Saturday, April 24, 2010

Mulholland Drive

It's been a while since I saw a David Lynch film; I'd forgotten what a beguiling experience it could be. I saw Mulholland Drive when it was first out in cinemas, and that first time, it felt exactly the way it was supposed to - like a shadowy, spirallingly dream-like descent into the unconscious, disorienting and oddly familiar in equal measures (ie, 'Unheimlich'). This time, knowing in advance how the pieces would fit together in terms of the film's structuring conceit, I was most struck by its formal perfection - the craft with which it sets up and then detonates the late-act identity/reality blur and shift while swathing the whole thing in that unmistakeable Lynch/Badalamenti mood.