#Mulholland drive 2001 full
#Mulholland drive 2001 series
#Mulholland drive 2001 tv

“ No hay banda!” he declaims: “There is no band”. In the scene, the MC of a surreal nightclub takes to the stage. It is both a sumptuous sensory experience and a self-reflexive exercise, lifting up the bonnet of the film so we can inspect the moving bits and pieces inside. The greatest is the famous Club Silencio scene, a truly unforgettable stretch of film. Late in the running time, after a scene that appears to show her waking from a dream, the protagonist morphs, unexplained, from the optimistic Betty to a haunted-looking, failed actress named Diane.īut it's the small self-contained moments that linger longest in the memory, and which give the film a mosaic-like texture. Interesting plot tangents are cut off like cancerous limbs characters appear and disappear. It is less a demonstration of how great cinema is achieved than what great cinema can achieve, its capacity for ideas seemingly endless.

If Kane can be viewed as an essay on the nuts and bolts of film-making – a masterclass in technical processes, from montage to deep focus, dissolves and the manipulation of mise en scène – Mulholland Drive’s appeal is more thematic and conceptual. The title that repeatedly arrives at or near the top of the list is Citizen Kane, writer/director Orson Welles’ esteemed 1941 feature film debut – BBC Culture’s critics poll of the 100 greatest American films last year put Kane at number one. In a discussion about the best critically received film so far in the new century, perhaps insights can be gained by comparisons to the best critically received film of the previous one. Her quest to uncover information about her past, coupled with Betty’s journey to land work as an actress, takes place among a tapestry of other stories, which play out like vignettes, some lasting only a scene or two. In fact, she calls herself “Rita” only after looking at a poster for an old Rita Hayworth film, Gilda, from 1946. Betty meets dark-haired, doe-eyed beauty Rita (Laura Harring) who stumbles down Mulholland Drive after surviving a car accident. The happy-go-lucky smile will eventually be wiped off her face. The closest character Mulholland Drive has to a protagonist is Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), a cheerful, aspiring actress who arrives in town looking for work. They could get lost in the dream-like ambience of it while being engaged in an intellectual exercise deeply critical of the commercial realities of filmmaking: a sort of backhanded valentine to Tinsel Town.

#Mulholland drive 2001 full

Infusing Mulholland Drive with pointed, perhaps pessimistic commentary about market forces in Hollywood, but also cramming it full of beguiling images, Lynch created a very appealing package for critics. One of the plotlines involves a hotshot director (Justin Theroux) who is bullied into casting a leading actress the powers that be want for his new picture, but he doesn’t. One of several small, shady characters is the mysterious Mr Roque (Michael J Anderson) who appears to control Hollywood from a wheelchair in his shadowy office. In early 2000 Lynch managed to rescue the project by agreeing to turn Mulholland Drive into a feature film, equipped with a budget twice the original size. They also objected to several things captured in the shoot, including an extreme close-up of dog excrement.

#Mulholland drive 2001 tv

He was given a green light by US cable network ABC, which hoped to replicate the success of the director’s small-town mystery serial.ĪBC was unimpressed with the first episode, which they considered slowly paced and drawn out – 37 minutes too long to fit into a conventional TV timeslot.

#Mulholland drive 2001 series

Under its dream-like veneer, Mulholland Drive is a brilliant commentary on Hollywood’s machinations, at least partly informed by its own woes.īeginning life during the development of Lynch’s cult TV show Twin Peaks, the director eventually pitched an idea for Mulholland Drive as a series in 1998. Mulholland Drive’s own troubled history, and the studio politics and power plays depicted by Lynch in the film itself, hardly feel like coincidences.