Jawnts: 'Mulholland Drive' in all its weird glory on big screen
There is nothing Hollywood likes better than movies about Hollywood. The pseudo-genre has spawned a profusion of classics, from Sunset Boulevard to Singin' in the Rain to Get Shorty; the Best Picture winners in 2012 and 2011 (Argo and The Artist) were both about the film industry. Everyone loves watching prettier, smarter, scarier versions of themselves.
There is nothing Hollywood likes better than movies about Hollywood. The pseudo-genre has spawned a profusion of classics, from
Sunset Boulevard
to
Singin' in the Rain
to
Get Shorty
; the Best Picture winners in 2012 and 2011 (
Argo
and
The Artist
) were both about the film industry. Everyone loves watching prettier, smarter, scarier versions of themselves.
One of the weirdest, and best, movies about making movies is playing on the big screen in Jenkintown this week, 13 years after its debut. Arguably David Lynch's best film, Mulholland Drive appears to be the story of a young actress (Naomi Watts, in her breakout role), fresh off the tarmac from small-town Ontario, helping a glamorous amnesiac (Laura Elena Harring) recover her identity and figure out how $75,000 ended up in her purse.
This being a David Lynch joint, things get weird right from the start and only get weirder. (The Academy of Fine Arts alum famously used gritty 1970s Philadelphia as inspiration for his truly bizarre debut film, Eraserhead.) It's best to watch Mulholland Drive with friends, because the movie is made to be picked apart over bottomless cups of coffee. Upon repeat viewing, the seemingly jumbled and arcane story becomes clearer. It's one of the only films that make the "It was all a dream" explanation enlightening, instead of infuriating.
With Mulholland Drive, the atmospherics work better writ large. Lynch masterfully uses an array of neat cinematic tricks to utterly absorb the audience in the experience, but their effects are diluted if you can hit pause or check your text messages.
Mulholland Drive manages to wield both stirring beauty and slapstick comedy. At some moments, a barely noticeable throbbing sound track imbues a near-cosmic dread. In a truly transcendent scene, Watts' character audition turns into a window on a whole different setting, one that is utterly impossible to draw away from. It's one of the best movies of the first decade of the 21st century.
Mulholland Drive is playing at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at the Hiway Theater, 212 Old York Rd., Jenkintown. Tickets are $10. For more information, visit www.hiwaytheater.net.