So I’ve finally gotten round to watching Mulholland Drive by David Lynch. After scoring it for $6.95 at JB Hi Fi, it has been sitting on my to watch list. And now that I don’t have a full time job, I’m expecting to get a lot of my literature read and arty films watched. Sucks how working at a computer 8 hours of the day makes you feel a bit numb to challenging art and literature – I would prefer to watch things that don’t challenge my mind.
One of my friends loved this film and how much the story line confused him. I have never watched a David Lynch film but have read quite a bit about the director and some of his iconic work.
Mirrors – the perfect symbol of questioning identity.
After watching Mulholland Drive, I am experiencing a sort of a Lynch-imposed kind of confused, depressed and isolated feeling in my head. There are numerous underlying themes in Mulholland Drive and it leaves you disconnected to everything around you – your sense of identity and the things that make up your identity. It was also unsettling especially at the point when Lynch made me feel comfortable in the characters and the storyline and then in a split second, whatever you knew went out the room. It was an absolute overhaul of characters, themes established. And I watched the movie with the expectation that something like that would happen, but even then, it still threw me off my guard.
The theme of romantic lesbianism was prevalent
A case of copycat identity
I performed a wikipedia search on the movie, to at least provide some closure into what Mulholland Drive was about to only get the answer from Lynch that its open to interpretation. I initially thought that the first part of the film with Betty and Rita was the dream like state of Diana Selwyn. The Cowboy character walked past the door of the ‘dead’ Diana Selwyn and told her to wake up – like what ever happened in the first part was just a dream. Even through out the first part, there were allusions, side comments to the fact that it was a hyper real world, fake to its bone. However, I think that was definitely the obvious interpretation of the film and I keep wondering that Lynch probably has a better meaning to this rather than it was all a dream cop-out explanation. Anyhow, I think a couple more viewing sessions and the small details should piece together some underlying meaning. Interestingly, some critics urge viewers not to over analyse the movie. But when its a Lynch movie, how can you not?
Watch the trailor:
