The Dreams That Blister Sleep: Latent Content and Cinematic Form in Mulholland Drive

Jay R. Lentzner, Donald R. Ross

American Imago, Volume 62, Number 1, Spring 2005, pp. 101-123 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/aim.2005.0016

For additional information about this article

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/aim/summary/v062/62.1lentzner.html

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JAY R. LENTZNER AND DONALD R. ROSS

The Dreams That Blister Sleep: Latent Content and Cinematic Form in Mulholland Drive
The dreams that blister sleep boil up from the basic magic ring of myth. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Introduction Few motion pictures have bedazzled, confounded, or provoked viewers more than David Lynchs Mulholland Drive (2001). Dismissed by Rex Reed (2001) as a load of moronic and incoherent garbage, but hailed by Philip Lopate (2001) as compelling, engrossing, well-directed, sexy, moving, beautiful to look at, mysterious and satisfying, it has garnered both some of the harshest epithets and some of the most lavish praise in recent cinematic history.1 Never intended as a theatrical feature, Mulholland Drive was conceived as a television pilot, but rejected by network executives after its first screening as too dark and too weird (McGovern 2001). For more than a year the project languished on the brink of abandonment, but it was ultimately acquired by a French production company that enjoined Lynch to transform it into a feature motion picture. The director recalls having had no idea how to proceed. Then, in a thunderclap of epiphany, inspiration struck him: it was a most beautiful experience. . . . Everything was seen from a different angle. Everything was then restructured, and we did additional shooting. Now, looking back, I see that [the film] always wanted to be this way (Macaulay 2001).

American Imago, Vol. 62, No. 1, 101123. 2005 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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Lynchs own coyness and teasing refusal to reveal much about the film has only added to the confusion surrounding his masterpiece. Dont look for answers in David Lynchs Mulholland Drive, writes Owen Gleiberman (2001), who describes the plot as a pretzel that never connects with itself. If David Lynchs goal is to baffle, adds Jean Tang (2001), Mulholland Drive has done him proud. Kenneth Turan (2001) dubbed the movie a mystery that doesnt want to be solved, while Glenn Kenny (2001) quipped: You laugh, you wince, you fall in love, you hold your breath, you cringe, you mutter Oh my God. . . . The only problem is exactly what the hell happens in this movie? Not every critic, however, has found the movie to be so maddeningly incomprehensible. Some have argued that it makes sense, especially when viewed from the perspective of a dream. The movie proceeds not with logic but with dream logic, wrote one critic (Allen 2001), while a second described it as being constructed entirely in the language of dreams (Taubin 2001). Others have concurred that the dreamlike design provides a gateway into the meaning of the film, but have found this pathway to be too difficult to follow. This paper is based on the premise that the key to understanding Mulholland Drive begins with the recognition that its diabolically intricate form is a dream that obeys the rules set forth a century earlier in Sigmund Freuds The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). While the nineteenth-century scientific community largely viewed dreams as nonpsychological phenomena, Freud revolutionized our understanding by finding them to be purposeful mental communications linked to the happenings of waking life. His Interpretation of Dreams stands for the proposition that while dreams often appear to be inexplicable and bizarre, they resonate with unconscious meaning. Despite Lynchs disavowals of interest in psychoanalytic theory, the convergence between Mulholland Drive and Freuds royal road to the unconscious should not be greatly surprising.2 Indeed, beholding this movie through the lens of Freudian dream-analysis throws it into sharper focus by revealing much of its hidden psychological complexity.

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From the first moment that the lights go down, Mulholland Drive projects an otherworldly quality, signaling the viewers passage into a Lynchian dreamscape. As Frederick Lane, a psychiatrist who was interviewed by Tang (2001) for her piece in Salon, has argued, the film divides into two parts: Part A comprises the first two hours and represents the manifest dream content as experienced by the dreamer, Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts), while Part B spans the final twenty minutes and presents fragments of her day-residue along with both her preand post-dream waking reveries, which are the keys to unlocking the dreams latent content. Diane Selwyns dream in Part A follows the murder of Camilla Rhodes (Laura Elena Harring) and represents her deeply conflicted wishes in its aftermath. From what can be pieced together from the Part B day-residue, Diane and Camilla began as two young, ambitious actresses, each of a different Hollywood type, in search of fame and stardom. Along the way they met, formed a deep romantic attachment, which then came unraveled once Camillas career began to soar. This occurred when she was discovered by the hot young director, Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux), who cast her as the new leading lady both in and out of his picture. Finally, at a dinner party at Adams Mulholland Drive home celebrating Camillas triumphs, Diane is not only brought face to face with her former lovers betrayal but is also forced to acknowledge her own static professional career. The sting of Camillas sexual rejection comes as Diane witnesses her brazenly kissing another blonde-haired woman and Adam unexpectedly announces his and Camillas wedding plans. At that moment, Dianes envy and jealousy turn murderous. Not long after, in a Sunset Boulevard diner, she contracts with a hit man to kill Camilla. When he asks whether she truly wishes to go forward, she replies, More than anything in this world! Dianes dream, however, reveals a far more complicated mental state. Much of its meaning concerns her desire to undo and displace responsibility for Camillas killing. On a deeper level, the dream also reflects Dianes conflicted feelings toward

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her parents, who become mocking persecutory objects when she cannot disguise her failures. Mulholland Drive starts with colorful flashes from an adolescent dance contest with the superimposed photographic image of a triumphant Diane Selwyn standing alongside an aging couple, who smile back at her approvingly. This screen memory quickly dissolves into a current dream-fantasy after a brief glimpse of Dianes unmade bed, which is at the center of the ensuing drama. Ominously, the camera snakes along the path of the rumpled, dirty linen, then disappears into the darkness of her crimson pillow. At that point, the lights go out and both the movie (Part A) and the dream begin. The main plot of the dream concerns the adventures of Dianes blonde, plucky alter-ego, Betty Elms, who, like the dreamer herself, comes to Hollywood to pursue her fantasy of becoming a famous actress. The dream also involves the misadventures of the glamorous, mysterious Rita, who opens the drama by averting death twice over, narrowly avoiding both a late-night contract killing and a tumultuous high-speed car crash along the winding turns of Mulholland Drive. Dazed, amnestic, and yet aware of the danger that surrounds her, the raven-haired beauty flees the accident scene and takes refuge in a nearby Hollywood apartment where the newly arrived Betty finds her naked and cowering in the shower. The panicstricken woman adopts the name Rita, based on an off-hand glance at a framed movie poster featuring the sultry femme fatale Rita Hayworth, whom she sees reflected back in the mirror along with her own image. Initially, Rita tries to escape from her troubles by retreating into sleep, but when this is unsuccessful she woodenly helps Betty rehearse for her approaching screen test. Bettys audition turns out to be an unexpected tour de force, with her raw sexuality breaking forth to reveal a smoldering talent. However, before the full impact of this triumph can be registered, Betty is whisked away by a maternal casting agent to see a director who is ahead of all the rest with a project that, it is promised, she will kill for. The director turns out to be the brash and arrogant Adam Kesher, who in an earlier subplot of the dream is summoned to the office of the head of studio productions and, under an ultimatum from nefarious business interests, ordered to accept

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the unknown actress, Camilla Rhodes, as the lead in his sought-after film. Adam initially refuses, but following a Joblike day of hell in which he appears to lose everythinghis wife, fortune, and control of the movieand which culminates with a starlit rendezvous with the venomous Cowboy (Lafayette Montgomery), the recalcitrant but chastened director finally comes around. Betty arrives at Adams sound stage just as the audition of the inauspicious Camilla is taking place. Bettys appearance causes Adam to become momentarily distracted, and their exchange of glances carries with it such electricity as to overshadow Camilla with its glow of movie magic. Reluctantly, Adam jerks himself back into the moment and carries out the Cowboys instructions by awarding Camilla the star-making part. Another exchange of soulful looks passes between him and Betty, who then, with a Cinderella-like turn, bolts from the movie set without looking back. Adams eyes follow her vaporous trajectory with abject and profound yearning. At this point, the dream also changes course as the highspirited Betty rejoins Rita to search for her identity. The quest leads this pair into the heart of darkness, which in this case turns out to be the bedroom of Diane Selwyns apartment, where they discover the dreamers rotting corpse lying across her bed. It also brings the two women increasingly closer together both physically and emotionally. With the aid of a blonde wig, Betty helps Rita to disguise herself, giving her a look not unlike her own. Later that night, the two women end up sharing the same bed, and their lovemaking unleashes in Betty a torrent of passion. Their subsequent sleep is interrupted by Ritas repetition of the word Silencio and by her ominous sense that things are awry. Rita prevails on Betty to accompany her downtown to the Club Silencio, an eerie, dilapidated theater, where they attend a supernatural performance in the early hours of the morning. The hallucinatory interior of the club, where reality and fantasy become impossible to distinguish, is like a dream itself. The womens presence here leads to the discovery of a mysterious blue box, the opening of which causes them to disappear. As the camera makes its way into the recesses of this unfathomable blue

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receptacle, the screen is once again thrown into darkness and the dream comes to an end. Part B of Mulholland Drive begins with the same Cowboy who previously had delivered the midnight wake-up call to Adam now summoning Diane from her nocturnal slumber. Diane awakens with an unshakeable depression and haunted by Camillas murder. She, like Rita in her dream, was hoping that sleep might afford her some relief, but instead arises from her bed looking dispirited and haggard. With the police knocking on her outer door, she appears trapped in her dreary apartment, haunted by Camillas death, as confirmed by the blue key lying on her table. A series of flashbacks of sexual abandon with Camilla overtake her. This joyful reverie quickly gives way to images of abandonment and loneliness that Diane seeks to counteract by self-soothing through masturbation. It is at this point that she seems forced to recall the disquieting events leading to Camillas murder. Mulholland Drive can therefore be summed up as the harrowing tale of a young womans descent into despair once the bitter taste of rejection forces her to realize that her dream of becoming an object of adoration, both professionally and personally, is nothing more than a delusion. By the end of the movie, Diane loses all ability to distinguish between waking reality and oneiric fantasy. With her depression deepening into paranoid psychosis, she ends her life after being chased back into her bedroom by terrorizing hallucinations of a Lilliputian elderly couple, first glimpsed at the very beginning, who represent her mocking parents. The locus of her fantasies now becomes her death bed, where her dreams are finally laid to rest. In the closing scene, the dizzied viewer is transported once more to the deserted stage at the Club Silencio and given one last glimpse of the site where reality, fantasy, and pyrotechnic cinematic art all dazzlingly merge. It is in what might easily be taken as an old-fashioned movie theater that Lynch leaves his audience, silent and darkling, with the daunting task of trying to sort out what has just taken place in this convoluted phantasmagoria.

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According to Freud (1900), the mechanisms of the dreamwork transform the dreamers latent thoughts into a more primitive pictorial language that aids the censor in obscuring and concealing their meaning. To interpret a dream, he argued, one must undo the effects of these processes and work back through free association to the sources of the disguised elements in the manifest content. In a similar way, writes Glen Gabbard (2001), certain films defy conventional analysis and understanding unless they are viewed as dreams subject to condensation, displacement, and other elements of Freuds dream-work (8). Dramatization or concrete pictorial (plastic) representation is the essence of the dream-work and involves the conversion of latent thoughts into pictorial images. Freud viewed this process as a regression to an earlier mode of thinking, analogous to the plastic arts of painting and sculpture. In her classic work Dream Analysis (1937), Ella Freeman Sharpe compared dramatization to a film of moving pictures projected on the screen of our private inner cinema (58). As is true of all David Lynchs movies, Mulholland Drive has an arresting visual style, which reflects his early training in the fine arts. In an interview, Lynch has compared the nonverbal aspects of painting and film-making in a way that aids us in understanding the emphasis on primary-process mentation in his dreamscapes: There are things that cant be said with words. And thats sort of what painting is all about. And thats what film-making, to me, is mostly about. There are words and there are stories, but there are things that can be said with films that you cant say with words. Its just the beautiful language of cinema. And it has to do with time and juxtapositions and all the rules of painting. Painting is the one thing that carries through everything else. (Rodley 1999, 2627)

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In Mulholland Drive, Lynch uses this language of pictorial representations wittily to evoke associative links to his own past pictures as well as to other notable examples of Hollywood art.3 While visually arresting, the dream at the center of Mulholland Drive is formed from a pastiche of other Hollywood movies and as such invites a kind of free association to popular culture. This results in the conceit that Dianes fantasy of becoming a movie star is not only inspired by the cinema but is also a reflection of the movies themselves. Condensation is the process by which latent thoughts are combined in the manifest dream content so that a single figure or situation may bear qualities emblematic of a number of different counterparts in real life. Perhaps the most obvious example of condensation in Mulholland Drive is the way that the dreamers entire acting career is telescoped into a single enigmatic screen test. Bettys love scene with Rita is also part of a much more complicated relationship between Diane and Camilla. On a deeper level, Ritas character may also synthesize aspects of the dreamers mother and rekindle childhood issues of dependency, seductiveness, and competitiveness. Indeed, Dianes dream in part represents her unsuccessful efforts to free herself from constricting maternal attachments. While struggling to break out as a leading actress, she becomes trapped by her dependency on Camilla/Rita/Mother. In the process, Betty/Diane is relegated to a supporting role. Displacement shifts psychically intense elements in a dream away from their original sources onto objects more acceptable to the censoring ego. This mechanism appears continuously throughout Dianes dream in a variety of ways. It is even described in the scene where Betty, in her effort to coax Rita to search for her identity, tells her they will don a disguise: It will be just like in the movies. Well pretend to be somebody else (italics added). The rage that Diane feels when the full extent of Camillas betrayal finally becomes known to her is displaced onto a middle-aged man whom she sees at that same moment sitting on the other side of the room. In the dream he becomes the espresso-drinking Italian businessman who had earlier spit out the coffee and excoriated Adam with bilious rage. One of the most elegant examples of displacement occurs in the exchange of names between Diane and the blonde waitress in

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the Sunset diner, to whom she bears a close resemblance. In the dream, the identity of Camilla Rhodes is displaced onto the blonde-haired woman whom she kisses at Adams dinner party. Indeed, the various blondesthe waitress, Betty, and Rita (in a wig)all look alike enough to confuse the movie audience and thus keep the dream censor off-guard as well. Symbolism in dreams also serves to disguise and replace unacceptable latent abstract thoughts with less threatening visual images. In Dianes dream, the pearl earring lost by Rita at the time of the near-fatal car accident becomes linked to the pearl-filled jewelry box that Adam desecrates out of rage over his wifes infidelities, and it is also symbolic of Dianes wish to despoil Camillas genitals for her sexual betrayal. The blue key, which both unlocks and deepens the mystery, serves as a symbol of Camillas death. Ritas amnesia, her attempts at concealment and physical alteration, her unspoken love of Betty and general inability to express herself, and her link to the Club Silencio all serve to associate her with death. The Cowboy and the dark, misshapen figure behind the Hollywood diner are harbingers of Dianes own demise and symbols of her self-destruction. A further aspect of symbolism can be discerned in the palate of Lynchs dreamscape, with pink and pale tones being associated with Diane and Betty, while darker reds and blacks are linked to Camilla and Rita. As in Blue Velvet (1986), Lynch again uses lush shades of blue as emblems both of mystery and of the loss of innocence. No symbol in Mulholland Drive is more prominent or initially more bewildering than the blue box discovered by Betty inside her purse. Freud, however, viewed boxes, purses, and other containers as symbols of female genitalia.4 It is therefore comprehensible that the unlocking of the blue box should come at a point in the dream sequence shortly after Bettys sexual awakening and the unleashing of her passion. Rather than construing the box as a generic Alice-in-Wonderland rabbit hole, it seems more compelling to equate it specifically with Dianes dream, and to see it as capturing the paradox of its ultimate mystery and bottomless nature.5

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The Dreams That Blister Sleep Sorting Out the Day-Residue

Freuds discovery that dreams are cobbled together from the scraps of day-residues is central to appreciating the manifest content of Part A in Mulholland Drive. Dianes experience both at Adams dinner party and in her subsequent meeting with the hit man introduces many of the characters who figure in her dream and it informs our understanding of its displaced affect. Upon her arrival at the party, Diane is greeted by Adams mother, Coco, who later makes polite, knowing inquiries into Dianes tale of Hollywood sorrow. In Dianes dream, Coco plays the role of the solicitous apartment manager who counsels Betty following her arrival in the city. The sober-faced Italian gentleman who is glimpsed by Diane sipping a cup of espresso on the other side of Adams living room is transformed in her dream into an intimidating studio investor whose rage toward the director is a projection of her own. The enigmatic Cowboy whom Diane also spies on the far side of Adams dining room as he hastens to make his exit returns in her dream to become yet another powerfully menacing presence. At the party, Diane locks eyes with a blonde-haired woman who at that same moment is planting a sensual kiss on Camillas mouth. The woman stares back brazenly with Camillas lipstick markings clearly visible across her lips. In Dianes dream, this same woman is recast as the blonde Camilla who is forced upon Adam and whose lip-synching audition leads to the role in his movie. While Diane reacts at the party to all these events with a steely anger, in her dream these feelings are displaced, blunted, and transformed into their opposites. Similarly, in the dayresidue scene at the Hollywood diner where Diane contracts with a hit man for Camillas murder, there is a fleeting moment just after the money changes hands in which her glance wanders across the room and meets the doe-eyed gaze of a male customer as he is standing at the register innocently paying his check. This same character substitutes in a pivotal early scene of Dianes dream for the dreamer herself, serving as a projected expression of her guilt and fears and desire for undoing.

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Central to Freuds understanding of the function of dreams is the notion that every dream represents a disguised fulfillment of a repressed wish (1900, 121). Freud regarded the simplest wish-fulfillment of dreams to be their satisfying of the desire to sleep, with the distortion of the dream-work serving to ward off both the inner and outer disturbances that threaten to awaken the dreamer. At a deeper level, he considered that dreams gratify through fantasy our unacceptable instinctual wishes, the origins of which can be traced to early childhood, and thus serve as a safety valve for discharging such impulses. With a depth and complexity that rival Freuds famous Irma Dream, Dianes dream in Mulholland Drive weaves a narrative tapestry that expresses her latent fantasies and agonizing unconscious conflicts. Dianes dream is not only a plea for penance but also a wish for punishment. It is both a statement of her desire to destroy her more glamorous and successful rival as well as a wish to abrogate those feelings of envy and jealousy. It is a declaration of hate and a confession of love. She longs to rid herself of this alluring competitor and to merge with her in a transcendent union. From a genetic standpoint, Dianes dream represents a desire to redress childhood hurts and to repair her bond with a narcissistic mother. In short, Freuds premise that dreams are the disguised fulfillments of repressed wishes is at the heart of Lynchs movie. Dianes desire to flee reality through sleep is expressed in her dream by the concussed Rita: It will be okay, if only I can sleep. Following her accident, Rita makes a series of attempts to escape into sleep, but awakens to find herself unchanged. Near the end of the dream, after her evening of lovemaking with Betty, Rita is gripped by a nightmare in which she talks aloud in the throes of fitful slumber. When Betty awakens and attempts to reassure her friend that everything is okay, she is met with Ritas fierce protests. Doubtless this reflects Dianes own uneasy awareness that sleep as a defensive retreat has failed her.

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Dianes dream is also designed to exculpate her from the responsibility for Camillas death. The assassination attempt on Rita is aborted at the very outset of the dream by a deadly car collision that miraculously leaves her as the only survivor. Later, by depicting the hit man as a hopelessly inept bungler who loses the trail of the missing woman, Dianes dream further serves to deny and reverse the reality of Camillas murder. Other attempts at undoing occur in the apartment of Bettys aunt when Rita reaches into her purse and, to everyones astonishment, pulls out three stacks of tightly wrapped onehundred-dollar bills, an amount that appears to be several times greater than that handed over by Diane in the diner. Ritas possession of the money means that the payment never happened. Rita also produces an ornate blue key, with the implication that as long as this emblem remains in her possession rather than where it was supposed to be at the time of Camillas death, then the actress continues to live. Bettys efforts throughout the dream reverse the dreamers murder of Camilla through her intrepid caring for the childlike Rita and the assistance she renders Rita in the search for her identity. But perhaps the most powerful expression of Dianes wish to undo Camillas murder involves a male dreamer haunted into retelling his dream within her dream. The episode occurs early in Dianes dream, immediately following the failed attempt on Ritas life. The scene shifts to the Sunset Boulevard diner, here playfully named Winkiesin a pun on the act of sleepingwhere Diane had plotted Camillas murder. There sits in the same spot an embarrassed man who finds himself compelled to confess to having had a dream about this place. His dream is terrifying and conjures up the specter of a ghastly face, probably the dreamers own, that is sensed to be lurking behind the building. Dreamer: Hes the one whos doing it. I can see him through the wall. I can see his face. I hope that I never see that face ever outside a dream. [smiles] Thats it. Other Man: So, you came to see if hes out there. Dreamer: To get rid of this god-awful feeling. (italics added)

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As Freud argued, when the act of dreaming becomes the subject of the dream itself, the material is of special significance: What is dreamt in a dream after waking from the dream within a dream is what the dream-wish seeks to put in the place of an obliterated reality. It is safe to suppose, therefore, that what has been dreamt in the dream is a representation of the reality, the true recollection, while the continuation of the dream, on the contrary, merely represents what the dreamer wishes. To include something in a dream within a dream is thus equivalent to wishing that the thing described as a dream had never happened. In other words, if a particular event is inserted into a dream as a dream by the dream-work itself, this implies the most decided confirmation of the reality of the eventthe strongest affirmation of it. The dream-work makes use of dreams as a form of repudiation, and so confirms the discovery that dreams are wish-fulfillments. (1900, 338) Dianes male alter-ego expresses her wish both to forget and to reverse her murderous actions. The grotesque figure who remains fixed in her minds eye and looms uneasily at the rear of the diner represents her displaced sense of self-loathing and fear of retributory vengeance. In the portions of the dream that follow, Diane struggles to substitute a more pleasing fantasy in place of this harrowing specter. She accomplishes this by conjuring up Betty, an altruistic, self-sacrificing, idealized version of herself, who spends much of her time befriending Rita in a doomed attempt to undue Dianes murderous feelings and behavior towards Camilla in waking life. Dianes wish to achieve popular and artistic success is also given clear expression in her dream-fantasy. Shortly after Bettys arrival on the Hollywood scene and her discovery of Rita cowering in the bathroom shower, the dreamers exuberant alter-ego is moved to reveal her own ambitions. While admitting she is a guest in her Aunts lavish apartment, Betty confides:

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The Dreams That Blister Sleep I could never afford a place like this in a million years. Unless, of course, Im discovered and become a movie star. Of course Id rather be known as a great actress than a movie star, but sometimes people end up being both, and that is, I guess youd say, sort of why I came here. Im just so excited to be here. I mean I just came here from Deep River, Ontario.6 And now Im in this dream place. You can imagine how I feel! (italics added)

This confession provides one of the clearest statements of the design in Part A. It reveals Dianes unbridled yearnings to get ahead, and the strong regressive and narcissistic forces at work in her dream as well. Dianes dream represents a compromise-formation between her id impulses to destroy Camilla and her superego constraints tempering these urges for vengeance. Her murderous rage, while present throughout the dream, remains largely displaced and stripped of its affect. Ritas narrow escape from death twice over in the opening moments of the dream, and her ominous sense of being pursued, is an ever-present portent of the danger in which she finds herself. Another indication of the dreamers underlying hostility occurs in the scene where Rita helps Betty prepare for her screen test. While reciting her lines, Betty brandishes a butter knife in Ritas direction and with a theatrical flourish threatens to kill her. The script, Betty notes, calls for her, in a torrent of tearful emotion, to cry out to her acting counterpart, I hate you, I hate us both. Perhaps, in this play within a play, word is tethered to the action, and within both lurks the truest expression of the dreamers sentiments. Dianes destructive impulses toward Camilla are manifested also in other portions of the dream. Adam responds to his wifes infidelity by pouring a canister of pink paint over the pearls that she keeps in her jewelry box, a symbolic genital defiling of the unfaithful Camilla. If Diane cant have Camilla, the dream is saying, then nobody can. And yet, when Camilla jumps from Dianes bed to Adams, the dream equates Rita to a common whore. Thus, the hit man travels the back streets of Hollywood making inquiries about Ritas whereabouts, searching for leads among the local hookers.7

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Dianes malignant envy and wish to destroy Camilla are replaced in her dream by a less venomous desire to neutralize her rival by pushing her out of the way. Ritas amnesia allows Betty to assert her own ambitions while at the same time making use of Rita as a source of support. This is illustrated in the dream-fantasy where Betty is seen rehearsing for her screen test with the amateurish Rita woodenly cuing her lines. Youre really good! coos Rita, prompting Betty to respond with a mocking expression of gratitude in a voice reminiscent of Garbo. But it is not until Bettys actual screen test that her talents emerge in a wishful fantasy that is both hypnotic and arresting. When it gets real, she surprises even herself. As the awe and excitement generated by her audition work their magic on the small audience, she succeeds in capturing everyones attention and outshines the efforts of the darkhaired, unidentified actress who had auditioned for the part just before her. Beyond Dianes desire to surpass and destroy Camilla, her dream-fantasy reflects primitive yearnings for merger. While the two dream-women are of similar age and striking beauty, at the time of their chance meeting they appear emblematic of antithetical Hollywood types. The earnest, wholesome Betty represents a cross between the 1950s stars Doris Day and Grace Kelly, while the full-figured Rita is a throwback to such 1940s femme fatale icons as her namesake Rita Hayworth. In Dianes dream, both women embark on a quest for identity, and as their journey leads them down the same path, their differences begin to fade. After Rita allows herself to be transformed by Betty into her platinum-wigged Doppelgnger, the two women stare questioningly at their converging images in the bathroom mirror. Later that evening Betty and Rita make love, signifying a progression of their physical and psychological merger. Thereafter, in matching hair styles and in similar dress, they head off to the Club Silencio and, for the remainder of their time together, are so synchronized in action and manner that distinctions between them seem no longer to exist. Together they sit huddled in the smoke-filled theater, hands clasped, heads touching. Ones tears are reflected in the others eyes. Ones panic triggers in the other a similar alarm. The mysteri-

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ous blue box that Betty pulls from her handbag is unlocked by the equally ominous blue key that Rita retrieves from her purse. The psychological dissolution of one woman presages the demise of the other. Indeed, the connection between them in the mind of the dreamer is deep, complex, and impossible to deny. Just as the Irma dream explains away Freuds professional derelictions, so too Dianes dream rationalizes the lack of success in her career. Despite Bettys electrifying screen test and ability to capture Adams attention upon her arrival at his set, the dream excuses her failure to become a star as the result of unsavory studio politics. In the end, the director is forced to accept Camilla Rhodes, even though Dianes dream makes her appear to be the lesser talent. Adams selection of Camilla over Diane and his coming between the two women both professionally and sexually are played out in the dream through fantasies of denial, reversal, and retribution. In the Part B day-residue, Diane is seen standing in the background of Adams production set staring sullenly as Camilla and Adam rehearse a romantic interlude. In the Part A fantasy sequence, when Betty first walks onto Adams sound stage, her presence wholly distracts him from the Camilla surrogate, and he casts a look of such palpable yearning as to leave little doubt that, were he not otherwise constrained, she would be the one whom he would want in his movie. The subplot involving the calamitous day in the life of the brash young director not only provides a pretext for Dianes inability to achieve stardom, but at the same time satisfies her wish to punish Adam for his complicity in unsettling both her professional and her personal life. Although Dianes parents are never explicitly mentioned, the elderly couple who are paired with the blonde-haired ingenue in and out of the dream function as parental figures, taking on both protective and persecutory functions. Our first glimpse of Betty, as she arrives at the Los Angeles airport, is in the company of the grey-haired, doting Irene, who up to this point has been her traveling companion. The maternal attachment of the older woman to the younger one appears fulsome and idealized. Irene embraces Betty with open arms, wishing her a fond farewell, and pledges to keep a close eye on her

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even in their separation, before ambling away with her shadowy husband. The artificial quality to the airport scene suggests that the dreamers desire for parental love and approbation is more a wish than a reality. This notion is reinforced in the next dream segment where this same couple, now seated in the back of a luxury car, undergo a sinister change in demeanor and delight in some wicked joke that appears to be at Bettys expense. Later, during Bettys auspicious screen test, another parental pair shower her with affection. This occurs when the fatuous, antiquated movie producer is reunited with his former wife, whom he introduces as the best casting agent in town but, alas, someone we cant afford. Both producer and agent fuss over Betty following her star-making performance. Their attentions seem both gratifying and uncomfortable, and pull the ingenue in opposite directions. Dianes dream hints at her hostile feelings toward her parents, although these are masked through heavy distortion. Most notable is the scene where the hit man, on the trail of the vanished Rita, guns down two middle-aged office-workers, possibly representing Dianes debased parental surrogates. The woman is an obese, foul-mouthed cleaning lady, and the man is a taciturn janitor. While both murders appear to be gratuitous and to involve two innocents who happen unluckily to find themselves in the hit mans path, perhaps the superficially random nature of these crimes serves as a cover for the dreamers sinister wishes. As we have argued, Dianes dream constitutes a compromise-formation between her warring id and superego agencies over the consequences of her murderous actions. While aspects of the manifest content provide veiled glimpses of Dianes wish to deny her complicity in Camillas destruction, the dream also expresses a deep sense of revulsion and desire to punish herself for all that she has done. Thus, while the dream-within-a-dream sequence at Winkies represents Dianes wish to undo Camillas murder, it also conveys her dread that this is impossible. The male dreamer-within fervently hopes that he might never again look upon the face that he knows is staring at him behind the wall at the back of the diner. Overwhelmed by guilt, however, he treks compulsively to

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behold that fearsome specter, and the scene ends in his collapse and death. Indeed, Dianes entire dream enacts the same fateful trajectory. Despite its lush-colored tones and optimistic leitmotifs, there are deeper chords of foreboding and despair. The persistent knocking at the dreamers apartment door, the cascade of telephone callers pressing for information about the missing womans whereabouts, the nondescript men lurking in the shadows behind the wheels of unmarked cars, the studio head who seems to control all these nefarious machinations without issuing any explicit ordersall of this gives the dream a haunted, juridical, persecutory quality. There is also the Cassandra-like premonition offered by the black-veiled interloper, Louise Bonner, who appears in the night at Bettys door to advise her that something bad is happening and someone is in trouble. Later in the dream, Rita is stirred from the depths of a restless sleep and issues a similar warning. The sinister Cowboy also admonishes Adam that anyone who does bad will see him thrice, as indeed befalls the dreamer. All of these incidents speak to Dianes unpardonable guilt and her wish for self-destruction. But no scene in the dream provides a more telling indication of this desire than the one where Betty, following her break-in at the apartment of Diane Selwyn, comes face-to-face with the dreamers rotting corpse and recoils at the ghastly spectacle. As Betty turns to run, the frame shudders as if to symbolize the shockwaves of anxiety pulsing through Dianes own body. At that moment, the dream turns from id gratification to superego punishment, signaling the retributive lengths to which the dreamer soon will go when she takes her own life upon awakening. The Club Silencio Sequence: Where the Real and the Fantasy Meet The centerpiece of Lynchs dreamscape in Mulholland Drive is the phantasmagoric interlude that takes place at the Club Silencio. Certainly the pivotal sequence, notes one commentator, it represents not only an important clue in this

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puzzle, but one of the saddest, most heartbreaking moments in contemporary cinema (Freeman 2002). If there is one scene, writes another, that encapsulates the main themes of the film and Lynchs recurring concerns as an artist, this is it (Chaw 2001; see also Chappell 2001). The scene occurs in a dilapidated, half-empty cabaret theater where a lip-synching Spanish singer belts out a soul-wrenching a capella rendition of the Roy Orbison ballad Crying before collapsing dead on the stage. Even as the womans body is unceremoniously dragged away, her singing continues uninterrupted. Just prior to this disquieting drama, a maniacal-looking impresario steps forward to explain how theater is built on trickery. You may hear a trumpet, or any one of a number of instruments, he intones, where none, in fact, is playing. There is no orchestra. It is all an elaborate fake. In the spine-tingling theater of the Club Silencio, the line between reality and fantasy blurs in much the same way as it does in the dream itself. Although on one level the mystery being celebrated here is that of sound-image synchronization or, more generally, the craft of movie-making, Lynch is also exploring the production of dreams, in both literal and metaphorical senses. The preternatural happenings on the blue-lit stage of the Club Silencio are at once cinematic special effects and dreamfantasies. On the other scene of the movie screen, when the lights go down and the viewer is lured into the hallucinatory projection, the effect is like that of being submerged into a dream-state. A motion picture is a dream, notes Mike Nichols. When you see it, you are in the dark. A movie involves drawing on your unconscious in the same way that dreams come out of the unconscious (Pettet 2003, 24).8 In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud sounds a metaphoric note similar to that of the impresario at the Club Silencio: Dreams are not to be likened to the unregulated sounds that rise from a musical instrument struck by the blow of some external force instead of by a players hand; they are not meaningless, they are not absurd; they do not imply that one portion of our stores of ideas is asleep while another portion is beginning to wake. On the contrary, they are psychical phenomena of complete

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Freud was convinced that dreams, when rightly interpreted, represent communications of high import and definite meaning. This appears to be at variance with Lynchs nihilistic challenge to the distinction between fantasy and reality. Yet Freudian theory allows us to apprehend the happenings at the Club Silencio as Dianes last desperate attempts at projection, reversal, and denial. If all is illusion, then so too is Camilla Rhodess death no more real than the demise of the Spanish singer whose voice continues to be heard despite her collapse upon the stage. If all is an illusion, then where does the border between dreams and our waking life lie?9 The Club Silencio sequence occurs when the dreamers defenses are beginning to crumble. Despite her best efforts to escape through sleep, reality and unreality are finally starting to come into focus. The message of the club that reality cannot be distinguished from artifice represents a desperate reactionformation against this nascent clarity. Despite its name, the Club Silencio is anything but quiet. With the death of the cabaret singer, it offers a portal to the other side of the grave and a baleful reminder of Camillas death. As Diane draws increasingly closer to embracing her awful secret, in recognizing her failed career and her act of cruel murder, there is no longer a safe place in the dream for her to hide. Uncertainty and confusion give rise to panic and possibly a glimmer of insight. At this juncture, the censor is overwhelmed by a rush of anxiety that causes the dreamer to awaken. All that is left is Dianes psychotic decompensation and her final act of suicide. Conclusion As this paper has tried to illustrate, Diane Selwyns dream in and of Mulholland Drive is a master class in Freudian dream theory. It illustrates many of the cardinal tenets of The Interpretation of Dreams, particularly exemplifying the precepts of wish-

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fulfillment and intrapsychic conflict at the heart of the underlying metapsychology. David Lynchs movie is also a piece of sublime tragic art, which follows the trajectory of human emotions from blissful hopes and youthful desire to abject dissolution and loss of innocence. It is no accident that Dianes surname, Selwyn, is linked to the early film pioneer Samuel Goldwyn, whose name was sutured together from his collaborations with the Selwyn Brothers, which led to the founding of Goldwyn pictures. Like Goldwyn, Diane strives to be the producer of her own dreams, but like the now-forgotten Selwyn Brothers she finds herself eclipsed by more towering figures. Like many an aspiring soul who has come to Hollywood in search of the promised land, Lynchs heroine reaches a dead end in Babylon with her dreams transformed into nightmares. 1475 Bryant Drive West Long Beach, CA 90815 jlentzner@pol.net Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Health System 6501 N. Charles St. Baltimore, MD 21285 dross@sheppardpratt.org Notes
1. While failing to recoup even half of its fifteen-million-dollar production costs during its United States theatrical run, the movie earned Lynch his third Academy Award nomination for Best Director along with shared directorial honors at the Cannes Film Festival. It was awarded Best Picture by the National Society of Film Critics, as well as by leading critical groups in New York, Chicago, and Boston. Despite being lauded for its powerful acting, lush cinematography, hypnotic score, and the ingenuity and pyrotechnics of its screenplay, the film failed to receive Academy Award nominations in any of these categories and was dismissed by host Whoopi Goldberg as an inexplicable curiosity. In an interview in The Village Voice (Lim 2001), the unflappably tight-lipped director responded to the following questions: Interviewer: Your work has inspired many psychoanalytic and academic readings. Do you pay much attention to them? Lynch: No. I dont read them. . . . Interviewer: Are you familiar with psychoanalytic theory? Lynch: Not really. The scene in the conference room where Adam comes face to face with two Mafia business types who present him with an offer he cant refuse comes from The Godfather. And in a subsequent dream fragment, the same hit man hired to kill Camilla triggers a chain-reaction of burlesque violence leading to the deaths of two unsuspecting office workers that pays homage to Pulp Fiction. Still other

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3.

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parts of Dianes dream bring to mind Chinatown and other hard-boiled noir films of a still-earlier era. Perhaps most of all, Mulholland Drive invites comparison to The Wizard of Oz, a movie repeatedly referenced by Lynch both in tribute and as savage parody. The orphaned female protagonists in both Mulholland Drive and the 1939 classic embark on a dream-quest leading them over the rainbow, but they arrive at very different destinations. While Dorothys journey is one of adolescent growth and integration, Dianes results in role confusion and psychotic decomposition. Her yellow-striped road leads to a loss of mind, heart, and courage, and finally to a despairing death. In a more sardonic vein, Lynchs clue that Diane Selwyn is no Dorothy Gale comes in the scene where, upon arriving at her Aunts courtyard apartment, Betty replies negatively to Coco the landladys inquiry about whether she owns a dog. In The Theme of the Three Caskets (1913), Freud discusses the symbolism of boxes in Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice and King Lear: If what we were concerned with were a dream, it would occur to us at once that caskets are also women, symbols of what is essential in woman, and therefore of a woman herselflike coffers, boxes, cases, baskets, and so on (292; see also Freud 1900, 354). Freud (1900) believed that every dream contains a navel (111n1; 525) that makes it impossible to interpret fully and serves as the point of contact with its unplumbable reaches. See also Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream (4.1.206 24), where this same idea is given poetic expression. In Blue Velvet, the Deep River apartments are the domicile of another lost woman-child, Dorothy Vallens, and the location represents a terrain of sinister foreboding. Indeed, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive both employ a hallucinatory style to probe beneath the faade of conventional normality. The youthful, haunted protagonists, Jeffery Beaumont and Diane Selwyn, are each drawn into a detective hunt that propels them back into the heart of childhood darkness, rekindling traumatic feelings of enmity and passion toward both parents. Their odysseys evoke not only sexual desire but also fantasies of murder and revenge that are played out in their dreams and given conscious expressions in both movies. For further incisive analysis of Blue Velvet, see Kael (1986, 110915) and Atkinson (2000). Given that the hooker in this scene extracts a cigarette from the same shirt pocket of the hit man from which Diane brings forth the blue key, the dreamer may well be feeling that she has sold herself out as well. Bertram Lewin (1946; 1948) was among the first psychoanalysts to see affinities between dreams and movies. As Freud drew an analogy between sleep and the return to the womb, Lewin linked the screen onto which the dream is projected to the nursing infants view of the mothers breast, its first object. For a scholarly exploration of how dreams have been used in movies, see Eberwein (1984). In a narrower sense, the Club Silencio sequence functions as Lynchs allegory of the unreliable nature of dreams and cinematic artifice. Earlier in the dream, just prior to Bettys screen audition, she is counseled by the enigmatic director not to play it like its real until it becomes real. In a world where illusion and fakery are the coin of the realm, how can any such advice be of value? If the voice of a Spanish singer is no more real than the disembodied notes of a glittering trumpet sounded without a player, then Dianes dream is also a counterfeit and Camilla Rhodes is dead. Perhaps this is the realization that causes the dreamer to awaken.

4.

5.

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7. 8.

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