Cast

Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller, Dan Hedaya, Justin Theroux, Brent Briscoe, Robert Forster, Katharine Towne, Lee Grant

awards

Cannes IFF 2002 – best director, César 2002 – best foreign film, BAFTA Awards 2002 – best editing, Independent Spirit Awards 2002 – best cinematography, New York Film Critics Circle Awards 2001 – best film, Chicago Film Critics Association Awards 2002 – best film, best director, best actress

Film description

Ever since Blue Velvet nearly all of David Lynch’s films have focused on a single theme: when under pressure, people have fantasies into which they run from reality. The fantasies are always flawed; they begin to crumble as reality begins to check back in. Part of the fun is looking for the moment when fantasy begins and, later, when it begins to crack. Will the character face the source of their fear and be healed, like in Blue Velvet, or will his or her personality be completely destroyed like in Twin Peaks and Lost Highway?

Mulholland Drive was slated to be a TV series, but was stopped mid-production and Lynch reworked it into a film. It is a typical and atypical Lynchian film. It is typical for all the reasons listed above: scenes of realism meld into daydreams in a character’s mind and a fantasy that begins to crumble because an imperfect mind is unable to beget a perfect world. However, this time, like never before, Lynch shows us the key to his film, like a magician explaining his trick. He does not spell it out, but it is still the biggest nod toward viewers in his oeuvre.

Michał Chaciński