I just saw Mulholland Drive on DVD last night…what the heck!!! Granted, I wasn’t paying attention the ENTIRE time, but after the lesbian love scene, things seemed to get WAY bizzare…
Maybe I ate some bad chicken or something…but I just don’t get it!!! Help!!! 
There’s a Salon article that should clear up most of it. But be warned, the author gets a few facts wrong.
I break the film into “threads”, the “director thread”, the “street people thread”, etc. Slice, reassemble, compare the “before and after”. etc.
A really great movie. Was #1 for the year on many critics’ lists.
A movie that makes you think is a good thing.
Don’t worry about your mental faculties just yet, susie426 – the reason Mulholland Drive appears to make no sense is because it makes no sense. It was originally going to be a TV series, which is why A) you don’t see any Naked Lesbian Action in the first 2/3rds of the film, and B) you get a crapload of plot threads thrown at you which appear to be going somewhere and then stop. When the network didn’t go for the TV pilot, Lynch apparently decided, “What the hell, I’ll film another 30 minutes or so full of weird stuff, add some lesbian sex scenes, and call it a movie! No one will know the difference!”
It certainly has some cool/memorable sequences, but Blue Velvet it ain’t.
Here is a nice analysis that goes a bit deeper than the Salon article and has some Reader Comments as well.
well, that clears it all up. I can handle both of your explanations (ftg and Winston Bongo). It is a really cool movie…I have to watch it again, but it was like it was two different movies sometimes-and that threw me off. Thanks!
Cheapbastid, that site was most helpful! Thanks.
I Love this movie and after a bunch of viewings and note taking I have learned that it makes perfect sense. The salon article is almost totally correct with a few errors that can be cleared up in multiple viewings. Also, David Lynch’s 10 questions/hints that comes with the DVD is VERY insightful.
David Lynch can rim me, after a National Hare n’ Hound in July at Blackrock.
Any movie that requires a cheat sheet has completely failed as a movie.
Ergo, Mulholland Drive fails as a movie.
It might make sense to David Lynch, but this movie was the biggest fleecing of critics in a long time. But then the next year they get the wool pulled over their eyes by Punch Drunk Love, so I guess it’s all relative.
MD does not require a cheat sheet. I read the Salon article after my 3rd viewing. (Hence it was easy to catch errors.)
I like movies that make me think. Some people like movies with Ahnold blowing stuff up. The SDMB seems to have relatively few of the latter. But for those few …
i can fully relate to winston bongo’s explanation, it does feel like a whole series of twin peaks jammed into one movie. plenty of interesting characters, just afforded one scene and never developed.
i like wacky. i like movies that make me think. this movie made me think “this movie is shit.” should i see it again? maybe a film that, for once, needs a sequel.
Maybe I’ll be pitted, but fuck you. There’s no need for this condescending tone. I thought Mulholland Drive failed as a movie, you didn’t, that’s it. I don’t know how that makes you superior, or makes me someone who only likes Ah-nuld (spell it right if you’re going to make fun of me) blowing shit up. You know what? I like dumb action movies. And I like movies that make you think, deal with it.
Personally I feel MD would have made an excellent TV show, but that didn’t happen. What we got was a movie that I feel is incomplete and includes a lot of Lynch tricks to make critics jump all over themselves to praise him.
I HATED IT. DEAL WITH IT.
And I hated Being John Malkovich too.
'Scuze me? I loved Punch Drunk Love. It wasn’t the greatest film ever, but it was sweet and surreal.
This makes no sense to me. Not all art – which includes movies, of course – is intended to be fully comprehended in one viewing, reading, sitting or other encounter.
There are “cheat sheets” for novels like Lolita and Ulysses, and neither of them fully reveals themselves after just one reading.
You need information outside the boundaries of the paintings to fully appreciate Pre-Raphaelite or Expressionist or Northern Renaissance artworks.
No one “gets” a Beethoven symphony or Bach chorale after just one listen.
Why should movies be any different? Yes, many movies want to communicate their ideas or experiences as quickly and clearly as possible. It’s an asset in many situations. But it’s not an asset in all movies, and simplicity is not a requirement for greatness.
Not all art needs to function as straightforwardly as good advertising.
I don’t care whether or not you like Mulholland Drive, or Lynch in general, but I don’t believe that complexity is a valid criticism. (And I do believe that Mulholland Drive is legitimately complex, not just weird for its own sake. But that’s a different argument.)
I saw Mulholland Drive before knowing anything about it. And when I was just about to start grumping, suddenly, the twist! (about 2/3 of the film). I stand up and drop the chair! It was absolutely amazing! I didn’t catch all the details, of course, but I got the point immediately!
It was a dream, a fantasy! A crazy fantasy of an aspiring starlet, a schizophrenic loser, in the very moment of her death. All of it with a little excentric touch. Fantasies are embedded in dreams, for this matter.
All Lynchian’s clues and gizmos are there because is his touch, then I thought he is a genious… a little weird, but a brave director who has creative freedom of his own. I started loving Lynch there, not for reading the critics.
I like that kind of movies very much, and I also like, for example, Armageddon or ID4. Both types are not mutually exclusive, for me.
I think you need to get off your high horse, Justin. You showed up in the thread and made what purported to be objective statements of fact about a matter that is ultimately subjective and based on personal taste. Not only that, but they were also incorrect.
I don’t care whether you like Mulholland Drive. Furthermore, I agree that there is a legitimate debate as to whether the film is weird for the sake of being weird or whether its complexity serves the story (although actually I think it’s not a very tough question) and, if the former, whether that’s a good or bad thing. But to show up in a thread and crap on a movie that the participants in the thread liked it – and to do so on the basis of supposedly immutable rules of cinema that you not only made up but which are just plain dopey, that deserves the condecension you’ve received.
–Cliffy
Hey Susie - what about ‘Lost Highway’?
Made in Macau- haven’t seen it yet…just “discovered” the creative absurdity of David Lynch (and I mean that in a nice way 
)
That movie is next on my list.
I don’t think that criticizing MD based on how it came to be a movie is valid in this case. That it succeeds so wonderfully despite that, is to me an extra feather in its cap.
Going the opposite way, Lucas was clearly in no way hampered in making TPM and AotC but look how lousy those turned out.
Sometimes people do their best work under adversity.
Googling:
ahnold: 13,200 hits
ahnuld: 5,370 hits
“ah-nuld”: 6,510
Well, that certainly puts me in my place, doesn’t it? (Grin)
I’m not on a high horse, but I’m sorry that I didn’t qualify what was an obvious opinion on the movie with “I think” or “This is how I feel” or “For me”. I think it’s ridiculous when people use someone stating their feelings on a movie as an excuse to attack them for not being objective or trying to state their opinion as fact. I did no such thing, you just assumed I did, and you were wrong.
I stated my opinion on MD in a thread where the OP expressed confusion about the movie. My belief is that that feeling of confusion is David Lynch whooshing critics everywhere into giving him praise.
You disagree with me, fine. But I don’t appreciate being talked down to because I hate MD and love Independence Day.