Most critics are calling "Mulholland Drive" director David Lynch's personal dream put on a movie screen. There may be enough evidence to support such a theory.

The film opens with the camera, possibly a woman, staggering toward a bed and collapsing on a pillow, then fading to darkness. What follows is a film with lots of characters, stories, eerie images and downright maddening confusion.

So what exactly is "Mulholland Drive" about? It's hard to say. The main focal point of the film is a woman (Laura Harring from TV's "Sunset Beach") who is the only survivor of a brutal car accident. She now suffers from amnesia (a theme running rampant this year in films) and stumbles her way into an apartment where the owner has just left town.

Meanwhile, at the airport we meet Betty (Naomi Watts), an aspiring actress who is coming to housesit while her aunt is out of town.

Betty always seems to have a smile on her face, even when she finds this strange woman in her apartment. Instead of calling the cops, Betty has compassion for the stranger and mistakes her for one of her aunt's friends. The woman tells Betty her name is Rita, after a poster she saw of Rita Hayworth on the wall.

Betty soon learns Rita is not a friend of her aunt's. Rita then confesses she can't remember who she is, and there is also the matter of the mysterious several thousand dollars in Rita's purse. Of course, she has no idea where it came from.

Betty is now determined to help Rita regain her identity, so the girls play Nancy Drew and begin to investigate. The friendship soon gets complicated when the two women fall in love.

There's also stories of a bumbling hit man, a director (Justin Theroux is excellent) who is under coercion by the mob to cast a certain actress in his movie, a cowboy, a man with visions of a horrible beast-looking man living behind a diner, a cheating wife, a blue key, and a corpse lying on a bed similar to the bed we saw in the opening scene.

One would think all of these stories tie together nicely like in a P. T. Anderson film, but they don't in a Lynch film. This dream begins to become complex in the last quarter of the film with random images, confused plot structure, uncertain identities and a plethora of other Lynch tactics.

This is quite possibly the most baffling film I've ever seen. Many may write this film off as weird, some may call it offensive smut because of two lesbian sex scenes, and many will demand an explanation at the film's close. Lynch will provide us no answers. He unfolds a mind-boggling film, and leaves us to interpret things for ourselves. It's like an abstract painting with no explanation from the artist. It's trademark Lynch.

I would hate this film, except the part of the movie I could comprehend was extremely fascinating. Naomi Watts gives a breakthrough performance, and was certainly one to give Sissy Spacek ("In the Bedroom") a rivalry when it came time for the Oscars.

She plays Betty as a ray of sunshine with shades of a dark side. A scene in which she auditions for a part in a movie has Betty playing a scene completely opposite from the way she rehearsed it, thereby cluing us in to her dark manipulative side.

Her performance may not be enough for most viewers. There are films that require a viewer to see them twice in order to unlock the mystery or connect the puzzle pieces.

You could see this film 100 times and still arrive at the same dead end. There is no resolution, no closure and no explanation. The most one can do is develop their own theories.

Lynch feels no need to explain himself. He even taunts us by having a stage performer demonstrate that what the eye sees and the ear hears, the mind believes.

This film is indeed like a dream. But have you ever had a dream where it seemed impossible that you could ever awaken? Have you ever dreamed something that would be offensive to people who saw it? Or have you ever had a dream that is completely void of rationalization or explanation?

Such is David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive."


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age