Returning to Mulholland Dr (2001)
Jade
The first time I watched Mulholland Dr about five years ago, I absolutely hated it. I remember thinking something along the lines of: “this is a thing of evil.” Now I have spent almost two weeks trying to respond eloquently to it, and in that pursuit have ended up writing an awful lot about my personal life and psychology, falling down rabbit holes in my mind... exploring the self, the shadow self, the multiplicity of selves that first made me respond so strongly... but I still have not been able to tackle the film itself, head on. When confronted with the full spectrum of being, can one continue to exist at all? One may be hero or villain, but when confronted by the capacity to be both, to contain all, I am disturbed. Paralyzed by possibility, I sit dumbfounded. Am I still writing around the subject? It occurs to me that my strong stance was the only response I could manage at the time. Mulholland Dr demands response and yet it defies response, remaining chimerical, unapproachable. I did hate it, to be sure, but perhaps only because I could not meet its demands.
I still cannot grasp it. I would like to do as Prufrock does, and squeeze this universe up into a ball and roll it toward some overwhelming question… What is the center of the film? As Alex notes, no moment in and of itself is particularly unique; most scenes reflect any other Hollywood film. But the way it is collaged together brings us a strange and shocking view of otherwise ordinary events. I try to pull out the pieces again, turning over the artifacts like a detective trying to piece together the case.
Let us revisit the evidence. Exhibit A is a mug shot of the hobo. Exhibit B is Naomi Watts as Betty, white and innocent. Exhibit C is Naomi Watts as Diane, whose face morphs from a sexy strung out blond to a mass of gore deformed by a gunshot. Exhibit D is the blue box and key. The blue box and key. Even now I am fighting the urge to cheat, to make a quick google search and reach for someone else’s reasoning: I hear Betty’s voice in my ear “We could pretend to be someone else.” Shh! I am getting away from the point again. The blue box. The blue box. What is inside of it? It opens up to alternate realities. Alternate selves. These pieces that we are, things we have not yet imagined.
Alex
Through all the viewings, and the years that pass between, the blue box remains in my memory, acting as emissary for all the objects, events, and feelings that can only find form in our intuition and in our dreams.
The hole for its key is not shaped for a key, it is a triangle. The key itself is like no key you’ve seen before; both are almost recognizable, yet each detail highlights its completely singular nature.
The blue box is a symbol for the multidimensional art object, which cannot be contained in any one thing. The blue box is itself, also it’s a doorway, also it’s Mulholland Dr in its entirety, also it’s the basically ineffable dreamworld that birthed the film, which Lynch briefly was able to see, long enough to make us this postcard that is the movie, and then to add to his movie a small and beautiful object that can hold everything which your own dreams might add later.
You called Mulholland Dr a thing of evil, when you first watched it as a younger lady. The black mark of archetypal darkness is one feature of an effective multidimensional object: if it’s labelled in the mind as bad, the observer will then fill the object with all his own unexamined baggage. Crafting the movie’s plot in the rough outline of a tragedy gives it this black mark, and ensures that its troubles will attach to your own unconscious traps until you work them out. It’s hard to take my habitual approach here and imagine the Romantic version of this film. Mulholland Dr is crafted with such immense love and appreciation by Lynch that it can’t be altered in any basic way. It’s been given sovereignty by this artist’s devotion, and the only respectful response is to turn back to my own workshop and make a blue box of my own.
Jade
Trust Alex to want to reimagine a plot with greater Romanticism. We know we have entered a true dreamworld with Mulholland Dr because even this most fundamental force of nature does not apply; in this context, Romantic vision is overthrown by dream logic, dream associations. The dream world extends beyond the Romantic vision; this ineffable dream world has a physics all its own.
When I was a child I cradled tiny objects like the blue box as if they were sacred, imagining enormous worlds contained in Polly Pocket doll houses or little crystal marbles. The blue box is a portal: the wardrobe leading to Narnia, the black hole to another dimension. Its inside is infinitely bigger than its outside.
I am trying to say something concrete about the film, and I can only make references to literature. Perhaps this is when you know you have encountered a true piece of art: when you can only respond to it properly with more art. Mulholland Dr takes us out of the knowable, the everyday. A new language and new tools are required; in this wonderland another form of sensemaking must be created.
In this new place, we are all required to contain all. This place defies orderly black and white and hard lines. In this space, nothing is truly other.