Mulholland Drive. Help me out here.

Lost Highway was so far over my head.. I sat through the whole thing twice, but I'm still lost.

I think it helps when seeing Lynch movies to not demand that any one element in the movie mean but one thing.

Good artworks have polyvalent meanings: meaning that they can be different things, multiple meanings. This is why strong works of art live long lives because they respond dynamically to the shifting contexts of time.

I think that w/ Lynch films it helps to try and ask about things from different perspectives:

for instance, you could ask, what could the Thugs be if the story represented different psychological entities?
or
even theological?
or
imaginal: for the main character, why was there a seemingly insurmountable relation to these figures? Do they represent the limitations of constructed identity? The inevitable loss of self or control or love? the projected fear of the loss of love by its being controlled by others (Oedipal?)? etc.
or
What about their sociological implications? or social/psychological: did they represent teh edge of our controled self projections on the world? the fact that the world will always exceed and take from us our realm of control? or are they just teh fact that teh world of hollywood (cultural imagination) is controled by dark forces of violence and power? etc etc

I think the beauty of Lynch's work is that he can encompass all of these perspectives and more: he definitly is thinking from a place of deep psychology but he is also thinking about social issues and also even metaphysical as well as others.

I think there is also the aspect that he operates on the following principle: if it can be gotten right away then its not worth getting: it wont stay with you long and turn over new insights in you life as you live it.

Pfflam, I completely agree with you about how to approach a David Lynch film.

Alcimedes, the most difficult part of seeing a David Lynch film is eliminating that need to "figure it out". We are almost trained to try to understand everything we see, that sometimes it takes the real enjoyment out of it. The one thing you must consider is that certain characters an occurrences possibly had no meaning whatsoever. However, there again you're making a judgement about what something meant.

I've seen Mulholland Drive twice now, and I still can't stop thinking about it.

I thought I'd share with you my four favorite scenes:

#4 - The Espresso scene - you know what I mean!

#3 - First meeting with the Cowboy - fantastic scene, spooky, dark, well written, very psychologically insightful, etc.

#2 - Silencio - wow, this blew me away; great music, incredibly spooky, well shot, etc.

#1 - The audition scene - probably the best scene I've seen on film all year; Naomi Watts deserves an Oscar nom for this scene; WOW!

Hard to believe that Mulholland Drive was originally shot to be a Fall pilot tv-show on ABC....

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RosettaStoned

possible spoiler coming

okay- here's what I got from it. The entire first half of the movie is the fantasy of Naomi Watts' character in the second part. She fantasizes that she did not have her lover killed, and that she is the sweet, small town girl that is out to conquer Hollywood. The mobsters in her fantasy were there to explain away her failure as an actress in the second part. It wasn't that the other girl (Camilla/Laura Harring- 2nd part) was better than she, it was that she was forced on the director by the mob. That's why Camilla in the first half has the face of the woman who kisses Camilla/ Laura Harring in the second. Diane Selwyn is taking random names and aquaintances from the second (real) part and plugging them into the first (fantasy) part.

Just my take