David Lynch movies aren’t always easy to understand. Last year we watched Twin Peaks, including the movie Fire Walk with Me. Some time before that I’d watched Eraserhead. My earliest, and unwitting, experience with one of his movies was Dune, which I saw in a theater in 1984. I had no idea of who Lynch was at that time, however. As I began exploring the horror genre I found a contingent strongly denying that Lynch directs horror. Still, there were enough elements in Twin Peaks and Eraserhead that some viewers do move in that direction. Now, I’d heard of Mulholland Drive many times over the years and I’d seen it classified as horror a time or two, but mostly as a thriller. Over the holidays I actually had time to sit down and watch it. And I’m still not sure how to classify it.
I’m not even sure that I can say what it’s about. Since I watch movies alone most of the time, I turn to the internet to have “discussion” about them. IMDb and Wikipedia are often good starting points. There is a tremendously long article in the latter on this film. Quite often Wikipedia provides not a ton of information about films, but here’s a case where contributors simply can’t say enough. And none of them know for sure what it’s about either. I suspect that’s why David Lynch is so highly regarded as a film maker. He’s an artist. What artist can explain what their work really means? Lynch has been notably tight-lipped about what he intended this movie to say, but if you’ve watched Twin Peaks through, you get an idea of what you might expect. It’s certainly an intellectual experience, and a surreal one. But is it horror?
One of the terms often used to describe the movie is “nightmare.” That seems like a horror-laden word, doesn’t it? It’s often a matter of the characters not knowing who they really are (and the viewers don’t know either). The thing that ties most of them together is that they’re involved in a movie in some way. I’ve come to believe that things like books and movies and songs—things we mentally “consume”—become part of our minds, just like food becomes part of our bodies. Some of the films we see are like junk food—fun, but all fluff. A David Lynch movie will give you something of substance to chew on. And finally having seen Mulholland Drive, I’d say it’s a much horror as Lynch’s earlier work has been, however you interpret that.
