Mulholland Dr. 2001. USA/France. Written and directed by David Lynch. With Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux, Ann Miller, Robert Forster. 35mm. 147 min.
“You could say that Laura Palmer is Marilyn Monroe, and that Mulholland Drive is about Marilyn Monroe, too,” said David Lynch. “Everything is about Marilyn Monroe.” Lynch wasn’t shy about his fascination with the legendary actor’s iconic image and enduring myth, which shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with the director’s attraction to light and darkness, incandescence and abjection, romance and horror. In Mulholland Dr., a wide-eyed aspiring blonde actress (Naomi Watts) arrives in Hollywood and meets an amnesiac woman (Laura Harring) who has escaped a murder attempt after a car accident on the titular Los Angeles road. This unlikely pair takes the audience on a haunted ride into the nature of moving images, the people who make them, and the industry that feeds our dreams and nightmares.