon writes that Mulholland Drive is critical of the culture of Hollywood as much as it is a condemnation of cinephilia the fascination of filmmaking and the fantasies associated with it 44 Harring described her interpretation after seeing the film When I saw it the first time I thought it was the story of Hollywood dreams illusion and obsession It touches on the idea that nothing is quite as it seems especially the idea of being a Hollywood movie star The second and third times I saw it I thought it dealt with identity Do we know who we are And then I kept seeing different things in it There s no right or wrong to what someone takes away from it or what they think the film is really about It s a movie that makes you continuously ponder makes you ask questions I ve heard over and over This is a movie that I ll see again or This is a movie you ve got to see again It intrigues you You want to get it but I don t think it s a movie to be gotten It s achieved its goal if it makes you ask questions 45 Romantic content Edit The relationships between Betty and Rita and Diane and Camilla have been variously described as touching moving as well as titillating The French critic Thierry Jousse in his review for Cahiers du cinema said that the love between the women depicted is of lyricism practically without equal in contemporary cinema 46 In the pages of Film Comment Phillip Lopate states that the pivotal romantic interlude between Betty and Rita was made poignant and tender by Betty s understanding for the first time with self surprise that all her helpfulness and curiosity about the other woman had a point desire It is a beautiful moment made all the more miraculous by its earned tenderness and its distances from anything lurid 32 Stephanie Zacharek of Salon magazine stated that the scene s eroticism was so potent it blankets the whole movie coloring every scene that came before and every one that follows 47 Betty and Rita were chosen by the Independent Film Channel as the emblematic romantic couple of the 2000s Writer Charles Taylor said Betty and Rita are often framed against darkness so soft and velvety it s like a hovering nimbus ready to swallow them if they awake from the film s dream And when they are swallowed when smoke fills the frame as if the sulfur of hell itself were obscuring our vision we feel as if not just a romance has been broken but the beauty of the world has been cursed 48 Some film theorists have argued that Lynch inserts queerness in the aesthetic and thematic content of the film The non linear film is incapable of sustaining narrative coherence as Lee Wallace argues that lesbianism dissolves the ideological conventions of narrative realism operating as the switch point for the contesting storyworlds within Lynch s elaborately plotted film 49 The presence of mirrors and doppelgangers throughout the film are common representations of lesbian desire 50 The co dependency in the relationship between Betty and Rita which borders on outright obsession has been compared to the female relationships in two similar films Ingmar Bergman s Persona 1966 and Robert Altman s 3 Women 1977 which also depict identities of vulnerable women that become tangled interchanging and ultimately merge The female couples also mirror each other with their mutual interactions conflating hero ine worship with same sex desire 51 Lynch pays direct homage to Persona in the scene where Rita dons the blonde wig styled exactly like Betty s own hair Rita and Betty then gaze at each other in the mirror drawing attention to their physical similarity linking the sequence to theme of embrace physical coupling and the idea of merging or doubling 50 Mirroring and doubles which are prominent themes throughout the film serve to further queer the form and content of the film Several theorists have accused Lynch of perpetuating stereotypes and cliches of lesbians bisexuals and lesbian relationships Rita the femme fatale and Betty the school girl represent two classic stock lesbian characters Heather Love identifies two key cliches used in the film Lynch presents lesbianism in its innocent and expansive form lesbian desire appears as one big adventure an entree into a glamorous and unknown territory 52 Simultaneously he presents the tragic lesbian triangle in which an attractive but unavailable woman dumps a less attractive woman who is figured as exclusively lesbian perpetuating the stereotype of the bisexual ending up with a man 52 Maria San Filippo recognizes that Lynch relies on classic film noir archetypes to develop Camilla s eventual betrayal these archetypes become ingrained to such a degree that viewers are immediately cued that Rita is not what she seems and that it is only a matter of time before she reveals her duplicitous nature 53 For Love Diane s exclusively lesbian desire is between success and failure between sexiness and abjection even between life and death if she is rejected 52 Diane is the tragic lesbian cliche pining after the bisexual in the heterosexual relationship Love s analysis of the film notes the media s peculiar response to the film s lesbian content reviewers rhapsodized in particular and at length about the film s sex scenes as if there were a contest to see who could enjoy this representation of female same sex desire the most 52 She points out that the film used a classic theme in literature and film depicting lesbian relationships Camilla as achingly beautiful and available rejecting Diane for Adam Popular reaction to the film suggests the contrasting relationships between Betty and Rita and Diane and Camilla are understood as both the hottest thing on earth and at the same time as something fundamentally sad and not at all erotic as the heterosexual order asserts itself with crushing effects for the abandoned woman 52 Heterosexuality as primary is important in the latter half of the film as the ultimate demise of Diane and Camilla s relationship springs from the matrimony of the heterosexual couple At Adam s party they begin to announce that Camilla and Adam are getting married through laughs and kisses the declaration is delayed because it is obvious and expected The heterosexual closure of the scene is interrupted by a scene change As Lee Wallace suggests by planning a hit against Camilla Diane circumvents the heterosexual closure of the industry story but only by going over to its storyworld an act that proves fatal for both women the cause and effect relations of the thriller being fundamentally incompatible with the plot of lesbianism as the film presents it 49 For Joshua Bastian Cole Adam s character serves as Diane s foil what she can never be which is why Camilla leaves her In her fantasy Adam has his own subplot which leads to his humiliation While this subplot can be understood as a revenge fantasy born from jealousy Cole argues that this is an example of Diane s transgender gaze Adam functions like a mirror a male object upon which Diane might project herself 54 Diane s prolonged eye contact with Dan at Winkie s is another example of the trans gaze For Cole Diane s strange recognition of Dan which is not quite identification but something else feels trans in its oblique line drawn between impossible doubles and their similar names Dan Diane which is no mistake 54 He stresses that the lesbian understanding of the film has overshadowed potential trans interpretations his reading of Diane s trans gaze is a contribution to the queer narrative of the film Media portrayals of Naomi Watts s and Laura Elena Harring s views of their onscreen relationships were varied and conflicting Watts said of the filming of the scene I don t see it as erotic though maybe it plays that way The last time I saw it I actually had tears in my eyes because I knew where the story was going It broke my heart a little bit 55 However in another interview Watts stated I was amazed how honest and real all this looks on screen These girls look really in love and it was curiously erotic 27 While Harring was quoted saying The love scene just happened in my eyes Rita s very grateful for the help Betty s given her so I m saying goodbye and goodnight to her thank you from the bottom of my heart I kiss her and then there s just an energy that takes us over Of course I have amnesia so I don t know if I ve done it before but I don t think we re really lesbians 56 Heather Love agreed somewhat with Harring s perception when she stated that identity in Mulholland Drive is not as important as desire who we are does not count for much what matters instead is what we are about to do what we want to do 52 Characters Edit Betty Watts arrives in Los Angeles pictured with Irene Jeanne Bates Betty is bright and optimistic in contrast to Diane also played by Watts in the later part of the film Betty Elms Naomi Watts is the bright and talented newcomer to Los Angeles described as wholesome optimistic determined to take the town by storm 32 and absurdly naive 57 Her perkiness and intrepid approach to helping Rita because it is the right thing to do is reminiscent of Nancy Drew for reviewers 57 58 59 Her entire persona at first is an apparent cliche of small town naivete But it is Betty s identity or loss of it that appears to be the focus of the film For one critic Betty performed the role of the film s consciousness and unconscious 57 Watts who modeled Betty on Doris Day Tippi Hedren and Kim Novak observed that Betty is a thrill seeker someone who finds herself in a world she doesn t belong in and is ready to take on a new identity even if it s somebody else s 21 This has also led one theorist to conclude that since Betty had naively yet eagerly entered the Hollywood system she had become a complicit actor who had embraced the very structure that destroyed her 36 In an explanation of her development of the Betty character Watts stated I had to therefore come up with my own decisions about what this meant and what this character was going through what was dream and what was reality My interpretation could end up being completely different from both David and the audience But I did have to reconcile all of that and people seem to think it works 60 Betty however difficult to believe as her character is established shows an astonishing depth of dimension in her audition 41 61 Previously rehearsed with Rita in the apartment where Rita feeds her lines woodenly the scene is dreck 32 and hollow every line unworthy of a genuine actress s commitment and Betty plays it in rehearsal as poorly as it is written 61 Nervous but plucky as ever at the audition Betty enters the cramped room but when pitted inches from her audition partner Chad Everett she turns it into a scene of powerful sexual tension that she fully controls and draws in every person in the room The sexuality erodes immediately as the scene ends and she stands before them shyly waiting for their approval One film analyst asserts that Betty s previously unknown ability steals the show specifically taking the dark mystery away from Rita and assigning it to herself and by Lynch s use of this scene illustrates his use of deception in his characters 61 Betty s acting ability prompts Ruth Perlmutter to speculate if Betty is acting the role of Diane in either a dream or a parody of a film that ultimately turns against her 33 Rita Harring is the mysterious and helpless apparent victim a classic femme fatale with her dark strikingly beautiful appearance Roger Ebert was so impressed with Harring that he said of her all she has to do is stand there and she is the first good argument in 55 years for a Gilda remake 58 She serves as the object of desire directly oppositional to Betty s bright self assuredness She is also the first character with whom the audience identifies and as viewers know her only as confused and frightened not knowing who she is and where she is going she represents their desire to make sense of the film through her identity 62 Instead of threatening she inspires Betty to nurture console and help her Her amnesia makes her a blank persona which one reviewer notes is the vacancy that comes with extraordinary beauty and the onlooker s willingness to project any combination of angelic and devilish onto her 32 A character analysis of Rita asserts that her actions are the most genuine of the first portion of the film since she has no memory and nothing to use as a frame of reference for how to behave 31 Todd McGowan however author of a book on themes in Lynch s films states that the first portion of Mulholland Drive can be construed as Rita s fantasy until Diane Selwyn is revealed Betty is the object that overcomes Rita s anxiety about her loss of identity 63 According to film historian Steven Dillon Diane transitions a former roommate into Rita following a tense scene where the roommate collects her remaining belongings Rita appears in the apartment smiling at Diane 44 Harring as the dark haired woman Gilda poster 1946 The dark haired woman assumes the name Rita after seeing the name on a poster Her search for her identity has been interpreted by film scholars as representing the audience s desire to make sense of the film After Betty and Rita find the decomposing body they flee the apartment and their images are split apart and reintegrated David Roche notes that Rita s lack of identity causes a breakdown that occurs not only at the level of the character but also at the level of the image the shot is subjected to special effects that fragment their image and their voices are drowned out in reverb the camera seemingly writing out the mental state of the characters 37 Immediately they return to Betty s aunt s apartment where Rita dons a blonde wig ostensibly to disguise herself but making her look remarkably like Betty It is this transformation that one film analyst suggests is the melding of both identities This is supported by visual clues like particular camera angles making their faces appear to be merging into one This is further illustrated soon after by their sexual intimacy followed by Rita s personality becoming more dominant as she insists they go to Club Silencio at 2 a m that eventually leads to the total domination by Camilla 42 Diane Selwyn Watts is the palpably frustrated and depressed woman who seems to have ridden the coattails of Camilla whom she idolizes and adores but who does not return her affection She is considered to be the reality of the too good to be true Betty or a later version of Betty after living too long in Hollywood 38 For Steven Dillon the plot of the film makes Rita the perfect empty vessel for Diane s fantasies but because Rita is only a blank cover girl Diane has invested herself in emptiness which leads her to depression and apparently to suicide 64 Hence Diane is the personification of dissatisfaction painfully illustrated when she is unable to climax while masturbating in a scene that indicates through blurred jerky point of view shots of the stony wall not only her tears and humiliation but the disintegration of her fantasy and her growing desire for revenge 35 One analysis of Diane suggests her devotion to Camilla is based on a manifestation of narcissism as Camilla embodies everything Diane wants and wants to be 65 Although she is portrayed as weak and the ultimate loser for Jeff Johnson author of a book about morality in Lynch films Diane is the only character in the second portion of the film whose moral code remains intact She is a decent person corrupted by the miscellaneous miscreants who populate the film industry 66 Her guilt and regret are evident in her suicide and in the clues that surface in the first portion of the film Rita s fear the dead body and the illusion at Club Silencio indicate that something is dark and wrong in Betty and Rita s world In becoming free from Camilla her moral conditioning kills her 67 Camilla Rhodes Melissa George Laura Elena Harring is little more than a face in a photo and a name that has inspired many representatives of some vaguely threatening power to place her in a film against the wishes of Adam Referred to as a vapid moll by one reviewer 68 she barely makes an impression in the first portion of the film but after the blue box is opened and she is portrayed by Harring she becomes a full person who symbolizes betrayal humiliation and abandonment 32 and is the object of Diane s frustration Diane is a sharp contrast to Camilla who is more voluptuous than ever and who appears to have sucked the life out of Diane 52 Immediately after telling Diane that she drives her wild Camilla tells her they must end their affair On a film set where Adam is directing Camilla he orders the set cleared except for Diane at Camilla s request where Adam shows another actor just how to kiss Camilla correctly Instead of punishing Camilla for such public humiliation as is suggested by Diane s conversation with the bungling hit man one critic views Rita as the vulnerable representation of Diane s desire for Camilla 69 Adam Kesher Justin Theroux is established in the first portion of the film as a vaguely arrogant 70 but apparently successful director who endures one humiliation after another Theroux said of his role He s sort of the one character in the film who doesn t know what the hell s going on I think he s the one guy the audience says I m kind of like you right now I don t know why you re being subjected to all this pain 16 After being stripped of creative control of his film he is cuckolded by the pool cleaner played by Billy Ray Cyrus and thrown out of his own opulent house above Hollywood After he checks into a seedy motel and pays with cash the manager arrives to tell him that his credit is no good Witnessed by Diane Adam is pompous and self important He is the only character whose personality does not seem to change completely from the first part of the film to the second 71 One analysis of Adam s character contends that because he capitulated and chose Camilla Rhodes for his film that is the end of Betty s cheerfulness and ability to help Rita placing the blame for her tragedy on the representatives of studio power 42 Another analysis suggests that Adam Kesher does not have the control he wants and is willing to step over who or what is necessary to consolidate his career Hungry for power he uses the appearance of love or seduction only as one more tool Love for power justifies that everything else is forgotten be it pride love or any other consideration There are no regrets it is Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles 72 Minor characters include The Cowboy Monty Montgomery the Castigliani Brothers Dan Hedaya and Angelo Badalamenti and Mr Roque Michael J Anderson all of whom are somehow involved in pressuring Adam to cast Camilla Rhodes in his film These characters represent the death of creativity for film scholars 65 73 and they portray a vision of the industry as a closed hierarchical system in which the ultimate source of power remains hidden behind a series of representatives 57 Ann Miller portrays Coco the landlady who welcomes Betty to her wonderful new apartment Coco in the first part of the film represents the old guard in Hollywood who welcomes and protects Betty In the second part of the film however she appears as Adam s mother who impatiently chastises Diane for being late to the party and barely pays attention to Diane s embarrassed tale of how she got into acting 65 Style Edit Dwarf actor Michael J Anderson as Mr Roque was fitted with oversized prosthetic limbs to give him the appearance of an abnormally small head The filmmaking style of David Lynch has been written about extensively using descriptions like ultraweird 47 dark 42 and oddball 74 Todd McGowan writes One cannot watch a Lynch film the way one watches a standard Hollywood film noir nor in the way that one watches most radical films 75 Through Lynch s juxtaposition of cliche and surreal nightmares and fantasies nonlinear story lines camera work sound and lighting he presents a film that challenges viewers to suspend belief of what they are experiencing 41 Many of the characters in Mulholland Drive are archetypes that can only be perceived as cliche the new Hollywood hopeful the femme fatale the maverick director and shady powerbrokers that Lynch never seems to explore fully 52 Lynch places these often hackneyed characters in dire situations creating dream like qualities By using these characters in scenarios that have components and references to dreams fantasies and nightmares viewers are left to decide between the extremes what is reality One film analyst Jennifer Hudson writes of him Like most surrealists Lynch s language of the unexplained is the fluid language of dreams 31 David Lynch uses various methods of deception in Mulholland Drive A shadowy figure named Mr Roque who seems to control film studios is portrayed by dwarf actor Michael J Anderson also from Twin Peaks Anderson who has only two lines and is seated in an enormous wooden wheelchair was fitted with oversized foam prosthetic arms and legs in order to portray his head as abnormally small 76 During Adam and Camilla s party Diane watches Camilla played by Harring with Adam on one arm lean over and deeply kiss the same woman who appeared as Camilla Melissa George before the blue box was opened Both then turn and smile pointedly at Diane Film critic Franklin Ridgway writes that the depiction of such a deliberate cruel and manipulative act makes it unclear if Camilla is as capricious as she seems or if Diane s paranoia is allowing the audience only to see what she senses 65 In a scene immediately after Betty s audition the film cuts to a woman singing without apparent accompaniment but as the camera pulls backwards the audience sees that it is a recording studio In actuality it is a sound stage where Betty has just arrived to meet Adam Kesher that the audience realizes as the camera pulls back further Ridgway insists that such deception through artful camera work sets the viewer full of doubt about what is being presented It is as if the camera in its graceful fluidity of motion reassures us that it thinks it sees everything has everything under control even if we and Betty do not 65 According to Stephen Dillon Lynch s use of different camera positions throughout the film such as hand held points of view makes the viewer identify with the suspense of the character in his or her particular space but that Lynch at moments also disconnects the camera from any particular point of view thereby ungrounding a single or even a human perspective so that the multiple perspectives keep contexts from merging significantly troubling our sense of the individual and the human 77 Andrew Hageman similarly notes that the camera work in the film renders a very disturbing sense of place and presence such as the scene in Winkie s where the camera floats irregularly during the shot reverse shot dialogue by which the spectator becomes aware that a set of normally objective shots have become disturbingly subjective 36 Scholar Curt Hersey recognizes several avant garde techniques used in the film including lack of transitions abrupt transitions motion speed nontraditional camera movement computer generated imagery nondiegetic images nonlinear narration and intertextuality 78 An emotionally troubled Diane exchanges words with Camilla Diane s scenes were characterized by different lighting to symbolize her physical and spiritual impoverishment The first portion of the film that establishes the characters of Betty Rita and Adam presents some of the most logical filmmaking of Lynch s career 31 79 The later part of the film that represents reality to many viewers however exhibits a marked change in cinematic effect that gives it a quality just as surreal as the first part Diane s scenes feature choppier editing and dirtier lighting that symbolize her physical and spiritual impoverishment 42 which contrasts with the first portion of the film where even the plainest decor seems to sparkle Betty and Rita glow with light and transitions between scenes are smooth 80 Lynch moves between scenes in the first portion of the film by using panoramic shots of the mountains palm trees and buildings in Los Angeles In the darker part of the film sound transitions to the next scene without a visual reference where it is taking place At Camilla s party when Diane is most humiliated the sound of crashing dishes is heard that carries immediately to the scene where dishes have been dropped in the diner and Diane is speaking with the hit man Sinnerbrink also notes that several scenes in the film such as the one featuring Diane s hallucination of Camilla after Diane wakes up the image of the being from behind Winkie s after Diane s suicide or the repetition reversal and displacement of elements that were differently configured in the early portion of the film creates the uncanny effect where viewers are presented with familiar characters or situations in altered times or locations 35 Similarly Hageman has identified the early scene at Winkie s as extremely uncanny because it is a scene where the boundaries separating physical reality from the imaginary realities of the unconscious disintegrate 36 Author Valtteri Kokko has identified three groups of uncanny metaphors the doppelganger of multiple characters played by the same actors dreams and an everyday object primarily the blue box that initiates Rita s disappearance and Diane s real life 81 Another recurring element in Lynch s films is his experimentation with sound He stated in an interview you look at the image and the scene silent it s doing the job it s supposed to do but the work isn t done When you start working on the sound keep working until it feels correct There s so many wrong sounds and instantly you know it Sometimes it s really magical 10 In the opening scene of the film as the dark haired woman stumbles off Mulholland Drive silently it suggests she is clumsy After Lynch added a hint of the steam from the wreck and the screaming kids however it transformed Laura Elena Harring from clumsy to terrified 70 Lynch also infused subtle rumblings throughout portions of the film that reviewers noted added unsettling and creepy effects 82 Hageman also identifies perpetual and uncanny ambient sound and places a particular emphasis on the scene where the man collapses behind Winkie s as normal sound is drowned out by a buzzing roar noting that the noise creates a dissonance and suspense that draws in the spectator as detective to place the sound and reestablish order 36 Mulholland Drive s ending with the woman at Club Silencio whispering is an example of Lynch s aural deception and surreality according to Ruth Perlmutter who writes The acting the dreams the search for identity the fears and terrors of the undefined self are over when the film is over and therefore there is only silence and enigma 33 Soundtrack EditThe album progresses much like a typical Lynch film opening with a quick pleasant Jitterbug and then slowly delving into darker string passages the twangy guitar sounds of 50s diner music and finally the layered disturbing often confusing underbelly of the score Neil Shurley 2002 83 The soundtrack of Mulholland Drive was supervised by Angelo Badalamenti who collaborated on previous Lynch projects Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks 84 Badalamenti who was nominated for awards from the American Film Institute AFI and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts BAFTA for his work on the film 85 86 also has a cameo as an espresso aficionado and mobster Reviewers note that Badalamenti s ominous score described as his darkest yet 87 contributes to the sense of mystery as the film opens on the dark haired woman s limousine 88 that contrasts with the bright hopeful tones of Betty s first arrival in Los Angeles 84 with the score acting as an emotional guide for the viewer 87 Film music journalist Daniel Schweiger remarks that Badalamenti s contribution to the score alternates from the nearly motionless string dread to noir jazz and audio feedback with the rhythms building to an explosion of infinite darkness 89 Badalamenti described a particular technique of sound design applied to the film by which he would provide Lynch with multiple ten to twelve minute tracks at slow tempo that they called firewood 89 from which Lynch would take fragments and experiment with them resulting in a lot of film s eerie soundscapes 87 Lynch uses two pop songs from the 1960s directly after one another playing as two actresses are auditioning by lip synching them According to an analyst of music used in Lynch films Lynch s female characters are often unable to communicate through normal channels and are reduced to lip synching or being otherwise stifled 90 Connie Stevens s Sixteen Reasons is the song being sung while the camera pans backwards to reveal several illusions and Linda Scott s version of I ve Told Ev ry Little Star is the audition for the first Camilla Rhodes that film scholar Eric Gans considers a song of empowerment for Betty 91 Originally written by Jerome Kern as a duet sung by Linda Scott in this rendition by herself Gans suggests it takes on a homosexual overtone in Mulholland Drive 91 Unlike Sixteen Reasons however portions of I ve Told Ev ry Little Star are distorted to suggest a sonic split identity for Camilla 90 When the song plays Betty has just entered the sound stage where Adam is auditioning actresses for his film and she sees Adam locks eyes with him and abruptly flees after Adam has declared This is the girl about Camilla thereby avoiding his inevitable rejection Rebekah Del Rio performing Llorando popularized in the film s Club Silencio sequence At the hinge of the film is a scene in an unusual late night theater called Club Silencio where a performer announces No hay banda there is no band but yet we hear a band variated between English Spanish and French Described as the most original and stunning sequence in an original and stunning film 42 Rebekah Del Rio s Spanish a cappella rendition of Crying named Llorando is praised as show stopping except that there s no show to stop in the sparsely attended Club Silencio 57 Lynch wanted to use Roy Orbison s version of Crying in Blue Velvet but changed his mind when he heard Orbison s In Dreams 20 Del Rio who popularized the Spanish version and who received her first recording contract on the basis of the song stated that Lynch flew to Nashville where she was living and she sang the song for him once and did not know he was recording her Lynch wrote a part for her in the film and used the version she sang for him in Nashville 92 The song tragically serenades the lovers Betty and Rita who sit spellbound and weeping moments before their relationship disappears and is replaced by Diane and Camilla s dysfunction According to one film scholar the song and the entire theater scene marks the disintegration of Betty s and Rita s personalities as well as their relationship 42 With the use of multiple languages and a song to portray such primal emotions one film analyst states that Lynch exhibits his distrust of intellectual discourse and chooses to make sense through images and sounds 31 The disorienting effect of the music playing although del Rio is no longer there is described as the musical version of Magritte s painting Ceci n est pas une pipe 93 Release EditMulholland Drive premiered at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival in May to major critical acclaim Lynch was awarded the Best Director prize at the festival sharing it with co winner Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn t There 94 It drew positive reviews from many critics and some of the strongest audience reactions of Lynch s career The film was publicized with cryptic posters bearing the abbreviation Mulholland Dr Box office Edit Universal Pictures released Mulholland Drive theatrically in 66 theaters in the United States on October 12 2001 grossing 587 591 over its opening weekend It eventually expanded to its widest release of 247 theaters ultimately grossing 7 220 243 at the U S box office TVA Films released the film theatrically in Canada on October 26 2001 In other territories outside the United States the film grossed 12 897 096 for a worldwide total of 20 117 339 on the film s original release plus much smaller sums on later re releases 5 Reception and legacy Edit Since its release Mulholland Drive has received both some of the harshest epithets and some of the most lavish praise in recent cinematic history 95 On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 85 based on 186 reviews with an average rating of 7 7 10 The website s critical consensus reads David Lynch s dreamlike and mysterious Mulholland Drive is a twisty neo noir with an unconventional structure that features a mesmerizing performance from Naomi Watts as a woman on the dark fringes of Hollywood 96 On Metacritic which assigns a normalized rating to reviews the film has a weighted average score of 85 out of 100 based on 35 critics indicating universal acclaim 97 Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times who had often been dismissive of Lynch s work awarded the film four stars and said David Lynch has been working toward Mulholland Drive all of his career and now that he s arrived there I forgive him for Wild at Heart and even Lost Highway the movie is a surrealist dreamscape in the form of a Hollywood film noir and the less sense it makes the more we can t stop watching it 58 Ebert subsequently added Mulholland Drive to his Great Films list 98 In The New York Times Stephen Holden wrote that the film ranks alongside Fellini s 8 and other auteurist fantasias as a monumental self reflection and added Looked at lightly it is the grandest and silliest cinematic carnival to come along in quite some time on a more serious level its investigation into the power of movies pierces a void from which you can hear the screams of a ravenous demon whose appetites can never be slaked 38 Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle called it exhilarating for its dreamlike images and fierce frequently reckless imagination and added there s a mesmerizing quality to its languid pace its sense of foreboding and its lost in time atmosphere it holds us spellbound and amused for all of its loony and luscious exasperating 146 minutes and proves that Lynch is in solid form and still an expert at pricking our nerves 99 In Rolling Stone Peter Travers observed Mulholland Drive makes movies feel alive again This sinful pleasure is a fresh triumph for Lynch and one of the best films of a sorry ass year For visionary daring swooning eroticism and colors that pop like a whore s lip gloss there s nothing like this baby anywhere 100 J Hoberman of The Village Voice stated This voluptuous phantasmagoria is certainly Lynch s strongest movie since Blue Velvet and maybe Eraserhead The very things that failed him in the bad boy rockabilly debacle of Lost Highway the atmosphere of free floating menace pointless transmigration of souls provocatively dropped plot stitches gimcrack alternate universes are here brilliantly rehabilitated 39 A O Scott of The New York Times wrote that while some might consider the plot an offense against narrative order the film is an intoxicating liberation from sense with moments of feeling all the more powerful for seeming to emerge from the murky night world of the unconscious 101 Mulholland Drive was not without its detractors Rex Reed of The New York Observer said that it was the worst film he had seen in 2001 calling it a load of moronic and incoherent garbage 102 In New York Peter Rainer observed Although I like it more than some of his other dreamtime freakfests it s still a pretty moribund ride Lynch needs to renew himself with an influx of the deep feeling he has for people for outcasts and lay off the cretins and hobgoblins and zombies for a while 103 In The Washington Post Desson Howe called it an extended mood opera if you want to put an arty label on incoherence 104 Todd McCarthy of Variety found much to praise Lynch cranks up the levels of bizarre humor dramatic incident and genuine mystery with a succession of memorable scenes some of which rank with his best but also noted the film jumps off the solid ground of relative narrative coherence into Lynchian fantasyland for the final 45 minutes Lynch is in mind twisting mode that presents a form of alternate reality with no apparent meaning or logical connection to what came before Although such tactics are familiar from Twin Peaks and elsewhere the sudden switcheroo to head games is disappointing because up to this point Lynch had so wonderfully succeeded in creating genuine involvement 79 James Berardinelli also criticized it saying Lynch cheats his audience pulling the rug out from under us He throws everything into the mix with the lone goal of confusing us Nothing makes any sense because it s not supposed to make any sense There s no purpose or logic to events Lynch is playing a big practical joke on us 105 Film theorist Ray Carney notes You wouldn t need all the emotional back flips and narrative trap doors if you had anything to say You wouldn t need doppelgangers and shadow figures if your characters had souls 106 Later Mulholland Drive was named the best film of the decade by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association 107 Cahiers du cinema 108 IndieWire 109 Slant Magazine 110 Reverse Shot 111 The Village Voice 112 and Time Out New York who asked rhetorically in a reference to the September 11 attacks Can there be another movie that speaks as resonantly if unwittingly to the awful moment that marked our decade Mulholland Drive is the monster behind the diner it s the self delusional dream turned into nightmare 113 It was also voted best of the decade in a Film Comment poll of international critics programmers academics filmmakers and others 114 and by the magazine s readers 115 It appeared on lists among the ten best films of the decade coming in third according to The Guardian 116 Rolling Stone critic Peter Travers 117 the Canadian Press 118 Access Hollywood critic Scott Mantz 119 and eighth on critic Michael Phillips s list 120 In 2010 it was named the second best arthouse film ever by The Guardian 121 The film was voted as the 11th best film set in Los Angeles in the last 25 years by a group of Los Angeles Times writers and editors with the primary criterion of communicating an inherent truth about the L A experience 122 Empire magazine placed Mulholland Drive at number 391 on their list of the five hundred greatest films ever 123 It has also been ranked number 38 on the Channel 4 program 50 Films to See Before You Die 124 In 2011 online magazine Slate named Mulholland Drive in its piece on New Classics as the most enduring film since 2000 125 In the British Film Institute s 2012 Sight amp Sound poll Mulholland Drive was ranked the 28th greatest film ever made and in the 2022 poll its ranking rose to 8th 126 127 Having received 40 critics votes it is one of only two films from the 21st century to be included in the list along with 2000 s In the Mood for Love In a 2015 BBC poll it was ranked 21st among all American films 128 The following year Mulholland Drive was named as the greatest film of the 21st century in a poll conducted by BBC Culture 129 In July 2021 Mulholland Drive was shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival 130 Home media Edit The film was released on VHS and DVD by Universal Studios Home Video on April 9 2002 131 in the United States and Canada with few special features It was released without chapter stops a feature that Lynch objects to on the grounds that it demystifies the film 132 In spite of Lynch s concerns the DVD release included a cover insert that provided David Lynch s 10 Clues to Unlocking This Thriller which were 1 Pay particular attention to the beginning of the film At least two clues are revealed before the credits 2 Notice appearances of the red lampshade 3 Can you hear the title of the film that Adam Kesher is auditioning actresses for Is it mentioned again 4 An accident is a terrible event notice the location of the accident 5 Who gives a key and why 6 Notice the robe the ashtray the coffee cup 7 What is felt realized and gathered at the club Silencio 8 Did talent alone help Camilla 9 Note the occurrences surrounding the man behind Winkies 10 Where is Aunt Ruth 133 One DVD reviewer noted that the clues may be big obnoxious red herrings 82 Nick Coccellato of Eccentric Cinema gave the film a rating of nine out of ten and the DVD release an eight out of ten saying that the lack of special features only adds to the mystery the film itself possesses in abundance 134 Special features in later versions and overseas versions of the DVD include a Lynch interview at the Cannes Film Festival and highlights of the debut of the film at Cannes Optimum Home Entertainment released Mulholland Drive to the European market on Blu ray as part of its StudioCanal Collection on September 13 2010 135 New special features exclusive to this release include an introduction by Thierry Jousse In the Blue Box a retrospective documentary featuring directors and critics two making of documentaries On the Road to Mulholland Drive and Back to Mulholland Drive and several interviews with people involved in making the film 136 It is the second David Lynch film in this line of Blu rays after The Elephant Man 137 On July 15 2015 The Criterion Collection announced that it would release Mulholland Drive newly restored through a 4K digital transfer on DVD and Blu ray on October 27 2015 both of which include new interviews with the film s crew and the 2005 edition of Chris Rodley s book Lynch on Lynch along with the original trailer and other extras 138 139 It was Lynch s second film to receive a Criterion Collection release on DVD and Blu ray following Eraserhead which was released in September 2014 140 On August 11 2021 Criterion announced their first 4K Ultra HD releases a six film slate will include Mulholland Drive Criterion indicated each title will be available in a 4K UHD Blu ray combo pack including a 4K UHD disc of the feature film as well as the film and special features on the companion Blu ray 141 Criterion confirmed on August 16 2021 that Mulholland Drive will be released on November 16 2021 as a 4K and Blu ray disc package Awards and honors EditLynch was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for the film 142 From the Hollywood Foreign Press the film received four Golden Globe nominations including Best Picture Drama Best Director and Best Screenplay 143 It was named Best Picture by the New York Film Critics Circle at the 2001 New York Film Critics Circle Awards and Online Film Critics Society Award Category Recipient ResultAcademy Awards Best Director David Lynch NominatedBritish Academy Film Awards Best Music Angelo Badalamenti NominatedBest Editing Mary Sweeney WonGolden Globe Awards Best Motion Picture Drama NominatedBest Director David Lynch NominatedBest Screenplay NominatedBest Original Score Angelo Badalamenti NominatedAFI Awards AFI Movie of the Year NominatedDirector of the Year David Lynch NominatedActor of the Year Female Naomi Watts NominatedComposer of the Year Angelo Badalamenti 85 NominatedCannes Film Festival Palme d Or David Lynch NominatedBest Director David Lynch shared with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn t There 94 WonCesar Awards Best Foreign Film David Lynch 144 WonALMA Awards Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture Laura Harring 145 WonChicago Film Critics Awards Best Film WonBest Director David Lynch WonBest Actress Naomi Watts 146 WonIndependent Spirit Awards Best Cinematography Peter Deming 147 WonLos Angeles Film Critics Association Best Director David Lynch 148 WonNational Society of Film Critics Best Film WonBest Director David Lynch NominatedBest Actress Naomi Watts 149 WonBest Cinematography Peter Deming NominatedNew York Film Critics Circle Awards Best Film WonOnline Film Critics Society Best Picture WonBest Director David Lynch WonBest Original Screenplay WonBest Actress Naomi Watts WonBest Breakthrough Performance WonBest Original Score Angelo Badalamenti WonBest Cinematography Peter Deming NominatedSee also EditList of films featuring miniature peopleReferences Edit a b c Mulholland Dr 2001 British Film Institute Retrieved July 18 2018 MULHOLLAND DRIVE 15 British Board of Film Classification July 26 2001 Archived from the original on October 27 2014 Retrieved October 26 2014 a b Mulholland Dr 2001 American Film Institute Retrieved July 19 2018 Mulholland Drive 2001 The Numbers Retrieved January 27 2018 a b Mulholland Drive 2001 Box Office Mojo Box Office Mojo Archived from the original on October 21 2012 Retrieved August 10 2012 Sanders Steven Skoble Aeon G 2008 The Philosophy of TV Noir University of Kentucky Press p 3 ISBN 978 0813172620 Silver Alain Ward Elizabeth Ursini James Porfirio Robert 2010 Film Noir The Encyclopaedia Overlook Duckworth New York ISBN 978 1 59020 144 2 Woods 2000 p 206 David Lynch In Conversation Queensland Art Gallery amp Gallery of Modern Art June 15 2015 34 22 36 07 minutes in Archived from the original on November 14 2021 via YouTube a b Divine Christine November 2001 David Lynch Creative Screenwriting 6 8 8 12 Woods 2000 pp 205 214 Harris Will January 22 2014 Sherilyn Fenn talks David Lynch and how Twin Peaks should have ended The A V Club Archived from the original on January 22 2014 Retrieved January 22 2014 a b c David Anna November 2001 Twin Piques Premiere 3 15 80 81 Newman Bruce October 10 2001 How pair got to intersection of Lynch and Mulholland U T San Diego p F 6 a b Cheng Scarlet October 12 2001 It s a Road She Knows Well Mulholland Drive Star Naomi Watts Has Lived the Hollywood Metaphor Behind the Fabled Highway Los Angeles Times p F20 a b Neman Daniel October 19 2001 Indie Actor Theroux Puts in Drive Time Richmond Times Dispatch Virginia p C1A Woods 2000 pp 213 214 Romney Jonathan January 6 2002 Film Lynch opens up his box of tricks 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original on August 30 2010 Retrieved August 17 2012 Ranier Peter April 8 2008 You Don t Know Jack New York Archived from the original on October 18 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 Howe Desson October 12 2001 Mulholland A Dead End Street The Washington Post p T43 Archived from the original on March 5 2016 Berardinelli James 2001 Mulholland Drive reelviews net Archived from the original on February 24 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 Carney Ray 2004 Mulholland Drive and puzzle films Boston University Archived from the original on March 3 2016 Kay Jeremy January 12 2010 LA critics name Mulholland Drive Film of the Decade Screen International Archived from the original on September 18 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 Palmares 2000 cahiersducinema net 2010 Archived from the original on April 26 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 Hernandez Eugene January 22 2010 Summer Hours Wins indieWIRE 09 Critics Poll Mulholland Dr is Best of Decade indiewire com Retrieved August 17 2012 Best of the Aughts Film Slant Magazine February 7 2010 Archived from the original on September 30 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 Best of the Decade 1 Mulholland Drive reverseshot com Archived from the original on July 17 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 Best of Decade The Village Voice 2010 Archived from the original on October 20 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 The TONY top 50 movies of the decade Time Out New York 739 November 26 2009 Archived from the original on October 13 2010 Retrieved August 17 2012 Film Comment s End of Decade Critics Poll Film Comment 2010 Archived from the original on June 8 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 Extended Readers Poll Results Film Comment 2010 Archived from the original on March 6 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 Best films of the noughties No 3 Mulholland Drive The Guardian December 30 2009 Archived from the original on September 8 2013 Retrieved August 17 2012 Travers Peters December 9 2009 Mulholland Drive Rolling Stone Movies Lists Rolling Stone Archived from the original on December 8 2010 Retrieved August 17 2012 Memento Mulholland Drive among Canadian Press film favourites of 2000 journalpioneer com December 20 2009 Archived from the original on July 13 2011 Retrieved August 17 2012 MovieMantz Best Movies Of The Decade accesshollywood com January 5 2010 Archived from the original on October 1 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 Best of the Decade Top Ten bventertainment go com 2002 Archived from the original on April 14 2010 Retrieved August 17 2012 The 25 best arthouse films of all time the full list The Guardian October 20 2010 Archived from the original on October 5 2013 Retrieved March 30 2011 Boucher Geoff August 31 2008 The 25 best L A films of the last 25 years Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on August 25 2015 Retrieved August 17 2012 The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time Empire Archived from the original on October 15 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 Film4 s 50 Films To See Before You Die Channel 4 Archived from the original on October 5 2013 Retrieved August 17 2012 The New Classics The most enduring books shows movies and ideas since 2000 Slate November 7 2011 Archived from the original on August 18 2012 Retrieved August 17 2012 Christie Ian 2012 The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time bfi org uk Archived from the original on March 1 2017 Retrieved August 17 2012 Critics top 100 bfi org uk Archived from the original on October 26 2013 Retrieved March 13 2016 The 100 greatest American films BBC July 20 2015 Archived from the original on September 16 2016 Retrieved October 6 2016 Mulholland Drive tops BBC Culture greatest film poll August 23 2016 Archived from the original on August 23 2016 Retrieved August 23 2016 2021 Cannes Classics Lineup Includes Orson Welles Powell and Pressburger Tilda Swinton amp More The Film Stage June 23 2021 Retrieved June 25 2021 MulhollandDrive Speeds To Video hive4media com February 14 2002 Archived from the original on March 18 2002 Retrieved September 10 2019 Rafferty Terrence May 4 2003 Everybody Gets a Cut The New York Times Retrieved August 10 2012 Lynch has in recent years refused to allow voice over commentary or scene access on the DVDs of his films The film is the thing he tells me For me the world you go into in a film is so delicate it can be broken so easily It s so tender And it s essential to hold that world together to keep it safe He says he thinks it s crazy to go in and fiddle with the film considers voice overs theater of the absurd and is concerned that too many DVD extras can demystify a film Do not demystify he declares with ardor When you know too much you can never see the film the same way again It s ruined for you for good All the magic leaks out and it s putrefied Lynch David 2002 Mulholland Drive David Lynch s 10 Clues to Unlocking This Thriller Mulholland Drive DVD Insert Universal City Universal Studios Coccellato Nick June 4 2008 Linsdey Brian ed MULHOLLAND DR Eccentric Cinema Archived from the original on March 24 2013 Retrieved February 3 2013 StudioCanal Collection Mulholland Drive studiocanalcollection com Archived from the original on October 15 2012 Retrieved August 10 2012 DuHamel Brandon August 31 2010 Mulholland Drive StudioCanal Collection UK Blu ray Review blu raydefinition com Archived from the original on March 9 2012 Retrieved August 10 2012 StudioCanal Collection The Elephant Man studiocanalcollection com Archived from the original on July 26 2012 Retrieved August 10 2012 Webmaster July 15 2015 Criterion Announces October Titles Blu ray com Archived from the original on July 18 2015 Retrieved July 19 2015 Mulholland Dr 2001 The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection Archived from the original on September 4 2015 Retrieved July 19 2015 Eraserhead 1997 The Criterion Collection Janus Films Archived from the original on June 20 2014 Retrieved June 17 2014 Machkovech Sam August 11 2021 Criterion announces support for 4K UHD Blu ray beginning with Citizen Kane Ars Technica Retrieved August 12 2021 Nominees amp Winners for the 74th Academy Awards Academy of Motion Picture Arts amp Sciences Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Archived from the original on September 7 2014 Retrieved August 10 2012 The 59th Annual Golden Globe Awards TheGoldenGlobes com Archived from the original on February 26 2012 Retrieved August 10 2012 Barney Richard A 2009 David Lynch Interviews University Press of Mississippi ISBN 9781604732368 Retrieved March 3 2020 Pinero Rodriguez Receive ALMA Awards Los Angeles Times May 20 2002 p F 7 Chicago Film Critics Awards 1998 2007 chicagofilmcritics org Archived from the original on May 15 2012 Retrieved August 10 2012 Memento Makes Memories at the Independent Spirit Awards Los Angeles Times Archived from the original on November 30 2016 Retrieved November 29 2016 LAFCA lafca net Archived from the original on March 3 2012 Retrieved August 10 2012 Taylor Charles January 7 2002 Mulholland Drive takes best picture in critics awards Salon Archived from the original on November 15 2013 Retrieved August 10 2012 Bibliography EditDillon Steven 2006 The Solaris Effect Art and Artifice in Contemporary American Film University of Texas Press ISBN 978 0 292 71345 1 Filippo Maria San 2013 The B Word Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television Indiana University Press ISBN 978 0 253 00892 3 Johnson Jeff 2004 Pervert in the Pulpit Morality in the Works of David Lynch McFarland amp Company ISBN 978 0 7864 1753 7 McGowan Todd 2007 The Impossible David Lynch Columbia University Press ISBN 978 0 231 13955 7 Odell Colin Le Blanc Michelle 2007 David Lynch Kamera Books ISBN 978 1 84243 225 9 Sheen Erica Davison A eds 2004 The Cinema of David Lynch American Dreams Nightmare Visions Wallflower Press ISBN 978 1 903364 85 7 Woods Paul ed 2000 Weirdsville USA The Obsessive Universe of David Lynch Plexus Publishing ISBN 978 0 85965 291 9 External links EditMulholland Drive at Wikipedia s sister projects Media from Commons Quotations from Wikiquote Data from Wikidata Mulholland Drive at LynchNet com includes interviews press kit film clips Mulholland Drive at Critics Round Up Mulholland Drive at IMDb Mulholland Drive at AllMovie Mulholland Drive at Box Office Mojo Mulholland Drive at Metacritic Mulholland Drive at Rotten Tomatoes Lost on Mulholland Drive comprehensive analysis and resource center Deciphering David Lynch s 10 Clues Archived from the original on January 26 2007 Retrieved February 1 2005 found within the DVD archived link original dead David Lynch Interview on Mulholland Drrive Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Mulholland Drive film amp oldid 1133338214, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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