David Lynch's films for me, are evocative pieces of art, that doesn't want you to understand them in a traditional sense like other movies. You have to just let the movie take you over, be consumed by its abstract, surreal yet kaleidoscopic nature. Such is the case with Mulholland Drive.
Watching this, the first few minutes spun my head around. I couldn't make sense of anything, I wasn't trying to, I just let whatever the film has shown me stay in my mind. I think that helps to achieve what it's trying to do.
This movie made me feel things, made me feel serene, uncomfortable, dreaded, anxious, curious, bewilderment, so many other things. If I was super neurologically active, scrutinizing a film such as this, I would have a spastic and pass out much like some of the characters in his films do.
David Lynch was an art major first, he liked to paint abstract art and was into subversive media. Though after a while, just drifting between work, he was becoming more ambitious as he wanted to dabble more into moving forms of his art. This was during the late 60s after his marriage.
He makes movies that all feel like you're in a constant dream state and that all the information fed to you could be null or hints that there's more to this than it meets the eye. But he's also a very versatile filmmaker, his filmography includes works like The Elephant Man and The Straight Story. Both are autobiographies of real-life people told through his own approach to storytelling.
You can't compare any work to Lynch, there are very few similarities, although it's easy to group him with Andrei Tartakovsky, both filmmakers do distinguished characters and have different narrative goals. Since Lynch is from US, his films mostly revolve around people taking LSD and see reality very obscured. That's kind of what his movies feel like, as if taking existentialism to a level not around in the 3rd dimension.
Mulholland Drive is a simple film with a simple plot. You're not watching the movie for just the story, you're watching it for an experience. This film is a product of a time where people weren't busy condensing the plot for the sake of runtime. This is a 2hr 20min film about a woman going through a messy internal struggle.
In the beginning, you see things that are rather strange and seem weirdly out of place for a good narrative, this was a well-hidden subversion from what was going on, that this was all a dream state, concocted set of events. It would help if you've watched Memento, which is a different film, but the story structure is kind of similar.
Though I never understood the entire plot, after the revelations. On my 2nd watch, even then I started deviating a bit and building my own interpretations. But I pretty much understood what was happening around then. Yet my mind was stuck in this haze-like state, like everything felt ambiguous.
Movies as a medium can be powerful influences, including such that evokes a great depth of mystery and unprecedented presences. This movie had such power over its story, I was consumed completely by it.
Suffice it to say, this is maybe my 2nd or 3rd David Lynch movie that I've watched, but I forget what sort of movie he makes that it's hard for me to predict his story threads. And that felt pretty cool. I don't think I'll fully understand how Lynch does it and maybe that's for the best.
Though often touted to be one of his best films so far, I think it should go by saying that you haven't had a proper Lynch experience till you've watched his earlier films. Like Eraserhead, and Blue Velvet. Heck, Twin Peaks is already an amazing show to boot, just ah, find a way to catch up on season 2 without watching it, because that 2nd running of the show was very bad.
