Mulholland Drive (2001)
Watch Perfect Blue instead.
Presentation:
This film as well as Inland Empire are David Lynch’s most well known works, which reveal his range when his best films are actually based off a Japanese anime. David Lynch commendably tries to make it his own, but does so with so much less mastery incorporating his TV sitcom sensibilities inappropriate for the caliber of depth this story commands. His work never feels an ounce cinematic to me and although the poor acting may be by design for this story, the bad acting is also poorly acted even for 2001. The only thing of praise is there are some voyeuristic camera movements that are eerie at the beginning of the film but are nevertheless weak compared to tones set by Fincher in the same time period. The film looks bad and the visuals and mood don’t capture the psychological themes required for the story.
Conclusion:
This is an idea, not really a film. It was torture to get through the painful one and a half hour set-up for the core plot, which is incredibly psychologically dense. It’s an extremely difficult undertaking, which Lynch takes a stab at but ends up disfiguring the jack o’ lantern instead with his take of a confusing trip on psychosis and schizophrenia. To be fair it’s quite impossible to adapt this story to live action and capture its essence in full, but this film is just worse than Perfect Blue in every metric and was agonizing to endure. You can’t have more than half of the film building an exposition for one of the most complex pieces of storytelling and leave just a sliver to deliver it. This solidifies it for me that David Lynch is a TV director, not a filmmaker. You may have liked this film, but only if you haven’t watched the Japanese original.
Recommendations
If a cinephile could have a Princess Bride.