Why Muholland Drive Resonates

When I first saw David Lynch's Muholland Drive, I was so enthralled that I watched it 2 more times in the same weekend. It was a movie that was filled with theatrical genius, cryptic storylines, and ultimately a modern day Greek (LA) tragedy. Maybe more importantly it was a story that hit too close to home.

Like Dianne/Betty, I was the midwestern ingenue who had moved to Los Angeles hoping for bigger things. I was the show stealer in the 2 high school musicals I did. I was the one who became high off accolades and praise. I was the one in college who felt more euphoria after nailing a scene in acting class than any Grateful Dead stoner session could ever provide.  I was Betty who had won the Jittberbug contest and was ready to show the world my talents. Deep down however I was insecure, unsure, and moving to the West Coast to get away - to find a happiness that was missing at home.

Like Betty, I came into an inheritence while in LA and squandered it. Not on a murder hit, but on the dot.com bust. Like Betty, I became guilt ridden with infidelity during relationships -  pursued by similar furies as Betty. In LA i was lonely, disconnected, and unrooted. Looking for my Camilla in massage parlors and one night stands.

Lynch's Muholland Drive was the sad LA I knew and  it somehow validated my experience - which was reassuring. The film reminded me that I was not alone in this experience. That there was something greater at work here. It was LA itself. For the wrong person, like me and Betty perhaps, LA reveals and enacts it's insidious dark side. Like a venus fly trap, the city waits for its unsuspecting prey and then pounces. Engulfing the lost and innocent in its maws. LA breeds on insecurity and shits out or destroys those with too much of it.

I was reading a few of the critics takes on their explanations of the film and was appalled at how intellectually dismissive they were of "reading" too much into it. One of the great joys of the film is the very intellectual challenge it provides to the viewer. Lynch's incorporation of the classic Greek tragedian tropes like Pandora's Box, the Furies, and death personified were fresh and modern. His exploration of the fine line between fantasy and reality is perfect for a setting like LA -  where film itself is nothing more than an illusion imbedded in the "reality" of a scene. Where the fantasy of hopes and dreams become mired in the reality of disappointment and struggle.

Lynch's LA is not the one we see at Oscar time. It is the LA that draws the innocence of middle America to its shores. It is the Siren singing that beautiful song of fame and fortune, that irresistible magnetic pull of magazine covers and red carpet walks. All of this, save for a small few, is just an illusion masking the jagged rocks of shipwrecked dreams and delayed success.