3. Mulholland Drive
This is certainly the widest known of the three films on my list, and in a way the least weird. Dont get me wrong, its still certifiably insane but director David Lynch knows that and embraces it, which in a way lessens the strangeness of it. Lynch even provides clues in the liner notes of the DVD (things like: Notice appearances of the red lampshade) to help audiences make some sense of the tale. For those of you unfamiliar with the movie, it more or less tells the story of a young actress (Naomi Watts) arriving in Hollywood and befriending an amnesiac (Laura Harring) who is crashing in her aunts apartment. Thats about all the nutshell I can give you because most of the picture is comprised of apparently related vignettes that include old people shrinking to inch-tall heights and laughing like lunatics, a nightmarish monster hanging out behind a diner, a Spanish nightclub where the singer collapses yet her voice continues, cowboy movie moguls, deadly car crashes in the Hollywood hills, a corpse rotting in a bed, Watts crying while she masturbates, and a blue box. Ive watched Mulholland Dr. several times over the years trying to force an order onto the randomness. On occasion I feel somewhat successful, but Ive never gotten to the point where everything fits. And I suppose thats some of its appeal. Reviewer A. O. Scott of the New York Times actually wrote that, the film is an intoxicating liberation from sense, with moments of feeling all the more powerful for seeming to emerge from the murky night world of the unconscious. Im not sure I would go that far, but something about it has kept me coming back. I will say that it can be rather unnerving in its weirdness, as in maybe dont watch it by yourself late at night and then expect to be able to immediately fall into a peaceful sleep. At the same time, we are a moving going public that has grown accustomed to being spoon fed our cinematic entertainment, so asking us to work for it is refreshing every now and again.