Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive, American surrealist thriller and neo-noir film, released in 2001, that is considered one of director David Lynch’s finest works. The movie is noted for its dreamlike, nonlinear structure and its exploration of the dark side of the so-called Hollywood dream factory. Mulholland Drive, which stars Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, and Justin Theroux, received widespread critical acclaim and was named the best film of the 21st century in a poll of critics commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in 2015. In 2022 it was ranked eighth in the Greatest Films of All Time, a poll of film critics published every 10 years by the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine. The film’s striking images, narrative complexity, and mysterious, menacing atmosphere has sparked many different interpretations of the movie’s meaning among critics and viewers.

Original format and production

Lynch had originally conceived of Mulholland Drive as a television series. He presented his idea to the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the television network that had aired his surreal drama Twin Peaks in 1990–91. After Lynch shot the pilot episode, ABC declined to develop the series that he had envisioned. Lynch then worked with the French production company Le Studio Canal+ (later known as StudioCanal) to shoot additional scenes and reedit the footage. The feature film thus created, also called Mulholland Drive, premiered at the 2001 Cannes film festival, where Lynch was nominated for the best director award and the film was nominated for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s highest honor. Lynch shared best director with Joel Coen (for The Man Who Wasn’t There).

Plot and characters

The nonlinear, dreamlike structure of Mulholland Drive is apparent from the beginning of the film. The viewer sees couples jitterbugging, overlaid with an image of a smiling blonde woman, then a rumpled bed and a street sign marking Mulholland Drive. The camera follows a limousine on a winding road at night. There is an accident, and a brunette woman (Laura Harring) stumbles from the wreck. Injured and confused, she hides in an empty apartment. The previously seen blonde woman, named Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), arrives in Los Angeles. She is wide-eyed and earnest, with dreams of Hollywood stardom. In the city for an audition arranged by her aunt, Betty is surprised to find the brunette woman in her absent aunt’s upscale apartment. The woman explains that she was in a car accident and has amnesia. All she has is a purse containing a blue key and a wad of cash. Spying a poster of Rita Hayworth, she tells Betty to call her Rita. Betty decides to help Rita figure out her true identity.

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Hollywood What If Quiz

In this first part of Mulholland Drive, vivid scenes come and go—as they do in dreams or nightmares—seemingly unconnected to each other, and new characters are introduced: two detectives investigate a car accident; a director named Adam (Justin Theroux), who is being strong-armed by mobsters into casting a certain woman in his upcoming film, discovers that his wife is cheating on him; an inept hit man humorously fumbles an assigned murder; and, in a scene famous for the dread it induces in viewers, a man investigates his dreams of something terrifying living behind a diner.

Meanwhile, Betty shows herself to be an accomplished actor at her film audition. Later, in search of clues to Rita’s identity, Betty and Rita sneak into a different apartment, find a decaying corpse on a bed, and flee, sickened and horrified. After a sexual encounter in which Betty professes her love for Rita, the two women travel to Club Silencio, a mysterious nightclub. In this iconic scene, a woman passionately sings about heartbreak. When she faints, the song continues, revealing that everything about the nightclub is false: it is just an imitation of life. Betty finds a blue box in her purse. She and Rita return to their apartment, where Betty disappears and Rita uses her blue key to unlock the box. The camera travels into the darkness inside the box, an image that some critics see as a transition between dream and reality.

In the second part of Mulholland Drive, the blonde woman is now a failed actor named Diane Selwyn. She was once in a film with the brunette woman, now named Camilla Rhodes, and the two once had a romantic relationship. However, Camilla left Diane and is now engaged to Adam—a fact that Diane discovers, to her humiliation, at what turns out to be Camilla and Adam’s engagement party. Angry and jealous, Diane hires a hit man to kill Camilla. Overcome by guilt, longing, and despair, Diane experiences terrifying hallucinations and kills herself. The film ends with images of the Los Angeles skyline at night, overlaid with happy images of Betty and Rita.

Critical interpretation

Critics and viewers alike have interpreted images and scenes in Mulholland Drive in many ways, and some have questioned the film’s overall coherence. Some critics see the first part of the film as Diane’s dream about her ideal life in Los Angeles, in which she is a successful actress in a romantic relationship with Rita/Camilla, who depends on her. The second part of the film, these critics think, is the reality of Diane’s life in the city, where she has failed both personally and professionally. Many critics see Mulholland Drive as a critique of the Hollywood dream factory, which withers so many artists’ hopes and aspirations.

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