Mulholland Drive

Recently a popular media website polled film luminaries about their favorite works of horror cinema. The director Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labyrinth" and "Crimson Peak") had one fascinating inclusion on his list: David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive." "Mulholland," which just received its first stateside Blu-ray release thanks to the Criterion Collection, is typically Lynchian: identities are malleable, so is physical space, and the ambience being conjured is like that of a nightmare. It's not the slice-and-dice stuff that we traditionally consider to be "horror cinema." But the concepts that Lynch is circling around (while keeping his distance, as his films do from reality) are the basis for that which scares us most. If "Mulholland Drive" is a horror movie, then the horror is our own inner lives.

There's something like a plot that we can suss out -- it's more like a series of events. And they're connected less by narrative than by compositional rhymes. The beautiful and youthful Betty (Naomi Watts) arrives in Hollywood ensnared by dreams and romanticism. Then the dark-haired Rita (Laura Harring) stumbles down the eponymous street, having been given amnesia by a car crash -- she's infused with a starlet's mysteriousness, and even she can't figure out why. There's also Adam (Justin Theroux), the cuckolded director; and the Cowboy, barking orders for an unseen studio executive; and the "man behind Winkie's" that haunts the dreams of them all. That's not to mention the performance club where nobody performs, or the exceptionally strange auditions that recur throughout the movie, or-especially-that iconic blue box...

Given the reputation that the film has earned in the 15 years since its release, we're probably safe in presuming that you know where this road leads: Betty and Rita investigate the mystery of the latter's identity. Eventually they give into the desires they hold for one another, and sleep together. But soon after that, the film experiences a rift: suddenly the upbeat Betty is the beaten-down Diane, and Rita has "found herself" as the successful movie actress Camilla. It's tempting to read the film exclusively in terms of sexuality, but the two women's tryst is merely one of many identity shifts in a film full of them. Sexual identity isn't the only factor that's in flux: the presence of Hollywood iconography inflames the women's desires for stardom and ego, while the presence of businessmen and executive power structures illustrates their shifting position within the class systems. One of the film's most famous shots sees an image of the two women begin to jitter, as though it were film being run through an old projector. There's the malleability yet again. Identity is everything within this film-but nothing is solid.

Criterion's Blu-ray release of the film is most appreciated for its filmic transfer of the movie itself, which maintains the grainy texture of the theatrical experience. (The film may be best watched through foggy eyes, and Lynch's intentionally fuzzy visuals often emphasize that.) The disc also features a number of extra features -- there's a deleted scene, a theatrical trailer, a booklet (featuring an interview with Lynch himself), and roughly 90 minutes of newly recorded interview footage. There are four pairings: Lynch and Watts speak about the production; then Watts is placed alongside interviews with Harring, Justin Theroux, and casting director Johanna Ray. Third up is composer Angelo Badalamenti, while the fourth speaks to cinematographer Peter Deming ("Evil Dead II") and legendary production designer Jack Fisk ("Badlands" and "There Will Be Blood").

The final special feature is listed as "On-set footage," and features exactly that: there's unedited fly-on-the-wall footage of Lynch directing his set, with some comments from some of the aforementioned crew members interspersed throughout the short feature. It allows many of creative personalities involved an opportunity to break down the atmosphere of "Mulholland Drive," and attempt to verbalize its ominous mixture of pleasure and poison. They all do their best, but that's a fool's errand. The opaque nature of the film's form and narrative demands a personal reading. Nobody can define the horror of "Mulholland Drive," because it's specific to every single viewer.

"Mulholland Drive"
Blu-ray
Criterion.com
$39.95