Decalogue 2001: Mulholland Drive

This event took place on Sun 28 March


We asked Decalogue co-creator Adam O’Brien, PhD student at Bristol University, why he picked Mulholland Drive, our Decalogue 2001 film. Here’s what he had to say:

If the much-loved American ‘indies’ of the 90s – those of Tarantino, the Coen brothers, Kevin Smith, Jim Jarmusch – were often marked with a kind black humour, then Mulholland Drive seems to signal a new seriousness. The film hardly lets you laugh anything off. Yes, there are amusing moments, but nothing is disposable. One of the reasons that people have such a hard time pinning down the film is that niggling feeling that everything matters, even if we can’t quite describe why. Every conversation, every prop, every gesture seems to hold the key. Each scene is monumental, and feels like a revelation of sorts – think of Betty’s audition, or the discovery of the corpse. If it sometimes seems as though Lynch isn’t offering us any answers, that’s probably because he’s offering us so many.

But why does this matter to the story of the decade? No, Mulholland Drive didn’t spawn a series of surreal melodramatic masterpieces (although Brick and Donnie Darko are clearly keen to venture into similar territory). But maybe it’s a bridge between the ravishing intensity of film as we knew it, and the playful inventiveness of digital cinema as we’ve come to know it. Inland Empire sacrificed the former and took the latter to new extremes. Mulholland Drive, like all great films, looks forward and back at the same time.

Come along to the Mulholland Drive screening on Sunday 28th March at 14:00hrs to hear more thoughts about this film and to let us know your own. Hit the comments button below to have your say now!

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