What the fuck is "Mullholland Drive" about?

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

I just watched it for the second time and I *still* don't get it. Please somebody shed light on this for me.

[XemaSab]

1. It's the shit

is what.

[ghostsofgiants]

2. Hahaha, but where's the fun in that?

[amitten]

3. Nothing.

Just...nothing.

[swag]

4. That's like asking, "what is the cloth sack in

That Obscure Object of Desire all about?"

I thought that Mulholland Drive was a hard cipher, but I'm really anticipating seeing Inland Empire, which is supposed to be supremely confusing.

[amitten]

5. A hard cipher...

Or, maybe a fucking mind-blowingly frustrating maze that you will never ever escape because while there is an entrance, there is certainly no exit.

[idgiehkt]

6. so it's not a lesbian love story?

:shrug:

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

7. That's part of it. It's still an indecipherable lesbian love story.

[Ivan Sputnik]

8. It's explained here

http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2001/10/23/mulholland_drive_analysis/

It really isn't hard to understand once you realize that the first part of the movie is Diane's dream/fantasy of what she wishes were true.

[Sugar Smack]

15. THANK you, Will. HARUKA, you have got to read this.

That was perfect. :D

[CanuckAmok]

9. It's about David Lynch's contractual obligation, I think.

Seriously, the guy gets more and more esoteric as time goes by; I'm convinced he's trying to put himself out of the Hollywood system once and for all.

He's a good film-maker (The Straight Story and Blue Velvet are brilliant), but what the bloody fuck beyond pretentious pseudo-intellectual pop-psyche symbolism is either Mullholland Drive or Lost Highway about?

[idgiehkt]

11. I didn't know he made "The Straight Story"

I thought the lead actor in that film did a really poor job and it just kind of ruined it for me. Don't know who he was. That was a great story though.

[WCGreen]

10. About two hours too long....

[Starbucks Anarchist]

12. In a nutshell...

***SPOILERS BELOW***


Naomi Watts' character is a depressed and failed actress new to Hollywood. She fell in love with Laura Harring's character, but Harring was obviously more interested in Justin Theroux's director character.

Therefore, the first 2/3rds of the film is Watts' character reimagining herself as an ingenue with sunshine on the brain, so to speak. In her hallucination, she saves Harring's character and they develop a relationship, while at the same time, Watts' career takes off.

However, the audience realizes the hallucination 2/3rds of the way through, whereupon Watts' character's relationship with Harring turns sour and we see that Harring becomes the star, not Watts.

The elderly couple meeting Watts at the airport early on seem like a pair of strangers wishing her luck, but in reality, they are Watts' character's parents, whom Watts knows are disappointed in her tragic life, manifested when they appear a second time as specters, shortly before she kills herself because of the perpetual pain of her personal life and the failure of her professional life.

The corpse that Watts and Harring find is, in fact, Watts' corpse, but since that portion of the film was a hallucination, we don't realize it then, and it provides Watts and Harring an interesting scenario.

It's been a few years since I saw it, but that's basically the summary of the movie. Hope this helps.

[leftofthedial]

13. part of it is a dream

pretty much everyone has a doppelganger

[Zero Division]

14. Watch for visual cues.

Like the zoom-in on the pillow in the beginning. I felt like such a dumbass when I finally did this and realized how much less confusing the movie really is. I love the atmosphere and bizarre humor in that movie.

[mainegreen]

16. The blue box in the alley is the TV company

that wouldn't let him make it as a made for tv movie.

Or so I'm told.

[LostinVA]

17. WHO CARES -- all that matters is that Naomi Watt is in it

Priorities, Grasshopper...

[mdmc]

18. BFEE

:kick:

[cemaphonic]

19. Other's have posted the plot explanation,

but there is also the business one. It was originally going to be a pilot for a TV series that was not picked up, so Lynch got some additional funding, and reshot and reedited it into a feature film. I personally think he did a great job doing so, but I also think that it would have been tighter, with fewer loose threads (bumbling hitman is the most glaring to me) and red herrings, had it been designed as a movie from the start. Maybe not though, knowing Lynch.

[bridgit]

20. it's about the tribulation of a young naive wannabe actress & the...

multiples of shattered & inconclusive dreams she is made to labor beneath while pursuing her pie-eyed vision of what hollywood is most definitely not...oh, with a butt-load of David Lynch thrown in

[KurtNYC]

21. David Lynch was asking for the fork to be put in him

When the review of any film (except "The Trip") says the film is "like an acid trip" it means 2 things:

1 - the reviewer has never done LSD
2 - the film is an unintelligible, nearly un-watchable mess

[mark414]

22. here is an interesting article from salon.com

along with a link to reader analysis as well...

http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2001/10/23/mulholland_drive_analysis/