| If I do nothing else in life, I attempt to look
as cool as other film critics. But on some days, I try to be even cooler: I try to buy
into the buzz of the film festival circuit by quoting Premiere magazine. If
someone who lives in a trendier place than I do says it's good stuff, then I'd better
believe. But then sometimes I just can't go along with Libby Gelman-Waxner, if you ask me.
And as much as I wanted to do, I can't heap "resounding" praise onto David
Lynch's Mulholland Dr. I know this thing has won a lot of awards and a lot of
film critics who have more readers and have richer bank accounts have assured me that the
film is a "weird trip through our conscience dream world" or something along
those lines. But I am afraid that circumstances forced Lynch into a bit of a corner. A
corner, as it turns out, from where he couldn't paint away.
Naomi Watts plays Betty, this from-the-sticks girl who comes to
Hollywood with the dreams of stardom twittering in her eyes. Watts plays Betty like Nancy
Drew after getting hit in the head with a shovel and the result allows us to see that
Lynch views the dreamer as a wunderkind innocent. This innocence gets it first test when
Betty arrives at her aunt's apartment to find "Rita" (Laura Harring) in the
shower. She's not sure what her real name is because she has developed amnesia. We,
as the audience know she got hurt in a pretty nasty car accident from the night before.
Betty is dead set on helping "Rita" figure out where she was going and/or what
she was doing. Along the way, the two encounter some pretty strange and unusual
characters/circumstances. All of this is merely baptism by fire until Betty's big audition
and then things begin to "bend the conventions of modern cinema ".
And at this point (about an hour and forty five minutes into a
two and a half hour movie) I was totally loving this stuff. Four stars, no problem. I
loved how Lynch was setting up the character's and the way they translated their dreams.
We of course had Betty with the images of jitter bug dancers going at it in her mind but
we also had Adam the director (Justin Theroux, who looks like Kyle McLaughlin. Think that
was intentional?) who finds out that fame is not as fun as it looks. We even have the
timid guy in the greasy spoon who gets a really freaky encounter with his visions. Lynch
is saying that our fantasies become horror in the light of reality and everyone involved
hits the mark really well. After watching her scene with Chad Everett, I was ready to hand
my Best Actress award over to Watts. I even loved Billy Ray Cyrus as the cheating pool
cleaning guy. But I kept thinking about the hit man having so much trouble pulling off a
score or Dan Hedaya as this really weird film executive and I was starting to wonder how
it would all get pulled off and tied up in the end.
Well, it doesn't and that's the problem. Back story: Lynch
initially planned and filmed Mulholland Dr. as a TV pilot but none of the
networks picked it up. (That kind of puts a disappointing light on HBO: They give dreadful
Larry David an improvised whinefest but won't give this a shot.) So instead of trashing
the project, Lynch takes the pilot, adds another forty five minutes to the end, and
there's the movie. But not really. The ideas and characters presented are so complicated
and precise that it would take at least a season or two to effectively navigate and
conclude their fates. But Lynch only got a certain amount of time and it seems like he
reverts back to the confusing weirdness that plagued Lost Highway and Fire
Walk With Me. After seeing actors switch characters and scary women sing Roy
Orbison's Cryin' in Spanish, you get the sense that Lynch knew he couldn't finsih
the story with any justice. And don't think this is a cop-out because it is clear that
Lynch's hypothesis stays clear. Heck, he evens shows a character being attacked by those
who supported her dreams so early in the film. I'm just not going to sit here and call it
"strange but exhilarating" just because I don't want to look stupid. Just look
at it like this: If Twin Peaks had been in the same spot, think of what a stretch
it would take to go from the 2-hour pilot to the conclusion where Agent Cooper becomes
"Bob", the personification of evil. And then to do it in thirty minutes. The
story was kind of a mess anyway. Think of how that would have turned out.
I wanted to give this film a passing mark because of what it
came so close to being. If only it had carried on for two seasons and the characters could
have made their evolutions in a more coherent way I thought. But I have decided to look at
this film cold and without the knowledge that it started out the way it did. And it could
have been worse. Some woman in front of me in the theater stumbled through the lobby like
she needed to find an ambulance saying quite audibly, "I can't believe we sat through
that fucking thing!" Apparently she hadn't heard the buzz or else her confused anger
would have probably turned into "awe-inspired wonder". Maybe I'm not hip,
but I can tell you that Mulholland Dr. will remind you of a really cool dream
that goes totally psycho once the alarm starts to ring. Just don't linger over the
"snooze" button very long. |
