Mulholland Dr.：The Mysterious Forest

Mulholland Dr.：The Mysterious Forest

When I first watched Mulholland Drive, it was a bewildering experience. Characters kept appearing seemingly at random, with no apparent connection to one another. While I could faintly sense a thread running through the intertwined narratives (like a solid rock providing a sense of security when touched), I was left wondering about the rest. Were they superfluous? Did they symbolize something? I found myself trapped in an enormous maze, occasionally stumbling upon what seemed like an exit – perhaps through Freudian or psychoanalytical interpretation – only to realize I wasn't satisfied with these shortcuts. I continued trying to make sense of it, sometimes disgusted by my search for hidden metaphors. At the time, I was still enamored with directors who strived for narrative coherence, and I thought this film was pretentious. So I turned it off and tossed it aside. But two years later, I fell in love with it, and it became a pivotal film for me.

It always emits a faint glow, as mysterious as the reflection of road signs on Mulholland Drive at night, drawing me back to it. Sometimes it flickers with enticing red lights, perhaps from that beautiful theater, and with a pale blue light, maybe evoking the nights of Los Angeles and the dream city. Often, a film gradually rearranges itself in one's mind, taking on a new form. You don't need to rewatch it; even when you do, it becomes a different film altogether. I don't resist such memories; they're precious because a film belongs both to itself and to the audience's recollections – perhaps more to the viewer than to its own appearance.

When I reopened it two years later, I learned to coexist with its gray forest and ventured into its inner world. It remains a mysterious film, but I no longer need that metaphorical stone to navigate it, nor am I afraid of falling into its abysses. I now relish all the humor and darkness: the amateurish, clumsy hitman; the sinister, smiling old man; the coffee and theaters; the wood and music... I finally realized that these are the more crucial elements of the film. In the past, I thought David Lynch was a director who toyed with symbols and structures, but I've come to understand that even the creators of the most convoluted symbols often return to simple structures. I must also acknowledge that symbols can be like a snowy sea or fireworks; they don't have to lead back to a simple mechanism. Like a beautiful metaphor that never returns to its subject but allows it to grow and imagine on its own, even becoming a friend to delusion.

Mulholland Drive has become a world unto itself, where characters inhabit their own territories, and when darkness falls, people perceive it in different ways. A wounded person will saturate the entire film with their pain. How are they all connected? This is a mysterious thing that's difficult to pin down. Perhaps they're like conjoined twins. In Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique, the French girl is saddened by sensing the death of her Polish counterpart. In Hotel by the River, a burned hand leads to people's tears and sorrow. In La Ciénaga, a massive rain connects the whole world...

Sometimes, Mulholland Drive isn't that complicated. It's a very simple film at its core. Life is hidden within it, and it seems to have become a theme during the filmmaking process itself. Its ideas were inspired by the TV show Twin Peaks, and it was even meant to be a TV show itself, but after several twists and turns, it eventually became a two-and-a-half-hour film. The film itself seems to reflect this journey as well. Betty's life is almost coming together, her Hollywood dreams within reach, and she's full of confidence. However, life abruptly halts when a dead body is discovered in her apartment. The film takes a dark turn, and the original life becomes a different branch, hidden beneath a decaying surface, disappearing along with the dream of Hollywood and the TV show Mulholland Drive.

Perhaps we don't need to use dreams and reality to describe Mulholland Drive. It may also be about life and unexpected events. Even though it leads to tragedy and the lonely journey we must face (what is the difference between death and departure for a film?), there seems to be an ancient fable here: our human destiny is to struggle to find buried facts and truths. We always sense it first, then discover it, and finally experience it. These unavoidable, piercing thorns make us fragile and vulnerable, but they also help us understand how to live better, to love, to embrace and cry together until the end comes.

This also includes the process of filmmaking. Perhaps few people, like David Lynch, consider filmmaking as a way of life. He becomes friends with the actors, and the search for and discovery of ideas for filming becomes a road adventure. Therefore, perhaps it is not only painful torment and diligent work that can make a film. Behind Twin Peaks: The Return, after each group of characters' scenes were finished, David Lynch would gather the crew, pick up a megaphone, loudly read out their names, and declare that they were done. This was the entirety of Twin Peaks: The Return.

To write this, I rewatched Mulholland Drive, and I realized that I might not love this film as much as I did in the past. Perhaps after multiple viewings, the mysteries have been somewhat exhausted. My friends and I often use "we" in our writing. "We" might be because of an invitation, including conveying and sharing, but when I use "we," I hope that I can disappear. But films are complex, even though the appearance of a film never changes. A film is always half about a person, and the other half is the film itself.

wirtten by Aires