Mulholland Drive mussed my brain up for days after I saw it the first time. And so, naturally, I had to see it again. This time, armed with foreknowledge from my previous viewings, and having read some analysis and interpretations from many others who had viewed it, I returned to experience the insanity all over again.

Apparently, word about this movie has spread. This time, it was showing in a nearby megaplex, and the auditorium was surprisingly full, especially for a Sunday afternoon matinee.

In this movie, David Lynch does a masterful job of playing with the human brain's compulsion to try to make sense of what it sees and hears. It invites the viewer to buy into this twisted maze of patterns, recurring images, phrases, and characters. Every scene is told as a riddle, which hints that a solution to all of it might just be waiting around the next corner. And so we follow, deeper and deeper into the twisted psychological version of a chinese finger puzzle. Eventually, a viewer may begin to suspect that there is no real solution to any of it, for the maestro even announces that "it's all an illusion", but by then, that doesn't matter anymore. The emotional weave has already made its lock, and so one becomes compelled to follow it through to completion. Again, and again, and again.

Spoilers follow.

I'm uncertain whether to classify the story as an illistration of the ultimate in poetic justice, or a spit in the face at the concept of karma. Before going into that, I suppose I should first lay out some assumptions regarding my interpretation of the film, since they may not be at all obvious, or even common.

First, I'm going to go out on a limb, and disagree with the Salon writers' analysis which postulates that the first two hours of the movie a big delusional dream inside the head of Diane. I say, "go out on a limb", because someone else I talked to about the film had independently reached the same conclusion as Salon, leaving me a minority within this small sampling of viewers. I just don't buy it. That's not to say it couldn't plausably be supported by the facts (in any discussion of this film, the words "plausibly" and "facts" have to be used loosely anyway). I just don't find that to be the most interesting or rewarding way to look at it.

Nor do I agree with Roger Ebert's writeoff of the entire thing as a beautifully elaborate dream, of which no sense can really be made. Maybe he's right, but again, couldn't use that argument on any film, thereby dismissing any inconsistencies or fallicies as "just part of the dream"? You could say it, but again, it's just not as much fun.

I take the approach, as I did in my first review, that every scene in the entire film is just as "real" as every other. Given this assumption, it follows that the universe in which Mulholland Drive exists does not necessarily have the same rules regarding time and space as ours does. This applies even if we allow (as we must) that the plot is told in a nonliner fashion. It is circular, and eternal.

A character, Diana, dies, and comes back to life reincarnated as Betty. She comes into the world accompanied by the same two elderly people who will eventually drive her into a gruesome suicide bed. She re-experiences the bliss, the wonder, the love, the sadness, and, eventually, the jealousy, hate, and murderous rage which will bring about her end -- and, in an unplanned way, Camilla/Rita's end. Diana loses her life. Camilla loses her identity.

They both get what they deserve. Diana, having committed the ultimate act of evil -- the murder of her lover -- dies of her own inability to live with her guilt. Camilla, the heartless cock tease (ok, maybe that word isn't quite what we're aiming for. let's try...) the heartless cunt tease, is to be killed, but she gets an even better retribution. She is stripped of her status, her power, and her pride. A girl without a name, she wanders the streets and hides until "Betty" finds her, and both of them gain a sort of absolution through love, although neither is consciously aware of it.

This all seems to be going grand, until they are gradually, magnetically, poetically, drawn back into the previous consciousnesses that are their dark sides. The possibly psychic, possibly nutso neighbor lady comes to warn of the trouble early on. Rita starts to remember just enough of her memory to lead them to Diane's old apartment. Once there, Rita becomes apprehensive and wants to turn back, but Betty continues in against Rita's premonition. They come face to face with the rotting body of Diane, but despite this horrifying discovery, they are not yet ready to face the future which overlaps with the past. But always, there is a compulsion toward finding out who each of them were, and will be. The knowledge of good and evil. (BTW, I submit that when the neighbor lady later refers "those two detectives" in her conversation with Diane, she is talking about Betty and Rita's visit.)

I would agree with whoever it was that stated that the true soul of the film lies in the "Silencio" club scene. This is where it all unravels. It is all an illusion. They weep at the song of the singer who is not singing it, who subconsciously evokes their own hidden knowledge that the love they experience now is not the whole of their being. Betty finds herself in possesion of the blue box, within which is hidden all that was done, and will be done again.

Both ready to finally know the dark side of themselves. Betty carries it into the bedroom, acknowledging her final act in the "innocent" world, and with that, she disappears. Rita searches for her, finds that she is gone, and opens the box. This triggers the transition to the other side of the coin. The dark netherworld of betrayal, lost hopes, and heartbreak. Betty's aunt returns to find the house just as she left it.

Some time passes; it isn't clear how much. Souls are transplanted, and identites replaced. Diane is reawakened from her deathbed by the cowboy. Rita has again become Camilla, the fleeting phantom of a lover who runs the haggard Diana's heart over with a bulldozer. Diane, in a vengeful daze, wishing for the innocence of a love long lost, hires a hitman to kill the one she cannot have.

The hidden demons of the "good" life come back to haunt her, and she does herself in, only to be reborn and live it all over again.

How's that for an explanation? So, based on that reading, is it poetic justice? If it's all a big circle, what follows what? Diane and Camilla are both evil doers, who both get an appropriate end. Betty and Rita are both essentially innocents, and during their term, they are rewarded with bliss. But if Betty and Rita are basicly good, why should they have to be drawn back into the world of darkness? If Diane and Camilla have done such wrong, why should divine intervention allow them both a second chance at happiness?

Perplexing.

There's another alternate interpretation that came into my mind that I have not seen mentioned by Salon, or any of the letters by readers. The cowboy tells the director that "if you do good, you'll see me again once. If you do bad, you'll see me twice." The obvious reading is that the cowboy means "good" to be choosing the girl shown to him by TPTB. But as is the case with many characters in this film, the cowboy does not explicitly state his intent here.

I'm going to go out on another limb, and suggest that the cowboy is NOT part of the "conspiracy". Instead, he intervenes on behalf of an even higher authority. While he appears to the director to be siding with the big bosses, he subtly tries to get the director to reflect on his own life, but is largely unsuccessful. He could even be thought of as a conscience. Ultimately, the director misinterprets the cowboy's instructions, and instead of following his own intuition to stand up for himself, he surrenders to a world which he sees as being stacked against him. He picks Camilla for the role.

Although it is never clear that the director ever sees the cowboy at all after that, we in the audience see the cowboy twice. Once at the bedside, resurrecting Diane (lending credence to the "higher power" theory), and once at the dinner party.

If I really wanted to go out on a limb, I could say that the director's caving, combined with Betty's sudden realization that she needed to get back with Rita, was what caused the downward spiral leading to their return to the "dark" side. If he had not chosen Camilla for the role, Betty might have auditioned, gotten the part, and the bliss would have continued. Instead, he turned around, said "this is the girl", then saw Betty, their eyes met, and Betty ran off (again, possibly subconsciously triggered by the memory, fear, and jealousy of him in that other life).

Yeah, it's a head trip. I'm going to give it a rest, and do some other stuff for a while. I didn't intend to write yet another mile long entry. Oh well. There it is. Make of it what you will.