Today's film is Mulholland Drive directed by David Lynch. Many people consider it to be his best film, and I'm not sure I agree, but it is exceptionally good. It began life as a pilot for a TV series spinoff for the character of Audrey Horne from Twin Peaks, drifted from that concept, remaining a pilot, and, once that pilot was rejected Lynch filmed additional footage and made a film of it.
The work of David Lynch is considered by many to be deliberately nonsensical, and insane for the sake of insane. I have to disagree. Lynch is a manipulator of the language of film, and the choices he makes to undermine logic and consistency are never slapdash.
Looking for his films to make a direct narrative sense is not a winning game. Lynch is trying to capture the language of dreams, and the ways in which our dreaming mind connects with us. Where as most filmmakers will start with a story they wish to tell, Lynch starts with images that compel him, and discovers the narrative with us. This is a pattern he's followed and to which he's become more dedicated as his career continues.
That said, Mulholland Drive is actually far less complex to follow than many people might realize, but it involves close attention, and commitment to the rules of the game he lays out.
And having said that, I will start the film.
The credits come up on blackness, with low foreboding tones that transition into jazzy music with people dancing. This is shown in a poppy surreal style, the clothing appearing to be that of the late forties to early fifties. This dancing continues for a considerably long time until we see white flare superimposing, the images of our lead Betty and her parents, accompanied by intrusive deep tones. We see Betty smiling, looking as if she's won a contest.
And suddenly red satin sheets, distinctly post-coital by implication and then blackness and the street sign flashing the movie's title. Heavy dark synth plays as we see a car driving.
Lynch is drawing contrasts of light and dark early in this film. This film, like Twin Peaks is obsessed with duality, and the presence of the light and dark in all human minds.
The shots of the car as they drive around curves in the Hollywood Hills are from a distance, and often slightly above. We are looking down on this from a distance.
We then see the implied passenger of the car a dark haired woman we will know as Rita. The visual opposite of Betty, dark haired, dark eyes, and seemingly sinister, or at least exotic.
The first line of dialogue is "What are you doing? We don't stop here." I'll try to remember that for later.
Now we see two cars drag racing as Rita is threatened at gunpoint. There is a terrible accident. The gunmen holding her are killed. The only survivor is our Rita. wandering through the smoke, seemingly with no memory. She looks at the city with a blank wounded stare, and off the road into the brush.
We know nothing of her, and now, it seems, neither does she.
Lynch loves noir, and this film is his love letter to it. Hollywood is the sensible home of this story, which draws visually from the many Noir films set there. Though this film is set in the ostensible "now," Rita's dress and appearance in this scene are noir appropriate.
Rita hides in a bush, frightened at being discovered by a young couple out for a walk and in love, falling asleep in the hedge.
The cops at the scene of the car crash are classic Lynch characters. Robert Forster is always amazing to see.
As Rita sneaks out of the hedge into the courtyard of the apartment complex, we see a cabbie, and a red-haired lady packing her belongings in the trunk. The camera angles start from the perspective of Rita, hiding in that bush, and then, AFTER Rita has moved out of view of the cab, we continue to watch from that same voyeur's perch. Just as we watched the car driving. We, the viewer, are a character in this film. We are present here. Why?
Rita is hiding under the kitchen table as the red-haired woman comes back in to find her keys. There is no music in this scene. The film is complicit in Rita's silence. We dare not have her be discovered. We hold our breath with her.
Why had Rita snuck into this apartment? Is this normal behaviour?
As the red-haired lady leaves, Rita resumed her nap UNDER that table.
At this point we cut to a crucial scene of the film. The scene in Winkie's Diner. Two men are having breakfast. One is describing a dream he's been having to his less than sympathetic friend. Note the movement of the camera is unlike any of the camera work so far. The camera is not focused on the two men in a steady way, nor is it handheld. It is drifting, unsteady, unmoored, and the lighting is slightly hazy.
We have no context for these men, or for their conversation.
The man explains that he's had a dream of having breakfast here at this diner, except that the lighting is different. In the dreams he is terrified. He says that, in the dream his friend is standing over at the counter, and we look over his shoulder with him, the camera as loose and unsteady as the man's mannerisms. There is a subtle undercurrent of malice, low tones on the soundtrack. He explains that they are both scared because of a man in the back of the restaurant that he can see through the wall, a man with a face he never wants to see outside of dream.
The man wants he and his friend to go out back and purge the feeling. His friend goes to pay the check, and the man looks over his shoulder. His friend is now at the counter, just as in his dream. We see him realize this. The two men leave the diner, and walk out back. The man is increasingly distressed, and the camera continues to drift, to the right, the left, slightly up, slightly down.
The soundtrack is a mix of street sound and low him. They approach the dumpster wall, graffitied, and turn the corner and see this face. The person comes into view and steps out of sight again very quickly.
Our dreamer faints dead away, his friend checking his pulse, and we cut back to Rita, asleep.
We are never told this is Rita's dream, and there is reason to be uncertain it is. What Lynch has done, however is let us know very directly, that our narrator in this film is unreliable. We are to be uncertain of what is real, and what is a dream. This is true of Rita, of the man in Winkie's Diner, and of us as the viewer....whoever we may be in this film.
Rita is still asleep as we see her, and then the film cuts to a man in a red room, using a headset telephone. The man is played by Michael Anderson, who played the Dwarf in the Red Room in Twin Peaks. This is not just coincidence. He calls a man and advises that "the girl is still missing." The older man he calls places a call of his own to a man with a yellow telephone. This man in turn calls...someone, the phone unanswered.
We cut to Betty at the airport with an older woman named Irene that she met on the plane. Irene and her husband are extremely friendly, but there is something sinister about their forced smiles. Betty leaves in a taxi, and the older couple in a limo, their forced smiles looking like a rictus.
Betty's taxi takes her to the apartment complex we saw earlier. We look at the stairs as she climbs them, a voyeur's angle again, watching unseen.
Rita meets the apartment manager Coco, played by Ann Miller with an eccentric flare that suits a Lynchian supporting character well.
We discover the red headed woman to be Betty's Aunt, who is letting her use the apartment while she is away. Betty looks at everything with the eyes of the small town innocent, but as she does, the apartment is shot form angles that imply menace she is unaware of.
She finds Rita's dress and shoes in the bedroom, but thinks they must belong to her aunt, and then discovers Rita in the shower. We see Rita through a glass door that obscures her to a cypher. Rather than being alarmed, Betty assumes Rita must be a friend of her aunt. She assumes the best. When asked her name...Rita is shocked to discover she doesn't know.
We see a poster of the film Gilda starring Rita Hayworth, and this is the name Rita picks for herself as she introduces herself to Betty.
Betty is adorable in this scene. She's kind and innocent and assumes the best of Rita. She also talks too much to fill silence. She has come from a small town in Ontario, and now, she says, "I'm just in this dream place. You can imagine how I feel." Oh, and Rita can, you see it in her face.
Betty realizes Rita is hurt and wants to call a doctor. Rita insists that she'll be okay if she sleeps. That she just needs to sleep. She lies down and does that, and Betty tucks her in under a blanket.
We cut to the skyline, and an overhead shot of the city, low tones again, and then two dark haired men walk out of their car. We see Adam, a film director talking to his manager about recasting his lead actress, asking him to keep an open mind.
The two dark men enter and are introduced to Adam and his manager. They are not talkative. They simply slide a headshot over for a Camilla Rhodes. It is increasingly implied these two men are organized crime figures. We also see that the man from the red room is listening to the meeting. The camera is steady as it was for his scenes. Was that a dream? Is this?
The mafiosi make it clear that this woman is going to get the part, and there will be no discussion, despite Adam's complaints. The danger of these two men is palpable. The older of them orders an espresso, but it is not to his taste. He spits it out onto a cloth napkin as everyone bursts into terrified apologies.
Adam says, "That girl is not in my film." He is told simply, "It's no longer your film."
Whose film is it?
Adam leaves the meeting, finds the mafiosi's car and smashes in the windshield with his golf club before driving off in a rush.
An older man walks into the red room, and speaks to Michael Anderson's character whom he calls Mr. Rook. He does through through glass, by speaker, and the lights turn on just as he speaks so that he can see Mr. Rook. He says that the girl is Camilla Rhodes, and the director doesn't want him, and asks if he wants the director replaced. Mr. Rook advises he wants everything shut down, and the man leaves. The screen fades to black.
We cut to a small office somewhere, and two men we've not seen before are laughing and making small talk. One of them says to the other, "So that's it. That's Ed's famous black book." Before his friend can even finish confirming it, he is shot in the head. It is made to look like suicide, and as the gunman is setting the body, he fires through the wall accidentally wounding a woman who is in pain, and making a noise. He steps next door to dispatch her, but she fights back with some vigor. He drags her to the first office, and is spotted by a janitor. He screams for the janitor, saying she's hurt badly, and he needs the janitor to call a doctor. Soon, he has shot both of them, leaves all three bodies in the office, takes the black book and leaves. The camera work is shaky, handheld, somewhere between cinema verité and the Winkie's scene.
We see Betty on the phone now speaking to her aunt, and it becomes apparent Rita is some sort of stranger. Betty is still certain the police will not be required, and confronts Rita as politely as anyone could. Rita begins to cry, apologizing, saying that she thought when she woke up she'd know who she was. She confesses her amnesia, and Betty offers her purse to her, so they can search. Rita seems reluctant to know, as if the truth is frightening. Extreme closeups are used to show Rita's beauty smeared, and tear streaked in comparison with head and shoulders shots of the well-kept Betty as the zipper slowly comes open, and the tones of menace return.
She pulls out a frankly terrifying amount of money from her purse, followed by a strange blue key. The music is slow and sad as she shows it to Betty. The significance of this key will be made apparent soon.
We see the gunman rom the office scene, and his lady friend, and some leather coat wearing associate eating hotdogs. It's apparent our gunman is looking for a beat up brunette.
Back in the apartment, Betty and Rita discuss the money and the key, and Rita says she remembers something, face in her hands, but is unsure what.
We cut to our director on the road, informed that everyone has been fired and the set is closed. He tells his assistant that he's going home. He is not willing to confront this problem. He has lost control of his film.
Betty wonders where Rita was going, and Rita says "Mulholland Drive." Betty suggests they call the cops anonymously to find out if there was an accident. Rita does not want answers. She is clearly happier ignorant, but she is drawn to Betty, and agrees to it.
Adam returns home, and discovers the pool cleaner in bed with his wife. He is losing control of his life, and this emasculation is a further loss of agency and betrayal. His wife acts as though he is in the wrong. The poolboy advises he just forget he saw it. Adam takes his wife's jewelry and silently goes to the garage and pours a gallon of pink paint into it. There is a struggle, and cleaner intervenes, politely, but violently, and escorts Adam out of his own home. Adam, bloody-nosed drives off. The pool cleaner seems genuinely concerned for him.
Betty and Rita hide the money and key in a hatbox in her aunt's closet, closing the door, and shake in it formally.
They go to a payphone and Betty calls the police and gets confirmation of the accident. The payphone is next to Winkie's, and the two go in to have coffee. The camera work is suddenly adrift. We see a waitress with short spiky hair. She has blonde hair and dark eyes. Her name is Diane. Rita stares at the name tag. There is something familiar about it. This diner is uncanny still. Rita says she remembers something.
She thinks her name might be Diane Selwyn, and we return to the apartment, and steady camera work. They look for D Selwin in the phone book."It's strange to be calling yourself," Betty says. "Maybe it's not me," Rita says.
The answering machine is not Rita's voice, but Rita is convinced she knows her. A roommate possibly?
We cut to a heavy-set man looking for Adam Kesher. His wife confronts him, and tells the man to leave. The man shoves her aside, and he calls for Adam again. She is on him like a spider monkey, and it's sort of adorable to watch. Billy Ray Cyrus is back as the pool boy, and he gets one punched, and then so does the girlfriend.
We cut to the city at night to the Park Hotel. Adam has rented a room, and his room is visited by the clerk who says there's a problem with his cards. Adam says he paid with cash, and is told that two men came by from his bank, and he's maxed out. Adam says that he has enough cash, but the clerk says, he knows but it's his duty to inform him that the men he's hiding from know where he is.
Adam makes a call to his assistant, and she confirms that Adam is now broke. She asks if he knows someone called the Cowboy. The Cowboy wants to see him, and his manager thinks it's a good idea. She thinks he should do it right away. It's been a strange day.
He is told to go to the top of Beechwood Canyon, to a corral there to meet him.
It's clear that forces have conspired against him.
Betty and Rita look up Diane Selwin's address on a map, and it's not far. They agree to go tomorrow to look. There is a knock on the door, and Betty answers, saying it is probably Coco. A woman in a cloak is there saying someone is in trouble.
She asks why Betty is in Ruth's apartment. Betty offers her name, and the woman says, "No, it's not. That's not what she said. Something bad is happening."
Coco comes to retrieve this woman, called Louise Bonner. Louise is one of Betty's neighbours. Coco leaves some faxed pages of a script. This woman bears a strong resemblance to the creature in the Winkie's scene. I think they are, in fact, one and the same.
Rita is clearly very upset by this visit.
Adam drives to the corral. Ours is, again, a voyeur's angle, and the drive through misty roads. The soundtrack is low drones and wind. He steps into the empty corral and a light buzzes to life. The Cowboy approaches.
The Cowboy makes pleasing small talk to start. The Cowboy states that a man's life is determined by his attitude. He asks if Adam agrees, and Adam does. The Cowboy asks him if he was truthful.
The Cowboy says that Adam must not care about the good life, and asks Adam to think about why, and stop being a smart-aleck.
The Cowboy asks how many drivers there are for a buggy. Adam says, "One." The Cowboy advises that he is driving this buggy, and that if Adam is willing to adjust his attitude, he can ride along with him.
The Cowboy advises him to go back to work, audition many actresses, and when he sees the girl he was shown, he is to say, "This is the girl." Everything is up to Adam but that choice. He advises Adam will see him once more if he does good, and twice if he does bad says goodnight and leaves. As he does the light goes out, and the Cowboy is gone.
The Cowboy is one of Lynch's creatures from outside. He is a supernatural being. A face of the devil, or something like it, cloaked in the mundane, but with no real understanding of how humans should behave, and he is, in his way, as chilling as BOB from Twin Peaks or the Pale Man from Lost Highway.
We jump back now to another critical scene. Betty and Rita are practicing her lines for an audition. It's an overwrought piece about a woman who had an affair with her father's best friend. Betty is...not great in this reading. She reads this material in most obvious and hackneyed way. The two of them find the scene risible, ending with "I hate you, I hate us both." We will later see this scene replayed to great effect later.
Coco arrives a short while later, meeting Rita, and asks to speak with Betty outside. Her Aunt Ruth has called wanting to know what's going on. Betty makes up a not very convincing story, and Coco isn't buying it. Coco says she'll trust her to sort this out, but that Louise Bonner said there was trouble. It's clear Coco has some reason to think Louise isn't ALWAYS wrong.
This is the approximate half way point of the film, and I've had to pause a lot, because so many of these details are important in the revelations to come. Most of the time I don't tend to recap in so much detail.
Even thus far, I hope you are seeing a pattern of the confusion of identity as we often experience in dreams, and that you can see the duality of the scene in which the face appears at Winkie's and Louise Bonner arrives at the front door to proclaim trouble. They are flip sides of the same coin. (Bonner, by the way is also the family name of the witchy old woman and her grandson in Twin Peaks--I think
this is not a coincidence. In the Lynch-verse, as in the Cthulhu mythos, some families are...special)
Betty leaves for her audition and is starstruck by the lot. She is led into the audition, and introduced to the film staff, and the actor she'll be reading with. An external casting agent also happens to be there. The other actor, Woody, is convincing as an over-tanned George Hamilton type. The director advises the scene isn't a context, and not to play the scene for real until it gets real.
Woody is kind of a creep, and says he wants to play it close like with the one with the black hair. Was this Rita? I bet it was. Kiiiinda. The director asks Woody not to rush his lines. Woody says acting is reacting, and all the actresses say it the same way. He says to Betty that if she doesn't rush it, he doesn't.
This scene is a demonstration of how acting can transform a script. The two play it right in close. Woody plays him as all smarm and menace, and then Betty turns the scene around and becomes the predator, turning her lines into a series of dares, and implied threats, dripping with sexual longing. The dialogue is word for word what the women read, but the dynamic, and the passion and the legitimate emotion between the characters, the need and the regret is palpable. It is clear that Betty is making Woody give a better performance than he's had to in years. And Betty's expression of self-loathing is utterly convincing. All present applaud, and rightly so. It's amazing work, and in the structure of the film, it's another example of duality. Light and dark, mirror images.
This is the second scene we see played mirrored. There will be more.
The casting agent is impressed, and it is clear that she will now be considered for Alex's film.
This scene also reveals that Betty has a deeper and more nuanced understanding of human fear and passion than we have ANY reason to expect. The scene is surreal, and we are left wondering where the hell that performance came from. She is like a woman possessed, and once she is done, she is back to herself-- a half-lost innocent.
The agent and her assistant are clearly trying to sour her on that project, and offer to take her across the lot to try for a part she will knock out of the park.
We cut to a sixties pop band singing "Sixteen Reasons Why I Love You." We slowly pan back revealing this is a film set, Adam's. He looks over his shoulder to see her, and the camera movement is such as to indicate immediate attraction between them. This is a call back to the diner scene again. She has entered like something from a dream.
it turns out this was a screen test. Adam thanks the actress, who he clearly knows, and then the next actress is introduced. It's Camilia Rhodes. "The girl"
He sits back to watch her performance. She lipsyncs "Why Haven't I Told You?" She seems fine, actually, not the kind of untalented mess you'd expect. Alan calls over the producers and says, "This is the girl." He is told he's made an excellent choice.
He looks over his shoulder at Betty again, and Betty remembers she is late to meet Rita and flees, leaving the director confused and shaken.
Betty picks up Rita and they make their way to the Selwin residence. It doesn't seem to look familiar to Rita, but she recognizes two men waiting out front in a car. They have the cabbie go around the back, and go in through the fence that way. We precede them, with the voyeur's angle, and they find the apartment. The camera seems to wait for them around every corner, eager for them to catch up, eager for them to enter the apartment. Rita chickens out and asks Betty not to go in, but Betty is firm, and knocks. There is no answer at first, and then a woman answers, and explains Diane is at number 17. They exchanged apartments. She also says hat she hasn't seen Diane in a few days. She wants to go with them, because Diane has some of her things. A phone call keeps her from that. They make their way to 17, and they know that Rita is not Diane.
There is, again the sense of the camera being eager for them to knock, and they do. There is no answer. Betty, our innocent small town Canadian girl starts testing windows, and finds one open. She enlists Rita's help in boosting her into the window. Betty comes around to open the front door, and looks shaken. The apartment clearly reeks of death. They make their way, in the dark, as the neighbour leaves her house to join them. They walk into the bedroom and the see a woman laying on the bed. in a short nightie, on the same red sheets as we saw earlier in the opening. They approach her to find her dead, and dead for some time. This shot will, again, be mirrored.
The neighbour knocks, there is no answer, and leaves, looking dubious.
Betty and Rita flee the house, and there is no environmental sound, nor do we hear Rita's scream of horror. There is just a jangled soundtrack, and blurring doubling of the images of their faces.
We cut to Rita hacking at her hair with scissors, until Betty stops her, and assists her in cutting her hair and getting her a blonde wig. She resembles Betty, but also, now, the waitress at Winkie's.
The line between the characters is blurring increasingly.
Betty invites Rita into her bed, platonically, saying it's a bit bed and she needs a good night's sleep. Rita removes her towel and climbs in, naked.
The two kiss each other goodnight, and then again. Things become immediately less than chaste.
This love scene is less erotic to me than agonized, and hungry. In the afterglow Rita is asleep and in her sleep mumbles "Silencio, Silencio." Her eyes open and she continues to say "There is no band, there is no orchestra" in Spanish and French respectively, and then Silencio several more times.
This wakens Betty, who wakes Rita, who says that it's not okay, and asks Betty to go with her somewhere.
And this is when the movie steps straight into total nightmare. This scene is one of the most nightmarish and beautiful in the Lynch canon. In fact, watch it:
https://vimeo.com/44062322
I'll wait.
Look at Rita's face in the cab. That is a woman on her way to the gas chamber. Afraid, but resolved.
The scene as they pull up, low to the ground, and moving in like the demons in Evil Dead. We are no longer in Hollywood. We are in the Other Place.
As they enter into the theatre you will see two women, a blonde and a brunette on the right hand side.
This is Laura Palmer and Ronette Pulaski, the two dead girls from Twin Peaks. This is not coincidence. We are now in the Lodge, whether Black or White, we cannot say.
The host speaks about how there is no band, but they can hear what they want. He summons forth instruments while using slight of hand to make a cane appear and disappear. He shows a trombone player, who keeps playing as the instrument leaves his mouth. It's all recorded, all a tape.
It is an illusion. Rita is already starting to unravel in the audience. Betty begins to convulse at the sound of thunder, and the fake lightning. We hear a deep demonic laugh, and the host vanishes in smoke. The colours shift, and the lighting shifts as though underwater. In the long shot we see Laura and Ronette there, and seated next to them may be BOB, their killer, and then we are back to the stage. Betty and Rita watch with mounting fear as a man comes out to introduce a singer. This man in red is the same man who warned Alex at the hotel. He is a servant of The Cowboy, implying a link between the Cowboy and this club.
Rebecca Del Rio sings a truly gut wrenching Spanish version of Roy Orbison's "Crying." Betty and Rita are both increasingly upset by it, seemingly coming to some kind of realization, weeping and holding hands. The song appears to be only a small part of their deep sadness.
As the song reaches it's climax the singer stares up vacantly, stops singing, the music, naturally continuing and collapses on the stage. The staff carry her off stage as the lights go down, and sadness seems to be replaced by fear. Betty picks up her purse from the seat next to her, and finds, inside, a blue box the same colour as the key we saw previously. We see the slot where the key goes.
And then they return home from this other world, box in hand. They enter Aunt Ruth's bedroom, and we see Betty set the box down on the bed. The frame leaves her behind as Rita grabs he hatbox, and then Betty is simply gone. Rita calls for her twice, and looks for her in the adjacent rooms, but she is not to be found. Rita is alone now with the blue box and the key. She uses the key to open the box, and the camera dives into the darkness of it.
The box then falls to the floor, held by nobody.
We pan up the wall shakily, disoriented, and Aunt Ruth walks in, her bed made, the room empty, looking as if she feels she missed something.
The scene shifts to a replay of the scene walked into at the Selwin house, We see the dead woman on the sheets, hear the door open, and the Cowboys says, "Hey Pretty Girl, time to wake up."
The room goes dark, we see light outside and further knocking. The woman on the bed is now the woman we've thought of as Betty. She doesn't look like she wanted company. She puts on a robe and answers the door.
The neighbour from the previous scene is there demanding her dishes, which Diane hands over.
Suddenly Betty simply is and has always been Diane. We see a normal blue house key on her coffee table as she and her neighbour handle the rest of her items. On her way out the neighbour says, "By the way, those two detectives cam looking for you."
Diane has woken up from her dream of being Betty.
She sees the woman we've thought of as Rita, and smiles broadly, calling her Camilla. She's the girl apparently. You have no choice. She says "You've come back," to Camilla, and then we see it's just a hallucination, as she trembles and then makes coffee.
The colours of this scene are stark and muted and real compared to the rich pallette of all the scenes which came before.
She comes into the living room, and suddenly Diane is nude but for cutoffs, and Camillia is on her couch nude. They begin to make out and Camilla says they shouldn't do that anymore. Diane becomes angry and forceful as Camilla tells her to stop.
Diane rears back with jealousy. "It's him isn't it."
We jump cut to the film seat. Alex is giving Camilla, and her co-star direction, his arm around her in the front of a car. Diane is watching, nervous and a little jealous. Alex orders the set cleared aside from the four of them. Alex demonstrates a kiss with Camilla that seems to be more than just acting, as Diane looks on, tears in her eyes. Alex orders the lights killed and keeps kissing.
We jump forward a little in the flashback to an argument between Diane and Camilla, with Diane shoving her out the door and slamming it behind Camilla.
We return to the now, and Diane is on her couch weeping and masturbating as the scenery blurs. She is angry as she approaches coming. We see a black phone ringing, and she picks up after hearing Camilla's voice on the machine. "The car is waiting," Camilla says. Camilla gives Diane an address on Mulholland Drive.
We watch her car drive through the Hollywood hills. it feels like the opening scene. "What are you doing? We don't stop here." The driver says it's a surprise, and Camilla comes up to the car, to fetch Diane. They foe hand in hand up the steps, Camilla leading. to a pool party at Alex's house.
Alex welcomes Diane, who watches as he and Camilla toast to love. Diane toasts with them, reluctantly. Alex introduces his mother to them...she's Coco.
Diane apologizes for being late, and Coco seems to find that distasteful.
The scene goes blurry and then snaps into focus on the dinner talk, and we find that Diane won a jitterbug contest, and won a trip to Hollywood, her Aunt had died also and left her some money. She met Camilla on an earlier picture. Alex and Camilla are making out at the table, and Diane is having a harder time hiding it. Camilla and Alex and Coco seem increasingly contemptuous, as we look through her eyes.
We skip ahead a bit, and we see the sinister mafiosi at the part as well, the girl who we thought of as Camilla stops off, whispers in Camilla's ear and kisses her, smearing lipstick. The Cowboy walks by in the background quickly. This marks the second time we see him since the corral scene. Someone has done bad.
Alex and Camilla begin to announce their engagement, giggling in a forced way, with almost evil expressions.
We are jarred from that scene by the sound of broken dishes, and we are in Winkie's. Diane is at the table with the gunman who killed three people in the office earlier. A waitress, who looks exactly like our last waitress comes by with coffee. Her name tag reads, "Betty."
Diane slips the man a headshot and says "This is the girl." He asks if she has the money, and she does. It's a big wad of money. He says, "Once you hand that money over, it's a done deal. You sure you want this?" She replies, "More than anything in this world."
He holds up the blue house key, and advises, once it's done, she'll find it where he told her.
She looks over his shoulder, and at the counter, sees the man with the recurring dream from the Winkie's diner scene at the beginning of the film. He looks at her, shaken.
She asks what the key opens, and the man just laughs as if the question itself is absurd.
And then we go out back of the diner, and we turn the corner of the cinderblock wall where the nightmare man was. It is lit in red, and it is night. The Man is holding the blue box by his fire, and he puts it in a paper back and drops it.
Out of the bag we see tiny versions of Irene and her husband, the forced smilers emerge moving with unnatural speed and jerkiness, their laughs high pitched and forced and robotic.
We then cut back to Diane's apartment, to the blue key on the table, and to her on the couch, staring at it. She has had Camilla killed, and is really staring that truth down now. There is a knocking at the door she does not answer.
Irene and her husband, still laughing crawl in under the door, and their laughs transform into Camilla's death screams. The lighting changes, flickering and flashing, and she bolts from the couch, chased by full sized versions of Irene and her husband, still laughing and still horrible.
She screams and is backed into her bedroom onto her bed where she ends this terror by grabbing the gun from her nightstand and shoots herself in the head. The room fills with smoke and synth, lights flashing. It is reminiscent of Silencio, and then we see the silhouette of the nightmare man, which fades to the LA skyline, and the faces of Betty and Camilla (in a blonde wig) laughing.
We then fade to Club Silencio, where a lone woman pronounces "Silencio."
The movie fades to a long black before the credits run.
When watched with this kind of closeness, the plot of the film becomes almost linear in a way that Lynch's films don't often achieve.
It is my feeling that everything we see from the beginning of the film until the opening of the box is the death dream of Diane Selwin. She is every character in that dream, as we all are in our dreams, though we wear many faces. The voyeuristic camera angles are the presence of the viewer as the dreamer, watching our own (Diane's) subconscious process her actions. She is the director, the murderer for hire, both halves of the love affair, the two men at Winkie's, and all of these scenes are trying to process what she has done.
Intruding on this dream are the forces from outside embodied by the Cowboy, and Club Sliencio. Diane has done wrong, and so she does not get the comfort of this dream, with it's potential second chance at happiness with Camilla in the form or Rita. She is not in control, and deep down, she does not feel she deserves it.
Club Silencio gives her her real life memories back, and the Cowboy wakes her up to them. She relives her memories, and comes to the same decision a second time...to murder Camilla. Right there, at the table, as soon as it is committed in her brain, the Cowboy walks by a second time.
She has been judged, and found wanting.
Perhaps this was one last chance at redemption, perhaps her punishment is to relive this cycle, or perhaps she will one time make the right choice. We don't know. We cannot know. Like the gods of Lovecraft, the forces from Lynch's Other Place are unknowable in any real way.
There are, I think a multitude of alternate interpretations one could come to with this film, but this is the simplest, and, to me, most satisfying.
Each rewatch of Mulholland Drive reveals new things to me, sometimes to an extent that startles me. It's the closest film comes to a legitimate occult experience outside of Inland Empire.
That film, lord. I could write a book.
My next film will be a sharp 180 as I ramble through Airplane! I doubt you'll see so detailed a recap as this, and for that we might all consider ourselves lucky.
If you have any questions about my interpretation, or want to discuss the film, hey, that's what comments are for. For my part, I just spent four hours watching a 2 and a half hour movie, and now I have to try and sleep after that.
My dreams will be a rich mess.
But goddammit, Mulholland Drive is worth some nightmares.
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