If you are a moviegoer that demands answers to all questions and doesn’t like finding yourself at the end of the film with your mouth hanging wide open, almost on the verge of yelling “What the hell was that about?!” – leash yourself away from Mulholland Drive as far as possible. If you have a DVD and you still haven’t seen it, throw it away in the bin or lock it up somewhere impossible to be retrieved or give it to your kiddie neighbour who wouldn’t have any clue what this film is about.
But if you are a moviegoer that indeed goes for movies, entertainment and a unique piece of filmmaking, open-minded enough to let David Lynch “mind-fuck” you with your brain being stirred into its limits with questions, senseless imagery and puzzling storylines, then Mulholland Drive is just right up your dark twisted alley. A “mind-fuck” film by the way in movie jargon means a movie that relentlessly doesn’t stop thrusting your mind with puzzles, mystery, incomprehensible signs that climaxes at the end with the viewer almost looking murderous because the film compels one to think rather vigorously. In other words, in shorter note, it simply means brain exercise.

Mulholland Drive, in fact, is one of the best mind-blowing movies I had ever seen in my whole movie-going life. After watching this film, I had definitely pulled up a fist and blamed David Lynch for assaulting my brain so much I couldn’t stop thinking about this film for weeks! Damn you, David Lynch! For being so cool, awesome and magnificently bizarre filmmaker in Hollywood today! His new magnum opus had definitely savaged and broke all filmmaking rules, and made the parlance that the more the movie made sense, the more we like it. To hell with it, Lynch tells us, in Mulholland he teaches us that the more the film makes no sense at all, the more we are attached, the more we give in, and the more we couldn’t take our eyes off.
Apparently, there is no such thing as a real story to Mulholland. But it is a cacophony of images, series of stories that sometimes interconnects, sometimes doesn’t make sense with each other, and doesn’t give a smooth storyline; it combines mood, atmosphere, anecdotes, dark and misleading characters, all entangled with each other. Each one overlaps, piles up, and intersects like each other is if you are watching a waking dream. Anyway, this is a dreamscape after all. Mulholland Drive is like having the weirdest dream; sometimes you just find yourself in a situation without realising how or why.

Lynch puts up different scenarios. It starts off with a lively vibe of 40s swing and jive dancing, then severely cuts off into a noir-ish mood in Hollywood. A black limousine was driving to Mulholland drive in Hollywood with a luscious brunette inside telling her driver why they were stopping when they’re not supposed to stop. Moments later, a car with hyper-drunk teenagers collided with their limo, leaving the brunette shocked and limped away downtown. We realised she lost her memory and creeps into a house without knowing where she was.

Next morning, a young perky, aspiring actress Betty (Naomi Watts)arrived in Los Angeles airport filled with Hollywood dreams. She stays in her Aunt’s house who was shooting in Canada and discovered the brunette in the shower. She says her name was Rita, but we audience know that she just got it from a poster in the wall of Gilda starring Rita Hayworth. Betty felt a sympathy and discovers that Rita was amnesiac, and she decides to help her.

The movie then introduced another character which felt completely unattached to the plot. A movie director (Justin Theroux) argued with the picture company and demands for the right actress suited for his movie. Then a deluge of senseless images ensued; a dwarfish man in an isolated room made a call in her mobile; a phone rang in another scene; another phone rang, now this one of a different colour without anybody answering it. Back to Justin Theroux being called upon a creepy-looking cowboy, telling him to “do good”. Then another mind-defying montages erupted: two people talking in a bar, and then both lead to the backyard where they found a scary-looking man/beggar, Betty and Rita scampering around Nancy Drew style solving Rita’s personality, tiny people running around screaming, a blue box that could only be opened by a triangular key, a nightclub called Silencio in which every singer is singing in sync with the music. Everything will leave you breathless, without any clue what was going on. If you have no patience, be warned, you may suffer of heart attack or some sort. Cardiac arrest with annoyance, maybe.

Then near the end, we discover that there was something indeed more than what the eyes could meet. Mulholland Drive boasts one of movie history’s finest girl-on-girl (or lesbo) grapple, Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Herring without their tops on. We realise, as the film oftentimes jumps from the real Los Angeles and the netherworld, (IF YOU WANT TO WATCH THIS FILM, STOP READING NOW! OR YOU’LL BE SPOILED!) that Betty and Rita were lovers. One of the most fantastic scenes was when Betty was invited by a party, only to discover that her lover Rita was to be engaged to the movie director Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts delivered her finest acting performance that made her way and broke through mainstream today. She was trembling, not with fear, but with anger emerging out as wrathful tears in her eyes.

Mulholland Drive is such a hypnotic film. Not all would understand this film, not all would usurp or bet their bollocks even just to sit down this film out of boredom. As judges, boredom shies away from this one. David Lynch is a master of puzzles and mystery and images. His vision is uncompromising and indeed doesn’t stick with conventional, boring filmmaking and sticks with his own skills.

Watts and Herring are absolutely gorgeous, fantastic actresses. Most of all, it’s Naomi Watts that catapults into acting greatness. In the first act, she pulls off a perky, almost teenage-bopper sort of a woman with dreams to follow, each step as though carefully measured. Then at the last act, she turns into a despicable woman filled with dark desire and despair that turns her insides with vengeance and fury to everyone beside her. If you hate her acting, look at her during the scene where she was practicing her lines with Rita with conventional reading, but on the real audition, she turns the whole charade around and delivered one of cinema’s finest scenes in performance context.

Mulholland Drive would have to be one of my favourite films of all time. It’s unusual, bizarre, odd, engaging, dreamlike, hypnotic, magnificent, mesmerising, truly one of a kind. It will surely haunt you for life.

Rating: A+