I rewatched this film a few nights ago in light of Lynch's passing, and came up with a new interpretation of it.
Mulholland Drive is one of my favorite films, and this is just my interpretation. I'm not invalidating anyone else's interpretation. I don't know what Lynch's intentions were with this movie, and maybe he didn't consciously know himself. He channeled his unconscious into his movies, and interpreting his work is a bit like doing Freudian dream analysis on him.
I've always loved Mulholland Drive, but I've also always thought that (what seems to be) the ultimate explanation is unsatisfying. After setting up all this tantalizing mystery, the explanation is that the first 80% of the movie is a dream. Isn't the "it was all a dream" ending the laziest copout explanation ever? However, I've grown to believe that this explanation is intentionally unsatisfying, and that this is central to the point of the movie.
To understand Mulholland Drive, we need to talk about the Club Silencio scene, which is the heart of the film. What makes this scene so powerful is that the movie, up until this point, has been almost entirely lacking in humanity. The acting is stilted and uncanny. No one acts like a real person. Everything feels fake. But when Rebekah Del Rio sings, there is a beautiful moment of genuine humanity that breaks through, to the point that it drives the characters to tears, but then she falls over dead, and her performance is revealed to have been as fake as everything else.
What's interesting about Lynch's films is that you can always interpret them in opposite ways. There are countless moments in his movies that you can interpret despairingly or hopefully, and the Club Silencio sequence is no exception. You can interpret that moment in a despairing and nihilistic way, meaning you can interpret that moment as saying that even the most seemingly true and beautiful things in life are lies. Or you can interpret it positively by recognizing that even if the performance was fake, it doesn't change the fact that Camilla and Dianne shared a beautiful moment and that the emotions they were feeling (and you, the viewer, were feeling) during that moment were real.
I can't help but think that the Club Silencio sequence is also a metaphor for the movie. It's no coincidence that the scene features characters in an audience watching a show, representing the viewer watching the movie. Much like the characters watching the performance in Club Silencio, we have a powerfully visceral experience when watching the film. We are overwhelmed by the sense of terror and beauty and mystery it gives us. However, when we put all the pieces together after the movie is over, the disappointing explanation causes us to experience a moment reminiscent of the characters watching the singer falling over. It's also no coincidence that
the man who introduces the performance is credited as "the magician." Great magic tricks are awe-inspiring while they're happening, but the explanation of the trick destroys that sense of awe. This is a metaphor for the movie. The movie itself plays a kind of magic trick on the audience, but when the magic trick is explained, there is a feeling of disappointment.
Once again, we can view this unsatisfying explanation in opposite ways. We can interpret this sense of disappointment negatively because the ultimate explanation was a letdown, or we can appreciate that while the movie was playing, it gave us a very real and profound experience.
Another important element of the Club Silencio scene is
the blue-haired woman. The color blue plays an important part in most of Lynch's films (i.e. Blue Velvet) and seems highly symbolic. The most mysterious elements in Lynch's films (i.e. the blue key and box in this movie) are often associated with the color blue. Also, in Twin Peaks, The Blue Rose Task Force investigates cosmic forces that are beyond human understanding. It's called "The Blue Rose Task Force" because they investigate the supernatural, and blue roses don't exist in nature. As Gordon Cole puts it, they investigate "the absurd mystery of the strange forces of existence." Thus, in Lynch's films, the color blue seems to be associated with mystery. It's no coincidence that the blue-haired woman utters the last line of the film: "silencio." She is telling the viewers not to talk to each other after the movie is over to try and solve the puzzle but to instead appreciate the experience and enjoy the sense of mystery.
This sentiment seems to reflect Lynch's view of life. His movies are mysterious because they're about the mysteries in our lives and how we search for answers. As Lynch often said in interviews, humans are "like detectives in life." I think he believes that if we were to find the answers to life's questions, they might be disappointing, so we should at least try to just enjoy the experience and accept the mystery.
In short, the Club Silencio sequence is a metaphor that works on three levels. On one level, it represents the fact that Betty is living an idyllic life as a young Hollywood starlet, but that life is false because it's nothing more than an escapist fantasy. On another level, it's a metaphor for the film itself. And on a third level, it's a metaphor for Lynch's whole outlook on life. For him, having all the answers to life's mysteries revealed might be like having a magic trick explained. His films are about the tension that exists between one's desire to enjoy the beauty of life and one's knowledge that it all might just be a kind of magic trick with nothing more to it (as the magician says, "There is no band! And yet, we hear a band.") In Lynch's films, this tension is never totally resolved, which is one of the reasons they're so unsettling. Overall, I think the film is a lot more than just a commentary on Hollywood. It's a deeply existential work.
I don't know how to square this analysis with his professed spiritual beliefs. I know he believed that there is a higher power and something larger beyond this life. Is it possible that doubt sometimes subconsciously crept into his head, and that's reflected in his movies? I'm not sure. But either way, that's my interpretation of the film. RIP to my favorite director ever.