Mulholland Drive
Movie Review
Mulholland Drive
by Eric D. Snider
Grade: C-
Released: October 19, 2001
Directed by:
Cast:
One of the most boring things in the world is listening to someone else talk about a dream he or she had. Unless you were in the dream, or unless you can actually re-live the dream yourself, there is simply nothing to hold your interest in hearing about it. It's like attending a funeral for someone you didn't know. You get the idea this is a big deal for the people involved, but it's all pretty meaningless to you.
Dreams don't follow the rules of storytelling. The plotlines are rarely sensible, things happen for no reason, and there is seldom any kind of satisfying resolution. The dreamer finds them interesting because they contain tidbits of his or her real life, but that connection obviously doesn't extend to other people.
I mention this because David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" is a lot like a dream. It's random, it makes very little sense, and it refuses to answer most of the questions a viewer might have. Roger Ebert praised the film for these very reasons, saying:
"Individual scenes play well by themselves, as they do in dreams, but they don't connect in a way that makes sense -- again, like dreams. The way you know the movie is over is that it ends. And then you tell a friend, 'I saw the weirdest movie last night.' Just like you tell them you had the weirdest dream."
But as I said, your friend isn't going to be interested in hearing about your dream, and I can't imagine anyone honestly being interested in watching David Lynch's dream-on-film, either.
I find it amusing that Ebert liked the movie for all the reasons I disliked it. If I had read his review without having seen the movie, I would have thought, "Wow, this sounds awful."
Since Ebert doesn't have a real sparring partner these days (Roeper who?), I'll presumptuously put myself into the chair Gene Siskel once occupied just for this one review, and then I promise I'll leave before Roger calls security. (The complete text of Ebert's review can be found here.)
EBERT: "The less sense it makes, the more we can't stop watching it."
SNIDER: I disagree. Nonsense is fun for a few minutes, but not for 2 1/2 hours.
EBERT: "The movie is hypnotic; we're drawn along as if one thing leads to another -- but nothing leads anywhere."
SNIDER: In other words, it's a bait-and-switch, a frustrating lesson in movie tedium. You put a bunch of intriguing ideas on the screen to pique our interest ... and then intentionally leave them unresolved! Hooray for you, David Lynch, you brilliant, pretentious man, you!
EBERT: "'Mulholland Drive' isn't like 'Memento,' where if you watch it closely enough, you can hope to explain the mystery. There is no explanation. There may not even be a mystery."
SNIDER: And you consider this a selling point, Rog? "Mulholland Drive" isn't like "Memento" because the latter is one of the best films of the year and the former is merely a smug attempt by Lynch to see if people will proclaim him a genius just because they're afraid to admit they didn't get it.
EBERT: It "lingers over what it finds fascinating."
SNIDER: In other words, most scenes drag on too long. I love a lot of David Lynch's work -- the "Twin Peaks" episodes he personally wrote and/or directed are my favorites in that series, for example -- but the guy is self-indulgent to the point of irritation. For crying out loud, if nothing's happening, quit showing it to us.
EBERT: "This movie doesn't feel incomplete because it could never be complete -- closure is not a goal."
SNIDER: Again, you think this is why people SHOULD see it? A movie that doesn't even TRY to mean something, that doesn't even TRY to explain itself, that doesn't even TRY to make sense? Saying, "Closure is not a goal" is like saying, "Coherence is not a goal," or "Satisfying the audience is not a goal," or "Logic is not a goal."
EBERT: "If you require logic, see something else."
SNIDER: O that I could!
I will say now what I like about the film. Lynch's insistence upon stylized acting is always a treat; one is never sure whether he's honoring the simple burger-at-the-malt-shop fare of the 1950s, or satirizing it. Laura Harring and Naomi Watts are both good as the heroines, Harring as an amnesiac who is wanted by a variety of people in Los Angeles, and Watts as a fresh-faced Canadian girl hoping to make it big in Hollywood. Billy Ray Cyrus has a cameo, and Ann Miller plays a significant role. Justin Theroux has some very funny moments as a film director being told to re-cast his lead, and being told this by a mysterious cowboy. I also laughed a lot at a calamitous scene in which a hitman tries to quietly dispatch a victim.
And there are some gloriously exciting ideas, dealing with identity and reality and celebrity. Some scenes, by themselves, are funny, beautiful, poetic and surprising, all punctuated by Angelo Badalementi's Gothic-synth musical score. If I had any hope the movie could be unraveled by paying careful attention to it, I'd watch it again and try to figure it out. I'm certainly not saying a film shouldn't be evasive or difficult to grasp, because those are often the most rewarding ones. But as Roger already told you, there's no chance of understanding this one, no matter how hard you try. The movie doesn't want anyone to understand it. To make sure of that, it removes several key pieces before it even hands us the puzzle.
Grade: C-
Rated R, some harsh profanity, several scenes
This item has 15 comments
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brooks says:
November 6, 2006 at 10:53 amthe movie makes perfect sense. it's a great story about a failed actress who becomes delusional and bitter upon the realization of her failure and normality. i suggest watching it again with this in mind.
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dave says:
November 25, 2006 at 5:33 pm"The dreamer finds them interesting because they contain tidbits of his or her real life, but that connection obviously doesn't extend to other people."
I can't disagree more, we all have universal archetypes floating around in our subconcious. We can all latch on to these tidbits.
"unless you can actually re-live the dream yourself, there is simply nothing to hold your interest in hearing about it. "
then why watch any film that you can't actually re-live? I pity you if you really feel this way.
Dreams are irrational! That is the beauty of this film, the meaning is always below the surface, resonating on an emotional level (your words "gloriously exciting" are a good description.)
I get a huge vouyerstic thrill from this peek into a dreamworld.
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Joel says:
November 26, 2006 at 4:16 pmI highly recommend giving this film another view. It depicts the psychological interior of a character as compellingly as anything I have ever viewed. If you keep in mind that we are watching the subconscious desires/rationionalizations of a severely depressed protagonist, you will see that the movie can be understood, and actually functions on numerous symbolic levels, if you are open to thinking about what purpose such abstract scenes might serve in relating to an undisclosed reality. Virtually every element of every scene fits together in a meaningful way, once you decode the structure of the film.
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Jesse Wallace says:
March 1, 2007 at 11:38 pmI totally agree with you, Eric. This movie was nothing but pretentious trite. Its not fun being deliberately confused and dragged along in non-sensical plot platforms. Its not fun seeing none of those platforms bearing any fruit. It's not fun hoping the movie will give you something worthwhile, but fails in almost every area.
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grant says:
April 15, 2007 at 8:11 amwow...i just had a seisure trying to undestand how utterly insanse and incoherent this film was. Im burning the disc, screw the rental hire folk.
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Renee W says:
April 26, 2007 at 10:00 pmI agree with Snider whole heartedly, and was ironically surprised how I agreed with him on several points. I enjoyed your Ebert/ Snider skit better than I did the movie. Koodoes Snider ! It makes up for the time I wasted trying to figure out why this movie was so stupid.
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David Manning says:
May 4, 2007 at 11:10 pmI believe this movie CAN be figured out. I never agreed with this review. I really appreciate how genius the structure is once you really think your way through it; it's probably the deepest movie I've ever seen (at least 15 times moreso than Memento, although Memento was admittedly better).
http://www.themodernword.com/mulholland_drive.html
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Mike says:
July 15, 2007 at 1:08 amI think Lynch himself suddenly developed amnesia. After telling a totally absorbing story for almost two hours...forgot his own story line and forgot who the actors were supposed to be playing. Bottom line...a load of crap.
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Bryan McClendon says:
August 13, 2007 at 6:01 pmThis movie more than any other really draws a line between those who get it and those who do not.
I don't mean "get it" on some metaphorical level either, I mean literally understand what is going on with the plot.
Having read all of the bad reviews linked from RT they all have this single one thing in common, they reviewer literally did not understand what was happening in the film at the time they were watching it.
If I hadn't understood the twist and what was actually going on, I probably would have hated it just the same, but when the main plot twist clicks the whole puzzle falls into place and you realize this movie is brilliant.
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Daniel Bishop says:
October 5, 2007 at 11:55 amOkay, so maybe I'm a dumbass. But even in retrospect, now that I have had all you smarties explain to me what I was supposed to have "gotten", it was still weak. I appreciate the dreaminess, and some of the scenes were individually enjoyable, some of them were aesthetically pleasing.... but as a film, it failed. I got nothing out of it. If that means I'm a dumbass, so be it. As a film, it still failed.
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Kevin says:
November 4, 2007 at 11:01 amI completely agree, Mr. Snider. "Nonsense is fun for a few minutes, but not for 2 1/2 hours." Thank you for not being afraid to state your opinions.
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chris says:
November 4, 2007 at 9:09 pmI think you should not take it personal. Lynch didnt want to make you feel frustrated.
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Barbaros says:
July 24, 2008 at 1:38 amMulholland Drive movie was a waste of 1/12 of a day which can not be retriewed anymore. During the whole movie you expect a great connection of both nonsense events you view and a graat ending which will blow your mind. Expectation of a great conclusion gets bigger and bigger when movie gets much more unsense. But the conclusion is even worse... Lynch couldn't figure a way out of the 2 hours of story mess, and I guess he did not try to conclude it and the end... It is simply a bad movie. Don't try to look deeper and try to understand. Bad is bad. And for the people who try to find a treasure underneath of this bad movie, don't try more. I'm sure even Mr.Lynch does not know what did he filmed about. Just a few good visualization and a quality filming technique. But the story is garbage, paranoid, nonsense and sometimes unneccesery horrifying.
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pay2c'EM says:
August 16, 2008 at 3:40 amOk, so here's a standing "challenge" to all of you who think you "got" this film: Instead of simply telling us that we "missed the point," tell us what you think the point was. Please!!! If you're going to critique a critique, at least follow the rules of critique by explaining the how's and why's of your opinion.
I watched this movie and didn't get it. So I watched it again to see if I COULD get it. Then I got a copy of the production notes to see what the REAL point of the whole thing was, then watched it a third time to see if I could get what I was told I should be getting. Third times usually a charm. Not in this case. This movie is unabashed pretentiousness masquerading as "deep" art. There's nothing else there. THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES, PEOPLE!
Again, if you disagree, please explain. And then I'll compare what you think you "got" to what the actual production notes were.
On a positive note: that Roy Orbison Spanish remake in the theatre was one of the most beautiful, haunting musical numbers I've ever seen in a movie. If only it could've been used in some Cirque de' Soleil production, unless of wasted on this mindless drivel...
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ben says:
December 26, 2009 at 12:16 amI just ranted against Eric Snider's anti-illogic stance in response to his review of the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie, so now that that's out of my system and I am in better spirits, I will try to respond to the last guy, Pay2Cem, who calls on those defending the film and claiming they "got" it.
I feel like neither the alpha nor beta girl of this argument, but the gamma girl cop-out. I don't subscribe to the "this film is brilliant and nobody gets it" theory, but instead I admit that it may not be meant to make sense in the way we are trained by movies to expect them to, and I challenge the underlying assumptions and values of those who say films must make sense all the time.
Did you know that Lynch is a huge fan of transcendental meditation? Logic, in large part, is an abstract illusion in which people attempt to take past experiences, label them, file all the labels into a tidy, non-contradictory system of their own invention, and based on that filing system they pretend to be able to understand the present moment better and even, on occasion, to predict the future.
However, isn't this a futile effort on our parts to control everything in our lives, one that is bound to fail? It only takes something like 9/11 or hurricane katrina and suddenly people realize that not everything can be labeled, controlled, planned-out, and predicted. There is mystery in the present, there is certainly mystery in the future... What is the huge crime in having a movie reflect this reality? A movie that reminds people to take in and appreciate the experience on a moment-by-moment, face-value basis--pay attention to how the moment affects you, not how you allow your rational analysis of the movie to influence your system of experiencing reality through the comfortable distance of your logical filter.
Try experiencing a movie as if you are REALLY living it--watch it with your heart, not with your mind. If that is too frustrating for you, you may find that there are more things than just illogical movies that frustrate you in your life, and unlike a movie these things can't always be simply switched off.
Copyright © Eric D. Snider.
This work may not be transmitted via the Internet, nor reproduced in any other way, without written consent from Eric D. Snider.
Notes:
In 2011, I reconsidered this movie for my "Re-Views" column at Film.com.