5. 'Diane' in Mullholland Dr.
For many, Mulholland Drive represents the pinnacle of director David Lynch's career. It does look like it may well be his last conventional movie, given his now seemingly total immersion into the avant garde. Although the word 'conventional' barely applies with Lynch, unless you're watching The Straight Story. He understands the Hollywood dream and how, for many, it can become a nightmare; Mulholland Drive serves as both cautionary tale and starstruck love-letter to the sometimes nefarious business of making pictures. The film starts with elements of what seems like an old-time thriller, complete with an amnesia patient and a plucky young starlet-in-the-making. But this is a Lynch movie, and we know our eyes can betray us. Nothing is ever as it seems with that guy. The film transcends traditional narrative structure, exploring the naive hopes and darkest desires of the protagonist, superbly played by Naomi Watts. It examines those sad, broken dreams of so many failing starlets. It isn't until some time into the third act that the penny drops. For some people, it won't be until they've seen the film two or three times more. We see a waitress called Diane. She's taking an order from a patron, someone we saw earlier in the film. Working backward from that point, you will realise that most (all?) of what we've seen is the imaginings of this tired, bitter looking woman, someone who came to Hollywood with dreams and ended up pouring cups of joe at Winkies. In what turns out to be a petty act of revenge, she's set out to kill and in realising this, wakes from a dream/nightmare state and, screaming in horror, turns a gun on herself. The tragedy of it all is in the fact that the character of Diane is supremely talented - such an imagination if nothing else! - but she's wasted and marginalised, not least by her own naivete and egotistical stupidity.