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MULHOLLAND DRIVE (Red; turn off Mulholland Drive)
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David Lynch loves lush sensual visuals. His rich hues, heavy with shadow, give weight to the solid voluptuous forms he finds in velvet drapery, dew-wet greenery, black leather limousine seats, and the faces, eyes, hands, arms, and bodies of women. The women need not show emotion -- indeed a slightly vacant, moist-parted-lip look well serves -- so long as his camera may voyeuristically linger over their pores. Which it does, for two hours and twenty minutes, in his impenetrable MULHOLLAND DRIVE.
Lynch partially redeems his quirky choices by a deft eye for casting. Both Midwest ingenue Betty (Naomi Watts) and anxious amnesiac Rita (Laura Harring), actresses unknown to American film, captivate with their expressions. Thrown together in a Lynchian ominous coincidence that to explain would be to deflate, they grope jointly in search of Rita's lost memories, her past, and any meaning to the film.
Of course, Lynch is the maestro of meaningless omens. Here he trots out all his favorite tropes: dwarves in dark curtained red rooms, intimidating melody-less mood music, elements visual and symbolic but never real. Over these he lingers like a dieter with her rich dessert. The action is slow. Scenes are slow. Camera movements are slow. Dialog is slow. All is bathed in visual balm intended to be scented massage oil but proving merely dark treacle.
For Lynch, film is an excuse for a visual dream journey -- and for an hour and three-quarters, that is what we have. Then someone (probably Lynch's backers) took him aside and said, "Dave, love you babe but this ain't Twin Peaks, you gotta resolve this puppy, okay sweets? Thirty minutes or so, okay?" And, sure enough, over the last half hour Lynch puts the pedal to the metal and it does all make sense, at least in Lynchian visual terms, by the time it is done. The sense it makes is a hideous disappointment … but then, so is the whole movie.
There are two bright spots: Naomi Watts as Betty is a major find, utterly convincing in all the personalities she is called upon to adopt. And a night-movie-theater sequence, Silencio, presents some truly inspired moviemaking legerdemain where, in the fashion of Penn and Teller, the MC tells you he is about to deceive you … and then does so, not once but twice.
About an hour and a half into the movie, as we were lost in Lynchian realms of absurdity, a moviegoer with a corduroy baseball cap, fleece-lined windbreaker, and backpack, came carefully into the theater. He found an empty seat (behind Nancy and me), carefully set down his backpack and placed his cap neatly atop it, carefully took off his coat and nested it around his chair, and settled himself. The movie rolled perplexingly along. After a few moments, the newcomer leaned forward and whispered to me, "I think I'm in the wrong theater. This isn't K-Pax, is it?"