Having celebrated its 20th anniversary last year, David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is re-released this month in German cinemas as part of the Best Of Cinema Series.
For the novices amongst you, the initial plot is simple enough: a young woman (Laura Harring) has amnesia following a car crash in the Hollywood Hills. She comes across a bushy-tailed aspiring actress (Naomi Watts) who has just moved to LA to fulfil her dreams of stardom. Then… Well, everyone knows better than to try to explain Mulholland Drive’s notoriously enigmatic narrative swerves. It’s not a film you get on the first try.
Or even the second, for that matter.
The timelines and dream logic have birthed countless think pieces attempting to decipher the puzzlebox plot. Whether you think it’s a Sunset Boulevard-inspired exploration on the plight of stardom, a satire of the Hollywood studio system, or even a mise-en-abyme capsule reminding us that we share collective dreams and logic-defying hallucinations when watching movies, you’d do well to rush to see this audacious masterpiece on the big screen once more and bask in its mysterious, macabre, erotic charge.
Mulholland Drive / D: David Lynch (US, 2001), with Naomi Watts, Laura Harring. Rerelease: February 01.