3. Mulholland Drive
Isn't every David Lynch film sans The Straight Story just an extrapolated journey through the inner life of a questionably sane protagonist? Perhaps, but Mulholland Drive, which is surprisingly straightforward for one of Lynch's dream-trip movies, goes to explicit lengths to emphasize that this isn't just a tale of insanity, but its one individuals insanity, shot through with an entire imagined world built from old noir films and La-La Land fairy tales. Lynch shows us two versions of Diane's life, but melds them together to suggest a mystery. The real world shows a rock-bottom would-be actress rejected by her lover, who has apparently hired someone to kill said lover (or done it herself) and is now so despondent and guilty, she's going to take her own life. The second version is a constructed reality that is painstakingly self-centered; Diane is a talented actress who has clandestine and shadowy forces adjust the Hollywood power game so she gets roles, and her lover experiences bouts of amnesia that force her toward a dependent role. The stranger segments that feel less tied to Diane--the man in the room, the creature behind the dumpster, Billy Ray Cyrus, the tiny munchkin old couple--can be seen as the mental emissaries of Diane's guilt, the forces that will "rescue" her from this false world of lies and return her to responsibility, even if that ultimately leads to her own tragic demise.