David Lynch‘s latest film, Mulholland Drive, a creepy look at Hollywood, is receiving some effusive praise from the folks who comment on Hollywood’s product.
The New York Times’ Stephen Holden is not reluctant to call it a “great movie,” adding: “Looked at lightly, it is the grandest and silliest cinematic carnival to come along in quite some time: a lurching journey through one filmmaker’s personal fun house. On a more serious level, its investigation into the power of movies pierces a void from which you can hear the screams of a ravenous demon whose appetites can never be slaked.”
Glenn Whipp in the Los Angeles Daily News concludes his review this way: “It adds up to a movie that is stunning in its power, amazing in its imagery and surprisingly affecting in its message. Mulholland Drive may not convert many people to the David Lynch fan club, but if you’re already a member, you’ll want to let the experience wash over you again and again. It’s an astonishing movie-going experience.”
And Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times describes the experience this way: “This is a movie to surrender yourself to. If you require logic, see something else. Mulholland Drive works directly on the emotions, like music. Individual scenes play well by themselves, as they do in dreams, but they don’t connect in a way that makes sense–again, like dreams. The way you know the movie is over is that it ends. And then you tell a friend, ‘I saw the weirdest movie last night.’ Just like you tell them you had the weirdest dream.”
