04 July 2008
Lynch's Mulholland Drive
Reviewed by Nori Muster
I am a late comer to this movie, but now its biggest fan. Here is a synopsis (shortened from all that I have written, more concise). Bear in mind that the events are portrayed out of sequence in the movie.
The first thing that happens in this story is that movie mogul thugs (the Castigliane Brothers) force director Adam Kesher to cast Camilla Rhodes as the leading lady in his new film. He refuses, then smashes their limousine with his golf club. (This scene is said to be a reference to a 1994 incident where Jack Nicholson did the same. Nicholson lived on Mulholland Drive for a number of years.) After the rough housing, Adam complies with the wishes of the powers that be and casts Camilla Rhodes.
This must have been the worst day of the director's life, because he goes home early and finds his wife in bed with the pool-man. By the time the main action of this movie starts, it is months later and he has divorced his cheating wife. He tells some friends at a party, "I got the pool, she got the pool-man." By this time he has fallen in love with Camilla and announces their engagement.
Camilla's lesbian lover, Diane Selwyn, is jealous and hires a hit-man to kill Camilla. She meets him at a local diner and gives him a purse full of money. He tells her that after the hit is done, he will deliver a blue key. She asks what the key opens; he just laughs at her. (It does not open anything, it is just a sign that the job is finished.)
While in the restaurant, a man standing at the cash register looks into Diane's face and sees her ugly hatred. It gives him a nightmare compelling enough to make him bring his psychologist to the restaurant to recount the dream.
The hit-man's thugs pick up Camilla in a limo to drive her to Adam's house on Mulholland Drive, but they stop along the way, point a gun at her, and tell her to get out of the car. Just then, two cars approach, driving recklessly; one has a head-on collision with the limo. Everyone is killed except Camilla, who walks away from it. Most of the action in the movie takes place in the week following the accident.
Camilla's next week:
Although stricken with amnesia from the trauma of the accident, Camilla walks all night and ends up on the doorstep of her future mother-in-law's apartment complex. (Coco, played by Ann Miller, is Adam Kesher's mother.) Camilla drifts off to sleep hiding in the hedges. When she awakens she sees a woman leaving one of Coco's apartments, so she sneaks inside for refuge. Soon, aspiring actress Betty Elms arrives from Canada. It is her aunt's apartment; the aunt has arranged an audition for Betty. When Betty finds Camilla in the shower, she is supportive and sympathetic to Camilla's situation. She takes Camilla to various places to check on details of the few things Camilla remembers. Betty goes to her audition and the producers are impressed with her acting ability.
Diane's week:
Meanwhile, Diane is consumed with guilt, staring at the blue key that symbolizes her former lover's murder. She is frightened because detectives keep coming around. She shoots herself in the head in her bedroom, probably within a day of the incident.
The hit-man's week:
The payment for the hit disappears (Camilla walks away with the purse containing the money), so he goes to see the thug who was supposed to organize the hit. The man laughs about the accident, so the hit-man kills him and takes his black book (the evidence). He accidentally shoots a woman in the next room, so he must kill her, then he must kill the janitor who was a witness. The hit-man goes out on the street to look for Camilla, who has disappeared. The movie does not mention this, but many people must be searching for Camilla, whose whereabouts are unknown.
Camilla finally regains her memory when Betty takes her to a nightclub called "Silencio." They find a mysterious blue box in Betty's purse, which symbolizes Camilla's amnesia puzzle. Camilla inserts a mysterious blue key into the box and opens it, which symbolizes her memory returning. She realizes why the men wanted to kill her, and she remembers her real life as a successful actress engaged to an accomplished director.
The real ending of the story (not depicted in the movie) is that Camilla Rhodes will re-emerge with her memories intact and her mysteries resolved. Betty Elms will get her acting career, because not only is she talented, but she is a hero for protecting Camilla and helping her.
Editor's note: I lived in the Disney Cottages when the movie came out. Diane's bedroom was where I slept for two years. Everyone warned me not to see the movie. All they could tell me was that it was "scary," "impossible to understand," and that a woman commits suicide in my bedroom at the end.
To add to the synchronicity, I grew up a block from Mulholland Drive (cross streats of Scadlock and Longbow). My roommate at the Disney Cottages was my friend Kyle, who grew up on Mulholland Drive. David Lynch had filmed the footage at the Disney Cottages about a year before we moved there. I had put off watching it until now, but I saw it this week, and loved it. Now it is one of my favorite movies, right up there with Dr. Strangelove, Airplane! Blazing Saddles, and Groundhog's Day. It has a good message and a good ending. To see more photos of the Disney Cottages at this site, click here.
