Have you ever stepped inside the mind of David Lynch? I did over a decade ago. He had penned a freaky little TV program called "Twin Peaks." My best friend got me hooked on it, and for one hour every week I committed myself to being scared silly by Lynch's storytelling. The guy always intrigued me, even though he didn't always make sense. So I approached his latest film, "Mulholland Drive," with great fear and trembling.
 If you've never seen anything by Lynch and you walk into this one expecting something that makes sense, you probably ought to go back to the concession stand and then wander into the latest viewing of "Domestic Disturbance," or some other tripe that feels the need to explain everything to you. Lynch explains nothing and, unlike such puzzlers like "The Usual Suspects," doesn't even give you enough clues to piece it together in the end. Plus, he is infatuated with mood, imagery, style, and emotion and neglects an actual plot for these things. Needless to say, this makes watching and reviewing the movie very difficult, if not impossible. In discussing it, I'm going to reveal some things that might be considered spoiler material. However, even knowing these things, you're still going to be baffled by the whole deal, so don't worry too much. In fact, if you have some outline, it might better prepare you to appreciate what Lynch has constructed.
The movie itself is some sort of weird combination of "Memento" and "Abre Los Ojos" (a Spanish film that has been re-made into the soon to be released "Vanilla Sky"). It has several narrative streams that are supposed to interlock and it is quite maddening to try and figure out how. Our first image is of a nameless voluptuous brunette who is seated in the back of a limo and is about to be killed when she is saved by a freak accident. She stumbles to a resident area and eventually sneaks inside of a vacant apartment. We then cut to a scene with an annoyingly chipper young blonde with the name Betty who has just gotten off an airplane and is staying in her aunt's apartment for a while in order to try and crack the movie industry. We soon find out that it is her apartment that the brunette has hidden in. Betty, thinking that she must be a friend of her aunt, happily welcomes her in. It is soon discovered, however, that the brunette has lost her memory. She gives herself the name 'Rita' after seeing a movie poster on the wall with the name Rita Hayworth on it. We find out that in Rita's possession is a large sum of money and a strange blue box. With these clues the two girls start hunting, Nancy Drew-like, to piece back together Rita's past.
Meanwhile, on a different narration, we witness a successful director who is being muscled into casting a particular actress into his newest film. Some unscrupulous mob-type guys, as well as the midget from "Twin Peaks" fame, tell him that unless he does what he's told he will be killed. He is later instructed to visit 'The Cowboy,' who apparently does the dirty work. The director does as he's told.
We then jump back to the two girls. They're doing some super-sleuthing when something jogs Rita's memory, and the two rush out to a late night live arts house, where a weird, dare I say 'Lynch-ian' performance is going on. After the performance is over, the girls discover a blue key in their possession that, of course, fits the blue box that Rita had with her. They rush home and turn the key.
What happens next I can't even describe, because the plot essentially stops making sense, at least from a linear point of view. Everything else that occurs from the insertion of the key into the blue box completely flips the movie upside down. Characters have different names, the plot has changed, and we are left with that strange feeling that you get when you wake up from a weird dream.
And here is where Lynch wants to bring us. The whole movie consists of two elements: a dream, and the reality that caused it. The reality and 'Lynch-pin' of the movie, and I'll try to be vague here, is that a girl with lofty and unrealistic aspirations has come to Hollywood to become an actress. She is soon beaten down by the harsh reality that is show business. She finds someone to love, but soon that love is replaced by jealousy and hatred, and leads her to destroy both her lover and herself. And at the brink of self-destruction, the starry-eyed Hollywood wannabe dreams/re-imagines her failed career and relationship in a way where everything unfolds just as a movie would. However, intermixed with her dream is her perception of all the sources of destruction present in Hollywood, and eventually because of it her dream becomes a nightmare.
The reality produces within her a wide range of emotions and images that only make sense once you know that everything you're seeing is a dream. It's pretty trippy, but if you think for a moment about the last time you had a dream, it does make sense. Objects and characters that you know in real life (in the movie these are things like the blue key, a black book, and practically every character) show up in your dream in weird places yet are all internally consistent. Also, many objects and characters are present only as background noise; they serve no purpose for the plot other than to keep up the weirdness that is our dream-state.
So I've told you everything, right? Well, no. So I've told you nothing, right? Not exactly. David Lynch's world is a weird one, and I've wrestled with some of his other stuff outside of "Twin Peaks" and it is simply impossible to find point or purpose. Even with "Twin Peaks," where the premise should have been simple- i.e. 'who killed Laura Palmer?' - that simply served as a vehicle for Lynch to create a psychedelic dual-world where the point of the show really didn't matter at all. After I finished watching "Mulholland Drive," I was utterly confused and decided that I didn't like it at all because Lynch refused to turn the blue key he has presented us with. Perhaps we've been too well spoon fed with Hollywood tripe to understand his work. Or maybe he's just nuts. Bottom line is, even though I thought I hated the film, I couldn't stop thinking about it. And finally, when the key was turned and I understood the point, it became one of the most intriguing films I've ever seen.
Here's my last hint for figuring it all out- focus on finding the real plot line of the story. When you've figured it out, remember that everything else is a dream. It then all comes into focus.
I can't say I'd recommend this movie; it's incredibly hard to follow and if you don't have an 'outside-the-box' mentality you'll never get it. But if you take heed to my words here and go in with an idea of what you're going to see, the picture does come into focus. David Lynch invites you to step inside his dream.
- Dogburt
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