Mulholland Drive

The scene begins with a medium shot of Rita and Betty hailing a cab outside Diane Selwyn’s apartment after discovering her corpse. The handheld camera moves increasingly closer to them until they drive off, upon which the camera loses focus and tumbles, literally depicting the women’s disintegrating emotional states. David Roche writes that Rita’s lack of identity and subsequent breakdown “occurs not only at the level of the character…but at the level of the image; the shot is subjected to special effects which fragment their image…the camera seemingly writing out the mental state of the characters”. 

A droning sound pervades most this sequence (and most of the film), as well as diagetic sounds of rushing traffic as spectral lights wash over the shot and low-key lighting creates a dream-like atmosphere and tension. It then fades into a shot of the cab rushing under the ominous L.A cityscape; the only light coming from the neon in the distance as the cab turns down a straight road lined with seemingly inconsequential streetlights – they do nothing to brighten the overall gloom and atmosphere of the scene. The repetitive shots of the ominous cityscape remind us constantly of Hollywood’s ever-looming presence not just on a physical level, but the level of the individual and the subsequent effect of the Hollywood’s all-pervasiveness – we, like Diane, simply cannot escape.  

The shot then moves inside the cab depicting Betty and Rita, whose new blonde wig now renders her almost indiscernible from Betty. This further reinforces the idea of false identity, furthered by the ever increasing droning, as both exchange apprehensive glances prior to their arrival at the underground ‘Club Silencio’. The deliberately languid editing serves to create a world more linked to the subconscious than to waking reality as we observe hand-held, subjective shots of the city fading in and out of each other. The droning increases as shots of Rita and Betty are interspersed with the highly saturated shots of the outside world; we are now observing through their eyes. The next shot is of the sparse exterior of the club itself, located in an abandoned alleyway and washed in a blue haze, comparable in its exterior to the symbolic blue box in other scenes. The club could be understood as an entrance into another dimension as the performers echo through Diane's consciousness that she is no longer alive and additionally serves to elucidate the mystery of the first three-quarters of the film as Diane’s fantasty of what has already happened.

We watch from afar as their cab pulls in and they enter the club, where all curtains are pulled back to reveal no hay banda: there is no band. The camera quickly moves closer to the entrance before cutting to a panning upwards low angle shot of the interior of the theatre, emphasing its grandeur and infusing it with a nostalgic quality. Lynch presents more than simply a “façade…and that he believes only evil and deceit lie beneath it”, choosing instead to infuse nostalgia throughout the film and reference classic film-making such as the shot immediately preceding the Club Silencio scene, where Rita and Betty’s sleeping faces merge into one, an allusion to Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona”. There are additional examples of Federico Fellini’s existentialist use of dream sequences, as well as his exploration of humour, violence and sexuality, but the predominant allusion is to Bergman’s focus on the psyche’s struggle with duality, a recurring Lynchian theme.

Club Silencio is a presented as a paradox, a surreal entertainment of a self-consciously un-live cabaret that boasts of its artificiality. The use of silence exemplifies Bordwell and Thompson’s view that in film, “silence takes on a new expressive function”, and it creates a brooding, surrealistic and dream-like quality. The focus here is on sound, rather than image; John Belton writes that its soundtrack “corresponds not, like the image, directly to objective reality, but rather to a secondary representation of it”. Sound is used to subtly reflect that the first two acts take part in a dream; minor details and various diagetic sounds are either inaudible or exaggerated, and Lynch further utilises both sound and music to devastating effect throughout this sequence. John Belton writes that the sound track “corresponds not, like the image, directly to ‘objective reality’ but rather to a secondary representation of it”, which would seem to apply perfectly to Lynch’s dreamscape.

We then see a devilish, other-worldly magician who stands quietly in front of a draped red curtain, persistently pronouncing “No hay banda…there is no band”, as Rita and Betty glance worriedly at the empty theatre in a medium shot with them both centered in the frame. The red curtain exemplifies the films use of colour symbolism (further explored below) such as the red lampshades; draped curtains are identifiably Lynchian, he has said himself "…curtains are both hiding and revealing. Sometimes it's so beautiful that they're hiding, it gets your imagination going. But in the theatre, when the curtains open, you have this fantastic euphoria, that you're going to see something new, something will be revealed.” The idea of a truth being revealed is core to this scene and the film as a whole, as we bear witness to an individuals struggle to come to terms with reality.

“It is all a tape recording”, says the magician, and yet, “we hear a band…it is all an illusion”; he thus unmasks the illusory nature of all that has been and is happening. Continuity editing ensures we observe the two women’s every reaction as they clutch each other whilst the magician presents a ‘trumpet player’ who mimes to the music, only to stop and have it continue; yet more reinforcement of the illusory nature of cinema. This scene is so important because it of its notion of retroactivity; meaning must be revised in light of this new understanding. The scene can be understood as Diane’s transition from her fabricated fantasy to the harsh truth that leads to her ultimate reawakening. The tone in this scene (and in the film overall) is continuously shifting, creating an unstable, ambiguous quality as we veer from the comic to the highly disturbing and further contributes to the unsettling quality and sense of dread.

The shot then moves closer to the magician, lit by a spotlight, with a blue-haired women looking over him from a balcony. Colour symbolism prevails throughout the film, with blue representing transience between the two worlds of fantasy and reality, further evidenced by the magicians’ routine involving blue electricity and blue smoke, which acts as his transitional exit. He raises his hands as if to invoke the thunderclap and lightning, in effect transmitting a truth to Diane she must confront. This is the reason Betty begins to shake uncontrollably, emphasised as Lynch cuts between the two women bathed in flashes of blue light and a close up of the magicians face, orchestrating the entire performance. The tension is only broken when the magician lowers his hands, an action serving not only to indicate that all the events are not only unreal, but directed by an exterior agent, Diane, whose projections of her powerlessness in this scene reach their pinnacle. He lowers his head into the blue lights that eerily distort his face as he disappears into a haze of blue smoke. The shot fades into the women’s view of the stage, bathed in blue light that extends to cover them, and we, like them, are totally immersed within the performance. As the light returns to normal the two women relax as a female performer, “La Lloranda des Los Angeles”, is introduced by ‘Cookie’ a character who appeared earlier in the film helping Kesher hide from the mob. The camera is stationary as she emerges from the draped red curtains to deliver a Spanish rendition of Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’. Her footsteps are all we hear as she walks towards the microphone, lit by a single spotlight, and begins to lip-sync, examining the power of the conjuring act of creating movies and suggesting that there is nothing wrong with being moved by the illusory; the knowledge that she is lip-syncing does not in any way negate our reactions to it.

The sequence then cuts between the women’s emotive reactions and a close up of Rebekah del Rio’s heavily made-up face, before cutting to focus on either a mesmorised Rita or Betty, reinforcing their distance as a result of a new understanding; their love is illusory and cannot last and from here on they are both alone. A high aperture ensures only their tearful eyes are in focus, creating empathy with the audience as we experience what happens directly through their reactions. Both watch as the singer collapses and ‘dies’ on stage before being haphazardly dragged off to the soundtrack of her disembodied voice still wailing over the speakers. Del Rio’s performance and symbolic death thus reflect both aurally and visually the death that Diane has reinvented as her fantasy love affair with Rita. Betty and Rita weep not only in reaction to the performance, but at the realisation that love between them is truly impossible.

From a narrative point of view, the obvious significance is to indicate that everything we have seen so far has been dreamed by Diane and is thus not real. The smooth flow of mystery is broken, and the scene at the same time serves as a clever reminder to the viewer that what s/he is viewing is not real either. Lynch puts us in the uncomfortable position of feeling called upon to solve its mysteries, only to realise that there is no solution; it is this space between the desire to know and the failure to comprehend that Lynch intends to present.

Still in the club, Lynch presents a close up shot of Betty opening her bag to find a mysterious blue box, the key for which Rita already found in her bag earlier in the film. Both women rush home to unlock the box and resolve the mystery of Rita’s identity; this is the point in the film in which Diane’s fantasy begins to truly disintegrate. Club Silencio ultimately makes Diane’s displaced history pre-conscious, and the box Betty finds in her bag is the step needed to make it conscious. With the box opened, the camera sinks into its black core and the box falls to the floor, pre-conscious is turned into conscious as now Betty disappears and Diane’s waking in her flat marks the beginning of the end. Her dark secret of murder and deception is revealed as well as Rita/Camilla’s identity, her murder becoming the source of Diane’s ultimate death wish and desire for silencio. 

Ultimately, Mulholland Drive is a mediation on the nature of cinema itself as we explore, through the relative safety of the medium, dark interior worlds not otherwise apparent. It presents the possibility of hope in the guise of a mystery film juxtaposed by the obsessive self-destruction of an individual; emphasising the importance of the cinematic experience, not the deciphering of narrative detail. The technical aspects ultimately work together to present a statement not only on the seductive power and cruelty of the film industry and Hollywood, but the deeper mysteries of desire and the innermost working of our unconscious, asking us to rethink terms such as illusion and reality. Mulholland Drive is an immersing and standout piece in an incredible body of work which suggests that the order we crave in our waking life may indeed be illusory, with the apparent chaos of the unconscious more meaningful.

Word Count; 2,178 (excluding bibliography)

Bibliography

• Belton, John; “Technology and Aesthetics of Film Sound” in Film Theory and Criticism, pp.386-395, L. Braudy, M. Cohen (eds.) Oxford University Press, 2004
• Bordwell, D. and Thompson, J; “Fundamental Aesthetics of Sound in the Cinema” in Weis, E. and Belton, J (eds.) Film Sound: Theory and Practice. Columbia University Press 1985
• Bordwell, D., Staiger, J. and Thompson, K. (1985) The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style & Mode of Production to 1960. London and New York: Routledge.
• Herzogrenath, B; “On the Lost Highway: Lynch and Lacan, Cinema and Cultural Pathology”. Other Voices, 1 (3): 1-22, 1999 retrieved 13.11.10 URL; http://www.othervoices.org/1.3/bh/highway.html
• Lynch, David (Writer/Director) “Mulholland Drive”, U.S.A, 2001, StudioCanal, Dist. Universal Pictures [DVD], 2002
• Rhodley, Chris, ed.; Lynch on Lynch, London: Faber and Faber, 1997.
• Roche, David; “The Death of the Subject in David Lynch’s Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive”, 2004, retrieved 13.11.10 URL;
• Nochimson, Martha P; “Mulholland Drive”, in Film Quarterly Vol. no 56 Issue no 1, pp37-45
• Taubin, Amy; “In Dreams” Film Comment, Sept/Oct 2001, Volume 37, No.5 pp. 51-54
• Weight, Gregory; "Film Reviews: Mulholland Drive", Film & History, Issue 32 (Vol 1), pp. 83–84.
• Wells, Dominic; “The Road to Hell” Interviews with David Lynch, retrieved 13.11.10 URL; http://www.thecityofabsurdity.com/losthighway/intlhroad.html

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