MULHOLLAND DRIVE (2001)

More than twenty years on, it’s hard not to see David Lynch’s feverish look at Hollywood, L.A. as a before-the-fact companion piece to Quentin Tarantino’s ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD/’19.  The earlier film like a response; perhaps even a rebuke.  A case of art vs. pastiche.*  Lynch has a narrative of sorts: a car crash disrupting a planned murder; a wannabee Hollywood starlet, naïf fresh before she finds an amnesiac beauty (like a dark twin) in her borrowed bed; a hot young film director with an offer he can’t refuse to re-cast a role*; a hitman having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day; a Garden of Allah like bungalow hotel run by tap dance legend Ann Miller; and much transference of personalities, apartments, industry jobs, souls and sexuality.  The entire film perfectly cast.  A heady brew that needn’t add up (and doesn’t) , merely be felt as something really happening (and it does).  Fierce & funny, violent & entertaining, Lynch never loses control of his mystifying material, helped by the restrictions of a feature length running time.  (Both sets of TWIN PEAKS see him losing interest at the two-third’s mark.)  DRIVE’s once dicey rep rightfully tilting up over the years.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *As mentioned, ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD/’19   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/12/once-upon-time-in-hollywood-2019.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Justin Theroux fine in a role that likely was written for Lynch regular Kyle MacLachlan.  Note those chin-first profile shots.  Alas, without the MacLachlan’s pile driver of a chin.