Why is Mulholland dr considered a masterpiece?

David Lynch urges people to participate in Transcendental Meditation to be able to understand his movies, namely Mulholland Drive. So basically, sit down, relax, breathe in slowly, exhale a bit longer than you draw in, count your breaths, try to think of nothing else, set a timer on a smartphone, do this for about 30 mins every day for the rest of your life. Make sure not to eat 3 hrs before starting. Have some well ventilated area for fresh air. Good luck in understanding Mulholland. If you don't have time for TM, think of MD as a dream of guilt for the murder of a lesbian lover and the last 1/4 of the film is what happened leading up to the first 2 acts.

WTF did I just read? Makes as much sense as a Lynch movie.

I've had this movie on my list for a long time - but I'm thinking of removing it... I'm tired of unsatisfying movies.

I remember hating Wild At Heart, and Eraserhead is something I don't ever need to see again.
Yet Blue Velvet, although being weird, has a fairly followable plot - innocent guy falls for the girlfriend of a psycho and is drawn into an underworld of dangerous characters and situations. It also has tons of memorable lines & scenes. (The only thing I remember from Wild At Heart was hearing a long, deep sound from Bobby Peru.)

Originally Posted by Joel

David Lynch urges people to participate in Transcendental Meditation to be able to understand his movies, namely Mulholland Drive. So basically, sit down, relax, breathe in slowly, exhale a bit longer than you draw in, count your breaths, try to think of nothing else, set a timer on a smartphone, do this for about 30 mins every day for the rest of your life. Make sure not to eat 3 hrs before starting. Have some well ventilated area for fresh air. Good luck in understanding Mulholland. If you don't have time for TM, think of MD as a dream of guilt for the murder of a lesbian lover and the last 1/4 of the film is what happened leading up to the first 2 acts.

That's a riot, Joel.. Plus your concise summary has the ring of being true-- and I haven't even seen the movie!

In the avant-garde, nothing ever need be explained. As David Tudor told a student at Black Mountain College: "If you don't know, why do you ask?"

~Doc

I've had this movie on my list for a long time - but I'm thinking of removing it... I'm tired of unsatisfying movies.

I would say it is a masterpiece within Lynch's universe, but not really outside of it. To be generally considered a masterpiece, a film has to be a bit more accepted by the mainstream which IMO Mulholland Dr. was not and is not. As much of a David Lynch fan that I am, I still felt it was a bit choppy. It was suppose to be a pilot for a show on ABC but they pulled a plug on it and Lynch was forced to scramble and make it into a movie. That seems very apparent to me as far as the continuity goes, but I still enjoyed it. There are other aspects of it such as the surreal elements, characters, score and depiction of Hollywood which I thought made up for it.

Sorry if this is a dumb thread or in the wrong place but I found this film really disapointing. It started off mezmerizing but quickly started to feel like a tv movie on life time.

Sorry if this is a dumb thread or in the wrong place but I found this film really disapointing. It started off mezmerizing but quickly started to feel like a tv movie on life time. Maybe it was on purpose but Naomi's character felt really campy as well as certain others but I felt almost no interest in the sections based around the two female leads (alsothe lesbian scene felt forced and like something from a softcore porn flick). Actually I was much more engaged in the parts surrounding the director. The scenes with with bim like where he caught his wife cheating or when he meets the Cowboy were pure gold ^^ That said the movie played out like a thriller with psychological elements and the main thing that kept me watching was curiosity to see how things would connect (plus i wanted to see why it was called Lynch's masterpiece). In the end though it went from being somewhat grounded in reality to an abstract mess leaving me confused and utterly unsatisfied.

Now understand I like surrealism and i dont always mind being confused but the biggest issue is I mostly felt bored and feel no motivation to rewatch this film and get a better idea on what happened and what everything meant. I much prefered Lynch's more normal film The elephant man as well as his earlier piece of nightmare fuel Eraserhead. For surrealsim I think The Holy mountain, Fear and loathing in las vegas, Possession, and The hourglass Sanitarium are better films than Mullholand dr.

I've had this movie on my list for a long time - but I'm thinking of removing it... I'm tired of unsatisfying movies.

I remember hating Wild At Heart, and Eraserhead is something I don't ever need to see again.
Yet Blue Velvet, although being weird, has a fairly followable plot - innocent guy falls for the girlfriend of a psycho and is drawn into an underworld of dangerous characters and situations. It also has tons of memorable lines & scenes. (The only thing I remember from Wild At Heart was hearing a long, deep sound from Bobby Peru.)

I think you'll find it unsatisfying, but it's probably still worth the watch. There are some interesting moments, a good scare, and things seem to have a deeper meaning without making any damned sense. And the general weirdness will keep things interesting, even though nothing resolves in a conventional sense.

I think the key to understanding Lynch is that he operates in a dream space. We're in our subconscious, in our fears, our jealousies, our naked desires. Our characters are lacerated by themselves in this space. It's a bad dream and we're being chased by the one monster we'll never escape, ourselves.

You make a good point about Lynch's films. Here is my commentary from a few years ago:

Mulholland Drive(2001)

I finally sat down to watch this picture after avoiding it for 20 years. There were several enjoyable elements, chiefly the superb acting of Naomi Watts in a role that demanded the use of a wide range of her acting chops; but also the production’s obvious technical achievements, such as Lynch’s use of Crayola type colors in his sets, and also the first rate cinematography by Peter Deming. The art and production designers certainly had a work out as well.

The film is basically a lesbian fantasy wrapped in an abstract and often incoherent neo-noir mystery. At times the primitive scenes are morphed into something entirely new with no explanation. The actors played against a dream-like but pretentiously incongruous or muddled narrative made it seem like someone’s graduate film school project. During other passages the action and suspense were very Hitchcockian. Yet at no time did I feel as if I were watching a great motion picture.

Some of the film is very comparable to abstract painting, as it is in other segments of Lynch’s movies: make of it what you will. There is no “right” answer, which allows endless speculation and intellectualization. The story starts as a mystery with the common noir trope of amnesia, and ends with a disquieting thud, followed by a mysterious uttered coda. The film has dream-like quality for sure, but it’s not surrealism. Some find the picture endlessly hip, while others might consider it artsy bunco. I lean toward the latter. It’s likely that Lynch has not revealed its meaning simply because it has no meaning.

The cast was enjoyable, from the brief cameos by Robert Forester and Dan Hedaya, to the smoldering sensuality of Laura Harring (in her best Rita Hayworth impersonation). Naomi Watts, who puts me in mind of a 20th Century Teresa Wright (Shadow of a Doubt), is the keystone of the movie, and she came through in spades. Justin Theroux as the director Adam Kesher was put through the hoops, and provided some of the minimal comedy. It was delightful to see the great Ann Miller as Coco, the landlady, in her last film screen role.

In the final analysis I experienced the film much the same as when listening to a great jazz solo. I enjoy it, notice several outstanding portions, but resist analyzing it any further.

Doc’s rating: 6/10