The Elephant Man

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

The black and white cinematography in The Elephant Man (1980) gives it a documentary, realistic, grim feel. Mel Brooks produced the movie but didn’t want it publicized because he wanted the film taken seriously. David Lynch is the right person to direct a movie about what society considers grotesque versus the frightening reality of the world at large. The first shot is of the close-up portrait of an attractive woman which is then offset by a heard of elephants marching across the screen. The elephants cry out and we see the woman on the floor silently screaming, supposedly being killed by the elephants. We hear a baby crying, implying a birth has taken place. We then shift to Anthony Hopkins’s character, Dr. Frederick Treves, a surgeon in London, at a sideshow, an appropriate setting for where so-called normal people go to reassure themselves that they are not what deviates from norm.

People either laugh or leave crying as they view those behind human cages, like scary animals in a zoo. Treves follows policemen who wish to remove The Elephant Man display because, as one says, it is inhumane to have this exhibit. The man who presents The Elephant Man, Bytes (Freddie Jones), says that there must be another move, indicating that his entry goes beyond even the average sights at the sideshow. He calls his act “my treasure.” It is an ironic phrase since it can be a term of endearment but also something of economic worth. Exploitation comes to mind.

The background sound of the film is like an industrial hum, similar to what Lynch used in Eraserhead. The usage fits with the scene that has Treves operating on a man who is a victim of a machine accident. The doctor says there have been more of these accidents lately, and he adds “you can’t reason with machines.” That echoes the ominous industrial landscape in Eraserhead and comments on the dehumanization ushered in by the Industrial Revolution. That feeling is backed up by the bleak urban setting with steam and fire present that implies a hellish backdrop. We later get a shot of polluting smoke belching out of smokestacks.

John Merrick (John Hurt) is the title character, and his extreme deformity may be due to a combination of neurofibromatosis type I and Proteus syndrome, although, as IMDb notes, the exact diagnosis was never discovered. That fact implies that it can be difficult for us to understand those that do not swim in the mainstream of society’s waters. At the beginning, Bytes says he “owns” Merrick and Treves calls him “it,” which shows that others do not think of Merrick as a human being. Bytes does a private viewing for Treves after being paid. He says that the mother met her fate in her fourth month of pregnancy on an “uncharted” African Island in an encounter with an elephant. This strange tale creates a fiction for the audience to escape into and to indulge human curiosity into what is considered the deviant aspect of the world. (According to IMDb, many parts of the film do not represent the actual story. For Instance, Merrick was not mistreated as described and could not speak as clearly as depicted).

Treves’s initial motivation in seeing Merrick is selfish as he wants to grow his reputation by also exploiting the man. However, when Treves sees Merrick he neither laughs nor is frightened. Instead, he shows some empathy by shedding a single tear. The first viewing of Merrick is in shadows, so Lynch does not present his physical appearance right away.

 When Merrick appears at Treves’s office, he wears a bag over his head and a bulky coat. It’s one thing for some to pay for a temporary viewing of the grotesque but it’s quite a shock to watch it circulate freely among society. Merrick initially will not respond to Treves and appears frightened of him, probably because of the harsh way others have treated him. It is interesting that his appearance should frighten others, but it is Merrick who is scared.

Treves displays him at The Pathological Society as a specimen, not a person, centering his talk on the extreme deviations from normal appearance. Again, we do not view Merrick yet as the camera shoots an outline of him behind a projection screen. The delayed revealing builds the audience’s suspense but also paves the way for us to get used to the idea of his deformity and accept him as a victim instead of as a monster.

Treves assumes that Merrick was deformed since birth and based on the man being unresponsive assumes he is an imbecile, adding he hopes so since being conscious of his condition would be unbearable. Treves is not exactly being empirically scientific in his conclusions here.

A drunken Bytes beats Merrick upon his return. Merrick has asthma and is suffering after the beating. The youth, who is Bytes’s assistant (Dexter Fletcher), shows concern for Merrick and goes to Treves who admits Merrick to the hospital. It is a young boy, possibly because he maintains some innocence in this depraved situation, who seeks help for Merrick.

Carr Gomm (Sir John Gielgud), the head of the hospital, tells Treves that Merrick should be in a place that deals with “incurables” and not in the hospital. The relegation of those that suffer without hope of being herded into an asylum shows the lack of compassion that existed toward society’s outcasts.

An unsuspecting female aid brings breakfast to Merrick and witnesses his deformed body. She screams in horror. We finally see what she does, but the audience has been somewhat prepared, and the shock is less for us. Treves begins to show more humanity as he attempts to treat and shelter Merrick.

In addition to the background humming there is mechanistic thumping heard. Along with those sounds are the highlighted ticking of a clock, the tapping of shoes on the floor, the striking of a match, and the hiss of gaslights. These become ominous noises, especially to the vulnerable Merrick. He is immediately in jeopardy of becoming exploited by the night porter, Sunny Jim (Michael Elphick), quite an ironic name, who wants to make money off a freak just like Bytes.

Bytes shows up at the hospital and confronts Treves, saying he wants Merrick back. Treves is now in protective mode and says that he knows Bytes beat him and that he is capitalizing on Merrick’s suffering. However, Bytes argues that is exactly what Treves was doing when he wanted to display him for his own betterment. At this point Gomm appears and supports Treves, implying that the police would not look kindly at how Bytes treated Merrick. We have a more humane side appearing on the part of the doctor and Gomm. Treves also gets Merrick to start to talk with him, which shows that if given a chance society’s shunned can be heard.

Treves rehearses Merrick to make a good impression on Gomm, but Merrick is nervous and is not used to conversing. Treves taught Merrick part of Psalm 23 from the Bible, and as Merrick says how “goodness and mercy” shall be part of his life, it seems ironic since that is not what others have shown him. Gomm feels that if his bronchitis gets better and he has recovered from his beating, the hospital is no longer a place for Merrick as he concludes that no further progress is obtainable. But, Merrick continues to recite the psalm beyond the part they rehearsed. Merrick reveals to Treves and Gomm that he read the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer when he was young. He is actually intelligent and knowledgeable. Gomm implies that it must have been horrible for someone the world would not allow to reach his full potential because of the way he looked.

When Merrick’s story becomes known there are two different responses. An actress, Mrs. Kendal (Ann Bancroft, Brooks’s wife) is interested in his mind. Sunny Jim wants to capitalize on his deformed body and charges others to witness the shock of seeing him. Thus, we have the two aspects of the world toward what is aberrant.

Treves has a well-dressed Merrick at his house for tea, and his wife, (Hannah Gordon), treats him with sensitivity. He is overwhelmed that a beautiful woman would treat him so nicely, so alien it is to his experience. They look at each other’s family pictures. The doctor and his wife display photos of their parents and children, showing a connected family. Merrick has a picture of his beautiful mother who has been absent from his life, and says he would be a disappointment to her, which, of course, is no fault of his own. His appearance has deprived him of any sense of family.

Merrick reveals artistic ability as he constructs a paper replica of a cathedral and draws accomplished pictures. One displays what it would be like to be able to lie down like others and have the luxury of sleep without the threat of suffocation due to the weight of an oversized head. The actress, Mrs. Kendal, visits, and she gives Merrick the works of Shakespeare. They read a section of Romeo and Juliet. She is moved by his reading and plays the role of Juliet, and he is Romeo, with the scene ending with a kiss on his cheek. She sees beyond his superficial covering and declares that he is not The Elephant Man. He is Romeo, she says, because she sees he is a romantic at heart. The audience understands society has not nourished the possibilities for this man and has decided that he should not be allowed to flourish.

Because Mrs. Kendal accepts him, and she is regarded as a person of excellent taste, she, in essence, gives Merrick the stamp of approval, and other refined people seek him out. He says that “people are frightened by what they don’t understand.” That is so in his case, because our first impressions are by way of our senses, and we judge by what we see, the packaging, and not what the wrapping envelops beneath the surface.

Mothershed (Wendy Hiller), who supervises the hospital support staff, tells Treves that she does not believe that these sophisticated visitors should meet Merrick. She was resistant at first about caring for Merrick, but now she calls him John, and says that she and her nurses have “bathed,” “fed,” and “cleaned up” after Merrick, which shows “loving kindness.” She claims that the visitors only see Merrick to show that they are providing the appearance of caring so as to be accepted by their peers. She says that Merrick is now on display to be looked at again, only in a different context. She is implying that these upper-class citizens are not appreciating Merrick for his true worth. He admits that he may be like Bytes because he has used Merrick as a curiosity. Although his wife says Merrick is living better than he ever did, Treves still questions his motives. Despite what happens in the daytime, the nighttime (symbolically a demonic part of the day here) allows Sunny Jim to use Merrick as a sideshow freak.

The hospital governing committee meets to determine Merrick’s status. One member says that the man is an abomination and that the hospital is not a zoo which houses animals. That rant contrasts with a shot of Merrick using his imagination to complete the model of the cathedral he has only seen part of. However, Gomm has enlisted the support of the royal family, and the Princess of Wales reads a letter from Queen Victoria that urges a Christian attitude toward Merrick. Gomm gets the hospital to grant a permanent home for Merrick.

This benevolent act contrasts with the cruel actions of Sunny Jim and those who pay him to abuse Merrick, laughing at him, manhandling him, forcing women to kiss him, pouring whiskey down his throat, and making him look at himself in a mirror. Bytes is part of the crowd and kidnaps Merrick. (One could criticize the representation of lower-class individuals as the ones who primarily exploit Merrick).

The steeple that Merrick put on his model is knocked over, signifying the un-Christian-like activity that occurred. When Treves discovers what happened, he is enraged, and confronts Sunny Jim, who is ready to attack the doctor until Mothershed knocks him out from behind.

Bytes takes Merrick to France and puts him in another freak show. He continues to abuse Merrick, beating him and placing him in a cage next to violent baboons. After experiencing a taste of decency, it seems Merrick continues to be the victim of the depraved aspects of people. It takes the other carnival freaks to save him, helping one of their own. They place him on a ship to England. But again, he cannot escape the cruelty of others. Boys harass him, and in his escape, he knocks over a girl. Pursued by a gang he stands up for himself and others like him as he declares, “I am not an elephant! I am not an animal! I am a human being. I am a man!”

The police return Merrick to Treves. Merrick’s health is in decline after all that he has been through. He tells Treves that he has been able to experience happiness because he finally has felt love. After all that has happened to him, he somehow is not an angry, bitter individual, but remains a gentle, sensitive person. He is finally able to go to the theater, a place that Mrs. Kendal said was a beautiful spot to visit. He can experience the beauty of an evening of art, which he can appreciate since he himself is an artist. The show is a fantasy, an escape from the harshness of what most of his life has been. Kendal dedicates the performance to Merrick, and he receives a standing ovation as everyone there sees him, possibly acknowledging his inner beauty.

In his room, alone, he says his model is done, which may also refer to his life being completed. He looks at his drawing of someone who lays down to sleep. He removes the stacked pillows from his bed and lies down for his last mortal rest. It appears that he has finally received what he always wanted, the love of others, and is ready to leave this life in that state. We hear his mother say, “nothing dies,” and it appears his spirit travels down a tunnel to her. The film ends as it began, with an image of her, as Merrick is reborn, free of his mortal coil.

Eraserhead

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

We recently lost one of the quirkiest and most artistic film directors, David Lynch. Some people hated his work, others love it, and those who love some of his projects dislike others. In any event, he was a challenging filmmaker. I was lucky enough to see Lynch in person at an interview at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. He related that he was an art student in Philadelphia when he saw air blowing through a window which caused his painting to move. He said it was then that he decided to make motion pictures. He said living in Philadelphia was not a pleasant experience as he observed violence and decay. However, the experience influenced his filmmaking. His movies explore the underbelly of existence. Think of the opening scene in Blue Velvet when the camera moves from the beauty of the garden to the insects swarming over a human ear.

Lynch’s first full-length film, Eraserhead (1977), in black and white, gives us that dark view in a surrealistic landscape. To attempt to analyze this unique work in a traditional manner would be unfair to the film. As Roger Ebert said, “to explain Eraserhead would be like cutting a drum open to see what makes the noise – you may get your answer, but you tend to ruin the drum in the process.” For myself, I feel like the main character Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) when he is asked what he knows. His response is, “Oh, I don’t know much of anything.” I think that may be a good way to start to approach this movie. So, I will draw on my own perceptions, and some from others.

The general view is that the story takes place in either an alternative world or at least a sort of post-apocalyptic one on Earth. Or, it is just an objectification of a Lynch nightmare. There is artificial food, presumably the only kind that can exist, and procreation does not end well. The whole of the film could be seen as a satire on how we as a species have fallen from grace and are irreparably damaged.

The opening has a soundtrack that almost sounds like what is in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the astronaut flies through the psychedelic light show toward the end of that film. We have the image of a man in a suit, Henry with his high, frizzy hair, floating in space in front of what appears to be a desolate planet. (I always thought, when I first saw the movie poster, that Henry’s hair looked like an eraser which fits the title of the film). The camera dives into a black hole where there is an emaciated, disfigured man (or as Ebert suggests one who has burns) looking out a window which evokes a silent scream from Henry. A diseased sperm seems to emanate from Henry’s mouth. The man pulls a lever and the sperm is sucked into fluid where then floats through another hole. Is this image supposed to be a grotesque version of a conception?

                                    

Henry, sporting a nerdish pocket protector, walks through a setting that is drab and barren, with mud, piles of dirt, and tall, filthy buildings. The sound in the background sounds like the drone of machinery, possibly a critique of a world becoming engulfed by mechanization.

He walks into a building that has zigzag carpeting in its lobby, which is what Lynch uses later in his TV show, Twin Peaks. IMDb notes that the pattern may have come from Stanley Kubrick’s influence on Lynch. The effect is one of things being off kilter. The ironwork on the heavy elevator doors has a Gothic feel to it. Henry’s apartment has dirt and grass in it. An IMDb note says that Lynch may be suggesting that below the surface of the human attempt at civilization, there will always be filth and creatures, “both literally and figuratively.” The picture he has of his girlfriend, Mary X (Charlotte Stewart), is in two pieces, one showing her head, as if she is decapitated (a foreshadowing), and thus, a fragmented entity. (The “X” last name of Mary and her parents seems to have something to do with the lack of true identity or individuality).

The landscape appears even more hellish as we hear crashing sounds and smoke emanating from the environment as Henry visits Mary X’s house for the first time. The awkwardness of the meeting with her parents is palpable. Henry scrunches in a corner of a couch, as if trying to recapture the womb experience. We see puppies vying for milk from their mother, their screeching sounds adding to the uncomfortable setting (more foreshadowing). Henry responds that he is a label printer to Mrs. X (Jeanne Bates). But this answer seems out of sync with the fact that Mary X seems to be having some sort of seizure which is only calmed by her mother stroking her hair (a maternal act that Mary X will not be able to sustain). Mr. X (Allen Joseph) says that he remembers that the area used to be a pasture and has declined into a “hellhole,” which implies how civilization has decimated nature. Grandmother (Jean Lange) sits catatonic in the kitchen as Mrs. X places a salad bowl and tosses its contents in her lap. It is humorous and upsetting at the same time, showing the numbing of life here. There is a contorting mechanical cuckoo bird coming out of the clock on the wall. IMDb states that the image may have come from Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, which is a story about an alcoholic experiencing hallucinations. When Henry attempts to cut up a tiny man-made chicken, it spouts oozing dark liquid and its cooked legs begin to move. It is now Mrs. X who goes into a trance and has a fit. What an inviting meal. One will either shake one’s head or laugh at the satiric thrust of this uber strange boyfriend-meeting-the-family scene.

It gets stranger. Mrs. X confronts Henry by asking if he and her daughter had sex. He is very embarrassed. She proceeds to nuzzle him saying things could get worse. Quite an understatement. Mrs. X says there is a baby at the hospital which is very immature. Mary X questions whether it even is a baby, an accurate assessment. Ebert says the “child” could be “a cross between a fetal version of E.T. and some form of skinned ruminant that has been plagued with an eternal cold that causes it to cry, whine and spit up various forms of goo practically around the clock.” Is the implication that this creature is what the human trace is devolving into – a domestic atrocity? The existence of this wild situation contrasts comically with Mary X asking Henry, like any other wife, if there is any mail.

After Mary X leaves for home because she can’t stand the situation, the child/creature becomes sick with facial pustules and breathing problems. Henry tries being a regular father in this highly irregular situation, taking temperatures and using a humidifier.

What follows is a nightmare, although reality in this film is already unreal. Henry’s loudly hissing radiator divides and turns into a stage revealing the smiling Lady in the Radiator (Laurel Near) with grotesquely large jowls. Those deformed sperms from the beginning of the film begin falling on her stage, which she squishes. Henry later encounters these entities supposedly waking up from his sleep, adding to the disgusting aspect of the film. He then has visions of the beautiful woman across the hall (Judith Rogers), who may be a prostitute. They have sex in a tub of water that looks like a witch’s cauldron. The Lady in the Radiator then sings, “In heaven, everything is fine.” The lyrics are ironic since what Lynch is serving up for us is a view of life that is far from heaven.

Henry then sees his own decapitation and his deformed offspring replaces his missing head, as if that horror is what the future holds. His head falls to the street and a boy takes it to a pencil factory where the worker there drills into the skull. The extracted material is used to make eraser head pencils. So, Henry, the nerd with the pocket protector, is an eraser head before actually being reduced to one in this fever dream.

After waking, Henry, who moves like Frankenstein’s monster here (is Lynch Dr. Frankenstein?), witnesses a savage beating from his window, a foreshadowing of what is to come. (The music in the background at this point sounds like sideshow carnival music. Send in the freaks?) He sees the prostitute with a man who has rouge on his cheeks (clown make-up to fit the sideshow feel?) entering her apartment. Henry pictures himself as the creature of his dreams, with the body of a man and the head of his deformed child. He then cuts through the bandages encasing the child, revealing its diseased organs. He then kills the creature with the scissors. Is it a mercy killing or is he trying to abort a decaying future?

Electrical lights blink in the apartment and outlets spark, while Henry sees what appears to be a smooth dinosaur doll head in the shadows. More about evolution? We return to that eerie globe at the beginning that cracks open revealing a hole. The burned/deformed man from the beginning reappears fighting with his levers. Is he a demonic god who has created this fallen world? The last image is of Henry being embraced by the Lady in the Radiator.

Is Henry living in an insane world, or is he himself insane and all this surrealism emanating from his mind? Like the main character in the movie Brazil who finds solace in insanity, is Henry embracing the woman at the end who sings of heaven because that is as close as he can come to escaping the madness? Your guess is as good as any.

7 of the Greatest Movie Cliffhangers

We have a guest post today from Hotdog.com.

7 of the Greatest Movie Cliffhangers

 Most film endings are straightforward. Heroes successfully set off on a quest of self-discovery, and the audience feels a sigh of relief as they ride off into the sunset. However, sometimes the most memorable movies don't spell out everything. They leave us with a cliffhanger to debate, interpret and re-watch to find details we missed before. The following films, we believe, boast 7 of the greatest movie cliffhangers, many of which are available to enjoy on popular streaming platforms.

Spoiler alert – we discuss the plots below.

 

Take Shelter

 

An apocalyptic storm is on the horizon. At least, that's what Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) believes while experiencing a series of horrifying nightmares. His history of mental health issues and increasing paranoia compel him to build a fallout shelter, but his precautions create skepticism. Whether or not his visions are true lasts until the final frame. Even then, the film’s symbolism of the storm as a reflection of Curtis’s mental state leaves doubt about his family's survival.

 

The Birds

 Director Alfred Hitchcock cultivated a catalog of suspenseful work for movie buffs to study while also struggling to sleep at night. His adaptation of Daphne DuMaurier's novel upends his staple of human-driven murder mysteries with birds attacking a peaceful seaside town. The film doesn't answer what makes the birds tick. Instead, the ending only beckons us to wonder if humankind can survive as the cast led by Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor search for a sanctuary. Unfortunately, birds occupy the scenery as far as the eye can see, causing viewers to wonder if Mother Nature has won once and for all.

 

Prisoners

 

Director Denis Villeneuve is no stranger when it comes to infusing his films with palpable intrigue. Prisoners is one of the best examples of his auteur style. Keller Dover (Hugh Jackman) will do anything he can to find his missing daughter and her friend. As he takes the law into his hands, Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) unravels a labyrinth of similar cases filled with dead ends and disturbing secrets. As Dover becomes the ultimate victim, the conclusion beckons the audience to wonder with hope or despair if Loki will uncover the truth right in front of him to solve everything.

 

The Graduate

 

Who knew young love could be so tumultuous? College graduate Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) engages in an affair with an older woman, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), and then falls head-over-heels for her daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross). Benjamin and Elaine have one thing in common: they feel tied down by their parents' expectations about their careers and relationships. Caught in-between arranged plans for the future, Benjamin and Elaine manage to break free during her wedding ceremony. As the adrenaline wears off, their stunned expressions don't paint a picture of living happily ever after. The final moments are a hallmark of a classic film as we're left to decide if they made the right choice.

 

Mulholland drive

 Director David Lynch always offers a surrealist escape, but even he outwits his genius with Mulholland Drive. Aspiring actress Betty Elmes (Naomi Watts) befriends an amnesiac (Laura Elena Harring) recovering from a car accident. Their lives strangely intersect with other actresses who look exactly like them and whose fates dissolve into murder/suicide. Was it all a dream or alternative realities merging? Unfortunately, or fortunately, Lynch remains secretive about the ending. His execution to use the same actresses to play multiple roles and the unreliable narrative makes it one of the most theorized cliffhangers in movie history.

 

The Empire Strikes Back

 

From superhero flicks to action blockbusters, franchises are commonplace now. But in 1980, a space opera trilogy-in-the-making took the world by storm with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. As the sequel to Star Wars – A New Hope, fans caught up with Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo attempting to bring down Darth Vader's regime. Nobody could prepare for the shocking revelation that Skywalker was Vader's son, or the dread of Solo forever frozen in carbonite. Even though we know what happens to the original trilogy characters today, Lucas's original vision is the blueprint for an installment that leaves audiences wanting more.

 

Inception

 Any film by director Christopher Nolan is a worthy entry on this list. However, Inception deserves extra recognition because of the iconic ending. Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) extracts secrets from his clients' subconscious minds better than anyone. But when he accepts the opportunity to do the impossible – plant an idea – his guilty conscience seeps into his mission. Nolan's intricate world-building around reality and dreams makes it difficult to tell the difference between the two. An elegant solution is to give the characters a totem. Cobb's totem is a top and links to a tragic accident in his past he hasn't healed from. If he uses it while dreaming, it will never topple. Using this to his advantage, Nolan crafts an ending where Cobb finally frees himself from his mistake and spins the top one last time. However, the film cuts away before we ever find out if the top ever stops spinning. Though most films' ambiguity builds to a flawed and unfulfilling conclusion, Nolan's attention to detail will encourage audiences to debate Inception's ending forever.

Mulholland Dr.

SPOILER ALERT! The plot of the movie will be discussed.

When I saw director David Lynch when he visited the Bryn Mawr Film Institute he spoke of the days he lived in my hometown, Philadelphia. He said the ugliness, the squalor there was sort of scary, disturbing. He also implied that because of those seemingly negative qualities that the city was wonderful. This impression may seem like a paradox, but for Lynch the darker side of life, the underbelly of the human psyche, was what fascinated him as an artist. It is similar to how the young boy in the movie American Beauty sees beauty in a dead bird or in paper trash swirling in the wind. In Lynch’s films, such as Blue Velvet, which I have written about previously, and in the television show Twin Peaks, the bizarre, the threatening part of life coexists with what appears to be the acceptable aspect of existence. But that “normal” world seems less real than one would expect, almost phony, and certainly less interesting, to the artist, and usually to the audience, than its counterpart.

 In Mulholland Dr., which Lynch wrote as well as directed, he again explores two different worlds, but here he is presenting two different stories in one film with each one having his disturbing, surreal elements because they spring from the main character’s personal experiences. To understand the enigmatic narrative, we must first understand what is happening. Then, we can delve into what Lynch may be trying to say through these stories. The best way to analyze the movie is to see the much longer first part of the film as a wish-fulfillment dream of the main character based on the short second part’s real world experiences, many of which are told in flashback. However, this may be too simplistic, which I will point out later.

The movie begins with a surreal sequence of young people dancing to jitterbug music against a bright blue background, as the figures and their shadows vary in size. It also foretells the type of film which is being shot later in the story. Superimposed over these images are shots of a smiling Betty (Naomi Watts). This unrealistic opening suggests the stream-of-consciousness of a dream. We also get a quick shot of someone in a bed with a pillow, which implies that we may be entering someone’s dream state. The upbeat, although strange, start segues to a drive at night with contrasting ominous music and the car light lit Mulholland Dr. street sign. The car doing the lighting stops, and the dark-haired woman in the back says that this is not where they should be stopping. At gunpoint, she is told to get out by one man, and another opens the car door. Rowdy, recklessly driven cars slam into the parked car, killing the men. The woman survives, and staggers away. She sneaks into the apartment of a woman who is leaving on a trip so she can sleep.

Betty lands at the Los Angeles airport, and we learn that she is an aspiring actress. She is all bubbly and in awe of being in LA. She met an elderly couple on the plane, and they hit it off. They seem sweet and encouraging. But, as we see them drive away in a cab, their smiles are grotesquely broad, and they bare too much teeth, which suggests a bit of nightmare invading Betty’s happy dream-come-true of being in LA. Coco (Anne Miller), who is the manager of the apartment complex where Betty’s actress Aunt Ruth (Maya Bond) resides, escorts Betty to her aunt’s home. The actress relative is on location shooting a film. The apartment is where the dark-haired woman is crashing. Betty finds her naked in the shower, which hints at their eventual sexual relationship. The woman has amnesia, so she says her name is Rita (Laura Elena Harring) after seeing the poster of the Rita Hayworth film Gilda hanging in the apartment. Rita has a handbag that contains a large sum of money and a triangular-shaped blue key.

 At a Winkie's restaurant, Dan (Patrick Fischler) tells Herb (Michael Cooke) about a frightening dream (a dream within Betty’s dream which pretends to be reality?) he has had involving a scary man living behind the dumpsters at the rear of this particular restaurant. Here again, we have a nightmare in counterpoint to the hopeful actress dream of Betty. Dan wants to look in the back so he can dispel his fear by proving that the creature does not exist. When they go to investigate, a shaggy-haired dark-skinned man with a long, pointed nose appears. Dan collapses. But, Herb only acknowledges his concern for his friend. Did he see the dark man, or was this a nightmare demon Dan hallucinates? At another point, Betty says, “I’m in a dream place,” when speaking about LA. So, the film often alerts the audience to the fact that what they are seeing may not be real.

Director Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) has a meeting with studio big shots and gangster types, the Castigliani brothers. One of them, played by the film’s composer Angelo Badalamenti, spits out what to him is unacceptable espresso onto a napkin. The brothers throw a head shot of an actress by the name of Camilla Rhodes (Melissa George) at the studio men because she is the one that they want as the lead in Kesher’s new movie. They keep saying, “This is the girl.” We see another bigger shot (ironically played by dwarf-sized Michael J. Anderson) in a room with a glass window who is the puppeteer pulling the studio strings. Kesher storms out and smashes the Castigliani’s car windshield. He returns home and finds his wife in bed with the pool guy, who says to him, “Just forget you even saw it. It’s better that way.” This remark echoes what is happening to Rita, who may be better off not knowing about the shady men who died at the car crash and the money in the handbag. Kesher stays at a sleazy hotel. The manager tells him that men showed up to say that Kesher’s credit cards can’t be used and he is broke. He is told to meet a “cowboy” (Lafayette Montgomery) at a ranch, who tells him that he has to pick Camilla for the role. Another unreal incident is how did these men know where Kesher escaped to, since he only paid in cash for the room?

In an unreal coincidence, Betty and Rita go to the same Winkie’s as did Dan and Herb. Betty, using the pay phone outside the restaurant, verifies that there was an accident on Mulholland Dr. While being served coffee at the diner, Rita notices that the waitress’ name is Diane, which reminds her that she knew a woman named Diane Selwyn. We also have a scene where an inept hit-man, Joe (Mark Pellegrino) kills a man for a black address book. Since they talk about a car accident, we know that these men are associated with the criminals involved with Rita. This impression is confirmed when Joe tells a prostitute to be on the lookout for the missing brunette. When Betty and Rita call Diane Selwyn’s number, Rita realizes it is not her, but she says she knows the voice. One of the neighbors at the apartment complex, Louise Bonner (Lee Grant), is clairvoyant according to Coco. Bonner says to Betty, “that’s not your name,” and advises her to get rid of Rita. This scene fits in with the dream nature of this part, possibly showing how the nightmare of reality is trying to intrude into Betty’s wish-fulfillment dream state.

Betty’s aunt set her up for an audition. She runs through the lines with Rita, and the two laugh at the bad dialogue. Some of her lines include saying how she hates the person she is talking to, and threatening to kill the other person in the scene. She says these words to Rita, which is an omen of what will happen in the second part of the movie. But, when Betty plays the scene at the studio, she changes the feel of the scene, and delivers a steamy, completely mesmerizing performance. The female casting director at the audition says that the film for which she read will never happen and takes her to see Kesher, who is auditioning women for his movie, The Sylvia North Story. Betty must leave to go with Rita to find Diane Selwyn. Camilla Rhodes auditions, and Kesher reluctantly repeats what he has been told to say: “This is the girl.”

 Betty and Rita go the what they believe is Diane’s apartment. They see men lurking about the area. They find the woman’s neighbor there, who tells them they switched apartments. We get a sniff of subtext here from the neighbor’s hurt and angry attitude that she and Diane may have been involved, which foreshadows the relationship between Betty and Rita. Betty enters Diane’s place through an open window, and lets Rita in. They find Diane’s decomposing corpse inside. Did the criminals associated with Rita’s past kill her, and were waiting for Rita to show up? Rita believes so, and goes back to Betty’s place to cut her hair. Betty finishes cutting her hair, and gives Rita a short blonde wig. They stand next to each other staring into a mirror. They look similar. It is interesting that they later make love, as if Betty is trying to make Rita into her own image, and may need to feel love for herself.

In the middle of the night, Rita, in a dream, starts to speak Spanish, and calls out the word, “Silencio.” She remembers a theater by that name and convinces Betty to go with her to that place. It is here where this world becomes more dream-like. The master of ceremonies there says everything at the theater is a recording, an illusion, as musicians pretend to play music, and a woman appears to be singing, but is not. At one point, the emcee disappears at the front of the stage. Betty reaches into her bag and a blue box magically appears there. We had the blue background of the opening, the blue key, and now this blue item, the coincidences lending themselves to the surreal nature of this world. When the women return to the apartment, Betty mysteriously disappears from the bedroom, just as the emcee had done. Is she waking up, and thus exiting her dream? Rita fits the triangular-shaped key into the box, and opens it. It seems as if her reality is sucked into the box, which drops onto the floor of Aunt Ruth’s bedroom, who is now there as if none of what preceded took place. However, the woman heard the sound of the box dropping, but finds nothing when she enters the room.

We then have what seems like a transition between Betty’s dream and a waking state. We see Diane’s bedroom with the corpse, but the image alternates with one of an alive woman in the bed. There is a vision of the Cowboy who says it’s time to wake up. Betty is now Diane Selwyn, in the apartment we saw in Betty’s dream. In the first part, after Rita dons the blonde wig, Betty says to her, “You look like someone else,” which shows the real world intruding in subliminally, telling Betty that Rita is not who she seems. The neighbor we also saw in the first part appears, collecting things from her former apartment, and she tells Diane that two policemen had been around, looking for her. We see a normal-shaped blue key sitting on the coffee table. Diane, even though awake, hallucinates that Rita is in her apartment, but her name is Camilla Rhodes. So, we know how that name showed up in her dream. But, then we see this Camilla half-naked on the couch, and the similarly topless Diane practically forcing herself on her, as Camilla tells her she must stop. The blue key is no longer on the table, so what follows is a flashback from here until the very end which shows most of the elements that appeared in the first part rearranged.

 Camilla and Diane are actresses, and they auditioned for Kesher’s movie, The Sylvia North Story, which was Kesher’s film in the first part, too. The two women became lovers. However, Camilla broke it off, which devastated Diane. Camilla became involved with Kesher. Camilla invites Diane to a party, and has a car pick her up. The driver stops where Rita did in the first part, and now it is Diane who says, “this is not where we are supposed to stop,” the words Rita used. Camilla appears and leads her up to the party. We see a man dressed like a cowboy, who turns into the western fellow of the first part. We also see a person drinking coffee who morphs into the espresso-sipping gangster brother in the dream. It is here where she meets Coco, who is really Kesher’s mother. Diane, in answer to some questions, states she had an aunt, who in this story died, and left her some money. Diane also says she won a jitterbug contest, which explains why we have young people doing that dance at the beginning of the dream. Kesher, talking about his divorce, laughingly says his ex-wife got the pool guy, while the director got the pool, which refers to the infidelity scene in the dream. Camilla then humiliates Diane by kissing a girl who showed up in the dream as Camilla Rhodes in the first part. It makes sense that in the dream she plays Camilla, the woman who gets the part. It also allowed Betty in the dream to keep Camilla in the form of Rita, but wipe her past clean with amnesia so Betty could help her, make her dependent on her, and fall in love with her.

In the next flashback, Diane meets with Joe, the hit-man, at Winkie’s, where she sees the person she dreams as Dan. The waitress’ name here is Betty, which is the name Diane uses for herself in the dream story of the first part. She is there to hire Joe to kill Camilla. She, like the gangsters, presents a headshot of an actress, in this case the real Camilla, and she, in this world, says the words, “This is the girl.” Joe says confirmation of the hit will be signaled by the appearance of the blue key he holds up in front of her. She asks what does it open? Joe just laughs. Now, this world, too, becomes surreal. We see the scary man behind the dumpsters, and he holds the blue box. It drops to his feet, as the box dropped at the end of the dream to the floor. We see the old couple who appeared as Betty’s flight friends, as tiny creatures scurrying away from the box. Is Diane imagining this part, psychotically answering her own question about the key? We are back in Diane’s apartment again, and the blue key is again on the table, signaling the end of the flashbacks which supplied her dream. We hear knocking at the door by the policemen possibly investigating Camilla’s murder, the light of the police car flashing in the background. Is this scene real, or more hallucinations on Diane’s part, brought on by paranoia? She is possibly driven insane with guilt about the killing of Camilla. She imagines the elderly couple, full-sized now, laughingly assaulting her. She pulls out a gun and shoots herself. She is now dead on the bed, just the way Diane was found in the dream. Did Diane as Betty foresee her own death?

So, is it that straight second part-is the reality-first-part-is-the-dream the only way to understand what happens? Perhaps. Maybe the scene in the second part which shows the scary man with the box is not part of Diane’s story, since she doesn’t really experience him, as she does the other parts that are the bases for the dream of the first part. Maybe Lynch is referring to the demons that lurk in all of our minds, not just in Diane’s suffering state. After Diane dies, we, the audience, see a surreal smoky mist rising from the bed. If Diane is now dead, and this is the “real” world, she cannot be experiencing this phenomena, or imagining it. After her death, we, not Diane or Betty, go back to the Silencio theater, which did not appear in the second part, the only suggestion for its existence in part one is Kesher speaking Spanish at the party. We see a glowing microphone stand, and the woman in the balcony we saw in the dream, who instead of saying the end, utters the word, “Silencio.”

I think Lynch is talking about the movie-making process. He has his main characters, and some supporting ones, be in the acting profession. We see the Hollywood sign twice in the film. We have auditions. Lynch may be satirizing the studios who try to manipulate the artist’s vision when he deals with the movie executives caving to disreputable interests, interfering with the director’s motion picture. At that Bryn Mawr Film Institute visit, Lynch said his primary advice to new filmmakers was to get final cut to protect their work. Movies spring from imagination, and involve the imaginations of the audience. In the first section, Betty, when suggesting they call the police to find out about the possible accident, says to Rita, “We’ll pretend to be someone else,” which is what actors do, and which we do as we are sucked into the movie’s world, much as we are sucked into the blue box in this film. Of course, this imaginative pretending to be someone else refers to how the two characters are different people in the two stories. But, it also points to how a director can take the same actresses and have them become different people depending on how you tell the story. Rita taking the name of an actress emphasizes the way people reinvent themselves in the dream world of film. Betty uses the same overwrought words of the script at her audition, but through art, transforms them into something moving. At Silencio, the emcee (the director?) tells the audience in the theater, and the audience watching the movie (also in a theater), that what we are seeing is not really happening in front of them. It is a recording, an illusion, of reality. But, Betty and Rita, in a theater, as are we, are still moved by the woman’s dubbed singing of the Spanish version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying,” as are we. That emotional moment is reality for us.

“Rhodes” is Camilla’s last name in the film. Mulholland Dr. is a road. When you take a ride with David Lynch down a cinematic road, that trip takes many imaginative turns.

The next film is Invasion of the Body Snatchers.