Mulholland Drive

No hay Banda!

This is the one of the lines that gets repeated during the crucial scene at Club Silencio in David Lynch's 2001 film Mulholland Drive. In the scene, the MC keeps repeating that there is no band and everything is recorded. Then he brings out a singer who sings until she falls down dead, but the music never stops, because it is all a recording. I believe that this scene unlocks the movie for the viewer. The plot of the film doesnt matter. Lynch is going to try to trick you into thinking that it is important, but it is all an illusion, because there is no band.

Lynch's film is about movies and hollywood in general. It is a rejection of narrative filmmaking. The piece of art does not need to tell a story, it only needs to illicit a strong emotion reaction from the viewer. And in spite of Lynch's rejection of a coherent storyline, he is able to illicit fear, laughter, suspense, and other emotions out of the viewer with characters that do not have backstories or any relationship with any of the other characters in the movie. The best example in a scene early on in the movie. Two men are eating breakfast at the diner Winky's. One man is describing his dream to the other, which involves both men eating at the very same diner. After eating (in both the dream and reality), the men go outside behind the diner and are scared by a figure that pops up from behind the building. The first man (the dreamer) is overtaken by fear. This is the last we see of the man, although we do learn later that the person behind Winky's was homeless.

This scene is a microcosm of the film as a whole. The fear that the first man is feeling is real, but is being caused by a dream. He should not be scared, but he cannot help himself. Much like the viewer of any film, who has strong emotions to imagined characters and situations. I should not be scared when I watch a scary movie, because it is a movie that is fake. But I do feel scared, almost uncontrollable.

I view this film as a love letter from Lynch to film. If films are good, they force the viewer to lose themselves in the film and allow their emotions to be controlled by a imagined story. By rejecting a coherent story, Lynch praises the medium by showing that these emotional reactions can be just as strong without a story. Unlike novels or plays, filmmakers can use music, pacing, cinematography and other tools to create emotional tension where there is no reasonable reason for that tension to exist.

However, even while praising filmmaking, Lynch is highly critical of Hollywood. The closest thing to a story in this film revolves around Betty, a bright-eyed girl coming to Hollywood to get 'discovered'. Betty, and her new friend Rita (who has been in a car accident and is left without her memory) go on a classic Hollywood mystery. However, after Betty kills at an audition, has sex with Rita, and eye-fucks a young auteur director, she is sucked back into another world. In this new world, she is a struggling actress, who hires a hitman to kill her more successful friend (who is the lead in a movie directed by Mr. Young Auteur Director, whom she also is romantically involved), and then kills herself after a pair of elderly ghosts chase her down a hallway.

Lynch bookends the first part of the story with shots that suggest it is a dream. It opens with a POV shot that ends face down in a pillow and ends with a shot of a cowboy telling Betty to wake up. It is not hard to see that Lynch is playing with this dream of moving to Hollywood and getting discovered. Betty (now called Diane) has awoken from a dream to her shitty life as a Hollywood extra, forced to stand on the sidelines as her friend (and former lover) makes out with someone else. If she ever did have the dream that Lynch suggests she did in the first part of the movie, then she clearly failed. Her failures in life, represented by the elderly people chasing her (the same elderly people wish her luck when she first gets off the plane at the start of the film), chase her down and cause her to kill herself.

David Foster Wallace defined 'Lynchian' as the macabre in the mundane. This film is the opposite of that thesis. Lynch showed how beauty can come out of such a horrible place. Films are beautiful, but they are created in the scary dark place of nightmares, Hollywood.

P.S. Alot of people think that the first 3/4 of the film is a dream and that is why the same actors play different roles after the switch. However, this cannot be true. The best example is that of Coco. Before the switch, she is Betty's aunt's friend who manages the apartment complex Betty and Rita are staying in. After the switch, she is Mr. Young Auteur Director's mother. However, Lynch shows that the first part could not be a dream, because Mr. YAD introduces Diane (aka Betty) to Coco for the first time. How could she be part of Diane's (aka Betty's) dream if they had not yet met. Also, the supernatural stuff that happens before the switch, get explained as not being all that supernatural. However, after the switch, the major supernatural moment happens when those elderly ghosts come from under the door, which is never explained. Lynch goes out of his way to show that the first part seemed more real, while the viewer wants to think it is a dream.

But, in conclusion, it doesnt matter. Lynch is not interested in what you think the story means. All he is concerned with is the reaction you have to the film. He tried to trick you into thinking it all made sense, but it does.

No hay bando.