100 All-Time Films (To see the entire list, click here)
David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001)
This is another one of the controversial films to make the list. Is this really one of the hundred most significant films in the history of cinema? I say yes.
David Lynch is one weird fella. He created some surrealist movies and established a very distinct style with movies such as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and Wild at Heart. Even his television show Twin Peaks emphasized his unique and crazy style. One thing is definitely true with his films; he hooks you even if you have no clue what is going on.
And that is true with Lynch. Most of the time, you have no idea what the hell is going on. Watching Mulholland Drive the first time makes you feel that way. Probably even the second or third time. Once you find yourself through that fog, you can see his true masterpiece.
The neo-noir psychological sexual thriller is a “poisonous Valentine to Hollywood”, perfectly stated by J. Hoberman of The Village Voice. Taken from the same cloth of Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, it is about broken dreams in Hollywood. Lynch is extremely critical of Hollywood and its suffocatingly fake culture. Since he is the only director that I can recall who made an extremely successful Hollywood picture (The Elephant Man) and the artsy surrealist films of his future (Inland Empire being one wild example), he has a foot in each the mainstream and the radical cinema. He has something to say on the matter and does so with this picture.
To get into the film now would require a lot of scrolling for you, so I will refrain from getting into the ‘meat’ of the picture. David Lynch mastered his ‘Lynchian’ technique using dreamlike images and his fierce and reckless imagination on Mulholland Drive. It is unlike any other film you’ve seen before and probably ever will again.
