What’s So Funny About Mulholland Drive?
David Lynch’s masterpiece asks viewers to let go of logic and dive deep into the director’s — and their own — subconscious. Let it in.
There are only two things that are pure in David Lynch’s world, and those are love and terror. Both cut through the artifice of his films like the brilliant beams of light that illuminate Naomi Watts’ face when her character, Betty — a fresh-faced aspiring actress from Deep River, Ontario — arrives at LAX for the first time at the beginning of Mulholland Drive. Betty is about to learn the truth about Hollywood, a truth that’s darker and more horrifying than she ever could have imagined. So why do people think this is hilarious?
In recent years, complaints from cinephiles about audience members laughing at inappropriate moments during movie screenings have become commonplace. Lynch’s films are particularly notorious for this: I’ve experienced it myself, emerging puzzled and a little irritated after sitting behind a pair of college students who snickered all the way through Mulholland Drive. The movie does have intentionally funny moments, as well as moments of high strangeness so disarming that you can’t help but make a noise that’s somewhere between a gasp and a snort. But it’s definitely not a comedy. So why do people insist on laughing at it?
When Mulholland Drive debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001, it sharply divided audience members into two camps: Those who thought it was brilliant, but baffling, and those who didn’t get it at all. Twenty-five years later, the apocryphal wisdom of the internet has made the movie a little easier to understand: Basically, everything we see before the major perspective shift towards the end of the movie can be understood as a fantasy that Betty — actually an embittered failed actress who recently lost both her dream role and her dream woman — is having as she sits alone in her apartment trying to figure out where it all went wrong.
Mulholland Drive was also initially shot as a pilot for ABC, then reworked into a feature film when the network passed, which accounts for some of the eccentric side quests that presumably would have been fleshed out in a long-form format like television. Beyond that, all you really need to know is that Hollywood is an evil place run by evil people where no good can prosper. It’s best not to get too caught up in the details: In fact, being a little befuddled just puts the viewer in the shoes of poor, naive Betty as nightmares start creeping up around the edges of her dream.
There are some truly terrifying and sinister moments in Mulholland Drive, particularly the famous scene where a man played Lynch regular Patrick Fischler describes a nightmare to his friend as the two sit in a booth at Winkie’s Diner on Mulholland Drive. After Fischler finishes his story, his friend gets up to pay, and the mood shifts as Fischler starts to sweat. His nightmare is coming true. He keeps walking, as if he’s no longer in control of his actions, and peers around the corner of the dumpster like he did in his dream. There, he sees a blackened face like a witch from a fairytale, and is so shocked that he faints into his friend’s arms.
What does that have to do with people laughing at Mulholland Drive? That scene is about the loss of control, about submitting to dreams and facing the strange and terrifying things we find there. This is what Lynch is asking his audience to do when they watch one of his movies, and the prospect of being face-to-face with the darkness of someone else’s subconscious — let alone their own — is too much for some audiences to bear. So they laugh, to distance themselves from the nightmare and remain in control.
But they’re missing out. Refusing to engage with art except at an ironic distance is always an issue, but it’s especially so with Lynch, whose work defies easy explanations, but always makes deep intuitive and emotional sense if you let it. So don’t be afraid to engage earnestly with Mulholland Drive, or with any of Lynch’s movies. If you do, the truth will hit you like a bolt of lightning to the heart.
