If you involve yourself in conversations about film, you’ve probably heard of the term “Lynchian,” which Urban Dictionary describes as “having the same balance between the macabre and the mundane found in the works of filmmaker David Lynch.” However, if you’re like me, that explanation will go right over your head. So what does that even mean anyway?
For a while, I avoided Lynch’s filmography, embarrassed by how I had no idea of what to make out of any of his films. I didn’t know that each film usually requires at least two viewings, but I still felt like I was missing something even when I figured that out. The complicated themes coupled with Lynch’s grotesque imagery and sometimes perplexing narrative structure had me stumped. I felt like a detective trying to crack a case, fitting of Lynch’s common motifs. It was only when I started studying film noir and the genre’s central themes that I realized how to break Lynch’s style down —specifically his 2001 masterpiece, Mulholland Drive.
Let me start by breaking down film noir because it’s a bit of a complicated genre. It encapsulates films made during and after World War II that reflected the feelings of disillusionment at the time. Film noir utilizes the archetype of the femme fatale, flashbacks, and chiaroscuro lighting, amongst other dark themes and style techniques. In James Naremore’s influential book More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts, he discusses the history of the genre, noting that French critics coined the term in 1946 with the defining films classified as film noirs; films from the genre released after its classical period fall under the term “neo-noir” due to the influence the original genre had on the films going forward. David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive is a prime example of the neo-noir because of its hyper-awareness of the genre’s conventions, taking advantage of them to exaggerate themes of romanticism, betrayal, and regret.
The film follows Betty (Naomi Watts), who has just arrived in Los Angeles to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. However, when she arrives at her aunt’s apartment she’s borrowing for the time being, she encounters a strange, beautiful woman who lost her memory after a car crash that ends up going by the name Rita (Laura Harring), after Rita Hayworth in Gilda, a notable film noir of its era. The two form a quick bond, which quickly turns to romance, and Betty does all that she can to help Rita find out what happened to her. The second act revealed that the film’s previous events were a wish-fulfillment fantasy of Diane Selwyn’s imagination. Diane dreams that she’s Betty and that her ex-lover, Camila Rhodes, is Rita in an effort to escape the truth of what she did to Camila. After being tossed aside by Camila for a director and failing as an actress, having to live in the shadow of her success, Betty hires a hitman to murder her and dreams up this fantasy before ultimately killing herself.
There’s a lot you can miss on the first watch since the reveal is so integral to the narrative. Even on repeat viewings, there’s still so much to unpack, with Lynch leaving a lot of the film up to the viewer. But, at Mulholland Drive’s core are film noir motifs and themes utilized to subvert the audience’s expectations, starting with the infamous femme fatale. Most classic film noirs focus on male main characters who are thwarted by beautiful women that deceive and trick them, usually involving a murder, which serves as a symbol for the burgeoning fears that men had towards female equality at the time, sparked by the increasing amounts of women in the workplace during and after the war. At first glance, Rita appears to be the femme fatale figure, showing up mysteriously and seductively in her red lipstick and painted red fingernails and distracting Betty from the real purpose she came to Los Angeles for — to become a movie star. However, the truth is the opposite of what’s expected, which serves as interesting commentary juxtaposed to the sexist origins of the archetype. Diane (aka Betty) is the actual femme fatale of this story and has Camila murdered because of her undying love and envy. Against the exaggerated Hollywood backdrop, Diane’s act of murder is more than just an attempt to mend her broken heart. It is an act of desperation after being beaten by the unrelenting shallowness of L.A.
Lynch’s use of Los Angeles is purposeful and reinventive. The film’s title is reminiscent of Billy Wilder’s classic noir Sunset Boulevard, which follows a washed-up silent film star who commits murder after becoming obsessed with a young screenwriter who she falls in love with while trying to reclaim stardom. It has similar themes as Mulholland Drive, and Lynch has even stated in the past that it’s one of his favorite films. Many other noirs such as Double Indemnity and Murder, My Sweet, also based in Los Angeles, reflect the anxieties of the changing landscapes at the time due to the increasing amount of automobiles and highways that created a sense of unpredictability. At the climax of Double Indemnity, Walter Neff’s (Fred MacMurray) car stalls right after they commit a murder, alluding to the reliance on cars in centrifugal spaces. However, Lynch seems to take a modern approach to the setting using the city’s backdrop to comment on the evolving commodification of Hollywood. The city serves almost like another character in the film, highlighting anxieties of the town now rooted in its obsession with stardom and cinephilia due to its newfound self-awareness. At the beginning of the film, when Diane imagines that she’s Betty arriving in the city from Ontario with dreams of becoming a movie star, Lynch exaggerates the scene with hopeful swelling music, bright lighting, and intentionally cheesy dialogue with Watts overacting the scene to instill the image of Los Angeles that is now privy to audiences at the time of its release. The film’s title credits in the Hollywood Capital font also reflect this self-awareness. This image of Hollywood is Diane’s downfall, and she comes searching for what she and thousands of other people just like her on the outside have dreamt of their whole lives. When she figures out the sour truth of life there, she sees no other choice but to resort to the unthinkable because in Hollywood, the city only makes or breaks people; there is no in-between. Los Angeles as a city is still a central part of the film but modified to reflect today’s anxieties, which are especially interesting to analyze considering the role that Lynch plays as a distinguished Hollywood director in real life.
While these noir inspirations helped me figure out my interpretation of the film, the theme that stuck out to me the most was Diane’s obsession with the past and fear of the future, which is a theme common in most noir films. In Detour, the main character spends the entire film avoiding his eventual arrest when he hitchhikes a ride with a man who accidentally dies in his company. In Gilda, the two main characters flirt and cause conflict with each other reminiscing over their broken relationship and fearing for what’s to come of their relationship going forward. Mulholland Drive exhibits these basic obsessions to explore Diane’s compulsion to succeed in Hollywood and what happens when she’s faced with failure and rejection. Diane imagines she’s Betty to cling to a romanticized past where Camila relies on her instead of the reverse and avoids the future in which she has to face life knowing what she has done to her. The entire film revolves around this central theme that drives Diane’s fantasy and, finally, her suicide. While envy and love make her an accomplice to murder, regret drives her throughout this film. Diane is latched to the empty promises that the city entices her with, unwilling to accept the reality of what she couldn’t achieve and the terrible truth of what she ended up doing. Lynch morphs the basic theme of regret that classic noirs explore to reflect the growing individualist ideals we are competing to achieve.
Mulholland Drive can be interpreted in many different ways, but I believe that at its core is a love letter to classic noir and an evolution of what the genre can be in the modern-day. Noir elements have been integrated into popular culture for decades with the emergence of the neo-noir and parodied representations of the genre used for comedy bits; there’s even an alternate version of Spider-Man called Spider-Man Noir. Lynch pulls from these elements and uses them to subvert audience expectations, making them feel like they can expect the outcome just to rip that away with them yet still stand by similar themes and narratives centering around love, murder, and regret. Without my new understanding of film noir, I found it easy to get lost in the mystery and style, but I now see this inherent obsession with past events out of the characters’ control fueling the anxieties and arcs of Lynch’s films. “Lynchian” isn’t just about the juxtaposition of conflicting images but the usage of them to prepare viewers for the darkness brimming in his characters’ minds, reflecting the strange and perverse desires of the human experience.
