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"Mulholland Drive"

Saw this last night.

Need answers.

You know this was going to be a series, right? Well is the movie the whole thing condensed into a movie, or was it like the pilot show extended into a movie?

***SOME SPOILERS HERE - IF A FILM SO ODD CAN BE SPOILT?***

The thing is up until about half way I was worried, because I was following it just fine, then we had the return to Lost Highway character switching thing going on with Diane and Betty, which I was still fine with, until I tried to get the timeline straight in my head.

That's what really got me, you felt like you had gone back, as if to explain what had happened to 'Rita' - but you hadn't the director had split from his wife, for one thing.

And where the hell did the whole casting the actress thing slot in? It was just kind of there, entwined to a certain extent, but not nearly enough for me to get my tiny mind around.

And was the guy on the phone, the little dancing guy from Twin Peaks? His face sure did look familiar.

And Billy Ray Cyrus. Hur hur.

So Mulholland Drive. It made my head hurt, but I like that.

Lesbianism aside, this is what I think Mulholland Drive means.

Betty and Rita are one and the same. The opening car crash is a metaphor for the end of Betty/Rita's career in Hollywood, as it takes place on a long and windy road symbolic of life. Betty/Rita then enters a dream-like sequence in which she reviews her life - signalled by the man at Winkies assertion that he doesn't want to see that face outside of a dream, as he then sees the face perhaps we can assume that it is a dream.

Betty is the Rita of before. A naive, innocent starlet who comes to Hollywood to make a name for herself. She has genuine acting talent that gets her pretty far - from the audition of a trashy movie to a major audition - however, such parts will always be denied to her as they are based as much on contacts and outside pressure than on acting ability. She learns this truth at the club silencio - that Hollywood is all one big lie and performance.

So in order to further her career she re-invents herself as Rita, who sleeps with directors to get parts. (Same sort of idea as the Lost Highway) The rise of Rita and the fall of Betty is the battle within her between her artistic purity and desire for success. In the end Rita (success) wins this and Betty (artistic purity) becomes dejected, as the two personalities seperate further.

And that's as far as I've thought it through, but it sounds good...

Snuggly, you really ought to watch it.

You don't need to understand it to watch it, but you find yourself wracking your brain to figure it out.

And lesbians.

Naked lesbians.

Eat me. We all know why you bought it.

Perv.

I just bought it on DVD today. Surprised that I never bothered to go see it at the cinema, given the fact that I'm a big Lynch fan. A lot of his stuff I managed to take quite a lot of meaning from (like Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, bits of Twin Peaks) but The Lost Highway confused the hell outta me, so I'm not confident of having much of a clue what this is about. I'd be extremely surprised if I don't absolutely love being baffled by it though.

I may lend it to Snuggly when I've watched it but I don't hold out much hope for him. There'll probably be an Adam Sandler movie on that he just won't be able to miss :P

Mr.Snuggly wrote:
> ?
>
> I'm just saying I don't want to have to be a jovial Belgian detective
> to understand what happens in a film, that doesn't mean I like
> watching Vin Diesel talking in a gruff voice and blowing stuff up.

I know where you'r coming from, but Mulholland Drive really isn't that type of film. Even if it makes no sense it still manages to be really funny and involving and it keeps you hooked all the way through. As well as the gratuitous lesbianism, and these aren't butch lesbians, these are really fit women, there's a load of really random scenes that are just really funny. The best bits are the cul-de-sac plot-lines. They serve no purpose whatsover and don't get picked up again in the film, but they are really funny. The incompetent hitman's particularly good.

It is a very funny film. And you don't need to sit there trying to work it out because that's not what you're mean to do. It's much better escapism than most films.

I do.

Pitch Black rules.
Needs more lesbians though

?

I'm just saying I don't want to have to be a jovial Belgian detective to understand what happens in a film, that doesn't mean I like watching Vin Diesel talking in a gruff voice and blowing stuff up.

Mr.Snuggly quoted a hell of a lot:

I know you are a staff regular but.............. your comment was a bit stupido. If you like to know exactly what happens in a film, watch a 'great' film like the fast and the furious...or don't...in fact don't even look at it in the video shop....if your eyes accidentally travel towards the cover then reach for a cross some holy water and fire, lots of it!

http://www.themodernword.com/mulholland_drive.html

Okay, the URL above explained it to me to a certain extent, well, to an extent where it makes sense, I'll give a quick summary of it below, if you're interested, but can't be bothered to read the whole article.

The story of Betty and Rita is a fantasy invented by Diane after the dinner party in which Adam and Camilla announce their engagement.

She invents Betty, new in town, that meets a Camilla that is a blank page because of her accident.

She invents the plot to cast the girl for the movie so there's a reason other than her acting ability why she doesn't get the role that Camilla gets. (What confused me though was that it was a different actress - I'll get to that in a second)

All of the people in Betty's world are at Adam's dinner party, they're in her head so they feature in Betty's world.

Billy Ray Cyrus is in the movie as he fits in with Diane's image of a pool cleaner.

The above helped me make more sense of it. It's a shame that I have to return it before I get to watch it again.

I still don't get the Cowboy, and why he told Diane to wake up.

I don't get why the guy that Diane played had to kill a couple of people to get the little black book.

I don't get exactly where the guy in Winkies fitted in, that saw the 'monster'.

I think I've gotten as close as I can get without watching it again. I'm not sure if it's possible to get everything, as there are surely some threads in there that were supposed to pan out if it was a whole series?

Damn, why was it not so? I need something else like Twin Peaks. Totally odd, that needs watching every week.

I really loved this movie, I love the fact that I've been scratching my head all day, and have had to look stuff up on the internet to help me get appy with it.

I do find myself in a position of wanting to watch Lost Highway again though, which is worrying.

It has lesbians in it. And they get naked and kiss.

Listen to the lure of lesbians

"Snuuuuuuugly......we get naaaaaaaaaakeeeeeeeeed"