12 Movies That Made You Work Out The Answer Yourself
2. Mulholland Drive
The Question: What the hell is the entire movie about?
David Lynch's surreal 2001 masterpiece is a gorgeous, superbly acted neo-noir that abandons typical narrative logic in favour of something more dreamlike, mysterious and, yes, ambiguous.
Lynch has patently refused to explain the meaning behind his film, but it's safe to say there's more to it than just aspiring actress Betty (Naomi Watts) and amnesiac Rita (Laura Harring) trying to figure out her identity across the sprawl of Los Angeles.
The most straight-forward and popular theory is that the first two-thirds of the movie are a fantasy in the mind of Diane Selwyn, a depressed, washed-up actress who appears in the film's second half, also played by Naomi Watts. Her reality is the polar opposite of the first two acts: her looks have faded, she's bereft of hope and her love life's a mess, culminating in a climactic murder-suicide.
The film's grasp on conventional filmmaking language is loose enough that this theory and any others can easily be both embraced and rejected. The auteur certainly didn't help his fans trying to figure it out, though, even removing chapter selections from the film's original DVD release, forcing them to watch it in one sitting or fuss around with the fast-forward and rewind buttons.