`` As if - the explanation of Emergence

Under Construction


Mulholland Drive or the Impossible Dream


I have a dream - Martin Luther King Jr.


Index


Following a viewing of Mulholland Drive (film) , reckoned by many to be one of the best films ever made, yet also thought to defy explanation, I thought about what it does mean. It is my belief that nothing truly defies explanation, once we know the facts, and we get plenty of clues in Mulholland Drive.


It is worth noting that the road Mulholland Drive , is both where Jack Nicholson lived, and runs for 21 miles, more or less along the ridge of the Hollywood Hills, starting near the Hollywood reservoir, almost within touching distance of the Hollywood sign, before leading on to the nowheresville of Calabasas. Mulholland Drive has some of the most exclusive and expensive homes in the world, housing mainly Hollywood celebrities. It is a literal and metaphorical view of Hollywood.


Art as Meaning


Explaining Metaphor

When you talk about things - unless you're a poet - a big thing become smaller. [...] And also, it's so limiting to say what something is. It becomes nothing more than that, and I like things that can be more than that. David Lynch - Lynch on Lynch


The whole film is a fairly transparent metaphor for the manner in which Lynch sees Hollywood operating, as a conveyor belt for starlets, that ultimately end in failure for everyone, because each and every star is mortal. This then makes Hollywood a metaphor for life, because we are all mortal. Every girl is taught to be a princess, but even real life princesses don't always make it to being Queen of England.


Someone must die before anyone can declare 'The King is dead, long live the King!


The essence of art is to make the subjective internal dream that is the ever changing experience of consciousness, something objectively tangible, something that bridges the gap, that makes my experience your experience. Everything we do is Art, but Film is, or can be, an extra special genre of Art, because Film is so constructed that it potentially embodies all other art forms. It is almost needless to say that it seldom reaches its own dizzy heights.


Comments range from dismissal as uninterpretable, potentially even confused, or at least confusing, through to solutions of the mystery. Whether the solutions are correct or not is not quite the point, Lynch seems to want them to not be limited by official explanation. However, I should think that each scene was deliberately included, created for a reason greater than random chance. Hence it follows that interpretation is possible. Confusion is a problem of the observer, not the film itself.


Post Script: It turns out that there is an excellent analysis of the film, on Youtube. It concentrates on the exploited starlet on the casting couch, and makes a pretty good case, although surprisingly failing to mention the, to me, obvious Princess Diana and Queen Camilla dimension.


However, this video does explain many of the easily missed clues dotted throughout the film.


Mulholland Drive


The Title

The title, Mulholland Drive, is not random, but specifically chosen, because the road is the height of Hollywood, like the Heads of the Valleys in South Wales, but posher. The director's house is high up with a view, it represents success, making it. .


The Dream

The film opens with couples dancing the jitterbug, over which a young blonde woman appears smiling and being applauded. This is followed by a point-of-view shot descending toward a pillow as someone lies down.


Betty/Diane is every starry-eyed wannabe arriving in Hollywood on the wings of smalltown nowheresville aspirations and attitudes - judgments that will ultimately spell death. Betty/Diane is every waitress working for tips, barely getting by in empty poverty and an old housecoat. Betty is ordinary - Diane - as everyone knows - is a princess, and would have been Queen of England, had life turned out differently.


Stardom and Hollywood Royalty

At night on Mulholland Drive, a brunette woman in an elegant evening dress narrowly escapes being shot by her chauffeur when another car crashes into them. Not the first time that a crashed car has intervened in stardom. Left with amnesia, she wanders into Los Angeles and hides in a vacant apartment. The next morning, she is discovered by Betty Elms, an aspiring actress newly arrived from Ontario to stay at her aunt's place. The brunette adopts the name 'Rita' after seeing a poster of Rita Hayworth and recalls only that she is in danger. The two women become friends and discover a blue key and a large sum of cash in Rita's purse.


Rita/Camilla is every star, who must die to make way for youthful talent. Only the hit that was to be the end of her career didn't quite happen, allowing us to see the overlap and interaction that takes place with replacement. [Camilla is the Queen of England.] The star has money, but has forgotten the 'why', begging the question what was it all for, was it worth it?


The American Nightmare

A man at Winkie's diner recounts a nightmare about a monstrous figure in the alley behind the restaurant. When he investigates with a companion, the figure appears and he collapses in shock.


The scary man behind the dumpster is the personification of failure, and his magic box is always empty. Everyone's box is empty, because the message of the film is rooted in Camus' absurdism. There is no making it, it is all fake and ends in Crying and silence.


There is also something of the suspense of Horror, or perhaps the horror of suspense. Not knowing the outcome is itself a trick of the Nightmare that only serves to increase the stress of the American Dream.


Power

Film director Adam Kesher is pressured by mob-connected businessmen to cast an unknown blonde, Camilla Rhodes, in his new project, The Sylvia North Story.


No director is free to choose the star as they please. Box office is the driving force, and is shown in the revolting behaviour of the money men, and the tiny stature of the hidden powers behind everything. There is no Free Will in the Land of the Free.


Cowboy, the Embodiment of Hollywood

The cowboy that director Adam has to meet, only to be told who to cast, is met at the top of Hollywood Canyon, near Sunset Ranch and the Hollywood sign. He wears the clothes of Tom Mix, and as the spirit of stardom is the final arbiter of who will find success.


Betrayal

Adam returns home to find his wife cheating on him, is beaten and thrown out of his house, and rejects a sexual advance from his assistant. A mysterious cowboy warns him to cast Camilla.


Even the director is subject to power, of the money men and of betrayal - being exchanged for a handsomer model, a better ride. Power is a hierarchy, and the top of the tree is corrupted and made small and hidden away, by that power. The powerful are made human midgets. As the poolman says, 'Just forget you ever saw it, it's better that way', it is better not to look.


Death

Elsewhere, incompetent hitman Joe Messing bungles a job, killing bystanders.


The hitman is incompetent because the hitman is just death, and death is random and gets anyone and everyone.


Risk

Rita remembers the name 'Diane Selwyn' and Betty locates her address in a phone book. A seemingly psychic neighbour knocks on the apartment door, warning that 'someone is in trouble', and building manager Coco later cautions Betty about letting Rita stay. Betty leaves for an audition and performs marvelously. A casting agent is impressed and immediately brings her to Adam's audition for The Sylvia North Story. While Camilla Rhodes auditions with a dull performance of 'I've Told Every Little Star', Betty and Adam share a brief, charged glance, but she slips away to keep her promise to meet Rita. Adam agrees to cast Camilla to please the mob, following the cowboy's advice.


The Sylvia North Story is the story of every starlet, one for which both Diane and Camilla were auditioning. They embody the competition for roles, but the game is rigged by the power of stardom. Talent has nothing to do with it. The film makes it clear that the short-cut to success is the casting couch, and that Diana's lack of success in losing out to Camilla is because Camilla went all the way with the producer, a point proven by the fleeting appearance of the Cowboy in the background.


Interchangeable

Betty and Rita visit Diane Selwyn's apartment complex. A neighbor who recently exchanged units with Diane mentions she has not been seen in some time and directs them to her apartment. Inside, the two discover a woman's decomposing corpse on the bed. Shaken, they hurry back. Rita panics and tries to cut off her hair, but Betty disguises her with a blonde wig. That night, they share an intimate sexual encounter and Betty twice confesses she is in love, though Rita does not respond. They fall asleep together, but Rita wakes them both up by chanting 'Silencio, no hay banda' (Spanish for 'Silence, there is no band') in her sleep.


Betty/Diane loves Rita/Camilla because that is what she wants to be, the star. But it is one sided, the star does not want to be the wannabe, although perhaps she loves youth as she feels it slipping away with her memory. But Rita has money, the symbol of success, even though she doesn't really know why. She still feels human, not a star.


Emptiness

Rita insists on visiting Club Silencio, where the MC explains that all of the performances are pre-recorded. Betty and Rita cry to Rebekah Del Rio's Spanish rendition of 'Crying'. Betty discovers a blue box in her purse that matches Rita's key. They return to the apartment; Rita is about to unlock the box, but finds that Betty has vanished. After unlocking the box, Rita also vanishes.



Failure

The narrative shifts to Diane Selwyn, a depressed and struggling actress who resembles Betty. She awakens in the bedroom where the corpse was found. The neighbor who previously switched apartments visits to pick up her belongings and warns that two detectives have been looking for her.



Rejection

As Diane moves through her morning in a daze, she recalls a series of memories of her former lover, Camilla Rhodes - a femme-fatale actress who looks exactly like Rita. These memories include: a volatile sexual encounter and breakup; being forced to witness Adam and Camilla display intimacy in front of her during a film rehearsal; a dinner party at Adam's house where Diane explains that she moved to Los Angeles with money inherited from her late aunt and that she lost the leading role in The Sylvia North Story to Camilla, and watches Adam announce his engagement to her; and meeting Joe Messing at Winkie's to hire him as Camilla's hitman, with the promise that he would leave a blue key as confirmation once the job is done.


Eventually Betty/Diane realises she is getting nowhere and needs the death of the star, to swap places, a blonde wig for the star is not enough to do it, so she pays for the hit. But even when she has achieved that, her smalltown attitudes come back to haunt her, so she has to kill off whatever remains of her innocence, presumably so that she can become the star.


Recrimination

The monstrous figure previously seen behind Winkie's opens the blue box, releasing a tiny elderly couple who laugh. In the present, a traumatized Diane stares at the blue key on her coffee table. The tiny couple enters beneath her door and, as Diane is terrorized by repeated knocking, grow into full-sized hallucinations that chase her through the apartment. She runs into her bedroom and shoots herself, dying in the same position as the corpse discovered earlier. At Club Silencio, a blue-haired woman whispers, 'Silencio'.


However, it turns out that everyone's box is empty, they really are all failures. Even the singer is dead, silent, replaced by a recording.


The American Dream


This is the American dream, the 169,000 waiters and waitresses in LA alone - waiting. The odds are not great.



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