“WHAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF”

By Raymond Benson

Of all the talented filmmakers who have made a mark in the history of cinema, there is that handful who belong in a special category. Granted, many directors are auteurs, in that they have a recognizable style and thematic consistency to their work—a “signature” that identifies them as the “authors” of their pictures. But there is a rare sub-set of auteurs who are so strikingly original and iconoclastic that their work is singularly their own and unlike that of any other filmmaker. David Lynch is one of these. No one makes the kind of movies he does.

Mulholland Drive is easily one of Lynch’s best pictures (and he’s not very prolific, either—only ten feature films to date, not counting television productions). It was released in 2001 to massive critical acclaim (Lynch shared Best Director at Cannes with Joel Coen, and he was nominated for a Best Director Oscar), as well as a great deal of bafflement and mutterings from exiting audiences such as, “Well, that was weird.”

Yes, it’s a strange film—after all, it’s a David Lynch picture, and he is, perhaps, the foremost proponent of surrealism in cinema since the advent of Luis Buñuel. But Lynch is also a romanticist, and his blending of these two somewhat conflicting artistic movements result in a distinctly different kind of animal, something that has been coined “Lynchian.” There is a beauty to Mulholland Drive that is mesmerizing. The mystery and ambiguity of its narrative is almost secondary to the emotional punch the director delivers to the audience.

Much has been written about the movie in an attempt to analyze it and make sense of the non-linear plot, and it is, like all great art, open to interpretation. It takes more than one viewing to “get” it, although I don’t think anyone can fully get it. If this is your first encounter with Mulholland Drive—and the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray edition is an excellent medium with which to approach the film—it is highly suggested you watch the film in its entirety, and then view it again the following day after thinking about it.

Basically, the film is the sad, tragic story of a severely depressed and failed Hollywood actress named Diane (played by Naomi Watts, in a brilliant, breakout performance that shot her to “A” list status) who has been jilted by her lesbian lover, Camilla (Laura Elena Harring) for a film director (Justin Theroux). Diane hires a hit man to murder Camilla, and then kills herself out of remorse and guilt. Doesn’t sound too savory, does it? Never mind—Lynch tells this story in the form of a compelling quasi-neo-noir mystery, and in the process he creates a puzzle for the audience to solve in order to connect the dots. Out of the 146-minutes of running time, nearly the first two hours of it consist of a dream Diane is having which casts her as a wholesome, talented, optimistic and aspiring actress named Betty. She meets an amnesiac victim who adopts the name Rita (also Harring), and they set about attempting to find out how Rita came to be in her situation. At around the 1:57:00 mark in the picture, Diane wakes from her dream to her reality. What follows then are several non-linear flashbacks to events that happened prior to Diane having her dream.

Dream logic is usually nonsensical when analyzed upon waking, but during the actual dream, everything makes sense, right? When watching the first two hours, you’ll see several characters and objects that appear in relation to the “plot” of the dream... but later, in the wakeful reality, the actors who played the earlier characters and the same objects appear in different contexts—with a little thought you can decipher how the dream connects these elements with the real circumstances. The clues are all there on screen.

Another interesting aspect of Mulholland Drive is that it was originally a pilot for a possible television series a la Twin Peaks. Lynch had filmed the “dream” section of the picture, but the network rejected it. The director got financing elsewhere, re-tooled the existing footage, wrote the rest of the story, and brought the principles back for more shooting. This is why the detectives, played by Robert Forster and Brent Briscoe, simply disappear from the movie after the first half hour—they were originally intended to be regular characters in the TV series. One can’t help but wonder what if.

This fascinating film comes with a gorgeous new, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by Lynch and director of photography Peter Deming, with a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray. Like most DVDs and Blu-rays that Lynch approves, there are no chapter stops. Supplements include some terrific new interviews with Lynch and Naomi Watts together (very funny and revealing); Theroux, Harring, and Deming; composer Angelo Badalamenti (wait until you hear how he got started writing film scores!); production designer Jack Fisk; and casting director Johanna Ray. There’s a deleted scene, the trailer, and a wonderful treat—on-set footage of Lynch directing several scenes from the film. The booklet contains a 2005 interview with Lynch from Chris Rodley’s book, Lynch on Lynch.

Mulholland Drive is a masterpiece in David Lynch’s canon and the new Criterion release certainly does it justice. This is a film that is haunting, beautiful, and full of secrets and surprises. It really is the stuff that dreams are made of.

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