David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is a film you can truly lose yourself in. The first shots take you to Los Angeles at night between dream and reality fluctuates. It is impossible to neatly separate the different levels that Lynch opens up throughout the story. Sooner or later all the images run into each other and pull you deeper and deeper into the film’s maw.
Nevertheless, there is one image that stands out and burns itself into the memory like no other. Once you’ve seen the moment, you can never forget it – even though it’s not even connected to the main part of the plot. Rather, Lynch ventures into a side street of his sunny, but also gloomy Los Angeles. Horror lurks everywhere, even behind inconspicuous corners.
But first things first: Which scene are we talking about?
David Lynch takes you into an eerie Hollywood
Mulholland Drive tells the story of young Betty (Naomi Watts), who comes to Los Angeles with a dream. She wants to become an actress. This sounds like a classic Hollywood story in Hollywood. But Betty meets someone in her aunt’s apartment mysterious womanwho calls herself Rita (Laura Harring) – after a picture of actress Rita Hayworth – and who survived a car accident a few hours earlier.
You can watch the trailer for Mulholland Drive here:
Mulholland Drive – Trailer (German)
Lynch also introduces us to other characters who meander through this strange Los Angeles. Pretty early in the film, Dan (Patrick Fischler) and Herb (Michael Cooke) meet in one Winkie’s on Sounset Boulevard. What at first seems like a completely normal conversation between two people turns into a more haunting and disturbing experience by the minute.
Mulholland Drive conjures up pure horror
Dan nervously reports a recurring nightmare in which he comes across a… frightening figure hits. He never wants to meet this figure outside of his dream, he is so afraid of her. Still, he can sense her presence in the diner’s backyard, which raises the question of whether we’re in reality or one of the film’s many surreal dream worlds.
Hazy camera movements underline the uncertainty of the moment as Lynch cleverly plays with the environment: the sun is shining and people are walking in and out of Winkie’s. There is nothing to suggest that we are dealing with one here unreal placewhich distorts reality, and yet an ominous shadow falls over the sequence, portending great, inevitable disaster.
What is particularly fascinating is how Lynch describes everything in the dialogue between the two characters and reveals what could happen afterwards. In doing so, he is, in a way, anticipating the later visit to the Club Silencio, where all of the performances will take place recorded beforehand and are only accompanied by a pseudo-performance, which sometimes turns out to be astonishingly real, but is even more shocking when broken.
The horror on Mulholland Drive is unbelievable
The most shocking moment, however, is when Dan and Herb venture into the back yard of the diner. As viewers, we theoretically know exactly what will happen, after all Dan has just explained it in great detail. Furthermore, we find ourselves in a scene in broad daylight –
everything seems transparent. But the closer we get to the wall behind the diner, the more unbearable the tension becomes.
Then Lynch unleashes with all his force, but only for a fraction of a second, a horror that has been foreshadowed since the beginning of the film by the eerie, enigmatic atmosphere. For a long time we don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with in Mulholland Drive. The sudden appearance of the nightmarish figure is one of the few events that can be specifically named. Still, she’s hard to believe.
The figure slides into the picture and shakes up the entire film. By the time we even realize what just happened, she’s gone again. What remains is an uneasy feeling, as if Lynch had it Door to another dimension opened a crack and let a strange creature into the city of angels. She lurks there now and stands for everything that you don’t dare say.
Regardless of what is really behind the appearance and whether we are in a dream or not: From now on, in Mulholland Drive, you constantly get the feeling that something sinister is slumbering there take you by surprise at any moment can. This uncertainty accompanies you throughout the entire film – and continues to resonate afterwards as an eerie echo.
We first published this text in June 2020. In memory of David Lynch we have brought it out again. Mulholland Drive is currently streaming on Mubi and MagentaTV as a subscription.