Review: [untitled] Author(s): Martha P. Nochimson Reviewed work(s): Mulholland Drive by David Lynch ; Mary Sweeney ; Alain Sarde ; Neal Edelstein ; Michael Porlair ; Tony Krantz ; Pierre Edelman Source: Film Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Autumn, 2002), pp. 37-45 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1213908 Accessed: 05/04/2010 11:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Film Quarterly. http://www.jstor.org Mulholland Drive Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) in "Twin Peaks." If vision is always shadowed by the imbalances and ag- in the lower, toxic of the Director/Writer: David Lynch.Producers: Mary Sweeney, gressions depths imagination, Alain Sarde, Neal Edelstein, Michael Porlair,TonyKrantz, provoked by the despotism of manufactured culture, Pierre Edelman.Cinematographer: Peter Deming. Universal. each new film gives Lynch a new opportunity to spur his audiences toward the vision that arrives when we depart from standard procedures and cross beyond the n Mulholland Drive, David Lynch pushes forward narrow confines of what a too restricted world thinks his ongoing investigation of the human condition of as reality. Now, in Mulholland Drive, he woos us and the ways in which learned habits of mind not only again, with a Hollywood fable. fail to support our needs, but often loom as frightening Although, in his latest film, Lynch ostensibly sets adversaries in our struggle to cope. As a matter of his sights specifically on Hollywood, the contempt he course, Lynch centers himself in the expansive energy heaps on its ludicrous power structure conveys the of the dreaming subconscious and looks with sadness, heinous absurdity of the entire entertainment industry, horror, and confusion at the (often darkly comic) and with such vigor, that it is no wonder that ABC, grotesque results of the tyranny of a very reductive seeing its face in this dark mirror, pulled away from it form of reason fabricated by our culture. Nevertheless, in its earlier incarnation as a television series.' Mul- despair is not a feature of Lynch's cinematic universes. holland Drive, however, is much more than a literal Help always resides in the highest reaches of the expose of commercialism. It is a visionary epic about human imagination in the forms of dreams and visions, the cosmic degeneration that originates in the thwart- as in those of the sublime, albeit doomed detective, ing of the creative act by the mechanistic forces of FilmQuoarterly, Vol. no. 56, Issueno. I, pages 37-45. ISSN:0015-1386. ? 2002 by The Regentsof the Universityof California.All rightsreserved. Send requestsfor permissionto reprintto: Rightsand Permissions,University of CaliforniaPress, Joumals Division, 2000 Center Street, Suite 303, Berkeley,CA 94704-1223. 37 commercialism,and an affirmationof Lynch'sbelief in and the laconic CastiglianeBrothers (Dan Hedayaand the abundanceof robustcreative potential in mass cul- Angelo Badalamenti), two thugs replete with the ture. Hollywood often plausibly referred to as the wardrobeand props of movie Mafiosi, who dictate to "dreamfactory," makes a perfect setting for the drama the defiant directorthe terms under which he will be of the lethal implications of the loss of creative free- permitted to make his film: a stock ingenue named dom. The malignant oppression of "dream"by "fac- CamillaRhodes will be the star.At first,the film seems tory"is representedin the film by a criminalcartel that to have a comic trajectory.The "darklady," who may controls Hollywood productionand therebybrings on or may not be an actress, is renderedamnesiac by the the catastrophe that is Lynch's subject, as he, pre- crash,but seems to be on the roadto regainingher iden- dictably,weighs in on the side of dreams. tity when she accidentallymeets Betty; upbeatBetty is In Mulholland Drive, Lynch continues to pursue sweetly determinedto help her new friend, who com- dreams by making the logical temporal, spatial, and ically adopts the name Rita after seeing a poster for psychological mechanismsof ordinarynarrative defer Gilda, featuring a picture of Rita Hayworth.Adam's to dreamnon-logic, which reflects the malleability of adversaries, the Castiglianes and an equally bizarre time, space, and identity.Certainly, there is something Western figure called the Cowboy (Lafayette Mont- in the way of an ordinary through-line in the film's gomery), are so grotesquelyhilarious that it is hardto story of Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), who comes to believe that they will pose any real problemsfor him. Hollywood from a small town in Canadadreaming of But the comedy that comes of their impenetrable movie stardom and does not succeed. However, this monomaniaabout the leadinglady for Adam's film has is not the usual indictment of tinseltown. Yes, Betty a desperately serious subtext. Adam, like Betty, also begins with everythingthat it takes-including the req- undergoes a morbid sea change, though his name re- uisite perky blonde charm,the talent, and the connec- mains stable. Beginning the film as a levelheaded tions-to "make it," and, yes, even all these assets Hollywood director struggling to keep control of his cannot win her the brassring in a corruptindustry. But movie, he ends as a hollow shell of a man. Moreover, Betty does not undergoreversals in a cause-and-effect the adorablybefuddled dark, sultry "Rita" ends the film plot. The initial events of the film simply evaporate as Camilla Rhodes, now a dark,sultry, vampiric diva, two-thirdsof the way through,and the charactersturn althoughCamilla Rhodes has previouslyappeared in a inside out. A spatialblack hole opens in the film in the completely differentform, thatof a cute blonde. These form of a dark passage into a mysterious blue box, discontinuitiesconfound our rationalexpectations for which pops up in various scenes, an ineffable portal a narrativeexperience. Surely,logic insists, one of the availablesuddenly and every so often.At a crucialmo- characters,probably Betty, is dreaminga brightHolly- ment in the film, Betty and the audience sink into the wood wish-fulfillment fantasy that is dispersed by a darkness within the blue object and emerge into a terribleHollywood reality of failure. But such a read- nightmareof catastrophicdisappointment so total that ing would make the film a facile critiqueof the Byzan- the initiallyfortunate Betty is transformedinto a cursed tine problems of success and self in Hollywood, and soul. But not only does she re-emerge from the blue Mulholland is anything but facile. Rather it presents box with a newly darkeneddestiny and depressedpsy- the unique Lynchianrendition of the dream'sperspec- chology; she also has a differentname, Diane Selwyn, tive on mechanism,here a mass-marketmachine that although in an earlier scene Betty has already con- feeds on genuine,not imaginary,creative impulses and frontedthe corpse of a woman of that name quite dis- turnsthem into waste products. tinct from herself (creditedas Lyssie Powell). The film MulhollandDrive propels the audiencethrough a is awash in the instabilityof the ordinarypoints of ra- set of disorientingtransformations in order to follow tional reality for Betty.2What has this to do with not the life of creative integrityto its demise, an issue of making it in Hollywood? life and deathimportance to David Lynch.Such an ex- Centralto our graspof Betty's problemsis thatshe tinction is not, according to this film, a single event, is not alone in the experience of uncanny shifts. Her but the devastationof the web of interconnectionthat tale unfolds as three almost simultaneousevents begin supportsa securereality; an onslaughtagainst the very the film:Betty's arrivalin Los Angeles; a car crashthat stability on which time and space depends. There are saves a mysterious,dark woman (LauraElena Harring) cosmic implications when Adam is coerced by the from the being victim of a hit in a limousine on criminalpower structurelurking behind the visible ap- Mulholland Drive; and a preproductionmeeting be- paratus of Hollywood in a sterile inner sanctum ac- tween movie directorAdam Kesher (JustinTheroux) cessible to very few. The absurdCastiglianes and the 38 MichaelJ. Anderson as Mr.Roque. Cowboy are the mere emissaries of a totally isolated, also a strongintimation of a force for good thatoccurs almost completely silent figure,a Mr.Roque (Michael when the humanwill is relaxedor even abdicated,and J. Anderson). Roque, the organizationkingpin, exists for most of his careerLynch has celebratedthe power only in a glass-enclosedoffice, immaculatelydetached of this force. From Eraserhead to Fire Walk with Me, from Adam's film, a lord of a static-void cut off from Lynch'sprotagonists have in some involuntarymanner the ebb and flow of creative energy. He and his emis- had their chance for a modicum of victory over op- sariesare exercises in puredominating will thatstymies pressive social structures.Mulholland Drive represents any form of organicdevelopment.