David Lynch has build his career and his cult status by films dominated by the "logic" of the irrational. Conventional Hollywood linear narratives never interested Lynch, so he, despite his obsession with American pop culture, music, comics, pitfalls and donuts in his special filmfilial approach, is closer to his European counterparts like Bunuel, Bergman or Fellini.
His career began with an avant-garde, experimental film Eraserhead (1977), but in order to make his bizarre visions closer to the demands of a more conventional commercial production, he made films such as Elephant man, Dune and Blue Velvet, and they represent his let's call them "most normal" films. In the 1990s, after the relative failure of the TV series Twin Peaks (yes, the failure: the cult status he gained was thanks to the Europeans and the Japanese, in the US it was taken off the program after the second season) Lynch looked like he had completely abandoned the very thought of any compromise.
The indication of this view was also the film Twin Peaks: Fire walk with me (1992), destroyed by the critics and ignored by the audience, is now somewhat revalued. THE Lost Highway (1996) was equally uninterested in the demands of the average cinema consumer, and criticism was only slightly more favorable. After the most controversial specimen in the entire Linch career - linear, simple, warm human Straight Story - Lynch returns with Mulholand Drive with its recognizable and unique style, just to come across the overall enthusiasm of the critics and the cult status of those few American viewers who made an effort to look at him.
Europe, and the rest of the non-American world, reacted much better to the latest Lynch, to what only limited people consider "common sense": Palme D'or shared in Cannes in 2001 with Koen brothers, as if it was an attempt of redemption for a traumatic and negative reception of Twin Peaks in that same Cannes, while in the crowds of awards received by various professional associations in the United States, he sees a sense of guilty conscience due to the poor treatment of his earlier films. The nomination for Oscar for best director is closest to what Lynch was able to gain in official ultra-conservative America today.
Mulholland Dr. is the culmination of Lynch's research of delirium states that emerge below the sleek surface of "normal" and "common" America, as well as the motive of the lost (or duplicated) identity that has become prominent since the incomprehensible film version of Twin Peaks.
The story of the constructs of reality, the inability to distinguish the reality from illusion, the story of problematic and unclear identity issues, dark passions, conspiracies, ambitions, hidden intentions, faust contracts and unconcealed crimes - from the world's largest Dream Factory.
SYNOPSIS 1- THE TIME OF VIEWING
Girl (Rita) who survives a car crash and possible murder, in shock descends into the city and finds himself in a flat that is unlocked at the moment. The young man in the restaurant is talking to the psychiatrist about his dream about that place, and the man hiding behind the wall nearby. He dies of fear when he approaches the wall again.
Betty, from Canade comes to Hollywood with her aunt, and finds in the apartment a girl who is under the impact of the accident, completely lost her memory.
A young filmmaker preparing his new film, gets demand by people from the mafia to give the leading role to a person named Camilla Rhodes. The hired killer clumsily executes the task in the building. Betty decides to help a girl from an accident when she finds her purs, and in that purse a huge amount of money and a blue key of an unusual shape. The hired killer is being asked around the circle whether someone saw a person who according to description corresponds to a girl who survived the accident. Betty and Rita (giving her a name based on the poster of a famous American actress) begins their own investigation of the case.
The director, refuses to interfere with casting, and after reveals that the whole project has been canceled and that all his bank accounts are frozen, he goes home to find his wife is cheating on him. Betty and Rita go to the same restaurant that the young man dreamed, where Rita, with the help of the identification card that the waiteress is wearing, remembers the name: Diane Selwyn.
Mafia people arrange a meeting with the director on a ranch outside the city, where a man dressed as a cowboy gives director another chance for the same movie with determined actress. An exasperated neighbor intrudes into the apartment and announces an abstract danger for Betty and Rita. Betty is preparing for some kind of casting with her aunt's friends, where they are all more than enthusiastic about her performance. There, at first glance, she falls in love with the director, just at the time when he accepts to choose a certain Camilla Rhodes.
After that, Betty and Rita go to the apartment of Diane Selwyn, whose address they found in the directory. There they find her dead on the bed. In their apartment Betty calms down Rita, which is affected by the events, and they establish an intimate relationship. Rita wakes up in the middle of the night with a vision, and the two of them go to a theater in which they have never been, where they watch a very strange show. Betty finds in her purse a blue box that she unlocks with Rita's key. Then Betty disappears from the movie as if she had never been there.
SYNOPSIS 2 - GENERAL TIME OF THE FILM
Diane Selwyn, a girl from a small town in Canada is coming to Hollywood after a dance show competition and after the death of her aunt, who worked in the film industry, and left her some money. However, Diane experience great disappointment when in the film, in which she wanted to get a leading role, she gets only support. The lead role goes to Camilla Rhodes, a girl who is revealed as a great talent, and for whom Diane soon strongly binds. Their relationship goes beyond intimacy, as Camilla helps her to get role in some of her next films. On set of shooting one of those films, Camilla falls in love with a young director and decides to end the relationship with Diane.
Diane, still broken up, accepts a friendly invitation from her ex-girlfriend to come to dinner, at the house on Mulholland Dr, where she is portrayed as Camilla's good friend. After she realizes that she has lost the person she wanted forever, seeing her kissing with another woman, in front of her future husband who does not mind it at all, Diane hires a killer in local restaurant. In the psychic distraction and solitude of masturbation, she puts herself on the bed and she finds herself in a dream from which she does not want to wake up, in order to make the crime she paid for only a passing thought. After waking up, and confronting reality, Diane, in her tangent sleep, kills herself in hysteria.
Betty Elms and the 'Dream place'
The relationship of a girl who dreams and the person to whom the dream is centered is much more complicated and multi-layered then a motive of enthusiasm, success and ambition.
In 26 min. As she met Rita, Betty says: "I'm sorry ... I'm just so excited to be here ... I mean, I've just come here from Deep River, Ontario, and now I'm in this ...dream place! Well, you can imagine how I feel ... "
In 132 min. Similar words come from Diana when she talks to Coco: "I'm from Deep River, Ontario. A small town ... I've always wanted to come here ... I've won this Jitterbug contest. That ... a sort of led to acting ..., you know ... wanting to act. "
However, these words are like a broken mirror of the first scene, that appears in a dream, which is a quantitative difference between dreams and reality. She is like a sand clock that lives in the hope that, before the time of awakening comes, one's hand will come and turn in order the clock, so she wouldn't have to overcome confrontation. Also, when comparing the character of the actress (Naomi Watts) who performed fantastically both scenes, the result is devastatingly noticeable. Betty is in her work, thinking of Hollywood and thus, in her entire enthusiasm, said 'dream place', which in translation means the place of which she could only dream of. But, latently, it also means a place of sleep, or simply a dream.
If in that association, the figure of Betty in a dream makes a play of words nonchalantly with the true reality of events, that indicates that the unconscious primacy in it culminates with the greatest power in sleep - ie. Betty is the defense from everything that is real.
Dangerous adventure and gift in the dream house
Thus, the main line of the story of the dream opens just after the 'dream place', as a reflection of a reminder, just as Rita is fainting , and Betty approaches her as a new friend, starting her role in the Hollywood adventure, what in reality she could never get it. The following motive is outlined: her friendship with this person is not without interest, i.e. her attitude to Rita is also a way for Betty to be an idealized self.
In 47 min. after the memory of the place where Rita should have arrived, Betty, hoping she will listen to her, says: "Maybe, that's where the accident was! There must be a police report ... We could call ... anonymously from the pay-phone just to see if there was an accident ...! Come on, it will be just like in the movies! We'll pretend to be someone else! ".
Or in 43 minutes into the film, she suggests her what to do, opening only a new plot : ''this is your purse ... Your name must be in your purse! You wanna know, do not you? Open it! "
Or, later on, when she proposed to hide their money, when she decides to climb the window of the locked house ... and each time opening a new Pandora's box. That's why, even if she seemed independent and decisive in her traits, for the context of the sleep pathology, Betty depends entirely on Rita, and it is already a pre-emptive form, that is, something that reflects the real relation, out of sleep, her relationship with Camilla.
But, Betty doesn't know anything about Diana's present, she is ignored in many scenes in the film, plunging into an unconscious stream on an ever wider track to make the dream last as long as possible; the key and the sum of money they find in Rita's bag, they do not even remind her of her own, just like when she ordered the murder in the restaurant, her name and surname, as well as the voice of Diane Selwyn at the answering machine.
She does not associate it with herself. She even adds, in a suggestive tone: "Maybe that's not Diane Selwyn's voice ... maybe that's your room-mate! Or if it is Diane Selwyn, she could tell you who you are! "
No detail that could at least indirectly stand in relation to Diane as a criminal or problematic person does not disturb Betty as a character.
Dreams do not touch the dreamer, i.e. total self.
Note: The first part is my translation from Serbian to Enslish the article from a webportal Cult of Ghoul- ''Mulholland Drive'' and the second part is my translation from Serbian to English from ''Strukture nesvesnog i predsvesnog u filmu Davida Lyncha Mulholland Drive'', by I. Kaic
*