Mulholland Drive- Enough of an Explanation to Enjoy the Film
The first and second halves of the movie feel like parallel universes, with the same actors playing similar but different characters with the names all switched around. In the first half, the opening scene finds a gorgeous brunette (Laura Harring) in a limo, scarcely surviving a car crash in the Hollywood hills. Meanwhile, a sweet, small-town blonde named Betty (Naomi Watts) arrives in L.A. with dreams of becoming an actress. Everything looks bright for Betty; she befriends everyone she meets, she’s staying rent-free in the gorgeous, upscale apartment of her out-of-town aunt, and later, we see her attend her first audition in which she’s personally introduced to the extremely friendly director, producer, and big name co-star.
Meanwhile, the brunette from the car crash stumbles from the wreck and in her confused state, seeks shelter in Betty’s new place. Betty soon discovers that the woman has amnesia from the event and can’t remember who she is. She takes on the name Rita and almost immediately, she and Betty become best friends, running around town looking for clues that will reveal who Rita really is. These antics are all stylized to seem spooky and exciting but mostly safe, with the two of them peering into windows and making anonymous phone calls like girls from a Nancy Drew novel. The only exception to this is a moment when they sneak into the apartment of a woman they’ve determined is a friend of Rita’s named Diane Selwyn, whose horrifying decomposing body is found on the bed. Later, sharing the huge bed at Betty’s aunt’s, Rita and Betty succumb to a mutual attraction and consummate their passion in a rhapsodic love scene.
Meanwhile, a rising, hotshot director is fiercely cajoled by a room full of powerful and cryptic executives to cast a particular actress named Camilla in his next movie. Camilla is a honey-haired vixen with pouty lips. She’s only shown briefly and it’s unclear why she wields such importance, but her presence does seem subtly malevolent.
The second half of the movie finds Watts playing another struggling actress, but this time, her name isn’t Betty, it’s Diane Selwyn, and she lives in Diane’s apartment from the first half of the film. Diane is depressed, unkempt, and near a mental break. We learn through flashbacks that she was in a relationship with the brunette who was named Rita in the first half — though here, her name is Camilla and she’s a rather successful actress. Camilla left Diane for the director of her recent movie, and Diane is heartbroken to the point of devastation. Her hopes alight when Camilla invites her to a party at her new place, but it turns out to be a cruel joke by the apparently heartless Camilla, who forces Diane to watch as she drapes herself all over the director and plants discreet kisses on a beautiful girl — the honey-haired woman who played Camilla in the first half. Still painfully in love with Camilla and losing her mind with grief, Diane hires a lowlife hitman to have Camilla killed via a staged car crash, and later becomes so overwrought with guilt that she shoots herself in the head.
Here’s what it all means:
the first half of the movie is a dream — a Death Dream, which appears for Diane after she’s killed herself. It’s the bright, hopeful life Diane imagined before she came to Hollywood, before the callous, inhuman nature of the city destroyed her. The second half of the film is Reality — aside from those notes of cinematic poetry Lynch is so fond of. In the Dream, Diane and Camilla take on the arbitrary names Betty and Rita. Diane is casting herself and her lover as new people, with their meanness and baggage excised. She takes the woman her lover scorned her for — the honey-haired woman from the party — makes her a distant, malevolent figure, and renames her Camilla, thus reassigning her all of Camilla’s cruelty and malice to her.
kaledo-art
2087
discoholicmusic
vaporwave
jacobvanloon
