It was all a dream.
That’s the explanation we get in the last half hour of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive,
revealing that the adventures of Hollywood newcomer Betty and mysterious amnesiac Rita
in the first two hours have all been the product of a washed-up actress’ imagination.
"I just came here from Deep River, Ontario, and now I'm in this dream place."
Betty is really Diane Selwyn, a depressed failed performer and jilted lover.
In her dreams, Diane is processing her career disappointments and her choice to order a
hit on her former lover Camilla, the Rita-character, who left her for a director named Adam.
"Here's to love!"
When Diane wakes up from her dream, she receives a key as a message that the hit has been completed.
And she finally commits suicide in a disturbed, psychotic state, unable to tell her dream
from her reality.
Initially commissioned as a TV pilot for ABC, the film is a showcase for two Lynch-ian trademarks:
strange dreams that hold the answers to our questions, and characters who discover the
dark side of the everyday.
Everything turning out to be a dream may sound too simple for this film, but it works so
well because the dream is a deeper, more revealing mirror of Diane as a person than her waking
life is.
It’s also pretty impressive that the fraction of the film that takes place in reality reveals
the origins of almost every symbol or other element of the dream.
So the ending of the film drives home Lynch’s message that dreams can be more vital in our
lives than the realities that have disappointed us.
It’s easy to miss, but one of the first scenes in the film seems to show Diane’s
head hitting the pillow, beginning the dream.
Later, once we catch a glimpse of Diane’s real life, it becomes clear that her dream
has been shaped by her preoccupations, fears, and desires.
The name “Betty” is taken from a waitress’ name tag at the diner where Diane orders the
hit.
The elderly couple who befriend Betty on the plane to Los Angeles may be her parents or
the judges of the jitterbug dancing Diane once did.
The cowboy who acts as the dream guide is a man Diane sees in passing at Camilla’s
engagement party.
“Time to wake up.”
And the blue key in Rita’s purse references the key the hitman leaves on Diane’s table
to tell her that Camilla is dead.
"When it's finished you'll find this where I told you."
These little clues show us how Diane’s mind has warped elements of her reality to produce
this dream.
But still it takes us some time to accept that the story we’ve been following for
most of the film isn’t real.
At first we’re inclined to doubt the second part of the film instead.
Just like Diane, we’re put off by the depressing reality of her life, and we want to believe
in the pretty dream of Betty and Rita.
By telling the story in this order and getting us invested in the dream first, Lynch suggests
that Diane’s dream isn’t less important than reality, and it may even be more profound
and meaningful than real life.
Diane’s dream has two opposing sides: wish fulfillment and worst nightmare.
Betty is Diane’s idealization of herself.
In the dream Diane's given herself a fresh start as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed actress,
arriving in Hollywood with high hopes.
"Of course, I’d rather be known as a great actress than a movie star.
But, you know, sometimes people end up being both.
So that is, I guess you’d say, sort of why I came here."
Whereas Diane is angry, jaded, and unsuccessful, Betty is perky, innocent, and shows star potential.
Diane has cast herself in her most-desired role: the up-and-coming starlet and Rita’s
lover and savior.
"Come on, it'll be just like in the movies!
we'll pretend to be someone else."
And in the dream, Betty has a clear mission in helping solve the mystery of Rita's identity,
while in real life Diane is awkward and unsure of her purpose.
"I’m sorry I was late."
The antagonists in Diane’s life become friendly faces in her dream.
Betty’s idealism and the retro visuals in the dream force us to share in this excitement
and nostalgia.
But Lynch shows us that, like Diane’s dream, Hollywood as we envision it is a fantasy.
“There’s jokes about everybody in LA writing scripts, and everybody’s got a resume and
a photo."
“It’s just an actress’ photo resume.
Everybody’s got one.”
"So there’s a yearning to get the chance, not necessarily for fame, but to express yourself.”
Diane’s re-imagining herself and Camilla as Betty and Rita reflects the way that everyone
in Hollywood reinvents themselves,confusing what is real with fantasy.
Rita even takes her name from a Rita Hayworth movie poster.
The dream itself is perfectly cinematic, in contrast to reality.
Meanwhile, innocuous, arbitrary parts of Diane’s life become nightmarish in the dream, like
the homeless man who appears as a terrifying monster.
This reflects Diane’s conviction that everything in her life is awful.
Although Betty is clearly talented, the Hollywood of Diane’s dream is corrupt and sinister,
because Diane believes that the system is rigged against her.
The dream scene where Adam is strong-armed into casting an unknown actress in his film
-
“This is the girl.”
- parallels the one in which Diane orders the hit.
“This is the girl.”
The comparison shows that in Diane’s subconscious, the Hollywood casting process is a violent
conspiracy,.
And perhaps the real original crime wasn’t killing Camilla, but the way that this town
has mistreated her and driven her to this.
Even the depiction of the city lights seems threatening.
In reality, Camilla has found the personal and professional success that Diane wants,
and Diane can’t reconcile her jealousy with the love she still feels for her ex.
“I wanted the lead so bad.
Anyway, Camilla got the part.”
So in the dream, Diane makes Rita into a victim, showing her inability to accept her former
girlfriend as someone with agency, who simply doesn't want to be with her romantically.
Dream Rita falls prey to the same Hollywood conspiracy that Diane believes stopped her
career.
Rita’s amnesia allows Diane to recreate her lover as she wants her to be: vulnerable
and dependent, trusting no one but Betty.
“I don’t know who I am.”
Diane’s wish for Camilla to have no life or desires outside of their relationship,
manifests in Rita putting on a blonde wig near the end of the dream.
“You look like someone else.”
But putting on the wig could also symbolize Diane's growing awareness in her dream of
her guilt in ordering the hit.
“D. Selwyn.
It’s the only one.
I’m gonna call."
"It’s strange to be calling yourself."
“Maybe it’s not me.”
"I remembered something."
As much as Rita is a stand-in for Camilla, she also sometimes represents Diane herself.
“Diane Selwyn.
Maybe that’s my name!”
Like Diane, Rita blocks out unpleasant memories.
The beginning scene in which Rita’s driven down Mulholland Drive mirrors Diane’s trip
to Camilla’s party.
“We don’t stop here.”
We don’t know where the hitman actually killed Camilla, but we know that Mulholland
Drive is where the worst thing happens to Diane in real life.
"Mulholland Drive."
"That's where I was going.
Mulholland Drive."
"Maybe that's where the accident was.”
The moment when Rita is about to be shot symbolizes Diane’s imminent arrival at the party, where
she’ll hear the most terrible news she can imagine: Camilla and Adam are engaged.
"It's 6980 Mulholland Drive."
The blood on Rita’s head at the beginning of the film -
“Oh, we should call a doctor.”
- could even be a reference to the end of the film, when Diane commits suicide.
To some extent, Diane is also all of the other people in her dream as well, reflecting the
universal truth that everyone in our dreams is a representation of us.
We interpret the world by projecting ourselves onto others.
Because Diane is unsettled and unhappy, she imagines the people she has encountered as
having big problems of their own.
She exaggerates Adam’s conflict with his ex-wife, which we know worked out in his favor.
“So I got the pool, and she got the pool man.
I couldn’t believe it.
I wanted to buy that judge a Rolls-Royce.”
And she assigns made-up problems to strangers.
"So you came to see if he's out there."
"To get rid of this God-awful feeling."
In the dream, Adam has lost control of his movie, in the same way Diane has lost control
of her life.
“It’s no longer your film.”
The only true villains in the dream are the men trying to kill Rita, the same men who
in reality drove Diane to the engagement party and are therefore guilty of delivering her
toward her inevitable doom.
And Diane being everyone in her dream doesn't just apply to the minor characters and the
protagonists, but also to the villain.
The culprit that she and Rita are looking for is also, ironically, her.
"Hello?"
Diane must wake up before Betty solves the mystery of Rita’s identity because she is
the person who ordered the hit, and she can’t face this.
The dream is full of evidence of the ordered hit, but Diane has erased herself from the
narrative because she won’t accept her own guilt.
The entire dream is built around this denial at its heart.
The very beginning of the dream comes from what she knows is going to happen: a hitman
is preparing to kill Rita/Camilla.
In the dream, Rita escapes the hit and finds refuge with Betty.
But deep down Diane can’t reconcile this happy narrative with her knowledge that the
real Camilla won’t escape death and Diane is responsible.
Betty’s presence in the story represents Diane’s fantasy of starting over with Camilla.
But when the waitress in the dream serves the couple, Rita’s look of confused recognition
reflects Diane’s fear that Camilla will find out what she’s done.
The dream nears its end when Betty and Rita visit Club Silencio, where the man on stage
informs the audience that the musical performance is a fantasy.
“No hay banda and yet...we hear a band.
If we want to hear a clarinet, listen.”
Both women sob at a Spanish performance of the song “Crying” that is performed as
if it is real but is actually recorded.
So these references to fantasy and the recording indicate Diane’s growing recognition that
she is in a dream state.
“It is an illusion.”
Betty then finds a blue box in her purse that fits the blue key found in Rita’s purse.
When Rita puts the key into the box, the dream ends -- whisking Rita away in the process.
Like Diane, we viewers are frustrated by this abrupt ending just as we think we’re about
to grasp the larger meaning.
In the same way the party scene ends just before the engagement announcement -- “Do
you want to tell them?” -- which we never get to see.
The key is the key to the dream, but all it does is wake Diane up, because it reminds
her that she’s killed her ex-lover.
The revelation that the box is empty symbolizes Diane’s inability to accept reality -- because
once she actually sees reality, her dream is over.
Putting this key into the box, and the fact that both objects come from the women’s
purses, could also have sexual connotations, expressing Diane’s desire for Camilla to
fill her void.
But primarily the empty box represents Diane’s futile quest to make sense of her life.
There’s no good explanation for her misery, just as the key that the hitman leaves to
signal the deed is done opens nothing.
"What's it open?"
Betty and Rita’s discovery of Diane’s dead body is a premonition of her own death,
as if Diane already knows, when she begins dreaming, that she's going to commit suicide.
Back in reality, the trigger of Diane’s suicide is again an exaggerated vision of
something that comes from her actual life.
Her fear of people laughing at her takes on a life of its own as the old couple from the
beginning of the film become aggressors in her mind.
So her final end shows that the boundaries between dream and reality have become truly
fluid, as her psychosis makes it impossible for her to tell what’s real from what’s
imaginary.
Together with Diane, we find it jarring and painful to give up the false, nostalgic Hollywood
for the unattractive truth.
Lynch makes us want to follow the dream Betty, not the very real Diane, to underscore his
message that dreams can be realer than reality.
They tell us more about who we are deep inside our psyches.
If we’re living in denial like Diane is, dreams are the place where our buried hopes
and fears surface.
The final scene of Mulholland Drive shows Betty and Rita together again, and we feel
a sense of loss for what was only a fantasy to begin with.
But Lynch shows us that, even if something is imagined or manufactured, like Mulholland
Drive the movie itself, our feelings for the fantasy are real.
"Silencio."