10 Movies That Were Designed To Mess With Your Head

Mulholland Drive splits people into two camps. It’s either a cinematic masterpiece the likes of which will never be seen again (it was voted the best film of the 21st Century in a poll of over 170 film critics), or it’s too obtuse and nonsensical to be entertaining. Like most of David Lynch’s movies, the point of Mulholland Drive isn’t really to ‘get’ it, the film is more concerned with exploring themes than sticking to rigid plot structures or conventional narrative tools.

When aspiring actress Betty Elms returns to the City of Angels, she meets a dark-haired amnesiac woman who has recently been involved in an accident, whereupon fantasy and reality melt together in an inexplicable soup of dreamlike parallel realities.

There are so many theories and analyses pertaining to the ‘meaning’ of Mulholland Drive, that they’re too numerous to list here. Even David Lynch himself has refused to explain or speculate on the method behind Mulholland’s madness.

In the end, the movie feels more like prolonged hypnosis or a late night fever dream than anything resembling a Hollywood film. It begs the question, are plot explanations valid or warranted? And is any time spent trying to rationalise and comprehend the film better spent being absorbed by its inherent weirdness. The movie is what you make of it, and your interpretation is really the only one that matters.