Also in the film is a quirky film director (Justin Theroux) pestered by gangsters pushing some actress, which turns out to be the brunette.
How others will see it. Despite its beginnings as a television series pilot, Mulholland Dr. turned out to be the most successful feature film in the long film career of eccentric director David Lynch, though this writer still prefers The Elephant Man (1980), and Blue Velvet is perhaps as notorious.
Though not a box office smash, despite general critical praise and various festival circuit triumphs, Mulholland Drive is a great success as a video release. It has a whopping 168K user votes at imdb.com and an extremely high user rating of 7.9, though ratings decline somewhat among men from 8.1 under age 30 to 7.5 over age 45. Women over 45 are moderately skeptical, given their average 7.1 rating.
How I felt about it. The irony of this much-acclaimed and highly lucrative film is that is was rejected as a pilot by commercial television. It wasn't deemed good enough to compete with junk TV like "Big Brother" but is so good that it almost became the AFI Movie of the Year?
The part that ABC didn't like, that is, the two-thirds of the film that makes the most sense and appears to be leading to something half interesting, is the best part. The film loses its way, to the extent that it matters, after the Club Silencio scene, and briefly regains coherence when the brunette babe is tormenting the blonde babe through jealousy.
Of course, much of the film doesn't make sense any way you approach it. Elderly ghosts pester the blonde babe until she shoots herself. So the Cowboy didn't kill her after all? Or the Winkies hitman? Or the mobsters? You can see how random the various plot conclusions are when the director himself doesn't know which turn to make until the night before shooting the scenes.
What we have here is a lot of voyeurism involving two beautiful woman, a blonde and a brunette, epitomized by two needless partially nude lesbian sex scenes. We also have a subplot involving a film director hassled by mobsters pushing a would-be moviestar, and various nonsensical scenes that should have been left on the cutting room floor.
What we don't have is great art, despite the great volume of film industry writings to the contrary, whose essays are similar in effect, if not in form, to the lawyer filings of corporate lawsuits. The client is to exonerated because that position pays my salary.
It is true that most viewers enjoy the film. Though the pieces of the story don't fit together no matter how they are rotated, apologists can make the intellectual effort anyway, and come up with varied rationalizations (alternate reality, nonlinear timeline, director's prerogative, joke on the audience) under which the film makes some sense.
Of course, it isn't necessary for a film to make sense to be any good. But when a story is a mishmash, it is best to admit so, and move on to the question that matters (how good is it) instead of the question that cannot be answered (what does it all mean). It's a bad sign when the only line you find amusing is delivered by Billy Ray Cyrus in bed.
Perhaps the story should have focused on the stupid pool cleaner, his cynical housewife mistress, and the frazzled film director with a short fuse. The blonde girl and brunette girl can make their own movie where they play lesbian in between changing characters.
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