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Mulholland Drive

Mulholland Drive

List Price: $14.98
Your Price: $11.24
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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A film in search for an ending.
Review: ...Forget the mystery, Mulholland Dr is about the character development of an innocent and pretty girl from rural Ontario who turns into a lascivious lesbian lover. Her object of affection is an auburn haired beauty that is suffering from amnesia (so much for avante garde story telling) and obviously in some trouble. The film starts with a relatively sound theme of suspense, and this is the story line that is never developed. There are numerous outtakes (for lack of a better description), which are quite audacious, sharp and theatrical. The acting is good. The ending confirms what you might suspect mid way through the film that the whole thing is dysfunctional. And just in case you aren't aware of the genre the ending fades to black, really.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Welcome To My Nightmares
Review: Let me give Mulholland Drive a whirl...A compassionate director (Lynch) hates that his hands are often tied by associate producers when it comes to making films. One of the aspects he hates most is when talented, beautiful, and young would-be starlets are overlooked in the casting process. It happens often. One day a particularly appropriate actress has to be ignored by Lynch, despite the fact she's perfect. When he goes home, his conscience rips him apart and even spills over into his dreams. He can't help but wonder is she still ok? Did she take it hard? Did she eventually make it or go over the deep end? Fortunately, that artist--David Lynch--has a medium through which he can vent his frustrations and fears. The result: Mulholland Drive--Lynch's frustrations, fears, nightmares, hopes, and ultimately a tribute to the starlets that never were. There used to be three, now there's four: Fellini's "8 1/2", Allen's "Manhatten", Fosse's "All That Jazz" and now Lynch's "Mulholland Drive". (Quentin, the master has spoken and it's time to go back to taking notes.)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Alchemy Meets Young Love
Review: The film clearly states its theme during the opening credits: the psychological inflations of youth with its passions: joy, lust, love, exhilaration and also betrayal, pain and destructiveness. In the opening credits, Diane/Betty is shown with parental or grandparental figures, in the psychologically inflated 'albedo' state - the 'pure white' state (in alchemy) - of innocence, in which everything appears to be positive and possible. It is a state of exhilaration and sexual openness, indicated by the teenagers dancing - yet it casts a huge shadow (in the Jungian sense) also seen by the shadows cast by the dancers. The theme is immediately continued with the 'immortal' teenagers joyriding in the opening frames of Diane's 'dream'.

The older couple who have accompanied her on the plane to LA, are equally intoxicated with Betty's youth, beauty and promise - as many parents and grandparents are - and they are the witnesses of her hopes, ambitions and ideals and in effect, egg her on towards greater inflation. It is no wonder that they reappear as her final psychic tormentors at the end of the film, loading her with guilt and opprobrium, reminding her of how far she has fallen from her own 'dreams'.

Coco, on the other hand, represents an older person, who has 'survived' what Diane/Betty is going through -this is why she can offer Diane the hand of comfort at the dinner party. Her status as survivor is made clear at her first appearance, when she greets Betty with a mock starlet's pose, saying 'Here I am, in all my glory!' She has gotten over it.

The alchemical nigredo stage - in which the all-positive illusions of the albedo/innocent stage are demolished, 'burnt' to blackness, is symbolized by the personification of death who lives behind the diner. All our fondest hopes and wishes, our joys and activities and relationships are just the fodder of dreams from his perspective. They play as tiny figures around his 'pandora's box.'

The whole first half of the film is Diane's dream after she has put out the hit on Camilla. Her 'first-falling-in-love' identity issues are explored there, along with all sorts of other bric-a-brac from Diane's conscious and subconscious mind. Other reviewers have described these well. We really only know Diane from her dreams, but we grow to care about her - at least I did - I did fall for that sweet corn-fed Midwestern innocent - and therefore the film is ultimately profoundly sad.

In alchemy, there is a third stage: the rubedo, when we have successfully negotiated the break-down and disappointment of the nigredo, we emerge in a transformed state, where real joy, love and ecstasy are at last possible. This stage is very different from the 'white' albedo stage. But Diane/Betty does not reach this stage. She is a 'failed alchemist.' But David Lynch is anything but a failed artist.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Dream Sequence
Review: Have anyone of you ever dreamed about people in your lives but those people seem to have taken on different roles during your dreams? This, I think, is what happened in Mulholland Drive. The movie makes a lot of sense if you try to connect all the points starting from the end to the beginning which is a dream sequence.
Diane is an actress trying to score big roles in Hollywood. She's in love with Camilla Rhodes who has gotten a lead role in director Adam's movie. Camilla has broken up with Diane to marry Adam. Heartbroken and filled with jeolousy, Diane wants to have Camilla killed and hires a killer to do the job.
This brings us to the beginning of the movie which I interprets as a dream of Diane that is very skewed on reality, but aren't all dreams like that? In the opening sequence, Rita/Camilla is nearly murdered (what Diane wants) but managed to escape with only a head wound that causes amnesia. She wondered into the life of Betty/Diane (bec. even in dreams, Diane wants to be with her).
We also see how the professional life of director Adam is wrecked and is forced to hire Camilla Rhodes as his new lead actress. This, I think, is what Diane wanted Adam's real life to be as punishment for stealing her Camilla. Adam is forced to hire only Camilla Rhodes bec. that is exactly what happened to him in real life -- Camilla Rhodes is Adam's new lead. However, the Camilla Rhodes in Diane's dream resembled Diane bec. Diane has hoped to be the new lead.
Diane also dreamed about the man whom she hires to murder Camilla. In her dream, she dreamed of the man knocking off a few anoymous people in an old building. As for the monster in the alleyway of Winkie's, that is what Diane has become -- a monster after she arranged to kill Camilla. This was in the last scene of the movie when Diane's face and the monster's merged as one.
This is my interpretation of the movie.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Give in to it - it doesn't have to make immediate sense
Review: David Lynch is his own man and he is unafraid to put out films that are untouched reruns of his own wild imagination. MULHOLLAND DRIVE drives some people crazy because of their need for absolute resolution of stories. This little gem of a film is more like a carefully staged stream of consciousness and if you can't jump on the ride then you're missing the joy. Lynch has captured fine performances from a strong cast, explores terrain rich and strange, and even goes over the edge just enough to test our thinking and conceptual skills. The ending is up to the viewer.......and what a refreshing turn for a film to take! Give in to it. The DVD allows you to see it at home where you don't need to fret that people around you may think you confused.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Mulholland Drive
Review: I fear to say this, as I myself fear this accomplishment, but this movie is a Masterpiece. It has every emotion that makes humankind live and die; happiness, terror, sadness, lust, love, awkwardness, goodness, guilt and evil. Plus, the appearance of Angelo, the whole ambiance of the movie, and knowing that the greatest Artist alive today made this film, definitely made it a chest chiller. The lacing of life is weaved through this movie as if it were done by a being who owned the soul of Carl Jung, Salvador Dali, and Sigmund Freud swirled in to one, I guess that is David... Life is funny and this movie weaves that in a spectacular knot! ... In short, if you are a Lynch fan and love the plots he weaves, the way he directs and his masterful eye for light, ... then this movie is for you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: lynch's most humane film
Review: i've found that something interesting has happened over the course of repeat viewings of this film (4 times since i bought the DVD last week). all of the artifice, the mystery, the amorphous tie-ins of murky sub-plots and confounding imagery that initially clouded my brain has given way to a single raw emotion that i'm left with as the end credits roll: sadness.

i wouldn't characterize myself as a particularly emotional person, but the last time i watched "mulholland drive" in its entirety (just last night, it so happens), i was left in tears. i really feel that this film is not just some elaborate con game that lynch is playing on his audience, as some of my fellow, rather embittered reviewers have claimed. it's not some smug, showy, empty Display with a capital "D" in the vein of "the usual suspects."

for me, at least, the real resonance of this film rests in the character arc of diane selwyn. the australian actress naomi watts is nothing less than startling in her portrayal of one young woman's devastating transformation at the hands of the hollywood "dream factory." it's a real testament to naomi's formidable talent that many of the people that i've seen this film with were not quick to recognize her in the latter section of the film. they thought that she had become a different person. and, indeed, she had.

the true beauty, the true power of this film, for me, lies in the mental juxtaposition of two images: one is of a disheveled diane selwyn standing in the kitchen of her dim apartment, clad in an old, dirty night gown, holding a brown coffee cup, her body shaking before the hallucinatory image of the lover she thought she had lost forever; the other is one that lynch closes the film with -- diane and camilla together, beaming with happiness, basking in the hollywood glow of moviestardom. this latter image fades away and we are brought back to the club silencio, in which the blue-haired madam of truth, reality, and an almost cruel justice declares that all is again silent.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: This [was bad]!!!
Review: If you ever want to feel like you're on a bad acid trip just rent this movie. The beginning seemed to have potential but totally fell apart by the end. Lynch couldn't pull off a somewhat satisfactory ending after two and half hours. Hang it up until you can put out something good ol'Davey, please!

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Overpriced and Underproduced
Review: Easily Lynch's low point. An aimless, rambling waste of time and technology. Surely there are more worthwhile uses of electricity than to power DVD players to run this lousy movie.

But what is especially insulting is the very high price on this DVD. There isn't a single extra feature of any consequence, which is evidently Lynch's decision. Fine and good. But this single DVD costs more than most double DVD sets. Why? Is it printed on extra-high quality DVD stock? No, looks about the same to me. Are the liner notes really special? No. Is there anything about this release to justify the jacked up price?

No. Not a single thing.

Save your money. Wait for Eraserhead to come out on DVD, and see what Lynch is capable of when he is working at his best. Avoid this overheated overhyped load of nonsense.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: What???
Review: Well that David Lynch has gone and ticked the whole world off once again!! I swear this man just makes movies to drive his viewers crazy. Don't get me wrong. I swear he his the only director who can film 146 min and leave every single door WIDE open. Take off your thinking goggles,people because you just ain't gonna get it. Sure, watch it 4,5,8 times. It's not gonna work.
I was intrigued yet very disappointed of the how the movie went on. I mean it's one thing to watch crappy ending but at least you understand how the movie got to ending. Do you know what I mean? I'm not going to critique this movie. You can read other viewer comments. But as you read on, you will begin to notice that no one can really explain the storyline to you. It's a movie you have to experience on your own. But as I said before, David Lynch is sitting in his $500,000 rocking chair laughing at all us poor souls that are still shaking our heads,thinking"What the hell just happened?"


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