by David Lynch, 2001.
Starring: Michael J. Anderson, Laura Elena Harring, Ann Miller, Justin Theroux, and Naomi Watts.
Rating: 9.5/10, 10/10.
Argh. There’s nothing I can say about Mullholland Drive other than the fact that it is one of the very best movies I’ve ever seen, if not THE best.
I’ll attempt to summarise the plot, but keep in mind as you read that there is no way I can convey the incredible selfness of this movie (what the hell did that mean?). It begins with possibly the best film opening in history: a woman (Harring) is being driven in a limo. The limo stops; she says "What are you doing? We don’t stop here." The men in the front turn around; one has a gun. "Get out of the car," they tell her. So far it is the typical assassinated-by-the-limo-driver scene we’ve all seen so many times. However, it is intercut with scenes of two very, very fast cars with teenagers hanging out of them and screaming in joy. Just as everyone in the limo is about to get out, they are lit up by headlights. They turn around, there is a horrific crash.
The two men are killed, and Harring’s character has lost her memory. She stumbles down the hill and manages to get into an empty apartment and hides there. But then Betty (Watts) gets there (she’s renting it from her aunt, who is off working on a movie), and the film sort of revolves around their attempts to figure out who Harring (who calls herself Rita after the "Gilda" poster in the bathroom) really is.
But this is David Lynch, who created the brilliant Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, so none of this is done in a straightforward manner, and there are all sorts of partial-to-complete subplots that come up out of nowhere and vanish back into nowhere. In most films this technique would be incredibly annoying and a sign of the director’s (or at least the editor’s) ineptitude, but here it is deliberate and ingenious. The whole film is incredibly surreal, and surreal doesn’t even begin to describe the second half of it. You just have to see it. If you don’t like it, see it again—you were wrong the first time.
I haven’t even mentioned how relentlessly good the acting is. Take Naomi Watts. If the Oscars don’t create a new award this year, the "Best Actress There Ever Has Been and Ever Will Be" award, and give it to her, it will have been a serious injustice. And that would be great, too, because it would free up the regular "Best Actress" award so they could give it to Laura Elena Harring. You think I’m exagerating (I can see it in your eyes), but I’m not. Not even a little bit.
I wish I could convey to you how stunning, beautiful, and deeply disturbing a film Mullholland Drive is. But I can’t. Just see it for yourself.