Mulholland Dr. (2001)

(In theaters, January 2002) Repeat after me; the emperor has no clothes. It’s not because it’s hard to understand that it’s smart. Heck, it’s not because it’s smart that it’s necessarily hard to understand; in this case, it’s because it’s incoherent that it’s difficult to understand. Art is partly about presenting complex emotions to a wide audience, and that’s a test that Mulholland Dr. fails miserably. The first half of the film promises an oddly eerie thriller with at least three different threads. But the second half essentially gives up on trying to piece any of this together and instead giggles madly as it throws nonsense on the screen. Too bad; for all his substantial faults, director David Lynch is adept at presenting strong individual scenes and coaxing good performances out of his actors. It’s too bad that all of it resolves to nonsense or at the very least a disjointed semblance of an oniric “explanation”. It doesn’t help that the film has considerable lengths. By the end, maybe you’ll be like me and my sister, whispering at the screen “We don’t care, David Lynch.” “You can’t make us care, David Lynch.” “Not even your gratuitous naked lesbian sex scene can make us care, David Lynch.”