Twin Peaks<\/em>\u2014it\u2019s all there! <\/p>\n\n\n\nBut those explorations are most acute in Mulholland Drive<\/em>, a film that has given me more nightmares than any other. Yes, any other<\/em>. More than Audition<\/em>, more than The Blair Witch Project<\/em>, more than The Shining<\/em>, more than Candyman<\/em>, more than The Ring<\/em>, more than The Vanishing<\/em>. <\/em>All those films are scary. For one of your TV shows or movies, though, a descriptor like \u201cscary\u201d is laughably narrow. A Lynch joint is somehow simultaneously intimate and all-encompassing\u2014less about the reactive moment of being afraid, and more about how that fear transforms you in its wake. About reconciling who you are after a moment that doesn\u2019t quite make sense, or<\/em> that feels confusingly familiar; that feels like you\u2019ve lived it already, or<\/em> like you\u2019ve already anticipated its occurrence. About losing yourself, and not recognizing who returns. <\/p>\n\n\n\nAre you the primary architect of my fears? Or do you simply tap into whatever my anxieties and angsts already were<\/em>? \u201cA film by David Lynch\u201d causes a level of apprehension that is practically unmatched, even though your works don\u2019t exactly rely on the kind of monsters that built Universal Pictures or Hammer Film Productions. Instead, you\u2019ve pioneered a cinematic style that has its own descriptor\u2014Lynchian<\/em>\u2014and that is disturbing<\/em> in its suggestion rather than its explicitness. <\/p>\n\n\n\nTime and space don\u2019t follow their normal rules. Identities are doubled, tripled, repeated ad infinitum. Our consciousness can be fractured, and corrupted, and polluted. All in all, Lynchian<\/em> means unshakably unsettling and unspeakably other, and Mulholland Drive<\/em> is the masterpiece that makes this vision real. Every scene feels like a trespass on someone else\u2019s memories, and the film\u2019s purposefully fragmented narrative feeds into this asynchronicity. What does anything have to do with anything else? Although Angelo Badalamenti\u2019s evocatively spooky score reverberates through it all and adds unifying tone and texture, at first it\u2019s hard to say where else<\/em> the connections are. <\/p>\n\n\n\nThe neo-noir vibe of the gorgeously chic woman (Laura Elena Harring) in a car traveling upon Mulholland Drive, and the no-nonsense efficiency of a pair of police detectives played by Robert Forster and Brent Briscoe, jaggedly contrast with the overly earnest cheeriness of aspiring actress Betty Elms (a never-better Naomi Watts). \u201cI\u2019d rather be known as a great actress than a movie star, but sometimes people end up being both,\u201d she says, all smiles and sunshine, and her optimism about the industry butts up against the catch-22 ensnaring movie director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux). Kesher, in a subplot that feels like Lynch aiming daggers at the nepotistic machinations of Hollywood, is being leaned on by mobsters to cast a certain actress in his upcoming movie. \u201cIt\u2019s no longer your film,\u201d they say, and they\u2019ll do whatever it takes to intimidate Kesher into acquiescing control. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of that is fairly grounded stuff. But you had to get weird with it, right? You had to get weird with it. <\/em>So there\u2019s that long dalliance with Joe the assassin (Mark Pellegrino) bungling a job and leaving three bodies on the floor instead of just one. (His \u201cI can\u2019t do everything by myself, man!\u201d is the pained complaint of overworked laborers everywhere.) There\u2019s the Billy Ray Cyrus cameo. There\u2019s the strange blue cube and accompanying blue key. And there\u2019s the reality-questioning nature of Club Silencio, and the hauntingly pained cover of Roy Orbison\u2019s \u201cCrying\u201d that Rebekah Del Rio sings on its stage. \u201cI was alright for a while\/I could smile for a while,\u201d Del Rio croons in Spanish, and those lyrics fit nicely with the warning Betty\u2019s mysterious neighbor Louise (Lee Grant) gives her: \u201cSomeone is in trouble. Something bad is happening.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat that \u201csomething bad\u201d turns out to be rearranges all the elements of Mulholland Drive<\/em>. The passion Rita and Betty grow to feel for each other, and the steamy chemistry Watts and Harring share. The creative bankruptcy Adam accepts for the promise of a payday, and the self-satisfied smugness Theroux injects into his character. The meaning of \u201cThis is all a tape recording,\u201d a meta reveal from Club Silencio\u2019s magician (Richard Green) that refers to more than just the performance Rita and Betty watch when they visit the venue. These disparate puzzle pieces mostly fit together like that blue cube and key, except for one: the diner scene. <\/p>\n\n\n\nYour career is dotted through with these moments of horribly drawn-out tension and practically fourth wall-breaking aggression, isn\u2019t it? I\u2019m thinking specifically of Twin Peaks<\/em> and The Return<\/em> (BOB leaping over the couch; the Woodsmen staring into the camera), and generally of your willingness to let the uncanny cross over into the direct. And so it goes with the segment in Mulholland Drive<\/em> that arguably makes the least logical sense, but also has the greatest visceral impact. Had you seen Fischler previously on Nash Bridges<\/em> or NYPD Blue<\/em>? Did you know he had that expressive of a face, and that level of control? Because if Mulholland Drive<\/em> is a film fashioned in the dream world, in that space between reality and regret, then Fischler\u2019s Dan is its North Star. His panic burns so pure that it becomes a subconscious guide for us, and an exemplification of the kind of cosmic horror that can await us in the most innocuous of places. A dumpster in the back of a diner is the home for a figure who plagues Dan\u2019s dreams, who takes over his reality, and who conveys to us the idea that inexplicable things happen to ordinary people\u2014and there\u2019s not much any of us can do about it. <\/p>\n\n\n\nMy understanding is that Fischler is surprised by the legacy of that scene. As he told Cultured Vultures in 2017<\/a>, \u201cIt\u2019s very odd for me that that\u2019s what it became. It wasn\u2019t on anyone\u2019s minds. I mean, I don\u2019t know what was on David\u2019s mind, but it was certainly not on mine.\u201d Was it on your mind, David? It had to be, right? Because every element of this scene works together to reach into my chest and squeeze my heart so hard that it stops. The close-up of Fischler\u2019s frozen, anguished face once Dan realizes that the dream he was describing is a dream he is actually in<\/em>. How the audio drops out, the sunlight grows blindingly bright, and cinematographer Peter Deming pushes us forward to the dumpster, like we are operating in the same daze as Dan. And, most unnervingly, the unnatural slinkiness with which the dirty, dank figure played by Bonnie Aarons reveals itself from behind the dumpster enclosure, holds our gaze, and smiles. <\/p>\n\n\n\nI did not like it! And yet I cannot purge it from my memory, either\u2014this suggestion that the most banal life experiences walk on a razor\u2019s edge between ordinariness and extraordinariness, in the purest sense of that word. That\u2019s your whole deal, and I keep going back to it, even as it turns me into a quivering mess. Remember what I said earlier about all my nightmares caused by Mulholland Drive<\/em>? Way to go, David<\/em>. You\u2019re a genius and also a masochist. Thanks for being you. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWith begrudging affection,
Mulholland Drive is streaming on Showtime.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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