An Oneiric Fugue: The Various Logics of Mulholtand Drive

DAVID ANDREWS

When you sleep, you don't control your dream. I like to dive into a dream world that I've made, a world I chose and

that I have complete control over

—David Lynch (qtd. in Chion 168)

Approaching Mulholland Drive

PREDiCTABLY, REVIEWERS HAVE CALLED David

Lynch's remarkable Mulholland Drive (2001)many things it is not. They have described it as"chaotic" (Mathews 2). Several have charac-terized it as a "dead-end journey," "a head-scratcher" that lacks "continuity" (Verniere 1,Holden 3). Others have reported that its imag-es and vignettes "mean nothing in a conven-tional plot sense" {Turan 2). Even those whohave lauded it have counseled that viewerswho "require logic" should "see somethingelse" (French 1, Ebert 3). They are wrong, ofcourse. Mulholland Drive is Lynch's most rigor-ous film. What has thrown the critics off issomething viewers familiar with Lynch shouldbe used to by now: the film is replete not withlogic but with logics, which require viewers tohold multiple understandings in suspense.This is what an ideal Lynch film demands of itsaudience, and Mulholland Drive is Lynch'smost ideal film to date.

The temptation when viewing a film of thissort is to call it illogical, for the word "logic"itself suggests a dialectical system aimed at aunitary truth. But Lynch's most innovative and

DAVi D AN D R Ews has taught American literatureand film for the State University of New York, Chi-cago State University, and the University of Illinoisat Chicago. His essays on film have appeared inThe journal of Popular Culture, film Criticism,Bridge, and elsewhere. He is working on his sec-ond book, Soft in the Middle: The ContemporarySoftcore Feature between Porn and Art, to be pub-lished by Ohio State University Press in 2005.

Structured f\\ms—Lost Highv\/ay (1997) comesto mind—refuse to satisfy the viewer's urge fora monolithic storyline, for a narrative impelledby a univocal intention. As a result. Lynch hasover the years suffered at the hands of critics.Witness Lost Highway, which, as Adam |oneshas noted, divided critics and bred reviewsthat "exhibited a tentative, confused, or evenfrustrated nature" (214).^ Regardless, the factthat Lynch's best films are not unitary does notmean they are irrational or, as is often thought,arbitrary. Instead, they are multiply logical. Hotfor certainties, reviewers have claimed that theobvious openness of a film such as Lost High-way \staniamountXo self-indulgence, disorga-nization, and. in a word, gibberish. Attitudeslike these are perhaps one reason that Lynchsupplies Mulholland Drive with such a denselyunified narrative, one that, if confusing on afirst viewing, quickly coalesces on subsequentviewings into an organic psychonaturalisticaccount, a seemingly unitary interpretationthat depends on the film's explicit oneiricstructure. Nevertheless, this clear narrativearchitecture is something of a red herring, for.on closer inspection, the film proves to be asopen, as indeterminate, and as multiple asLost Highway. In a sense, Mulholland Drivejustifies its interpretive openness—and thepure aesthetic thrill of its intricate formal struc-tures, variously self-reflexive, allusive, andfugal—by grounding this openness in psycho-logical detail and the apparently monolithicnarrative that such detail yields.

Before analyzing the various logics of Mul-holland Drive, it is helpful to briefly summarize

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its narrative as a linear structure. This narrativespiits in two. The first movement is the story ofBetty (Naomi Watts) and Rita (Laura Elena Har-ring). Betty is a would-be actress from DeepRiver,̂ Ontario, who moves to Hollywood to findRita, an amnesiac car-crash victim who borrowsher name from a Rita Hayworth poster, in heraunt's shower. Despite mysterious circum-stances—$125,000 in cash and a bizarre bluekey in Rita's purse, as well as a putrescentcorpse (Lyssie Powell) in the apartment of Di-ane Selwyn, the one name Rita remembers—Betty resolves to help Rita find her identitywithout involving the police, whom Rita instinc-tively fears. Meanwhile, Betty begins trying outfor roles. Two other threads, one involving aninept hitman (Mark Pellegrino) apparentlysearching for Rita and the other chronicling amiserable day in the life of film director AdamKesher Qustln Theroux), intersect via the shad-owy magnate. Mr. Roque (Michael). Anderson).Roque may control hitmen interested in Rita. Hedefinitely controls Kesher's production, whichis shut down after Kesher refuses to cast Cam-illa Rhodes (Melissa George), a blonde actressput forth by Roque's mob associates, for thefemale lead. The film is recasting this prizepart—possibly because Rita, now missing, pre-viously had the part. His life a sudden sham-bles, Kesher complies, anointing Camilla "thegirl." The main thread concludes bizarrely (evenby the standards of a segment that includes aTerrifying Bum [Bonnie Aarons) with a rottingface and an ominous yokel known as The Cow-boy [Monty Montgomery]). After their inaugurallesbian tryst, Betty and Rita visit Club Silencio.where a blue box appears in Betty's purse. Ontheir return, she vanishes, and then is followedby Rita, who is sucked into the blue box the keyunlocks.

The second movement begins with Bettybeing awakened by knocking—except she risesfrom Diane's bed as Diane. This Diane is noth-ing like Betty. She is exhaustively pathetic: sul-len, insecure, unkempt, and jealous. Becauseof its nonlinear editing, this section is difficultto reconstruct, but the gist seems to be thatDiane is an unsuccessful actress from Ontario

who has learned to hate the vampish Camilla(i.e., the first section's Rita). Camilla inspiresDiane's jealousy and hatred by beating her forroles (e.g., in "The Sylvia North Story") andspurning her in love (through the sexual atten-tion she pays both Kesher and the blonde Cam-illa of the first section). Diane hires the inepthitman to kill Camilla. He gives her an ordinaryblue key as the signal that the deed is done. Atthe start, the key is on her coffee table, so pre-sumably Camilla is dead throughout the secondsection's frame scenes, which all transpiresoon after Diane awakens. Thus Camilla's ap-pearances all appear to be either flashbacks orhallucinations. Apparently, Diane is now pur-sued by external detectives and internal de-mons. Paranoia and a guilty conscience yieldmadness and suicide: Diane shoots herself asshe lies in bed—the same bed in which, in thefirst movement, the putrescent corpse wasfound.

The Oneiric Reading: NaturalizingDreams and Madness

Though difficult, it is not impossible to con-struct a plausible, unitary interpretation fromthe above summary. In this oneiric interpreta-tion, the entire film takes place in a mentaluniverse—Diane's head—including thosescenes that involve neither Betty nor Diane.'The Betty-Rita narrative is Diane's dream. TheDiane-Camilla narrative provides a waking, al-beit frequently hallucinatory, frame for thatdream and provides psychological explanationsformany of its particulars, including its identityswitches. To quote Dune (1985), this shorter,second section might be called "the sleeperhas awakened." Like The Wizard ofOzii^jg), aLynch favorite (as Wild at Heart [1990] demon-strates), Muihoiland Drive may then be viewedas a nonnaturatistic film with an implied natu-ralistic narrative. Much Wke Sunset Boulevard{19^0), Muihoiland Drive is in this view a pro-foundly sad meditation on how dreams of Hol-lywood success turn to dust—then to jealousy,murder, madness, escapist fantasy, and finally,suicide. The twist is that the figurative dreamer

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is also a literal one, which, when combinedwith Lynch's typical welrdness, leads to cine-matic phantasmagoria.

Muihoiland Drive is prefaced by two scenescrucial to this "ideal" oneiric reading. The filmopens with a shot of jitterbuggers—some in cut-out live action, some in cut-out silhouette-dancing on a synthetic field of violet as a shim-mering haze emerges from the bottom and issuperimposed over the scene. The haze re-solves into the faces of an elderly couple and ayoung woman (Diane/Betty), who is apparentlybasking in applause. The film then cuts to afloating, off-focus shot of Diane's carpet, bed,and pink pillow. To the offscreen sound ofheavy breathing, the camera closes on the pil-low and fades to black. This is followed by aghostly shot of a Muihoiland Drive sign flicker-ing in the headlights of Rita's limousine. ThusDiane's dream narrative commences.

The pillow is the key.t It apparently estab-lishes that the narrative that follows is a dreamand that the synthesized jitterbug shot thatprecedes it has diegetic import—as. for exam-ple, Lynch's stylized depiction of Diane's pre-sleep torpor.'' (This idea is reinforced when theshimmeringwhite trio flashes once in the sec-ond scene, creating a visual bridge between thetwo scenes.) It is a telling choice: it returns Di-ane to her last successful "dream," her dance-contest victory, which led her to acting—or asshe sullenly qualifies herself, her "wanting toact." Diane is starting over at the point at whichdreams still seem possible. Is the elderly cou-ple (Jeanne Bates and Dan j . Birnbaum) in thefirst sequence her parents, of whom the dia-logue omits mention? This possibility is intrigu-ing, as it explains why these oldsters are, onthe one hand, the illusions that trigger Diane'ssuicide at the end of the film, but on the otherhand seem unrelated to Betty (and loboto-mized in their bonhomie) as she arrives in LosAngeles. If this is the case, then from the startDiane's unconscious focuses on neutralizingthose forces of conditioned morality most dan-gerous to her sanity and life.

It is important to understand that as shefalls asleep, Diane is already a depressive.

suicidal woman beset by twin "knockings":from the police and from her conscience. Theentire story of Betty and Rita represents thedreamer's stylized escape from, and prettifiedresurrection of, a more ontic past. In thedream, it is not Diane who wants Camilla killedbut a Kafkaesque Hollywood syndicate that,significantly, is uninterested in artistry—andbesides, Camilla's killing is thwarted by "fate"(the car crash), so she lives on as Rita. Betteryet, Diane herself is reconfigured as a sleek,talented, upwardly mobile, confident actress—in other words, she adopts the qualities sheadmires in Camilla while dispensing with therest—who, far from wanting to hurt Rita (theperson Camilla becomes), goes to unreason-able, even dangerous lengths to help her. Theunconscious dreamer is creating an elaboratesystem of defenses for the waking self by firstdissolving that self, then reconfiguring it in alight as positive as that which overexposes herface in the jitterbug sequence. Indeed, this"dream place"~-a term Betty applies to heraunt's^ Hollywood home but which applieslikewise to the entire first section—even allowsDiane to explain and, ironically enough,avenge other failings.

Consider that in dreaming her Betty-self to"The Sylvia North Story" audition, the sleepingDiane kills, it seems, nearly thirty birds with asingle stone. Shortly after Betty's arrival, Kesh-ertakes two long, aestheticized looks at her,with an extreme close-up conveying starry-eyedlove. As a casting agent (Rita Taggart) predicts,Betty knocks the director "right out of thepark," symbolically winning the man who stoleCamilla from Diane and suggesting that if hecould, Kesher would cast Betty as the lead inhis film, which happens to have the same titleas the one whose lead Diane lost and Camillawon. In a sense, Diane conquers her romanticrival, Kesher,' and one-ups Camilla both emo-tionally and professionally—with the lattervic-tory reinforced by Rita's obvious lack of actingtalent. Further, by imagining Betty's flight fromthe audition, the dreamer has imagined that itis not incompetence that has cost her the part,but a combination of baleful external factors'*

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and her own goodness. Kesher cannot give herthe part, for he is bound to give it to the blondeCamilla, who as a malign, anonymous figure inthe second section engages in a malicious kisswith the dark Camilla (which also suggests theblonde Camilla wins victories unfairly, some-thing Diane wants to believe). Moreover, Bettycannot break her promise to meet Rita—neitherher charity nor her honor allows it.

All of this is twisted in beautifully involutefashion by the fact that the film Kesher is direct-ing in the second section is not "The SylviaNorth Story." On that plane, a film of that titlehas already been directed by a man named BobBrooker (Wayne Grace). Is this an exercise in"dream logic," a random firing of mnemonicsnippets from Diane's past? Yes and no: thoughDiane's dream is a brlcolage of waking memo-ries, it is rarely random. After all, Brooker is theman who selects Camilla for the lead in "TheSylvia North Story"—a defeat Diane reduces to"He didn't think so much of me." Diane-the-dreamer iiteralizes this rationalization by fash-ioning a Brookerwho is a hilarious moron withno eye for talent. Though Betty's audition is byall other accounts "stellar," he alone remainsunimpressed, deeming it "forced" (albeit "hu-manistic").

Naturally, this elaborate process of evasionand self-justification cannot work. Sleepersawaken; the external world reasserts its hold.The process is doomed by internal contradic-tions as well. As evasions of Diane's sins,Betty's virtues lead Betty to emblems of thosesins, thus reminding the dreamer of a nightmar-ish reality. Betty's goodness pushes herto helpRita, which in turn pushes them both towardDiane Selwyn's apartment. Betty's confidencehas a parallel trajectory. The dreamer transfersmost of Diane's meekness to Rita, who wantsnothing to do with Betty's plan to visit the San-ta Bonita apartments. Rita also displays anirrational fear of the authorities, which mayalso mark a projection of Diane's postmurderfears onto another person.' (Betty inexplicablydoes not want to go to the police either, but it isclear she fears neither them nor anyone else.)After the pair views the corpse—a scene that

signals how seriously Diane has considered theprospect of suicide, while formally prefiguringthe scene in which she kills herself"-thedream practically bursts. As the pair rush inhorror from the fetid apartment, the film sur-face threatens rupture: the characters blur, trailapt ghost images, and almost merge. Betty'svirtue has undermined her world.

As any Freudian would predict, Diane's con-science is as much a part of her unconsciouslife as her conscious life; sleep offers no re-spite. Indeed, Diane's conscience manipulatesBetty as surely as Diane's visions of an im-proved self do. Diane's dream is littered withemblems of guilt, emblems that intrude evenon her sanitized "dream place." The beauty ofLynch's supposedly "chaotic" film is that it isso dense, so orderly and intricate; even thedialogue that Betty practices for her auditionreminds the dreamer of her misdeeds." Themost obvious emblem of Diane's guilt, though,is the blue key that Rita finds in her purse. InDiane's world, this is an ordinary key, but be-cause it is the signal that Camilla is dead, itcarries an intolerable psychic weight. Indeed,Diane is staring at it when she goes insane.Blue has come to color her world; for her, it isthe color of guilt, madness, and death. It is nosurprise, then, that as she backs away from herimagined tormentors, she wears a bluish robeand the frenetic blue light of psychosis is flash-ing through the hall. In Betty's world, the bluekey has been made sleek and, well, Lynchian,but its simple presence in her world, no matterhow stylized, bears witness not only to Diane'ssin but to her final inability to escape that sin,even in a brave new world.

For Betty, the mystery of the key is yet anoth-er incentive to help Rita probe the mystery ofher identity. Pursuing that mystery will causeherto grow closerto Rita, to the point wherethey become sexually involved; the attractionrefuses to stay submerged. But their coupling,shortly after they see each other as twins in abathroom mirror, signals the end of manydreams. Betty has returned to the sexual andcareerist, ratherthan the altruistic and other-wise virtuous, imperatives of her Diane-self. It

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Photo 1: Rita (Laura ElenaHarring) and Betty (NaomiWatts) in Winkie's Diner,Muihoiland Drive. ©2001Universal Studios (Univer-sal Focus). Photographer;Melissa Mosely.

is no surprise, then, that after their sex scene,Rita awakens noticeably stronger, someonewho for the first time is in command of Betty:"Go somewhere with me." She is not quite thedomineering Camilla, just as Betty is not quitethe sullen Diane, but both are closer to theirwaking identities. When they do "go some-where," Club Silencio, it is Rita who comfortsBetty, who holds Betty tight as she convulsesuncontrollably (which any viewer of Lost High-way will recognize as a sign that a sort of meta-morphosis is taking place). Club Silencio isperhaps the most wonderfully realized of a longline of spooky Lynch nightclubs, and it is pivot-al to Muihoiland Drive. Its master color is blue(blue smoke, blue light, blue wig), so it is anappropriate place for the apparition of the bluebox. In sexualized symmetry with the earlierremoval of the key from Rita's purse, the boxappears in Betty's purse upon the conclusion ofa spectacular Spanish-language performance ofRoy Orbison's "Crying." The box is the mostdamning emblem of guilt of all. In the dream, itis quite literally Rita's death. When Rita opensit—and she must be the one to open it, whichperhaps explains why Betty vanishes beforeshe does so—she dies, the box dropping to thefloor as she is submerged in the blackness ofDiane's unconscious.

More symbolically, of course, the box standsfor Camilla's murder and Diane's complicity in

it. It is a Pandora's box of guilt, madness, andsuicide. When Diane recalls the moment shewas first shown the key at Winkie's, she re-members asking the hitman, "What's it open?"lust prior to asking this question, she sees atthe register the man who will die of fright(Patrick Fischler) in her dream. The hitman re-plies to her question by laughing ominously.The suggestiveness of his laugh, along with herown guilt, causes Diane to dream that the keyopens a box of horrors, a box owned by a Terri-fying Bum who haunts her dream and whomshe associates with the man seen at the regis-ter. The dissolve from the hitman's laughter tothe scene of the Terrifying Bum behind Winkie'sis thus highly significant. Like much of the sec-ond half, it is out of sequence: Diane is shownthe key before Camilla is killed; she sees theBum in her dream after Camilla is killed; andshe imagines the Bum releasing her parentaltormentors from the box after she awakens.Presumably, this hallucination is concurrentwith her sitting at home, staring at the key; thetormentors trigger her suicide thereafter. Thather memory of the hitman's laugh segues into avision of the Bum reveals how her disintegrat-ing psyche confuses the unconscious with theconscious. In her dream, then, the key, the box,and the Bum are interrelated emblems of guiltand fear. Further, in this psychonaturalistic ac-count, it is not incidental that the Bum's face is

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rotten and bluish. As an agent of conscience,fear, and suicide, it makes sense that his putre-fying, terrifying face recalls Diane's dream ofher own putrefying, terrifying face—and the hueneeds no comment.

In a sense, the Cowboy might also be seenas an agent of conscience and self-destruction.He is similar to the Bum in that he seems tohave power over events; as the Man Who Diesof Fright says of the Bum, "He's the one who'sdoing it." In the dream, the Cowboy tells Kesh-er, "You will see me one more time if you dogood. You will see me two more times if you dobad." Kesher seems to have done "good," butDiane has not. This perhaps explains why theviewer is shown the Cowboy twice just before"the sleeper awakens." After Rita disappears,the scene morphs from Aunt Ruth's apartmentto Diane's. Diane is on the bed. but she is notdead, or at least has not been for long: herbody looks fresh. The Cowboy opens her bed-room door and says, "Hey pretty girl, time towake up." The viewer is then shown the bodyagain. Its skin has a ghastly gray sheen and anexposed part of the mattress looks to have sud-denly rotted and burst (which is exactly how themattress looks when Rita and Betty see thecorpse). The viewer then sees the Cowboy onemore time; he looks glum and closes the door.This deterioration of the body—and the doubletake of the Cowboy—may be the sleeper's ac-knowledgment that she has done "bad" andwill pay for it on awakening.'^

Before moving on, I should explain in detailhow this oneiric reading interprets the structureand psychological purpose of the second sec-tion of Mulholland Drive. The framing structuresare graceful and fascinating and deserve anarticle oftheirown. As noted, the second sec-tion provides two sets of frames. The largerframe encloses the first section. In flashback,the viewer sees Diane before falling asleep,while in the film's present, the viewer sees Di-ane in her robe afterwaking up. The smallerframe encloses the second section itself: theshots of Diane in her robe are the present, andthese scenes in a sense circumscribe all the

other shots, which are either flashbacks (theparty scene, the Winkle's scene, the masturba-tion scene) or hallucinations (the Camilla-comes-back scene, the Terrifying Bum scene),lust as the first section is viewed from thedreamer's perspective and is thus unreliable,the second section is viewed from the perspec-tive of a paranoid woman on the verge of mad-ness and suicide—and is also unreliable. (Thinkof Sunset Boulevard as narrated from Norma'sperspective. Better yet, think of a paranoid Poenarrator, updated as a bisexual female, imagin-ing yet another revenant woman. For the guiltymind, the dead never stay that way—an ideaexemplified by Fred Madison, another Lynchcharacter seemingly taken from Poe.) This is atricky strategy, and a lesser director would havebotched it, for the second section has two di-vergent psychological purposes: both to implya set of credible, naturalistic explanations forthe dream's content and to reveal tbe mentaldeterioration of a mind from within that mind.That is, the second section must at once feelreal and unreal, reliable and unreliable.

Having touched on many of the ways inwhich Lynch accomplishes his first purpose. Iwill not go further except to say that one of thesecond section's richest scenes in this regard isthe party sequence at Kesher's home. Here theviewer learns through a quick cut how the ludicespresso scene in the first section came to beimagined by the dreamer: as Diane drinks herespresso, she looks up and sees the menacingface of the man who is the espresso snob/mob-ster (Angelo Badalamenti) in the first move-ment, thus establishing an association be-tween the two elements that will resurface inher dream. The viewer is also shown a mandressed in cowboy garb passing through aroom. When Kesher boasts. "So I got the pool,she got the pool man." the entire scene involv-ing his comic breakup reorients itself. The view-er learns the origins of the limousine scene andof the flickering Mulholland Drive sign; he alsolearns that Diane's aunt is dead and has lefther money—perhaps the cash used to kill Cam-illa? The new understandings and possibilities

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that may be derived from this scene represent arich interpretive resource and a primer inLynch's nonlinear, associaticnal storytelling.

This scene also demonstrates how Lynchaccomplishes his second purpose. It is impor-tant to remember that Diane is rememberingthe scene, and, as in a dream, to some extentreconfiguring it. Fred Madison (Bill Pullman),the protagonistof/.osf ^//g/iivoy who resemblesDiane in many particulars, makes a commentthat is to the point: "1 like to remember thingsmy own way . . . How I remembered them, notnecessarily the way they happened." WhileDiane's memory does not seem as distorted asFred's, her recall is clearly unreliable. This ex-plains the tonal opposition of the two move-ments. In part one. everything associated withBetty's new life in Hollywood seems bright and.for a while, squeaky clean; she is optimisticand composed, and new friends like Coco (AnnMiller) are friendly and helpful. In part two,everything associated with Diane's old life isdark and dingy; she is pessimistic and oftenunkempt, and new "friends" like Coco, whoappears at the party, are condescending andmalicious. The psychonaturalistic accountholds that, in the second section, Diane's con-scious memory darkens her past, making itmore hateful, more sordid, than is naturalisti-cally probable, just as in the first. Diane's un-conscious memory makes her dream life shinierthan is naturalistically possible. The lightingscheme Lynch adopts reinforces this strategy.Section one is primarily shot in natural or brightlight until after the visit to the Santa Bonitaapartments; section two is shot in subdued ornocturnal lighting. The party exemplifies such anighttime shot, and Coco's characterizationthere is typically mean-spirited. Camilla is thecharacter whose behavior changes most radi-cally—so it is apt that she seems to lure Dianeto Kesher's party solely in order to humiliateher, lavishing her affections not on Diane buton Kesher and the blonde Camilla, who is like-wise irrationally cruel. Even characters friendlyin both sections—the waitress at Winkie's (Mel-issa Crider)—create contrasts unfavorable to

Diane. In the first part, the waitress's name isDiane, so she is disheveled and very ordinary;in the second, her name is Betty, so she isgroomed and ready for a Revlon contract. (Pre-dictably, Betty is kind to the waitress. Dianecan only snarl at her.) Plainly, these are thememories and perceptions of a depressive withminiscule self-esteem. More than that, in thedream interpretation, they are an unconsciousjustification of suicide, just as the dream is anelaborate if flawed survival mechanism.

Lynch also accomplishes his second pur-pose, exposing the instability of Diane's mind,through his liberal use of off-focus shots andnervy cuts. Or nervous: organizing the disconti-nuity editing of the second section are noisesthat jar the delicate Diane, thus accenting thefragility of her being as she listens to knocks ather door. For example, the scene before Dianeis called to the party depicts her masturbating,a highly disturbing scene that moves in and outof focus.'^loining the two scenes is the soundof a phone, which jerks Diane's head away fromher frenzied autoeroticism; the scene switchesto Diane in a party dress, debating whether topickup her bedroom phone to talk to Camilla.The cut marks a psychic stress fracture, onethat has indelibly altered Diane's mind, orga-nizing not only the two scenes, but Diane'smemories as well. The sound bridge from theparty scene—which also contains a number ofshots in which Lynch adjusts his focus—to thescene with the hitman operates in a similarfashion. Lynch works Diane's character into astate of agitated misery (the cut comes as asmug, laughing Kesher is about to announcehis plans to marry Camilla), then uses the off-screen sound of shattering dishware to jerk herneck into the next scene, in which a similarsound has caused a similarly violent twist. Theoff-focus shots and the jarring cuts both conveythe state of Diane's mind and serve as a cau-tion to any viewer who would view this section"straight."

What of the final sequence, a nonnarrativecoda that resembles the nonnarrative prelude?It could be argued that this prelude-coda struc-

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ture supplies the film with a third frame. Re-gardless, the Ideal oneiric reading of Mulhol-land Drive relies on the similarities between thetwo segments: both coda and prelude amountto fade-outs, one into sleep, the other intodeath. In the coda, the viewer is given threedistinct scenes: a smoky closeup of the Terrify-ing Bum's face; a series of blue-tinted, overex-posed head shots of Betty and Rita superim-posed over a Los Angeles skyline; and thefinale in Club Silencio, in which blue smokedisperses before the woman in the blue wigwhispers "sf7enc/o."The smoke obscuring theBum is linked to the postsulcide shot. AfterDiane pulls the trigger, her room is suffusedwith blue-lit smoke. In this reading, the smokesuggests the muffling of consciousness. Itscolor suggests the persistence of guilt, as doesthe presence of the Bum. But guilt/s fading:dying extinguishes guilt more effectively thandreaming can. The dissolve into the processshot leaves Diane with a happy ending, onethat never occurred in life, not even in dreamlife. The overexposed faces superimposed overthe skyline, so similar to those superimposedover the jitterbuggers. are the smiling faces ofBetty and Rita on their way to Club Silencio. Thedream has been improved. Betty and Rita donof smite in that scene; by that point in thedream narrative, crying is all they have left. Asin the jitterbug scene, Diane's flickering uncon-

scious picks up where the dream went astray.Yet instead of continuing into a new cycle ofpain and regret, the images thankfully end.Though the film travels on to Club Silencio, theblue smoke disperses to reveal an empty stageand no audience—save for the woman in theblue wig (Cori Glazer). whose single word, "si-lencio," is for Diane tantamount to "the end."to "death." and perhaps to "mercy." Wakinglife. Lynch almost seems to say, is as illusory asdream life. For those troubled by a sense ofunpardonable sin, this is a great consolation.

Kinks in the Onerric Reading:The Possibility of a Supernatural Logic

The oneiric interpretation can clearly bepushed much further. The virtue of this readingIs its inclusiveness. the way it makes it possi-ble to naturalize the many nonnaturalistic de-tails and formal indeterminacies of MutholiandDrive into a totalized, psychological account ofa single mind's disintegration. At the sametime, this virtue is also the theory's flaw. For itsinclusiveness is a species of reductivism thatflattens out the film and dispenses with manyof the qualities that make it authentically Lyn-chian. Consider how this ideal reading treatsthe seemingly supernatural elements of Mul-holland Drive. In many of Lynch's films, thesupernatural is accorded a measure of legiti-

Photo 2; Diane (Naomiyi/attsje/?) and Camilla(Laura Elena Marring).Muihoiiand Drive. ©2001Universal Studios {Univer-sal Focus). Photographer:Melissa Mosely.

32 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 56.1 / SPRING 2004

macy that oneiric or otherwise psychologicalanalyses can never explain away; indeed, thisseems implicit to the term "Lynchian." In Dune,the Twin Peaks series (1990-91), and TwinPeaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), dreams act asportals to other dimensions, supernatural onesas real as ours. What distinguishes Kyle Mac-Lachlan's characters from other characters inall three projects—and what, in his role asAgent Dale Cooper, differentiates him from somany other Lynch policemen, who are typicallyincompetent—is that he pays attention to hisdreams, not for the insight they provide intohis own psychological being but for what theyconvey about external events, worldly or other-worldly. My view is that the crowning achieve-ment of Lynch's opus must be a film that al-lows the possibility that the unconscious is aconduit to some legitimate alternative realityor that ontological alternatives of some sortexist. At the same time, the word "Lynchian"suggests a cinematic indeterminacy that defiesmonolithic explanation, naturalistic or super-natural, oneiric or psychogenic. But the strictoneiric reading of Mulholland Drive allows forneither Lynchian quality. Its theoretical sjpple-ness is, ironically, rigid and unitary, banishingthe supernatural possibilities raised by theClub Silencio sequence, the Terrifying Bumscenes, the blue box, and even the coda,which in some ways recalls the coda of FireWalk with Me.

Yet 1 do fhrnk Mulholland Drive is Lynch'sgreatest achievement thus far. That one caninfer a coherent naturalistic account of the filmmarks it as an advance over Lost Highway,which was Lynch's most complete film prior toMulholland Drive. Though for the most part itlacks Lynch's typical ludic touch. Lost Highwayis incredibly unified, both formally and themati-cally. The film is a psychological tale, delvinginto Lynch's favorite themes: madness,dreams, and violence. But because its perspec-tive is so solipsistic, so closely identified with amadman's—and because the film contains noplausibly reliable source of information—itseems ludicrous even to posit a coherent natu-ralistic account of its content. The advantage of

this indeterminacy is that it maintains the film'sopenness to supernatural readings: the MysteryMan (Robert Blake) may be an authentic, dis-crete embodiment of Evil, or he may simply bea function of Fred Madison's psychosis. HenceLost Highway rema'ms open to supernaturalinterpretations without, as in Fire Walk with Me,confirming them. Unfortunately, this opennesscomes at the expense of narrative richness, ofpsychonaturalistic detail.

As noted. Mulholland Drive supplies awealth of such detail. Like Lost Highway, it isabout madness and dreaming, although it pri-oritizes dreaming. Its surface is more variedthan the surface of Lost Highway, alternatingseemingly realistic sections (which is why manycritics mistook it for simple Hollywood satire[Verniere 2; Holden l ; Chan 1-2]) and blatantlyunrealistic ones. In addition, its comedy isbroader than Lost Highway's, and its lightingscheme is less noirish. The question is, dothese psychological details, and the naturalis-tic account into which they coalesce, subordi-nate or neutralize that other quintessentiallyLynchian theme, the supernatural?

They do not. Though the oneiric reading isinternally coherent, it accounts for some de-tails less convincingly than others. For one, itdismisses the fact that the film portrays a di-versity of sleepers. If the film is a function ofDiane's mind, why, near the start of herdream, does the filmmaker so persistentlydepict Rita falling asleep, sleeping, and wak-ing up?"* The effect, it appears, is to encloseimportant scenes within her m'md, includingthe chain of calls from Roque to the hitman,'^the scene at Winkie's in which the man dies offright,'^ the scene involving Kesher and theCastigliane mobsters, and several others. (Norshould one neglect that Rita begins chanting''silencio" while asleep, having seemingly ac-cessed important information while dream-ing.) The result is subtle and inconclusive initself; interpreting these scenes as "belong-ing" to Rita leads nowhere. Still, these imagesof Rita falling asleep and waking up are just asthere as those of Diane doing the same. Thusthey gently undercut the ideal oneiric reading.

lOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 56.1 / SPRING 2OO4 33

creating a thin fissure of indeterminacy in anotherwise closed interpretation.

This uncertainty yields others. Excluding thecoda, the only scene in the second section inwhich Diane does not appear is the sequencebehind Winkie's, in which the Terrifying Bumputs the blue box in a bag, then drops it, re-leasing Diane's diminutive parental tormentors.In the psychonaturalistic account, Diane is athome hallucinating the Bum. This is a conve-nient explanation and one that makes sense.But the fact that it is the only scene of this sort,in combination with the fact that it involves theBum, who as a personification of Evil {or an evildeed) has a long Lynchian lineage, is discon-certing. It is quite possible that Lynch varies hisperspectival structure here so as to leave openthe notion that the Bum has a reality indepen-dent of Diane—just as Bob {Frank Silva) isdefinitely independent of Laura Palmer (SherylLee) in Fire Walk with Me, and the Mystery Manmaybe independent of Fred in Lost Highway^If this is the case—and it cannot be discounted,no matter how supple the oneiric interpreta-tion—an entirely new ontological plane emerg-es. This beautiful supernatural possibility workswith and against the psychonaturalistic ac-count, lust as the Mystery Man claims to havebeen "invited" by Fred Madison, the Bum, ifreal, seems to have been summoned by Di-ane's conspiracy to commit murder. The eventsleading to that act, then, might be understoodwithin a naturalistic scheme. But afterthat—and Diane's entire dream is after that—the arbi-ter of events and images could be Diane, theBum, or both. After all, the Man Who Dies ofFright claims the Bum is in charge: "He's theone who's doing it." Psychologically, the Bumis the dreamer's way of personifying her con-science and thus distancing herself from thething "doing it," that is, leading her toward self-destruction. But if the Bum is actual, he mayactually be "doing it," that is, dictating herdream and pushing her closer to the abyss aftershe wakes up. Ergo, this possibility casts intodoubt many of the oneiric reading's explana-tions for the dream as well as the various

(seeming) hallucinations that haunt Diane aftershe wakens from it.

There is, then, no ideally closed reading ofMulholland Drive. Nor should there be. In anideal Lynch film, the various interpretive logicsare all fleshed out (as the psychonaturalisticreading is not in Lost Highway) and are simulta-neously interdependent and mutually exclu-sive. The oneiric interpretation approaches thisideal, for It subordinates dream logic and psy-chogenic logic into a single psychonaturalisticaccount. But that account cannot subordinate,or be fully reconciled with, the film's supernatu-ral logic. Taking the latter as primary, one mightsubordinate the logic of dreams and pathologyunder that heading—but then the naturalisticreading would be discounted. This would con-stitute another false interpretive move. Neitherreading can be given primacy; both are there;the viewer has to find a way to accept that, totolerate it, and ideally, to enjoy it.

Repetition. Self-Reflection, and Allusion:The Musical Logic of Counterpoint

Why does Lynch invite such narrative indetermi-nacy? Perhaps because there is an abstractcinematic logic that does not depend on ide-ation, intellection, and narrative: formal logic,the symphonic logic of counterpoint. It is, ofcourse, impossible to avoid interpretation inthe Neitzschean sense, in which all perceptionis interpretive; but in a more limited sense, it ispossible to analyze and appreciate MulhollandDnVe apart from its narrative illusions. By creat-ing a film in which no unitary reading takesprecedence. Lynch directs the filmgoer to hisfilm's abstract qualities: to its reverberant son-ic, visual, and ideational motifs; to its play ofallusions; to its sensuous surface, so rich insaturated colors; to its labyrinthine repetitionsand variations.'^ Consider Michel Chion's claimthat, in Wild At Heart {1990) and Fire Walk withMe (1992), "the genre [Lynch] was aiming forcan be called "a cine-symphony," characterizedby traits such as the use of more powerful con-trasts than he previously allowed himself; the

tOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 56.1 / SPRING 200^

revelation ratherthan the concealment of theuse of discontinuity in the overall structure . . .and a bolder mixture of tones and atmo-spheres" {123). Lynch pursues this symphonicgoal in io$t Highway, and perhaps he perfectsit in Mulholland Drive. He has referred to LostHighway as a "psychogenic fugue" (qtd. inRhodes 58), a term that highlights both its nar-rative concern with psychosis and its formatemphasis on repitition and variation (seeRhodes 57-61). To twist this formulation slight-ly, one might dub Mulholland Drive an "oneiricfugue." Moreover, as Mutholland Drive, a filmabout filmmaking, is Lynch's most reflexiveproject to date—more so, even, than Lost High-way, a self-conscious film that makes frequentreferences to home videos and the porn indus-try—it is appropriate to focus on the abstractand the sensuous, especially since the film'saesthetic resources are thoroughly groundedand even justified by its narrative richness. It islikewise appropriate because the film repeat-edly instructs the viewer that "it is all an illu-sion," "it is all a tape."

I refer, of course, to the magnificent ClubSilencio segment, whose interpretive potentialis augmented if the supernatural reading is leftopen. The emcee (Richard Green) is a sort ofmagician; he controls events, directing his owndisappearance and the appearance of the bluebox; it is possible that Lynch sees in him anoccult figure pulling Diane away from her Bettyillusion, back to the reality of guilt. This figure isalso easily incorporated into the psychonatural-istic account. That said, at this point 1 wouldfocus on how this sequence directs the viewer'sattention beyond all narrative illusions, wheth-er naturalistic or supernatural. When, in hismesmerizing staccato, the magician tells theviewer that "it is all an illusion," Lynch is notjust reminding us that Diane's dream is an illu-sion, but that the whole cinematic experienceis an illusion, a filmstrip, "a tape recording."Lynch has fractured more than the surface ofthe dream narrative; he has fractured the entirefilm.'5 It is intriguing, then, that he situates hismost lovely sequence—Rebekah Del Rio's lip-

synched rendition of "Crying," interspersedwith exquisite closeups of Betty and Rita (espe-cially) weeping—in this scene. This is an art-for-art's-sake moment, an ethereal sequence thatbegs the viewer to engage in pure autotelicappreciation, forvia the magician, the directorhas renounced claims to narrative significance.The images are just images, the film just a film.This puts a different spin on the coda. By theautonomous, self-reflexive logic of MuihollandDrive, the blue-wigged woman's last word, "si-lencio," suggests that behind the film is noth-ing. No reality, no meaning, lust silence, forthefilm is an ether borne of beauty.^^

Though I haven't space for a comprehensivesurvey, I would briefly comment on two of thefilm's most effective motifs, both of which en-rich the symphonic logic of Mulholiand Drive:the visual allusions to Bergman's Persona(1966) and the related theme of doubling, sointegral to the film's dense contrapuntal mod-e l . " Reviewers have noted that MulhollandDrive is rife with references to Persona (Chan3-5; Verniere l ; Williams 2)." Few critics,though, have noted Lynch's specific visual allu-sions; instead, they have observed the resem-blances between each pair of central charac-ters.^^ But the specific visual references aremore impressive and significant; taken togeth-er, they allude to Persona structurally as welt. Iam not talking about the similarity betweeneach film's opening and closing montage;though similar formally and perhaps oneirically,this parallel is not visually specific. Instead, Iam talking about a trio of related visuals that in/Mu/rto//andDr/Ve includes, first, the shot ofBetty and Rita rushing from Diane Selwyn'sapartment; second, the shot of the couple inthe mirror admiring Rita's wig; and third, theshot of Rita and Betty awakening after sex.

As noted, the first shot creates a rent inLynch's film. For only the second time in thedream narrative (the first, aptly, involves theinitial appearance of the Terrifying Bum, anoth-er scene in which a face inspires horror), thefilm manipulates a nonnaturalistic effect, oneinaugurating a series of occurrences that

JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 56.1 / SPRING 200ii 35

quickly undermines the ontological authentici-ty of the entire first section. This mimics thefirst scene in which Bergman undercuts theseemingly stable narrative of Persona. Afterthe blonde Alma {Bibi Andersson) allows Eliza-bet {Liv Ullman) to walk through glass, sherealizes with horror the cruelty of which she iscapable. At that point, a flame seems to burnthrough her face and the film itself, revealingthe kind of image seen in the earlier associa-tional montage. The viewer of Persona returnsto the primary narrative through an off-focussequence—which suggests another techniqueshared by the films—and returns shaken, inboth cases, the characters' emotional re-sponses either effect or almost effect the irrup-tion of one filmic level into another. Thoughthis is only half accomplished in MulhollandDrive, it is clearthatif Diane were to awaken atthis point, the viewer would, as in Persona,return to the ontological plane introduced inthe film's opening sequence.

The next Persona reference is much morevisually specific and pursues the idea of merg-ing or doubling that Lynch hints at when heblurs the heads of Rita and Betty in the afore-mentioned scene. After returning to Ruth'sapartment, Betty helps Rita disguise herself ina blonde wig that makes her look more likeBetty—as the latter suggests when, looking atherself and her friend in a mirror, she com-ments, "You look like someone else." (Thisdovetails nicely with a comment Alma makes toElizabet: "I looked In the mirror and thought,why, we look alike.") This scene strikingly andunmistakably reconfigures a dreamy sequencein Persona in which Elizabet pays a nocturnalvisit to Alma. There she embraces Alma andturns her toward what the viewer must infer is amirror. Elizabet slowly pulls Alma's hair back,suggesting how a slight change in hairstyle-one Alma will adopt in later scenes—evokes thesimilarity between theirvisages. As the scenefades to black. Alma drops her head againstElizabet's breast, a gesture with a subtle eroticcharge. In Mulholland Drive, the mirror scenealso involves an embrace, one followed up by alesbian scene in which the mergings and dou-

blings of the previous two shots are literatizedthrough physical coupling.

Mulholland Drive's most interesting reinven-tion of Persona's iconography may be the sub-sequent shot. The mise-en-scene includes Rita,softly lit, lying supine on baby blue sheets.Betty is behind her, on her side, facing the cam-era. Rita's head is captured in a close profileshot, the shallow focus chiseling her featuresmore sharply than Betty's. Rita's head overlapsthat of Betty, whose eye, nose, and mouth arecarefully aligned with Rita's so as to form asingle face. Two takes later, the composition isthe same, but this time the camera focuses onBetty. These shots are the most overt signal yetof the identity transformation that has beenundenway since the couple viewed Diane'scorpse (indeed, it is at this point that Rita be-comes more assertive, for once telling Bettywhat to do). More pointedly, the scene is anhomage to Bergman's famous composite shotsin which he splices together the faces of Almaand Elizabet.

Obviously, the congruities noted above allinvolve the doubling theme, which is pivotal toboth films. Equally important is the fact thatLynch is building toward the Club Silencioscene—which violently undercuts Diane'sdream and transforms Mulholland Drive into anexplicitly self-referential, symphonic artifact—by way of a tripartite visual intermezzo thatinvokes Persona, another explicitly seif-reflex-ive, abstract film that involves acting and inwhich the director ruptures narrative illusion,using his powers to create a lovely, disturbingfilm with a strong yet indeterminate storyline. Itis as if Lynch meansto justify his own self-reflexive structures by systematically alludingto a now classic film that traversed the sameexperimental territory. This allusive system sug-gests that Lynch has arranged his Personareferences so that they supplement his film'snarrative psychology and, ultimately, undercutits movement toward determinacy, closure, andself-sufficiency. Psychology, Lynch implies, isnot enough, cinematically speaking; there areother logics to consider.^*

I have already delineated the most obvious

iOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 5 6 . 1 / SPRING 2OO4

way Mulholland Drive makes its doublingtheme manifest—that is, through the psycho-naturaiistic account, in which the ellipses, iden-tity switches, and divers happenings of the firstmovement are more or less explained and reori-ented via the repetitions that reverberatethroughout the second. This is the fugalscheme in which lines such as Betty's "It'sstrange to be calling yourseir and Diane's"This is the girl" are meaningful and right inboth a narrative and musical sense. Indeed, itis possible that Lynch's formal choices are notsubservient to his narrative material. Is it anyaccident that his narrative choices typicallyyield fertile ground for the kind of repetitionand variation that has become his signature,most notably in Lost Highway? \n that film.Lynch adopts plot resources that allow him tocreate a sonically and visually musical film.Like Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway splits its"psychogenic" narrative in two. According toEric Bryant Rhodes, the "parallel stories of iosfHighway aretwo manifestations of one essen-tial story: a man obsessed with possessing thewrong woman" (60). Interestingly, Rhodes re-fers to Susan Sontag's essay "Bergman's Perso-na" (1967) to support his argument that thissubject matter is a pretext for Lynch to indulgein contrapuntal "devices of duplication, opposi-tion, repetition, deviation, and inversion" (61).If, as Chion believes, the doublings and repeti-tions of Fire Walk with Me are part of Lynch'sprimary desire to create a "cine-symphony," itmakes sense to think that Lynch's recent use ofnarrative parallelism is an offshoot of this over-arching formal intention. More than a delightfulsidelight, the repetitions may be the point; inSontag's terms, the film "takes a position be-yond psychology [and] eroticism" (131}.

This would explain the obsessive way inwhich the film's formal elements wax andwane. Lines, sounds, images, myriad technicaleffects: all behave according to the logic ofcounterpoint. Such a logic explains those repe-titions in Mulholland Drive that resist narrativeexcavation. Consider the constant overheadshots of Los Angeles, which may be alignedwith the dreamer's perspective but which nev-

ertheless make no clear psychological sense.These shots resemble the overhead shots ofthe combine harvesting grain that, accompa-nied byAngelo Badalamenti's lush orchestra-tion, recur in that otherwise un-Lynchian film,The Straight Story {\$<^Si).Jh\s shot is one ofrelatively few repetitions in that film, and itsaim is not psychological but aesthetic and ar-chitectural. Lost Highway an<i i\/lulhotland Drive,which are anything but "straight," maximizesuch effects by integrating them with the narra-tive. Does Lynch really need to repeat "This isthe girl" a dozen times to convey the tremen-dous pain Diane feels at having identified Cam-illa to the hitman by that phrase? Or, for thatmatter, does the constant emphasis on coffeeand coffee cups tell us anything about Diane'spsychology and the danger of dreams? Grant-ed, the film's saturated coloration has greatsignificance, but is there a specific narrativeexplanation for the way the two movementsalternate the colors of sheets and robes(Betty's sheets are light blue and her bathrobepink; Diane's sheets are pink and her robe din-gy light blue)? What about the way the charac-ters in the first half seem to intuit approachingpresences? Why does Lynch so consistently usea mobile camera and asynchronous sounds tocreate disembodied perspectives?^'' There aredozens of similarly replicated motifs and tech-niques, duplications whose main point, itseems, is to repeat, to unify, to bind the filminto a melodic totality.

By now, it is apparent that Lynch is an au-teur bent on leaving behind an organic body ofwork, so it is not surprising that he practices aparallel musical technique across his opus.There are the generalized themes and obviousmotifs that ebb and flow, networking his films:dreaming; depression, paranoia, and overtpsychosis; supernatural evil; ontological frac-ture; aestheticized violence; sentimental evo-cations of the 1950s; cars; night shots of high-way stripes; diners and nightclubs; dogs,sprinklers, and picket fences; etc. But thereare also hundreds of leitmotifs, many of whichMulholland Drive perpetuates. Fervent weep-ing, elicited by a lip-synched song (see Blue

JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 56.1 / SPRING 2OO4 37

Velvet). Schematic treatments of night and day

{Blue Velvet and The Elephant Mari [1980]).

Schematic oppositions between blondes and

brunettes (Fire Walk with Me, Blue Velvet, and

Lost Highway). Nocturnal car accidents with

head wounds for radiant brunettes [Wild At

Heart). Seemingly incompetent detectives

(Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Fire Walkwith Me,

and Lost Highway). Ihe list draws into the

night. \f Mulholland Drive coritalned a floor

with black-and-white, zigzag stripes—Lynch's

most distilled emblem of inverted repetition, a

motif inaugurated by Eroserhead (1978)—it

would feel complete.

An Open Conctusion

The viewer is left with paradox. Contrary to the

film's reviews, Mulholtand Drive is dense with

narrative significance, yet this density may,

finally, be a justification of the film's formal

play, which results in a musical perfection that

(in ironic accord with its reviews) has no para-

phrasable meaning. Lynch's elegant film suc-

ceeds by simulating Chinese boxes. The first

box is a jumbled, discontinuous plot. Inside

that, the persistent viewer finds a second box,

a unitary storyline that naturalizes Diane's

dream. But inside that, the most persistent

viewer finds a third box, one that is beautiful,

delicate, and intransigent in its multiplicity.

This box (is it blue?) is neither jumbled nor uni-

tary nor strictly naturalistic. It is rather an inten-

tionally packed constellation of possibilities,

some of which are narrative and diegetic, some

formal and nondiegetic.

NOTES

1. For a concise overview of this film's critical recep-tion, see Jones,

2. This is a Blue Velvet reference: Dorothy Vallenslives in Deep River Apartments.

3. This idea is easiest to understand in terms of thedream: the dreamer is the watcher, whether Betty isinvolved or not. The presence of this watcher is indi-cated by the floating-camera effect Lynch achieves bycrane shots and by mobile framing in general; thiseffect is particularly noticeable in the Winkie's scenenear the beginning, a scene not involving Betty, The

Man Who Dies of Fright and his shot-reverse-shotcompanion (Michael Cooke) quite clearly "float,"

4, As are the sheet and mattress. The viewer isshown the bed several times in the first section—e.g.,during Betty and Rita's visit to Diane's apartment andduring the Cowboy's. In these shots, the mattress isshowing. But in the opening sequence, the mattressis not showing, nor is it showing when Oiane wakesup at the start of the second section. This is strongevidence that the first half is meant as a dream.

5, Considering how often Mulholland Drive is com-pared to Persona (1966), it is useful to note that sev-eral analysts have interpreted the celebrated openingmontage of Bergman's film as representing the firststages of sleep, whether NREM or REM, with the char-acter-driven narrative that follows a full-blown REMdream occurring within the head of a single character(Kinder 66-72; Hobson 90-94). Though I do not thinkLynch {or, for that matter, Bergman, who describes hisown montage as almost purely poetic and thereforenandiegetic [Bergman 198-99]) conceptualizes hisscheme quite this scientifically, I do think he intendshis audience to read this sequence as a drifting off,an oneiric fade-out.

6. The second section confirms that Aunt Ruth(Maya Bond) is dead; her presence is more wishfulfillment,

7. This naturalistic dream interpretation also makesit possible to interpret the tortures Kesher undergoesduring his bad day as another way in which Diane quadreamer gets even with him. He loses his film, hiswife, his bank account—and worst of all, the dreamreduces his dapper black suit to a pink-stained messand then forces him to wear it through the majority ofthe first section—so that during his midnight rendez-vous at the corral, he looks almost as silly as the Cow-boy. Unsurprisingly, in a film with a lush yet carefullyrestricted chromatic scheme, pink is a color consis-tently identified with Diane/Betty, as if the stains onhis suit are a sign of her personal investment in hishumiliation. Similarly, Wilkins (Scott Coffey), the manwho atKesher's party reminds Diane of Camilla's"great" performance in "The Sylvia North Story," ishumiliated during the dream movement by beingassociated solely with feces.

8, This category includes not just Roque and theCastigliane brothers but also the Cowboy, All conspireto give the blonde Camilla the part in Kesher's film, allseem to have some sinister power to drive "the bug-gy" of events—and all can be linked to Diane's desireto escape responsibility. Two other characters whoapparently have some arcane power over events andthus fit in this category include the Terrifying Bum andthe emcee/magician at Club Siiencio.

9. The outstanding example of this type oF projec-tion is the Man Who Dies of Fright behind Winkie's.He is a proxy sufferer, the dreamer's method of dis-tancing herself from her own fear.

38 lOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO 5 6 . 1 / SPRING 2OO4

10. Though not exactly the same. The corpse iswearing a gray slip. Diane avjakens in a similar s l i p -but when she actually kills herself, she is wearing alight blue robe with the slip underneath. I point thisout to demonstrate that Betty and Rita are not viewingDiane's actual corpse, that is, they have not, by enter-ing her apartment in the dream, entered an alternatedimension that scrambles the unconscious with theconscious and shoots forward in time—a possibilitynot to be lightly discounted in a Lynch film.

11. Betty's first line is "You've come back," a linethat recurs when, on awakening, Diane hallucinatesan image of Camilla in red. One could almost imagineCamilla continuing the dialogue: "I thought that'swhat you wanted." The aptly sexualized dialogue,which evokes the combination of attraction and repul-sion visible in Diane's face when hallucinating Cam-illa, even suggests Diane's self-hatred ("I hate you, Ihate us both"), her crime ("I'll kill you"), and her fearof capture ("Then they'll put you in jaiT}. Doubly inter-esting is that throughout most of the movie, Diane'smemories of her waking life determine her dreamillusions; here, a memory of her dream life has deter-mined an illusion borne of insanity.

12. Three, perhaps not incidentally, seems to bethe unlucky number with the Bum, as well: the ManWho Dies of Fright expires after he sees him a thirdtime, and presumably, Diane does the same, seeingthe Bum once in a dream, once in a hallucination, andonce as she fades into death.

13. This scene perhaps alludes to a somewhat lessfrenzied scene in Bergman's TheSilence (1963), a filmMulholiand Drive invokes in other subtle ways, in-cluding the main relationship (two schematized wom-en whose abject relationship has lesbian overtones)and that crucial word, "silencio."

14. This technique, and the uncertainties it produc-es, is another similarity Mulholtand Drive shares withPersona, which frequently depicts both Alma andElizabet falling asleep, asleep, or waking up.

15. One presumes this is the inept hitman. Theviewer is shown only his arm answering a phone.

16.This man is also a self-described dreamer, mak-ing the issue of who's dreaming whom even morecomplex.

17. By "independent." I do not mean "unrelated." Isimply mean that they have an objective reality; theyare not, that is, purely subjective constructions ofDiane, Laura, and Fred, respectively.

18. In speaking of Mulholland Drive, Lynch has saidthat "[albstractions can exist in cinema and that's oneof the powers of the cinema to me. And I love theabstract feel of it and I hope others will as well. I knowpeople understand it" {"City" 2).

19. Lynch is, of course, drawing an analogy be-tween dreams and films, a frequentstrategy of his.See Bergman, "On Dreams"; "a film does not suffer inthe slightest from having the illusion broken . . . It is a

good idea to suddenly wake the audience up foramoment and then to plunge them into the dramaticaction again, as when you continue to dream afterbeing briefly awakened" (55).

20. It is interesting that this nihilistic beauty, so tospeak, is on several levels explicitly fraught with sad-ness. Lynch is an aesthete but not one with a simplis-tic or banal sense of beauty. Of Lost Highway, Badaia-menti observes that "even in its uneasiness anddisturbing nature, there's a beauty, and that's what[Lynch is] looking for" (Keeier n. pag.). One need onlythink of the shot of the woman dancing atop the caras Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) mauls Jeffery Beau-mont (Kyle MacLachlan) in Blue Velvet; therein "weconfront the beautiful image in stark relation to thefacticity of the real" (Beil 192). As it turns out. Lynchhas all along been hoping to distill a discomfitingbeauty, one approximating the sublime.

21. Bergman has reported that in his trilogy and inPersona he was intent on creating visual "chambermusic . . . in which, with an extremely limited numberof voices and figures, one explores the essence of anumber of motifs" {Bergman 168). Lynch is after thesame musical goal, the same sort of "distillation," butin a much larger, lusher setting, one more difficult toinfuse with a sense of abstraction. Bergman works ona smaller scale that leads to "chamber works" ratherthan symphonies.

22. Lynch's film refers to numerous films, its dens-est references involving Billy Wilder's Sunset Boule-vard and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958). SunsetBoulevard is invoked by the whole Hollywood dream-scape as it drifts into madness. More particularly,Mulholland Drive echoes Wilder's film through streetsigns and other direct visual references: Ann Miller asCoco, reprising Gloria Swanson as Norma, and Rita asan emergency, |oe Gilles-like refugee in a Hollywood"dream place." The most explicit allusion is a shot ofthe gated, Para mount-like studio at which Betty per-forms her screen test; just inside the gate is a luxuri-ous old car that recalls Norma's decrepit yet magicalvehicle. The Vertigo references are also obvious:Betty's grey suit, the one she wears just before thebottom drops out of her identity, the use of the sameactresses to play several different roles (think also ofLuis Bufiuel); the chromatic opposition between dou-bles who are light and dark yet still the same person;and many others. (This is hardly Lynch's first Vertigoallusion. Considerthat Laura Palmer's double in theTwin Peaks series is Madeleine Ferguson.}

23. Granted, these are legion: both films focus on arelationship between two women, a relationship thathas either an implicit or explicit lesbian component.In both, the women are schematically differentiated,with the darker character suffering from a mentaldisturbance. This character's problem creates a dis-cursive void, a silence the lighter character fills withoptimistic chatter. At the start of both films, the light-

lOURNAl OF FILM AND VIDEO 56.1 / SPRING 2OO4 39

er characters attempt to nuree their new friends, butthe relationships gradually become twisted and ab-ject. The central characters in a sense switch or mergeidentities, their relationships developing into savagestruggles in which it is unclearwho is healthier, whostronger; regardless, the lighter characters becomeless optimistic, garrulous, and stable as the filmsprogress. Further, both films involve an acting theme,which is related to other salient themes: dreaming,madness, and doubling.

24. Such an intention is wholly in keeping withLynch's well-documented dislike of commentatorswho attempt to explain away the ambiguities of hisfilms. Fora comprehensive account of this critic-film-maker dynamic, see Andrews. I hope I have demon-strated in the present essay that critical exegesisneed not violate the richness and indeterminacy ofthe Lynchian text.

25. This technique cannot be fully explained by thepresence of the dream watcher. Often, the disembod-ied perspective becomes a point-of-view shot, alignedwith the perspective of one of the dream's internalcharacters; this happens often with Betty but also withother characters (e.g., Louise Bonner [Lee Grant]).

REFERENCES

Andrews, David. "Confessions of'A Certain Kind ofMoviegoer': Examining David Lynch." Bridge 3.2(2003): 182-91.

Bell, Vance. Rev. of The Passion of David Lynch, byMartha Hochimson. Journal of Popular Film andTelevision 29.4:192.

Bergman, Ingmar. Bergman on Bergman: InterviewsWith Ingmar Bergman By Stig Bjorkman, TorstenManns, and Jonas Sima. 1970. Trans. Paul BrittenAustin. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973.

. "On Dreams. The Subconscious and Filmmak-ing." Petric 51-55.

Chan, Andrew. Rev. of MulhollandDrive, dir. DavidLynch. Film Written Magazine (2001): 7 pp. 20 Apr.2002 <http://www.filmwrttten.Drg/reviews/2001/mulholianddr_ac.htm>.

Chion, Michel. David Lynch. Trans. Robert Julian. Lon-don: British Film Institute, 1995.

Ebert. Roger. Rev. of Mulholland Drive, dir. David

Lynch, SunTimes.Com 12 Oct. 2001: 3 pp. 20 Apr.2002 <http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/200i/io/ioi2O5.html>.

French, Blake. Rev. of Mulholland Drive, dir. DavidLynch, imdb.com 31 Oct. 2001: 6 pp. 21 May 2002<http:us.imdb.com/Title?oi6692Z|).

Hobson, Allan. "Dream Image and Substrate: Berg-man's Films and the Physiology of Sleep." Petric

75-95-Holden, Stephen. "Hollywood Seen as a Funhouse of

Fantasy." Rev. of Mulholland Drive, dir. DavidLynch, nytimes.com 6 Oct. 2001: 4 pp. 21 Apr. 2002<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/06/movies/o6DRIV.html>.

Jones, Adam. "The Uncanny and Critical Responses toLost Highway." Bridge 2.2 (2003): 214-18.

Keeler, Toby, dir. Pretty as a Picture: The Art of DavidLynch. Topanga, California: Fine Cut Presentations,1997-

Kinder, Marsha. "The Penetrating Dream Style of Ing-mar Bergman." Petric 57-73.

Lynch, David. "City of Absurdity: David Lynch's Alw/-hollandDrive." geo.cities.com 3 pp. 22 May 2002<http://www.geocities.com/Holiywood/209/mulholland.html>.

Mathews, Jeremy. "Mulholland Drive RedeemsLynch's Career." Rev. of Mulholland Drive, dir. Da-vid Lynch. Red Magazine Online j pp. 20 June 2002<http://www.red-mag.com/reelioi8oi/ly.php).

Petric, Vlada, ed. Film and Dreams: An Approach toBergman. South Salem, New York: Redgrave, 1981.

Rhodes, Eric Bryant. Rev. of Lost Highway, dir. DavidLynch. Film Quarterly ^i3 (1998): 57-61.

Sontag, Susan. Styles of Radical Will. 1969. New York:Anchor, 1991.123-45.

Turan, Kenneth. "TheTwists Along Aflu/ho/tond." Rev.of Mulholland Drive, dir. David Lynch, latimes.com12 Oct. 2001: 3 pp. 21 Apr. 2002 <http://www.calendarlive.com/top/i,i4i9,L-LATimes-Mov-ies-X!ArticleDetail-45ioo,oo.html).

Verniere, James. "Simpty Sublime: David Lynch Mas-terfully Steers Head-On into Terrifying Twists ofMulholland Drive " Rev. of Mulholland Drive, dir.David Lynch. Boston Herald 12 Oct. 2001: 2 pp. 20Apr. 2002 (http://www.davidlynch.de/bostonherald.html).

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