After decades of ignoring home video and avoiding contact with his rabid fan base, David Lynch has this year fully embraced DVD and the web. His subscription home page is as commercial an enterprise as they come, and his involvement in DVD work has so far led to some irritating extras: the purposely surreal 'interviews' on Fire Walk With Me and, on this show, his 'personal' ten clues to solve the mystery. Mysterious auteurs add to their legend by letting their work itself serve as their last word, rather than interpreting it for us in interviews. Until his own recent need for positive publicity, Woody Allen kept a tight leash on any official analysis of his films. Lynch was the king of this, following the lead of Stanley Kubrick, of course - allowing rumors of recuts and special editions of his work to bounce around the fan ionosphere until everybody was talking about him. Now he has to play at least some of the same self-promotional games the rest of 'em do. This DVD of Mulholland Dr. has no extras at all, so his Remote Genius persona is safe for now.

Reviews of Mulholland Dr. have been talking about its status as a PG rated television show that was later transmogrified into an R-Rated film, as if the information were vitally important ... as if a disclaimer card up front would have been useful: "Dear viewer, Mulholland Dr. makes no linear sense because it was an inexpensive television show that was reworked for the big screen. A fairly straightforward, but unresolved mystery has been left unresolved, and instead fleshed out with weird tangential subplots in a new structure that deconstructs the characters and relationships of the original, with a new story (or several new stories) that bend the original back upon itself."

If the puzzle aspect of Mulholland Dr. is a good one, it's because the original piece was clearly developing hints that would have been addressed as the miniseries went on. The characters dress up like one another - Rita and Betty seem interchangeable at one point, an idea interestingly timed with their sexual collision. The theme is nicely echoed through the semi-interchangeable actresses Adam is trying to cast for his lip-synching pop-song scene.

When the film turns in upon itself, setting up an entire reorganized set of relationships - Betty becomes Diane Selwyn, Rita becomes Camilla Rhodes - there's a nice feeling of narrative plasticity ... the shifting identities and relationships could be alternate realities, alternate possibilities, dreams of potential realities - who knows? Reality shifts just as if God said, 'What if the mystery woman was already a big star and the neophyte actress a lesbian hanger-on who's being dumped? So be it." Lynch does a great job of handling the way one plane appears to intersect with another. Camilla is the object of a Diane hit (I think) but then transforms into Rita, who can't remember her identity. Some events are definitely happen in a specific timeline, and others, like the dead-of-night performance of the Orbison song in Spanish, are isolated dream experiences that seemingly happen out of time, outside the story we are watching.

The downside of this is that being a Lynch insider (which Savant doesn't consider himself) is practically a prerequisite to even beginning to have a clue as to what's happening in the film. In theaters, there were the initiated, who treated the picture like it was Holy writ, and the others, who wondered if they were being had, or insulted, or both. Lynch, when he repeats himself, can be just as annoying as any other filmmaker who asks you to find things significant only because they are thematically linked to earlier work. I try to keep an open mind, but the tiny squeaking Aunt and Uncle serously gripe my patience. The 'everything is an illusion' mantra at the Club Silencio is so grindingly obvious, that it borders on trite, no matter how brilliant other aspects of the show might be. Likewise, the truncated dead-end subplots remind me less of narrative roads not taken, than of shoes left dangling. When they add something to the story, such as the genuine craziness of the hit men, the pain is lessened. But additional strangers drifting onscreen to describe dreams that mirror their present realities, are just more gum in the gears.

What works best in Mulholland Dr. are the same elements we're always attracted to - interesting and sensual characters, and perplexing plot turns that make us want to see more and find out what's going to happen next. The performances are all fine except for Ann Miller's catty landlady. Strangely, Naomi Watt's Betty is more convincing when acting in a scene-within-a-scene, than she is playing herself, the naive newcomer in tinseltown. Lee Grant, Chad Everett, James Karen, Robert Forster and Dan Hedaya are just a few of the bits and just-bigger-than-bits that fill out the undeveloped subplots.

Savant also took exception to the present sentiment that Mulholland Dr. is Lynch's greatest work so far. Even the disparaged Wild at Heart was visually distinguished, and Lynch's earlier films, even flawed work like Dune, were deliriously beautiful. Mulholland Dr. was shot for television and simply looks drab. I suppose it's the sign of the dilettante, when I can sit happily entertained through this director's most self-indulgent passages when there are interesting visuals to watch. Without the hypnotizing images of Blue Velvet, Mulholland Dr. sometimes resembles a dry run.

Yet interesting enough to want to see it again, as soon as I have the right co-audience ...

Universal's DVD of Mulholland Dr. is a careful transfer that makes the many dark-on-dark scenes look as attractively murky as they did in the theater. Jack Fisk's wholly believeable settings often look better on DVD, as many theaters chose to project the show narrower than 1:85, cropping off many compositions too tightly. Lynch probably did some vertical repositioning in his transfer, while selectively darkening parts of Laura Herring's nude scene to frustrate DVD weenies with nothing better to do than to surf for celebrity private parts. The lack of chapters is a bother, but understandable. Savant is of the opinion that 'David Lynch's ten clues to unlocking this thriller' is a pretty cheesy move, unbecoming the reigning Genius King of the Weird.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Mulholland Dr. rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements: none
Packaging: PP keep case
Reviewed: April 16, 2002