Mulholland Drive

I can't help it, but I've probably seen too many Lynch films in too short a time, which leads to me not liking Mulholland Drive as much as I probably could. But when I watch this film, I see all the previous works Lynch has done. There's something from Twin Peaks, something from Lost Highway, something from Blue Velvet, and also a certain intensity from Wild at Heart. It's great that Lynch maintains his style, that it's still him, but his mind games are more of a torment for me. The craziest part for me is that people are trying to analyze the film as if there's a clear explanation for what we're watching. To Lynch's films, especially the recent ones excluding The Straight Story, simply no key exists. It's not about understanding what the director intended, but simply taking something from the film, finding your own path, without expecting that your interpretation is the only correct one. Lynch is brilliant at this, but he's also repetitive. (03/19/2014)

I didn't, and probably never will, fully understand. After the completely direct and purposefully comprehensible Elephant Man, I saw David Lynch's second feature film, which completely breaks boundaries in terms of the level of comprehensibility. The first two-thirds were somewhat interpretable, but the last twenty minutes completely reversed all my thought processes, and it was only at the last word "Silencio!" I said: "Oh shit!". I've never been so confused and conflicted, and in fact this may have been one of the director's intentions. Why explain everything at the end, when the viewer at least has something to think about. All in all, a very weighty film that, along with the premise, excels in the acting and the wonderfully gloomy and mysterious music. (10/27/2011)

A psycho(il)logical and strange picture that is hard to grasp... So, in fact, the type of classic that we are used to getting from Lynch. If it had ended twenty minutes earlier, this would have been maybe the most graspable Lynch movie ever, but at that moment is breaks into the most bizarre movie ever. Lynch on his best film-making (not series-making!) form. (05/12/2012)

A film about the purity and vulnerability of the human soul, about life’s dreams and the desire to fulfil the expectations that are placed on us. A film about the fear of touching the ideal, about disappointment, desperation and hatred, about the ugliness of the world outside (specifically Hollywood in this case). This film doesn’t have one clear point, there is no “right key” to it. Mulholland Drive is a mosaic of multiple ideas that could have been put across in a much simpler, but not as interesting and compelling way. The number of connections in the film that tell you something depends on your personal experiences and your awareness of their place in your life. A simultaneously cruel and beautiful soap opera. (10/04/2005)

As a series, it might not be bad. Yet as a standalone film, it rides the wave of films with unreliable narrators, and that perpetual dreamlike atmosphere and the combination of Lynch and his favorite films just makes for a new collage. However, the latent Sapphic themes and the crush on the Paramount gate are elements I’m always interested in. (10/23/2016)