Oregon Live, 10/19/01

Few filmmakers anywhere have equaled David Lynch's ability to construct startling images and soundscapes, to evoke gripping atmospheres, or to take the syntaxes and parts of speech of the cinema and consistently wring them into original, expressive shapes.

And few human beings share Lynch's particular obsessions -- or at least are willing to talk about them: the confluence of sexuality and horror, the marriage of glamour and pain, the sense that uncanny and opaque forces control our destinies, the struggle between plain, cornball goodness and dark, unspeakable evil.

Although he has made wonderful pictures that don't fit the pattern -- the classic American folk tale "The Straight Story," the gripping Victorian nightmare "The Elephant Man" -- the core of Lynch's canon thrums with a nauseating, dizzying blend of powerhouse moviemaking and bizarre, dreamlike storytelling: "Eraserhead," "Blue Velvet," "Wild at Heart," "Lost Highway" and the TV series "Twin Peaks," along with its theatrical incarnation, "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me."

"Mulholland Drive," Lynch's latest, is another masterfully twisted brick in the writer-director's oeuvre.

A tale of amnesia, sex, nightmares, murder and the movie business, it's surreal, erotic, creepy, frustrating, absorbing, transporting and torturous in the way only a Lynch film can be.

In many regards, it's as full-bodied a summation of its maker's tics and talents as he's ever produced -- not the best Lynch film so much as the Lynchiest.

The film originally was meant as a pilot for a TV series (and just try to wrap your head around that thought while you watch!). When it was rejected, Lynch came up with a few new scenes and voila -- a feature film.

Like "Twin Peaks," "Mulholland Drive" is built on the backs of relatively unknown acting talent -- chipper blonde Naomi Watts, darkly voluptuous Laura Harring, and irritating hotshot Justin Theroux -- with some faces from movie and TV history tossed in for cameos, including Ann Miller, Robert Forster and Chad Everett.

Watts plays Betty Elms, a fresh-faced Canadian girl who has come to Los Angeles to be discovered. Staying at her aunt's lovely old Hollywood apartment, she meets the amnesiac Rita (Harring) and decides to help her discover her true identity. And that might not be a good thing: Rita -- it's not her real name -- escaped assassination the night before but can't remember any of it.

At the same time, a snotty young movie director (Theroux) is running into trouble. Unhappy with the leading lady in his latest picture, he's planning to recast; but when some sinister gangster types insist on a certain young actress and he balks, he finds his life thrown into turmoil from the bedrock up.

There are other stories: a neurotic psychotherapy patient who insists that evil lurks behind a diner, a pair of old vacationers who seem a little too happy to ignore, a hit man who turns a simple job into a melee, a cowboy who dispenses advice with divine authority.

As in "Lost Highway," what brings it all together -- or tries to -- is supernatural, maybe even inexplicable. And it doesn't exactly hurry itself along, which can be as excruciating as delightful.

The main thing is, it's all Lynch: strenuous and daring and moody and ludicrous and loaded with inventions, and beguilingly void of easy answers.

Depending on your taste for the director's other films, you should know right away if "Mulholland Drive" is, in your algebra, a must-see or a not-on-your-life.

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