That’s just about my interpretation, except she’s not imagining, but dreaming. Makes sense with Wizard of Oz’s heavy influence on Lynch.
:/… I thought we’d all figured this out by now.
The basic underlying theme of the movie is one woman’s desire for and obsession with another woman’s status, which transfers subconsciously into the desire for the woman and the her perceived adventurous life. The plot works basically along the lines that you describe, Jirin, but another key element to understand about Mulholland Dr., and the reason I disagree with people who feel it is his best movie, is that it isn’t entirely self contained considering it was supposed to be a much longer plot and had to be turned into a film instead of television series at the last minute. This may not seem significant but what it means is that you are right in describing the last few minutes as where most of the “real” plot of the movie is simply because Lynch had to rush to tie it all off instead of build all of the themes and scenes that he wanted, resulting in the start of Hollywood gothic like the producer in the glass room and the movie the director is trying to start that do not, ultimately, get fully resolved in the quick adhesives Lynch throws on the strings at the end.
You can pretty much see the cut between when this movie was a television show and when it becomes the movie it is.
So keeping in mind the themes revolving around Hollywood, the desire and adventure the women have for each other, and the thread twists at the end, interpretations like yours are ultimately the strongest, in my opinion. I think that was where Lynch was heading in the larger series as a whole, he just had to rush it, and the result is that the ending throws a lot of information together at a very rapid pace. One cannot expect a Lynch film to be clear, but still, in this one Lynch was forced to become a little more literal than he usually is.
—PolarisDiB
The movie is open to any number of interpretations. Here were a few listed in The Guardian back in 2002. I think Sunset Blvd is the more logical place to turn in regard to piecing together the sequences, as he essentially played this one in reverse.
This is perhaps the most straightforward analysis I’ve seen of the film, which I happen to agree with. It’s a 2001 review from Flak Magazine:
For those who had trouble reconstructing Mulholland Drive’s plot into story upon first viewing, here is a possible reading: Diane (Naomi Watts) wins a foxtrot contest in the Midwest and follows her acting aspirations to Los Angeles. Camille Rhodes (Laura Harring) beats her out for a movie audition, but the two become friends and later lovers. Diane watches Camille start to drift away and become involved with her director, Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux). Camille starts refusing Diane sex, and invites her to a party thrown on Mulholland Drive by Adam. At the party, Camille and Adam announce their engagement; also, Diane meets Adam’s mother (Ann Miller), sees a girl (Melissa George) kiss Camille, and notices a cowboy (Monty Montgomery) walk by.
Diane’s obsession with Camille deepens. She goes to a restaurant named Winkie’s to pay a hitman (Mark Pellegrino) to kill Camille. He tells her he will drop off a blue key when the contract has been fulfilled. At some point, Diane switches apartments with her neighbor. In her new apartment, she goes into deep depression, sleeping for three weeks in the fetal position.
There she dreams up an elaborate fantasy. In that dream, Camille is split into two characters. The first, later identified as Rita, is involved in a car accident on Mulholland Drive (the same location as the party) and loses her memory. She takes sanctuary in an empty apartment, in a complex run by Coco (Justin’s mother). Betty (Diane’s alter ego) arrives in Los Angeles and goes to stay at that same apartment, left vacant by her aunt. There, she meets Rita and chipperly decides to help Rita get her memory back. They find money in Rita’s purse (just as we had seen it in Diane’s when paying the hitman) and a strange key (similar in color but not shape to the hitman’s).
Meanwhile, the director, Adam, is being pressured by a secret syndicate to recast his lead actress. They want him to choose a girl named Cammie Rhodes — the second part of Camille’s split-by-Diane personality, played by the woman who Diane saw kiss Camille — but he refuses. Going home, he catches his wife cheating on him. Adam retreats to a shoddy hotel, where he discovers his bankruptcy at the hands of the syndicate, and learns he must meet with a man called “The Cowboy.” He does, and the idea is reinforced that he must choose Cammie Rhodes for his lead.
Many of the sublots revolve around a diner named Winkie’s. In one, a man (who had been at the register when Diane paid the hitman) recalls his vision of doom to his psychiatrist. In another, the hitman, now working for the syndicate, searches for Rita, killing an old friend and questioning a prostitute (dressed in an outfit similar to the one Diane wore to meet the hitman). Betty and Rita go to Winkie’s, where the waitress’s nametag (which said “Betty” when Diane met the hitman) reminds Rita of a possible lead to her past. They look up the address belonging to that name and decide to go there after Betty’s audition the next day.
At her audition, Betty is excellent, garnering the attention of a talent scout, who whisks her away to the audition for Adam’s movie. But Adam concedes to casting Cammie Rhodes before Betty can audition, although he is obviously drawn to Betty. Betty leaves in order to go with Rita to see the mysterious Diane. They find Diane dead (in the same position Diane is sleeping) in her apartment.
Betty and Rita go home, awkwardly admit an attraction to one another, and make love. Rita cries out “silencio” in her sleep, insisting they go to a performance art theater. There, Betty weeps as a woman sings beautifully, but the evening’s performances imply that nothing they see is real. Upon finding a strange blue box in Rita’s purse, they rush home.
Once home, Betty disappears, and Rita opens the box with the blue key, only to be sucked inside. The dead Diane of the dream is told to awaken by the Cowboy, returning Betty to her physical body.
Now, the dream is over, and Diane wakes to brew some coffee. Her neighbor comes over to pick up dishes left behind in the apartment switch. Diane brutally masturbates on her couch and flashes back to her experiences with Camille: making love, going to the party, visiting her on set as she flirts with Adam. Her short scenes in the apartment are the only ones that we can take as happening “now,” unclouded by Diane’s memory or fever dream. At the end, regret and hallucinations overcome Diane, and she shoots herself.
Remember, this is only one interpretation of the story of “Mulholland Drive.” Other interpretations can be made, or one can enjoy the film without bothering with an interpretation — an illogical film is still entertaining. But the filmmakers clearly went to great trouble to give Mulholland Drive a logical, complex structure, and giving up on the search for that structure does the film a disservice.
Jirin
When I first saw the film when I was 18 I didn’t understand what happened at the end at all, but when I saw it again recently, here’s the conclusion I came to. Tell me if you agree.
The real plot of the movie is what happens in the last fifteen minutes. A woman’s girlfriend gets drawn into Hollywood, gets married, and shuts her out of her life. She gets angry and hires a hit on her. The hit man tells her that when she finds a blue key, it means the hit was successful.
The majority of the movie is her imagining a scenario where the hit failed. She came up with a ludicrous scenario in which the car could have crashed and she could have lost her memory and hidden out with a stranger, and she filled in the gaps with people and things she’d seen, such as the cowboy and the name ‘Betty’. She imagines the hit man being bumbling and incompetent, so he might have failed. She imagines a lot of hidden machinations choreographing everything against everyone’s will, so her girlfriend isn’t responsible for betraying her.
Then her illusion is shattered when she sees the blue key, and kills herself.
I figure, either that’s the real plot of the film, or it’s a lot of random Lynchian absurdity where symbolism substitutes for plot. But I’d like to see other people’s ideas.