MULHOLLAND DRIVE is David Lynch’s maniacal, notorious thriller- a kinkily off-kilter neo-noir.
That careens from one violent non sequitur to another. The movie boldly teeters on the brink of self-parody, reveling in its own excess and resisting narrative logic. From the absurd midnight automobile accident on the Los Angeles road that opens the movie and gives it its title, MULHOLLAND DR. makes perfect (irrational) sense. Lynch’s outlandish noir feels familiar, and yet it’s continually surprising.
The movie is a sensual mystery: Betty, fresh from Deep River, Ontario, and Rita, car crash survivor, at the center of secrets and the heart of a mystery, two helpless hearts with no one to turn to but each other. The movie within the movie is a fragmented biography: Diane, ground down by the industry, and Camilla, dangerously close to the top of the ladder, telling each other’s story, with the gulf between tellings threatening to devour the whole world. The dream is of betrayal, of facing the undeniable moral truth of oneself. The movies, they say, are a beautiful lie, and all lies must eventually yield to a reckoning.