This review will be critically analysing David Lynch's movie "Mulholland drive". This one of those genious Lynch's movies when you think that you understand everything at the beginning and wonder how cliched everything looks, but in the end you don't understand anything and are left amused and amazed how everything is difficult and how it is hard to find any connections in the end which probably don't even exist.This submission is based on M. Keith Booker's ideas in "Postmodern Hollywood" book, Roger Ebert's and James Berardinelli's reviews.
Figure1
After watching this movie you just can't keep asking questions to your self: Why? What? How? It is obvious that this was the goal of David Lynch. One of the reasons for this to happen in M. Keith Booker's words is that: "...Lynch films represent is emphatically not reality but other representations of reality - which explains why they are sometimes confusing to viewers who attempt to interpret them as being "about" the real world." (M. Keith Booker, "Postmodern Hollywood", introduction, page x, 2007). In one of the previous reviews I talked that Christoper Nolan's "Inception" is somehow missing that postmodernity when you can compare his works with Lynch's or Burton's creations. in "Inception" even if the dreams were a part of this movie it still lacked this total madness of actually imagined world and it still was just a plane image of this "real" world. In "Mulholland drive" you have this clear and kind of stupid plot at the beginning which connected with other "dreams" might not make sense. Roger Ebert just approves this idea: "If you require logic, see something else. "Mulholland Drive" works directly on the emotions, like music. 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." (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times, October 12, 2001). But it is a must not to forget that that kind of movies are definitely not for every kind of audience. Some people just like the simplicity. James Berardinelli apparently sees only the beginning: "promising" and ""Twin Peaks"-ish" (James Berardinelli, Reelviews, date of publishing is unknown) and that just brings us to the discussion that this kind of postmodernism is definitely difficult and not easy for everybody to understand or like. Borrowed icons of Hollywood's appearance even gets us more confused when we think that we can see through those characters and at one point everything just changes drastically manipulating things that we really don't expect to see. A scene with a singer fading out on the scene after a close shot when you could just thought that she was just actually singing, but the phonogram is just not stopping to play or almost at the same time Diane's random spazms just gives more of that obvious fakeness and randomness. Few mintues ago the movie tells you that everything is fake, but you still don't believe in it and after the singer's scene you just fall into this depth of total confusion.
Figure2
All in all it is hard to talk about the story itself and there might be people that either hate it or just love it. The one thing is clear - you just must to see it to have your opinion about it.
Illustrations:
Figure1: A director that has weird and randomly conected story with the main characters
Figure2: Two main characters: Rita and Diane
Bibliography:
M. Keith Booker, "Postmodern Hollywood", introduction, page x, 2007
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times, October 12, 2001
I think you enjoyed it! "Silencio!"
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