The further time moves along to give viewers more space and distance from the haunting mind fuck that was and is Mulholland Drive, the more it appears as though David Lynch was not only putting the synecdoche of Hollywood on blast for its “rigged game” atmosphere, but also accentuating just how little our destiny is actually in our control once we all have our assigned “part” to play by those in positions of greater power. In this regard, we are all actors (whether performing for film–or rather, social media–or not).
Topping the most recent film critics’ collective list of the best movies of the twenty-first century (so far, of course–though the way cinema is dumbing down/going the way of the dodo, it doesn’t seem likely that Mulholland Drive could be noticeably topped in the future), the movie is in keeping with identity crisis and memory loss (for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Memento both also make the list), both of which seem to be prominent themes of twenty-first century film. Chalk it up to the fact that our memories are often documented while we’re experiencing them that we can’t process the images and sensations with as much care as our phoneless forebears did. Or maybe there’s just much more reason to want to forget about what’s happening in the present epoch. As for the identity crisis element (alive and well in Mulholland Drive), a large bulk of that all too common phenomenon stems from Hollywood itself, packaging and repackaging the concept of what it means to be “happy” and “successful”–which, in any century, relates to money and appearance.
For caricature of “fresh off the boat” naivety Betty Elms (Naomi Watts)–with the perfect name to mirror that naivety–her pursuit of acting seems to have nothing to do with either of those two aforementioned categories aimed at decimating self-esteem. No, instead she appears to genuinely love the art of acting, and the illusion it creates (representing an original purity of what moviemaking was initially about before profit margins intervened). Of course, all of Mulholland Drive speaks to the notion of illusion, particularly how it is puppeteered by the Hollywood machine. How, try as we might to manipulate our own fates as artists, everything is already pre-governed by the arcane dictates of those funneling in the cash. That Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), the director of a 50s period piece called The Sylvia North Story, is tormented by a gang of mobsters (ostensibly run by Lynch’s go-to music composer, Angelo Badalamenti) into casting an unknown actress named Camilla Rhodes (played in one version of reality by Melissa George) heightens the sense of out of controlness there is in so-called “art” when someone else is financing it.
His rendezvous with “The Cowboy” after the mobsters drain his “line of credit” at every place in town is not so coincidentally at a corral, a manifestation of the cattle call nature of Hollywood and its ability to destroy or elevate what it deems to be the cream of the crop. Illicit meetings in dark places appear to be the norm in Mulholland Drive when it comes to getting a picture made, like the underground-lingering Mr. Roque (Michael J. Anderson, best known as the dwarf of the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks), cryptically and creepily sitting silently in a chair as he mutely communicates his desire for a picture to be shut down unless it goes his way.
With this in mind, Lynch almost seemed to want to pull the lid off the dirty dealings of H’wood before the world was apparently ready to receive the news that their precious entertainment industry was filled with dark deeds more unimaginable than anything in a Lynch film. That is to say, the revelations blown out of the hot tub water by the #MeToo movement. While Lynch makes no reference to sexual abuse, per se, it is abuse of power in dictating the illusions created by the escapism of film that make it such a scary universe, easy to get lost in. And subsequently forget the way back out. This is where the strange nightclub called Silencio comes into play, with the emcee/magician/bandleader insisting, “No hay banda” (“There is no band”)–that is to say everything is an illusion, even the seemingly earnest singer belting out a Spanish version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying” turns out to just be lip-syncing (for her life, as RuPaul would call it). Yet the fakeness of it all still moves people, iterating the point that humanity cares not if performed emotions are ersatz, so long as they themselves can feel something from the performance.
Lynch’s, in many senses, modernized version of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard offers a character (Betty) with dreams as equally dashed by the end of the narrative as Joe Gillis’ (William Holden), that is, when those dreams don’t give way to delusions in between. Confusing reality with illusion being the number one hazard of the trade called acting. Or being involved with the movie business in any way, really.
As the “real” Betty–which is to say, Diane, the woman who lives a shittier, therefore more realistic existence–grapples with the fact that she didn’t “make it” as a star the way she always thought she would, we’re delivered further death blows by Lynch in terms of him positing that there are forces so intensely dark and overpowering in the realm of Hollywood that they’re almost mystical. And, of course, completely out of anyone’s dominion to subordinate other than those who are in said perch of influence. Hence, the bizarre and terrifying appearance of the homeless man of someone’s specific nightmare in the dumpsters near Winkie’s Diner (because all Lynchian fare must revere the diner)–one of several seemingly non sequitur plot points to the story of Betty and her amnesiac friend, “Rita” (Laura Elena Harring), a name she takes from a poster for Gilda starring Rita Hayworth, further layering on the ways in which Hollywood manipulates and infiltrates us all. Dan (Patrick Fischler), the man at the diner, discusses his fear of the very homeless man who unleashes the force of a menacing blue box that will eventually be Betty/Diane’s undoing. The dichotomous irony of putting a homeless person in such a position of clout further adds to the sardonic depth of Mulholland Drive, arguably the most cautionary tale about being taken in by the city of dreams (a.k.a. delusions), as well as offering the parallel universe concept of “what could’ve been” that La La Land subsequently did in a much more chipper way.
While the medium of film might have diminished since 2001, ergo been somewhat toppled by other entertainment avenues such as streamable TV and web series, it has given way to an even greater master of manipulating reality: the internet. So it is that Mulholland Drive remains both prescient and pertinent to humanity’s struggle to decipher illusion from what’s real.
