Perspectives | Why Is "Mulholland Drive" Postmodern

"Mulholland Drive" Poster

Mulholland Drive is a 2001 neo-noir mystery film written and directed by David Lynch. The film starrs Naomi Watts as a Betty Elms. Betty newly arrived in Los Angeles, who meets and befriends an amnesiac woman hiding in an apartment which belongs to Betty's aunt. The story includes several other seemingly unrelated vignettes that eventually interlock, as well as some surreal and darkly comic scenes and images that relate to the cryptic narrative. However, why this film is postmodern?

1. Hyper-reality - The film sets itself directed to reality, but the longer the film goes, the further away it strives away from reality.  The start of the film is seen as cheesy, romantic comedy, where Betty arrives to Hollywood, to become an popular actress. But accidently meets the amnesiac woman (Diane) in her aunts house. The story itself developes into romance but as it unreveals the shadowy mist around it, audience is struck by Bettys mental state. The surrealist hallucinations accure, nevertheless, the film's reality is broken and its shown that the film the audience has watched is not a film, just backward memory flashes which aren't revelant to reality.

2. Unreliable Narrator -  During the entire film an unreliable narrator is telling the story not truthfully and the audience is forced to question the shown scenes. In the final scenes of the film, it cannot be followed as reality  nor dreams/flash back .

3. Non-linear story telling - Through out the movie, the audience follows Bettys story line, but as Betty wakes up from her dream, she is Diane. The story which was once followed is discontinued in another one. It stops following chonological time line and ends up in mystery story.

4. Fragmented - The film "Mulholland Drive" is splint into 3 fragments which follows different story lines with different characters in them. This postmodernistic tactic is used in films to provide the audience an insight to an internal reality through the eyes of a certain individual whose point of view is altered by mental illness or substances (drugs, alcohol, etc.). 

5. Pastiche - The postmodern movie Mulholland Drive uses pastiche, referencing different aspects of Hollywood culture and its history. For example Rita, also known as Camilla, references the actress Rita Hayworth a successful movie star in the 1940s. Another reference used by Lynch is a film of the 1950s, Sunset Boulevard, one of Lynch’s favorites.