Diane Selwyn

Hi Honey!  You look quite comfy there.  It's nice to see you nice and relaxed, which is great for me because I want you to be happy.  That's a beautiful neck you have there.  Please stay away from vampires.  I'm blogging earlier than usual today.  It's Tuesday, so I have to blog and run.  I just slammed my dinner down, and almost got a fish bone stuck in my throat from eating too quickly.  I want to talk about a movie today.  No Honey, you don't have to watch this movie unless you want to.  I just feel like talking about it.

"Mulholland Drive" is fiction not fact, so it is rather stupid to explain what goes on in the movie with science and psychology, but it also isn't wrong to do so.  That is the movie: "anything goes" is what David Lynch wants the audience to do.  That's why he won't explain the movie.  But we who love the movie want to put it into words.  I don't accept that all the movie is carefully planned: it is a go-with-the-flow event, as Lynch admits that it was supposed to be a TV series, then became a movie, specifically after a sudden 30 minute brainstorm from where he had to go back and reshoot scenes.  So did he make any mistakes?  Let's assume he took care of everything.  Say, David Lynch kind of looks like Eraserhead...

For me the movie begins with Dan, who is clairvoyant.  He gets 2 identical dreams which frighten him, and he realizes that there is a man behind the walls, at the back of Winkie's, who is "doing it".  This man is a tramp living behind the dumpster, and is similar to the angel of death, and appears more towards the end of the movie.  I was initially duped into believing that the timeline begins when Camilla opens the blue box.  But the tramp throws the blue box into the trash: there is no timeline.  Out of the trash comes Irene and her companion, they accompanied Betty on the flight to Hollywood, then became the phantoms that drove Diane Selwyn to her suicide.

Betty is the ghost of Diane Selwyn, and her purpose is to save the life of the woman she loves, Camilla Rhodes.  Camilla is set up to be assassinated by the Mob and replaced by another Camilla Rhodes.  But the setup failed due to a car accident, and Camilla escapes with her life to Aunt Ruth's apartment, but loses her memory.  Now Camilla didn't give back Diane's love, but Diane still wants to help her, even though she hired a hit man to kill Camilla out of jealousy.  This hit man is incompetent, and we see that he never finds Camilla.  There is a possibility that the hit man that Diane hired did succeed in killing Camilla (then Camilla joins Diane at the end as a ghost) since we find the blue key on Diane's coffee table, but I am more inclined to believe that he put the key there before finding Camilla then spent Diane's money on hookers.  Seeing the blue key on her table and out of guilt, Diane as a ghost strives to help Camilla escape death by getting Camilla to disappear, and Camilla does disappear disguised as a blonde, while Diane gets some revenge on certain directors in the meantime.  In the end, Camilla gives back Diane's love out of gratitude for saving her life, and Diane Selwyn finally finds happiness as a ghost.  That is the love story.  Not a positive message though.  People who commit suicide unjustifiably have to relive their lives that they loathed in an endless loop.

Camilla is the one who primarily sees illusions.  Apparitions are generally thought of as being projections from the past, but the reverse is also valid: they are also projections of the present or future.  This is where the timeline breaks down: some events are linear like Adam Kesher's marriage, and some events are loops like Adam Kesher's awareness of Diane Selwyn.  But really, all the events are irrelevant to what really matters: the love that Diane Selwyn has.  This story is a collection of explosions that occur in an area, the area being the connection between all the explosions.  Then the area is turned upside down.

Modern Art Abstract Paintings by Oefy