The David Lynch movie that confused the cast and crew: “What happens?”
David Lynch is a director whose work contains many mysteries. People puzzle over the sometimes ambiguous layers to his film that reveal little to audiences upon the first watch. With a nightmarish dreamscape, exaggerated colour palette, and disjointed music choices, Lynch’s stories are the kind that need multiple viewings before you can glean any sort of understanding of what they’re about.
They evade obvious interpretation, which is what makes them so captivating and enigmatic, with audiences today still pondering over the strange images in Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet. While it is understandable that viewers aren’t clued up on the inner-workings of the story, you’d imagine that the actors and collaborators on the films would be, but according to Laura Harring, this isn’t the case.
Mulholland Drive, released in 2001, follows an actor called Betty Elms who moves to Hollywood to become a movie star, but her life is disturbed by the presence of another woman who has amnesia. Meanwhile, as they attempt to discover her identity, a filmmaker also has issues with the production of his latest film.
The film definitely falls into the category of films that feel like bad dreams, with a narrative that feels loose and evasive; flitting between strange ideas and concepts that leave a sour taste in your mouth, struggling to latch onto one thing that will help you understand the correlation and meaning of each scene. It is Lynch at his best, with incredible performances from the lead cast that add to this dizzying disorientation.
However, when asked about her understanding of the film, Harring had no more answers than we do, saying, “Who was killed? Was it Diane? Was it Camilla? Was it Rita? Was it Betty? Who was on that bed at the end? And, when you think about it, it could be any one of them; the film works with any character.” Despite not having concrete answers to the questions created, she did offer her own insight into the ending of the film, saying, “…the dead body at the end is the death of the ego, and how we can really be free at the end.”
This is a fascinating take and a theory that can be added to the endless sea of ideas about the film’s meaning. Some have theorised that the entire story is a dream, while some have imagined that it is a coping mechanism for trauma and Betty Elms was a victim of sexual abuse. While it is fun to conjure the possibilities of the story, Lynch himself has given some clues to help viewers discover the movie’s meaning, highlighting the importance of red lampshades, clues that are revealed in the opening credits and the key that is given.
Ultimately, the beauty of this film comes from the fact that it creates questions that are ultimately unanswerable, and sometimes, the journey of seeking the truth is more satisfying than ever finding the answers. Sometimes, we watch a horror or thriller film, and once we discover the reasons behind why everything is happening, it immediately becomes less interesting. The best bit is when we are immersed in the unknown, and Lynch is a master of the unknown.
