Welcome to the world of Freudian "Dream theory" and the unconscious mind. Peter Lynch teases and taunts - then shocks and baffles you, as he delves into the battered psyche of an aspiring actress.
Click here to see the rest of this review...
The "mystery" begins with an accident on Mulholland Drive. The sole survivor - a woman (Laura Harring) named Rita - loses her memory and goes into hiding by sneaking into a nearby apartment. The very next day, however, she is discovered by Betty Elms(Naomi Watts) who has moved into her aunt's place to pursue her own Hollywood dream.
As Betty moves up the ladder in her successful acting career, she also strives to help Rita find her true identity.
In the process, they grow sexually intimate and emotionally dependent on each other. However, Rita is a mental wreck and on one such ocassion Betty takes her to "Club Silencio" - a nocturnal haunt of the heartbroken and insomniacs. And it's here that Betty finds the mysterious blue box which Rita must open and unveil the "reality".
Mulholland drive is a visual delight - rich in texture and imagery - and at the same time is brutal and explicit in content. The subplots, like the one involving the hotshot director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux in a stylish role) and others featuring "the cowboy" or "the tramp" are open to interpretation in the context of the real story. The director draws on Freuds theory of "Wish Fulfilment" to juxtapose reality with fantasy. The characters and thier "roles" in both these realms are developed with great imagination.
The review of this Movie prepared by Biswa
Betty Elms (Watts) is a naive transplant to LA, aiming to make it big in Hollywood. She meets a beautiful amnesiac (Harring) who calls herself "Rita", and tries to help her find her identity. But Betty finds herself falling for "Rita", and the more they find out about her, the darker the truth about Betty really becomes.
The review of this Movie prepared by Michelle Yusuf
Imagine 1960s-era Fellini making a film noir, or Peter Greenaway doing a movie about the underside of Hollywood. David Lynch's 2001 offering, nominated at the Cannes Film Festival for the Golden Palm and awarded Best Director (an honor shared with Joel Coen for "The Man Who Wasn't There"), is like a personal dream or nightmare with very familiar elements that just ... don't ... fit together. A statuesque brunette (Harring, in the Tripplehorn/Hayak mode) barely escapes from a car wreck in which two men were about to shoot her, with her memory gone but a purse full of big bills. She hides in an old but stylish Hollywood apartment where a perky blonde from the sticks of Canada (Watts, looking a bit like Tea Leoni) has just arrived to attempt a career in film acting. We also get glimpses of a young film director (Theroux) whose project is being strong-armed by gangsters who fund it and insist on a new female lead, and a hit man botching a simple job and having to kill unexpected witnesses. Weird characters and sequences, stylized acting mixed with a little naturalistic work (Watts has an astounding scene during which her usual Nancy Drew-ish character auditions for a role and is jaw-droppingly intense), and all the stuff we're familiar with from Lynch combine in an infuriating yet spellbinding whole. Don't try to make sense of it -- is the first 2/3 real and the last 1/2 a nightmare, or the first 2/3 a fantasy and the last 1/3 the grimy truth? ... just enjoy the visual ride.
The review of this Movie prepared by David Loftus
