class=”alignleft size-medium wp-image-42425″ title=”mulholland drive blu-ray” src=”https://www.heyuguys.com/images/2010/09/mulholland-drive-blu-ray-228×300.jpg” alt=”” width=”219″ height=”283″ />The Studio Canal Collection’s Blu-ray of Mulholland Drive was always going to be a pleasure to watch.
The film is not as divisive as Lynch’s later Inland Empire, nor as suffocating as Lost Highway and its place on numerous top 10 films of the decade lists is well deserved. Some may find its narrative shifting sands unsettling, but Lynch is at his most playful and energetic here; Mulholland Drive is simply one of the best films of all time.
Conceived around the time Lynch was knee deep in cherry pies and Black Lodges, Mulholland Drive is Lynch’s sinister take on the Hollywood dream; it is a mystery and a muddle and your understanding and enjoyment of the film will deepen and change the more you watch it, making it the perfect film to add to your collection.
It is one of the most perfectly realised and poetic visions of Hell on Earth, it is beautiful, dark and impossibly seductive with Naomi Watts in particular playing the stranger in a kind of false paradise perfectly. The film’s quality is a given, so what makes this Blu-ray special?
The extras include an introduction to the film by Thierry Jousse, a retrospective called In The Blue Box which begins with Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly talking about his reaction to seeing Mulholland Drive, then other directors chiming in about the huge impact the film has had on them and their work. There are interviews which are worth checking out to hear composer Angelo Badalamenti (whose oppressive score is sublime) talk about his work with this film at the time, and also ten years later.
There’s an on set documentary, with the lead actresses and David Lynch talking about the journey down Mulholland Drive from failed pilot to the big screen. There’s a lot of Lynch directing his cast and crew and the feeling emerges that Lynch knows exactly what is looking for with this film, and it may come from a mistake, or an improvisation, or from the perfect performance from an cast member, but when it happens Lynch will know it instinctively, and it’ll be Beautiful.
Lynch says ‘Beautiful’ a lot and the word is clearly contagious as everyone seems to use the word throughout, which is appropriate as it is the perfect description for the film, and it’s great to see a Blu-ray doing the film justice.
I’m a Lynch fan, but even if you’re not you need to see this film, and this disc is the best way to do it. I’d have it shipped with every blu-ray player sold.
