Wednesday Movie - Mulholland Dr.

I can’t remember the last time I’ve paid this close attention to something. By the end I was exhausted for it; for trying to catch every detail, trying to draw significance out of every scene. I was convinced I wouldn’t get it otherwise. But in the end all that work wasn’t necessary; despite the reputation this movie has, it’s not all that hard to understand. I’m nowhere near capable of explaining it in its entirety—scene to scene—but I know what it’s about, and so do you if you’ve seen in.

The movie begins with a series of strange, unrelated scenes: a dance competition, a woman surviving a spectacular car crash, a man discussing his reoccurring nightmare. The only common thread between these scenes is the dreamlike quality they all have; the camera floats softly, the dialogue is not quite illogical but it’s vague to the viewer while filled with meaning for the characters. Past this sequence, the movie settles into two (mostly) coherent storylines.

1. Betty (Naomi Watts) comes to Hollywood for an audition. She has arranged to stay at her Aunt’s house while the Aunt is away working on a film, but when Betty arrives, she finds a strange women already living there. The woman is initially assumed to be a friend of the aunt’s, but it’s soon revealed that the woman—‘Rita’ (Laura Harring)—has amnesia. She’d wandered into the house for refuge after a car accident, but she remembers nothing else, not ever her name. The mystery deepens when the two women discover that Rita’s purse is filled with a fortune in cash and a strangely-shaped key. Betty takes on the girl detective task of helping Rita find out who she is.

2. A young director (Justin Theroux) takes a meeting with various studio executives over the recasting of a lead actress in his movie. A miserable and mysterious Dan Hadaya tells him ‘this is the girl,’ sliding forth a glossy headshot of an actress. The director, Adam, pitches a fit; he won’t be told what to do. He trashes Hadaya’s limo and takes off for home, where he find his wife in bed with Billy Ray Cyrus (playing a guy who’s probably not named Billy Ray Cyrus, but come on—we’re just gonna think of him as the Achy-Breaky guy anyway.) The director gets in a wusstastic scuffle with his wife, gets punched out by Billy Ray, and gets the boot from his own house. Later, after further threats about not casting ‘the girl,’ Adam folds and casts her.

-Spoilers beyond-

Things begin to unravel when the girls visit a club named Silencio. They witness a number of musical acts, some so emotionally powerful that the girls are brought to tears. But during each act the audience (Silencio’s) is shown that all the sound is prerecorded. Everything they believe to be happening is actually fake. While there, Rita finds a box—one that would seem to be a perfect fit for the key in her purse. Moments later the box is opened, and we’re taken elsewhere.

Betty (Naomi Wattes) is now a woman named Diane (different name, different character). She’s no longer a bright-eyed ingénue; she’s now a lowly extra, living in squalor and lusting after another actress, Rita (same name, different character). We learn that Diane and Rita were once lovers, but Rita has since moved on to Adam (same name, same character), and it’s also likely that Rita has also slept with the girl Adam was forced to cast (different character, name change status: unknown). The jealousy tortures Betty and she decides if she can’t have Rita, no one can. A hitman is hired, the hit is successful, and that’s where things get real shit-crazy.

There’s more to it, things I probably couldn’t recap and certainly couldn’t explain, but the key bits are listed above. While odd at times, these scenes I’ve noted above are coherent, and they’re possible for pretty much anyone to understand. If you’ve seen the movie, you may have thought you didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but you took a guess and you probably guessed right. The real story is the second one: The girls were lovers; Diane had Rita killed out of jealousy but then found the guilt too traumatizing; Diane either passed out or had a psychic break; and she experienced a dream (the first story) stocked with all the key characters in her life cast in alternate roles, ones more favourable to Diane (Rita loves her and only her) or unfavourable to her enemies (Adam suffers the indignity of getting clocked by Billy Ray Cyrus.)

I imagine that people see this movie for three reasons: they know exactly what they’re in for, they pick it up blind and have no idea what they’re in for, or they hoping to be transported to the mythic Isle of Lesbos. I remember a picture in Premiere magazine around the time the movie was released. It featured the female leads nestled in close to one another, their bronze skin glistening just so. It made me think, this is an important movie, one that I should see. And, is it hot? Um… yeah. Hottest scene of its kind? No, that distinction has to go to Mindy Cahn and Charolette Rae in that Very Special Episode of Facts of Life. Believe it; it happened.