Every so often a film comes along that challenges the brain cells to a duel and wins outright. The recent Tree of Life is one such example. Director David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, released 10 years ago in October 2001, is definitely another.

By the end all you are sure of is that you have just witnessed an audacious, captivating and addictive film

Mulholland Drive is a complex tale of suspense, set in the real – or is it a parallel? – universe of Los Angeles. At best it can be described as a psychological film noir, yet it is almost impossible to pigeonhole a film that defies description like this one does.

Even a plot synopsis is hard, given the intricacies of the unfolding storyline. It starts off simply enough, as Betty Elms (Naomi Watts) arrives in LA to seek work as an actress. She is blonde, bubbly, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, looking forward to her new life.

She arrives at her aunt’s apartment to discover a dark-haired woman (Laura Elena Harring) who is suffering from amnesia after surviving a horrific car crash. Betty immediately bonds with the woman and promises to help her discover her identity.

In the meantime, a hotshot young director Adam Kersher (Justin Theroux) is being strong-armed by the mob into casting an unknown actress in his next film.

So far so straightforward; until scene after scene, myriad eccentric characters – including a kindly old couple behaving like demented demons, a cowboy and a dwarf in a wheelchair – make an appearance.

Yet, while their presence only obfuscates matters further, you know intuitively that they fit in; like the blue key fits in the mysterious blue box whose significance, like the red lampshade and the blue-haired woman at the Club Silencio, is important. It’s just hard to figure out what that significance is.

By the end the protagonists are not who they were at the beginning, any clues you may have cottoned onto lead nowhere, and all you are sure of is that you have just witnessed an audacious, captivating and addictive film.

It’s all a dream! That is the obvious explanation, and is easy to see why. Mulholland Drive is a rarity in that it succeeds in recreating that surreal, murky, dreamscape quality we experience every night but find impossible to define. And yet, from that dreamscape, the questions continue to arise: whose dream is it? When does it start? At what point does it end?

Multiple viewings do little to offer a logical answer. I recently sat down to watch it again, notebook in hand, to take notes and seek new clues, and that elusive ‘A-ha!’ moment. It never came. Often I caught myself looking intently at the screen, pen hovering over blank paper, absorbing the impressiveness of the film – my fascination with it unremitting.

Not that I think I can offer the one true explanation to a film that is so patently open to interpretation. On its UK release, the Guardian newspaper challenged six top critics to explain the plot. And they all came up short; ultimately agreeing that that over-analysis is useless.

Roger Ebert, who in his original review described the film as a “surrealist dreamscape in the form of a Hollywood film noir, and the less sense it makes, the more we can’t stop watching it,” answered the Guardian’s challenge by stating that “Mulholland Drive isn’t like Memento, where if you watch closely enough you can hope to explain the mystery. There is no explanation. There may not even be a mystery.” There is certainly no explanation, but boy is there a mystery!

That mystery is the film’s allure and in the decade since its release, it is a mystery that is nowhere near being solved. The original DVD version includes ‘David Lynch’s 10 clues to unlocking this thriller”. They don’t help.

The cast of the film were equally in the dark. In an interview on the DVD Naomi Watts compares the film to a book whose author dies before it is released, so everyone has questions about the book but they are never going to get answers.

“Audiences just have to work it out, and if they can’t then they have to come up with something,” she says, understanding that audiences love a challenge, especially in a film like this which lingers in the mind long after the credits have rolled.

The director himself says rather obliquely, “It’s a road that is locked back in time. It’s all by itself on the crest of the mountains, and there are many places you can overlook the valley or Hollywood down below. It’s very dark there at night, and the road is curvy. It’s kind of a dream road.”

Whether he’s talking about Mulholland Drive the road or the film is anyone’s guess. Just watch the film to find out. You won’t, but watch the film anyway. It’s a journey that has to be experienced.

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