Staggering out of the theater two hours and 25 minutes after paying to see ‘Mulholland Drive,’ I say to my roommate, “I don’t think David Lynch ever intended to make a movie anyone could decipher. In fact, I think he takes morbid pleasure in knowing that scores of Lynchian worshippers, all of whom are apparently in their last quarter of grad school, are in libraries right now trying to assign meaning to the whole mess, holding workshops on the ‘state of the unconscious’ as it relates to notions of identity, gender, fantasy, and gratuitous footage of large female breasts.”
Nodding his head in frustrated, almost hysterical agreement he chimes, “Wait until you see ‘Blue Velvet’. The dude likes to screw with you!” Then he smiles showing that he, too, is in on the secret.
We laugh into the expanding light of oncoming traffic, happy in our little capsule of triumph over the Lynchmonster.
“He will not screw with us!” we whistle, skipping to the car in a delusional, potentially ridiculous flitter.
Upon returning home, however, a certain indescribable urge—not unlike gas or the increasingly popular urge to herbal—forces us to eat a bowl of chocolate ice cream covered in Nutella. Which really has nothing to do with this story.
Where was I?
We return home and promptly race each other to the computer in a maddening conformist dash for whatever critical commentary we can find. It’s been five minutes since the confident, albeit freakish trot to the car and now I can’t even form a coherent sentence: The box and the thing? Cowboy man twice vaccuum explosion? Huh? But, boobs flutter taillights scramble and the monster! Heavens to bumfuzzling squalor, what did that movie mean?!
After printing out all 11 pages of the Salon review, we settle into bed with our analog solution and slowly calm our asses down, sufficiently comforted by the following observation:
‘Mullholland Drive’ is a good movie for the same reasons any other movie can be considered so:
1. Lesbian sex.
2. Gratuitous footage of large female breasts.
4. The casting of Dan Hedaya as anything or anyone.