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So, I saw this again on Saturday, and the narrative that salon.com presents is much easier to understand the second time around. Instead of appreciating the movie just for the surreal experience of it’s vivid imagery, I was able to put the puzzle together and enjoy it on a somewhat linear level. That’s what makes “Mulholland Drive” so great; it accomplishes so much for multiple levels of interest. It’s driven by one concept, but has many many branches that can either be followed as parts of Lynch’s puzzle or can be ignored as mere backdrop for the intense dreamscape.
Here’s a couple of other things I noticed :
(SPOLIERS)
1. The plot is actually very simple. Diane Selwin has her former lover Camellia murdered when Camellia spurns her for a hot new director. The rest of the movie is either part of Diane’s initial dream (notice the film starts out with a first person view of someone laying down on a bed and pillow), or her flashbacks of factual events during a masturbation fantasy. All of the scenes that don’t occur in the “present” must then be regarded through a filter: the guilt and confusion Diane has after paying a man to kill Camellia. Also, Diane’s jealousy of Camellia’s success must have something to do with the way certain dream sequences played out.
2. I’m very curious how this would have been organized for a television series. Would the whole first season have been Diane’s dream? Or would Lynch have slipped in and out of the dream sequences? That would have confused and angered audiences more than the quirkiness of Twin Peaks did. It’s no wonder stations wouldn’t pick it up. All they saw were droves of advertising money changing the channel the instant Betty becomes Diane or vice versa.
There are certain characters in the film who probably would have had larger roles in the series. Robert Forster certainly was supposed to have more to work with than the thirty second piece of dialogue he had in the film. He was billed as one of the main actors in the credits. I suspect the hooker, the weird psychic neighbor, and the man with the bad restaurant dream would all have been crucial to any television series Lynch envisioned. Which may be why the movie makes so little sense the first time around.
3. Does anybody think the Diane character is a reference to Dale Cooper’s “Diane” in Twin Peaks? Not that I think they are supposed to be one and the same, but one of the bigger fanboy questions of TP regarded Diane’s identity. It would be just like Lynch to make an entire surreal adventure just to play around with a question he had no intention of answering.
4. I agree with salon.com. The evil bagman behind the restaurant represents Diane’s guilt and anguish over her decision to have Camellia killed. After every dream and hope the movie business had to offer, this small town girl from Ontario was crushed. The bagman becomes the last vestige of her innocence; thoroughly corrupted by her jealous rage. It would have been great if the bagman was played by Naomi Watts under a lot of makeup and dirt.
5. Adam, I think the people at the dinner party only served the purpose of adding elements to Diane's dream sequence. So, that flashback actually occurs BEFORE Diane dreams the first 3/4 of the movie. Random people here and there became major characters in her dream-story. So the woman who whispers to Camellia becomes Camellia in the dream. The composer in the corner becomes a mafia overlord. The cowboy is completely incidental. There just happened to be a man, dressed as a cowboy, at this Hollywood brouhaha. That's conceivable. Diane sees this oddity, and incorporates it as a major force behind the scenes of her dream.
I don't think the question of whether Adam (the director) sees the cowboy once, twice, or never has any impact on the actual story of "Mulholland Drive". It is only crucial to the results of Diane's dreams. As such, Adam never sees the cowboy again. Diane sees him (as she's waking up) once/maybe twice if you count the camera fading in and out. And we the audience see him twice after the dinner party scene. This could be construed to mean that Diane did "bad"; the cowboy being another manifestation of her guilt over Camellia's assassaination.
Before this I wasn’t much of a Lynch addict. I had a passing interest in Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet. Now I’m watching four hours of TP a day, catching up on Lost Highway etc., and having plenty of nightmares involving creepy custodians and bicycles with chainsaw blades ripping their riders into shreds. A movie about dreams installs dreams about movies. |
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