There are, as I've been going on about, two recurring themes you can't help but notice if you watch a lot of neo noir:
Watching a David Lynch movie is a lot like drinking Chartreuse, people either like it or hate it. You'll note, I don't say they either "love it or hate it" but "like it or hate it". I am in the like category. I get Lynch enough to like him.WARNING: the spoilers start here.
Anyway, the key scene in this movie is a dream sequence within a dream sequence. Yes, you read that correctly. The movie opens with a dream sequence only we don't know it's a dream sequence. We think it's real and then there is this dream sequence where two women get up in the middle of the night and catch a cab to a theatre where the MC tells us, speaking at times in in Spanish, at times in in French and at times in in English tells us that there is no band, that it it is all an illusion. Everything up until now has been a dream. Which is most emphatically not to say that everything from now on is real.
Lynch has given us at least one hint that this is the case at the start of the movie. The very opening shot is a weird nostalgic shot of a bunch of people jitterbugging. When, where, why and how is never adequately explained. Immediately after this, we see a bed and the camera pans down towards in a way that unmistakeably suggests someone's head coming down on the pillow. And the very next shot we see is the street sign for Mulholland Drive. We're in a dream.
That we come out of a dream through a dream within the dream is either going to strike you as fun and clever or it's going to strike you as not only ludicrous but irritatingly pretentious. It happens, by the way, one hour and forty-five minutes into a roughly two hour and twenty-five minute film and that launches a little game whereby you the viewer have exactly forty minutes to figure out what really happened and what was our protagonist's dream. This prospect will either strike you as fun and clever or it's going to strike you as not only ludicrous but irritatingly pretentious.
At the theatre, the protagonist finds a blue key in her purse that is obviously key to a mysterious blue box that came up earlier. Opening this blue box seems to make the dream end.
The rough outlines are easy enough to figure out. A young woman came to Hollywood hoping to make it big and she fell in love with another young woman who has now left her. In response she has a multi-layered dream. The layers, in order of appearance are:
I think that deciding what is real here is less important than seeing that there is a familiar Hollywood motif at work here. We have a character investigating a mystery that seems to have nothing to do with them only to find out something evil about themselves in the process. That, it seems to me, is the real take-away point in the movie. The dreams are a way of confronting heartbreak and we start off entirely focused on the one who broke our heart only to discover through this dream analysis that we ourselves are culpable of ... something. And the woman protagonist here symbolizes the whole city of Los Angeles.
A brief digression, if "the cowboy" sounds familiar, he ought to. We find a similar character in The Big Lebowski made just three years before this movie. We also have a strange, wheelchair confined man in a big house who seems to be the one running the shadowy mob operations. I don't think that similarity is a coincidence but is rather an homage. On that subject, the obvious question about Lynch is the same one I once asked about the Coen Brothers: He can do surreal and postmodern but could he, if required, tell a straight story?
Part deux
Anyway, the dream within a dream sequence ends with a woman singing the song "Crying" in Spanish, a powerful hint that the movie is really about our protagonist dealing with heartbreak. But what parts of the last forty minutes of the movie are really real? That's where it gets tricky.
But I think the what is real question is just a distraction from what really matters. What is more important is that all the elements from the overlapping dreams from the first part reapear in the following order:
Okay, you still want to know what is real? You can push your own interpretaion, but here is what I think is real.
I find all Lynch's movies flawed but they have some wonderful moments. I may be partly biased in his favour because the greatest erotic adventure in my life began when I went to see his Wild at Heart with a certain someone.
In any case, the first great moment here involves a part that "Betty" tries out for in a Soap Opera. It involves a girl who is being pursued sexually by a friend of her parents. We see her do her lines twice. Once while practicing with Camilla and then again when she tries out for the part. In the two scenes, the exact same words are used to achieve completely different effects. In the first our protagonist plays the part of a sexual victim and in the second she is the sexual aggressor.
A brief digression, one of the great things about Lynch is his willingness to be trashy. There is a lovely moment in the audition where a bad guy trying to exploit the young girl sexually turns out to be named "Woody" an obvious slap in the face (if not a kick in the testicles) to Woody Allen.
The second is a beautifully cheesy moment. Our protagonist, now known to us as Diane, is on the couch and we think she is crying as she thinks of her loss of Camilla. The camera pans down and we see, to our shock, that she is actually masturbating. What we took to be tears of bereavement was actually her frustration at being unable to reach orgasm. The phone rings and we are wrenched out of that scene and ...
Into a conversation with Camilla who tells Diane that there is a car waiting for. But there is also a wonderfully trashy moment here. Camilla says, "Are you okay? You coming?" And yes, the joke is intentional. It plays on that old seventies classic that sounds of distress and sounds of sexual excitement are very similar.
But again, there is a deeper point here. Lynch has gone a good way to solving the problem of how to use a woman's sexuality in a neo noir. As I've said before, with male leads, his sexual desires are symbolic of his desire to regain what he has lost. That is not plausible with female leads but this ambiguity between pain and pleasure, that is something worth exploring further someday and somewhere.
Special bonus Canadian section
When Betty says she is from Deep River, do you think innocent girl from small hick town somewhere in Canada? Well, that's a problem. You see, Deep River is not your ordinary small town. The primary industry in Deep River is a nearby nuclear research facility. Deep River probably has a higher number of PhDs per capita than 99.999 percent of the towns on earth. It's not a place where naive, unsophisticated girls come from.
The big question is, "Whose mistake is this?" Did Lynch make the mistake or did Diane make it when she created Betty?
Only one person in the entire world will understand the significance of this video here:
- A dream-like and nostalgic atmosphere that enhances our sense of the protagonist's attempt to regain something "lost" they feel they were entitled to.
- The protagonist's pursuit of a dream-like femme fatale as an outward symbol of their inward compulsion to get the something "lost" they feel they were entitled to.
Watching a David Lynch movie is a lot like drinking Chartreuse, people either like it or hate it. You'll note, I don't say they either "love it or hate it" but "like it or hate it". I am in the like category. I get Lynch enough to like him.WARNING: the spoilers start here.
Anyway, the key scene in this movie is a dream sequence within a dream sequence. Yes, you read that correctly. The movie opens with a dream sequence only we don't know it's a dream sequence. We think it's real and then there is this dream sequence where two women get up in the middle of the night and catch a cab to a theatre where the MC tells us, speaking at times in in Spanish, at times in in French and at times in in English tells us that there is no band, that it it is all an illusion. Everything up until now has been a dream. Which is most emphatically not to say that everything from now on is real.
Lynch has given us at least one hint that this is the case at the start of the movie. The very opening shot is a weird nostalgic shot of a bunch of people jitterbugging. When, where, why and how is never adequately explained. Immediately after this, we see a bed and the camera pans down towards in a way that unmistakeably suggests someone's head coming down on the pillow. And the very next shot we see is the street sign for Mulholland Drive. We're in a dream.
That we come out of a dream through a dream within the dream is either going to strike you as fun and clever or it's going to strike you as not only ludicrous but irritatingly pretentious. It happens, by the way, one hour and forty-five minutes into a roughly two hour and twenty-five minute film and that launches a little game whereby you the viewer have exactly forty minutes to figure out what really happened and what was our protagonist's dream. This prospect will either strike you as fun and clever or it's going to strike you as not only ludicrous but irritatingly pretentious.
At the theatre, the protagonist finds a blue key in her purse that is obviously key to a mysterious blue box that came up earlier. Opening this blue box seems to make the dream end.
The rough outlines are easy enough to figure out. A young woman came to Hollywood hoping to make it big and she fell in love with another young woman who has now left her. In response she has a multi-layered dream. The layers, in order of appearance are:
- A woman about to be murdered on Mulholland Drive is saved by a horrific car crash that kills those who intended to kill her but leaves her in a state of amnesia.
- A Winkie's on Sunset Boulevard where a guy goes to confront his nightmare hoping to overcome it but is instead overcome by his nightmare.
- A young woman named Betty from Deep River, Ontario arrives in Los Angeles planning to make it and stays in her Aunt's apartment while her Aunt is away.
- A movie maker casting a movie is threatened by mob-like figures who want him to pick a woman named Camilla Rhodes for the lead role.
- A strange hired killer/pimp in a leather jacket for whom everything goes wrong.
- A weird figure called "the cowboy" who like the mob-like characters, seemed to be secretly driving the plot of the dream only he seems to have this power solely as a teller of a narrative and not through violence.
I think that deciding what is real here is less important than seeing that there is a familiar Hollywood motif at work here. We have a character investigating a mystery that seems to have nothing to do with them only to find out something evil about themselves in the process. That, it seems to me, is the real take-away point in the movie. The dreams are a way of confronting heartbreak and we start off entirely focused on the one who broke our heart only to discover through this dream analysis that we ourselves are culpable of ... something. And the woman protagonist here symbolizes the whole city of Los Angeles.
A brief digression, if "the cowboy" sounds familiar, he ought to. We find a similar character in The Big Lebowski made just three years before this movie. We also have a strange, wheelchair confined man in a big house who seems to be the one running the shadowy mob operations. I don't think that similarity is a coincidence but is rather an homage. On that subject, the obvious question about Lynch is the same one I once asked about the Coen Brothers: He can do surreal and postmodern but could he, if required, tell a straight story?
Part deux
Anyway, the dream within a dream sequence ends with a woman singing the song "Crying" in Spanish, a powerful hint that the movie is really about our protagonist dealing with heartbreak. But what parts of the last forty minutes of the movie are really real? That's where it gets tricky.
But I think the what is real question is just a distraction from what really matters. What is more important is that all the elements from the overlapping dreams from the first part reapear in the following order:
- The cowboy shows up in a seedy apartment and tells a girl we thought dead on a bed to wake up. Again, his ability to "narrate" the story we are watching seems to give him power in this dream.
- She gets up and we are, briefly, in "the real". We see that she is the same protagonist we have known as Betty until now is actually one and the same with a mysterious figure we have known as Diane. A woman from a few doors down shows up. Diane has switched apartments with this other woman for reasons that remain mysterious. This other woman wants the last of her stuff to move to her new place. This moment seems real but we quickly see (or should see as most people seem to miss this point) that what is real or not doesn't matter because our heroine is herself inacapable of making clear distinctions between reality and dreams.
- At this point our movie director shows up again only he isn't choosing between two women for his movie lead but rather is choosing Camilla Rhodes, who has now merged with the the dream girl with amesia from part one to become one character where there used to be two, as his wife thereby dealing our protagonist a blow for she is also in love with Camilla.
- Diane gets a call from "Camilla" who tells here their is a limo to take her to a place on Mulholland Drive which sets up a scene that recalls the dream where the woman who was to be murdered is saved by the car accident. This new scene even features some of the same dialogue from the first. The difference is that what happens in this dream is that Diane goes to the party and his humilated by her lack opf success as compared to Camila and her loss of Camilla to the director as he seems to be about to announce their marriage only he never quite says it because we are wrenched out of that dream into
- The Winkie's where Diane is talking to a hit man so she can take out a contract on Camilla. The hit man tells Diane that she will receive a blue key as a sign that the job is done. It's not the same blue key as the first one. And when she asks what it opens we are wrenched out of this scene and ...
- Back to the apartment where Diane haunted by her dreams .... I think I'll leave that spoiler unspoiled. Suffice to say, the movie is now over.
Okay, you still want to know what is real? You can push your own interpretaion, but here is what I think is real.
- Diane is real. She may or may not come from Deep River for reasons I'll come to in a special bonus Canadian section below.
- She came to LA, young and innocent and hoping to make it.
- She switches apartments with another woman because she is hiding from "the two detectives" who are actually her pimps. She is trying to stop being a prostitute.
- She has spent the last few days hiding in her apartment, perhaps stoned. Faced with the failure of her hopes, she slowly lose her grip on reality leading to the thing I won't spoil.
- Camilla/Rita is unreal. The name Camilla obviously recalls the La Dame aux Camelias and she represents the life as as hooker that she is struggling to prevent herself from falling back into.
- I'm not sure the hit that Diane seems to contract for at Winkie's is real. First of all because I don't think Camilla is real and second because of the sense we got in the first part that Winkie's is where people go to confront their nightmares.
I find all Lynch's movies flawed but they have some wonderful moments. I may be partly biased in his favour because the greatest erotic adventure in my life began when I went to see his Wild at Heart with a certain someone.
In any case, the first great moment here involves a part that "Betty" tries out for in a Soap Opera. It involves a girl who is being pursued sexually by a friend of her parents. We see her do her lines twice. Once while practicing with Camilla and then again when she tries out for the part. In the two scenes, the exact same words are used to achieve completely different effects. In the first our protagonist plays the part of a sexual victim and in the second she is the sexual aggressor.
A brief digression, one of the great things about Lynch is his willingness to be trashy. There is a lovely moment in the audition where a bad guy trying to exploit the young girl sexually turns out to be named "Woody" an obvious slap in the face (if not a kick in the testicles) to Woody Allen.
The second is a beautifully cheesy moment. Our protagonist, now known to us as Diane, is on the couch and we think she is crying as she thinks of her loss of Camilla. The camera pans down and we see, to our shock, that she is actually masturbating. What we took to be tears of bereavement was actually her frustration at being unable to reach orgasm. The phone rings and we are wrenched out of that scene and ...
Into a conversation with Camilla who tells Diane that there is a car waiting for. But there is also a wonderfully trashy moment here. Camilla says, "Are you okay? You coming?" And yes, the joke is intentional. It plays on that old seventies classic that sounds of distress and sounds of sexual excitement are very similar.
But again, there is a deeper point here. Lynch has gone a good way to solving the problem of how to use a woman's sexuality in a neo noir. As I've said before, with male leads, his sexual desires are symbolic of his desire to regain what he has lost. That is not plausible with female leads but this ambiguity between pain and pleasure, that is something worth exploring further someday and somewhere.
Special bonus Canadian section
When Betty says she is from Deep River, do you think innocent girl from small hick town somewhere in Canada? Well, that's a problem. You see, Deep River is not your ordinary small town. The primary industry in Deep River is a nearby nuclear research facility. Deep River probably has a higher number of PhDs per capita than 99.999 percent of the towns on earth. It's not a place where naive, unsophisticated girls come from.
The big question is, "Whose mistake is this?" Did Lynch make the mistake or did Diane make it when she created Betty?
Only one person in the entire world will understand the significance of this video here:
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