Cinema obviously has a complete arsenal of funds from all kinds of art. Cinema is total art in the most literal sense of the word. It synthesis two incompatible creative paradigms: temporal and spatial. Moreover, the cinema can give dynamics and tempo-rhythm to static images, each of which is a visual object. On the other hand, it is possible to fix on a film a temporal creative phenomenon, music or a poem, through an emotionally or compositionally static mise en scene. The history of the cinema is filled with the works of many directors, but only a few of them can be ranked among the geniuses of this kind of art, like David Lynch. The director and Buddhist, whose work “Mulholland Drive” deserves to be the object for review due to the symbolism and dreams transference used in it.
The director’s climbing started at Lost Highway and led him first to the heights of Mulholland Drive, and then to the heavenly gates of the Inner Empire. David Lynch transferred the visions of dreams, fears and subconscious desires of the characters with the authenticity of the animalist. He portrayed the isolation of any sequence of events and their internal para – logical connection, the following of which can lead an attentive and persistent viewer from the temporal to the mythical and metaphysical realm to the area of original author’s idea (Bradley 182).
History of the Movie Creation
Conceived as a television series, Mulholland Drive, in the beginning, was a two-hour pilot release. Lynch sold the idea to ABC producers about how Rita turns out to be the only survivor of a car crash with a handbag containing $ 125,000 in cash and a mysterious blue key, and about Batty trying to help her find out who she is. The story contains real and surreal elements, as well as the earlier Lynch series Twin Peaks (Stivers).
The story’s narrative is based on story arches, such as the riddle of Rita’s personality, Batty’s career, and the Adam Kesher’s film project. Lynch chose Naomi Watts and Laura Helen Harring from their photos. Then he invited everyone for a half-hour interview. Lynch described Watts’ choice: “I saw a person with an enormous talent and a beautiful soul, intelligent with the ability to play many different roles, it was a perfect set.” Justin Theroux met Lynch immediately from the plane. After a long flight almost without sleep, Teru came dressed all in black with tangled hair. Lynch liked this image, and therefore in the film, Adam is dressed in a similar manner and has the same hairstyle.
The filming of the pilot release began in Los Angeles in February 1999 and lasted six weeks. Eventually, TV company did not like it, and they decided to abandon its continuation. The reasons were the non-linearity of the narrative, the age of Watts and Harring (who were considered too old), the character Ann Miller smoking a cigarette, and a large image of dog excrement in one of the scenes. Lynch agreed with ABC. He also did not like this version, but he was short of time to bring it to mind.
Later the script was rewritten and supplemented. Lynch made a feature movie. As a result, 18 additional pages of the script appeared. They described the romantic relationship between Rita and Batty and the events that took place after the discovery of the blue box. Naomi Watts benefited because she found Batty too one-dimensional, without the dark side, which appeared in the feature film.
The Symbolism of Color in the Movie
The symbolic content of the film is most clearly manifested in the symbolism of color. Lynch is eclectic in this matter and combines conventional color symbols with traditional ones. However, inside each design: a scene, a story line, a film, he is strict and consistent, so if you see and remember his color alphabet, you can read any message within the framework of this design.
The first shots of the film show the Jitterbug dance contest in the small Ontario town of Deep River. Pink background, music, and costumes create a specific image of the sixties, here pink looks like an integral part of the entourage. However, this is a symbol already. For example, American pop star Pink associated with pink color, which accompanied her not only in dresses but also in make-up, scenic backdrops, and video clips. Her vulgar, but at the same time “childish” manner of behavior, full lips, created the image of “girlish sexuality,” a girl coquette, who is still essentially a teenager.
When Diana sinks into a dream, she sees herself that is Betty Elm, dressed in a pink blouse that is a bit cramped; her sleeves are too short. She looks like an overgrown Canadian Pink, one of the armies of pink blondes with a sly yet innocent look. Her robe is also pink, and she gives her aunt’s red negligee to Rita, her inner Camille: this is not Betty’s color, at least now (before attending the Silencio Theater).
Black is the elegant color of confidence, self-control, stay “at the top” of the situation, the color of the control. It should be noted that neither Mr. Rock nor the Cowboy play the role of “men in black,” they wear suits of different colors because they are functionaries of the sleep. Heroines wear black while going to Mulholland Drive. In black always is his inhabitant, director Adam Kesher.
He manages events, but he “has chosen the wrong girl” in the real world, and Diana’s inner mafia in her dream shows him who is the master. But, at the same time, Adam is part of Diana’s psyche, the inner director of her destiny. The scene of Adam’s arrival home, in which instead of warmth and sympathy he is met by adultery, depicts the absence of a house near Diana herself. Trying to take revenge, Adam pours a can of pink paint into the box with her jewels. It is a symbol of the loss of an innocent state, a sign of a collision with a hostile and cruel reality. He gets a couple of good strikes from his wife’s lover, his nose is bleeding, but the black suit is not smeared with blood, but with pink paint: this is the true blood of the character. Covered with pink spots, Adam is no longer a director in black; he loses control (Mactaggart).
Red is the color of mature female sexuality, the color of passion. Red dresses, red lingerie, red lanterns are easily recognizable images, woven into the canvas of modern civilization. As in the sphere of Diana’s dream events, and in the real (of course, limited by the boundaries of the film), red color retains its symbolic meaning. Like the color of the towel, in which the naked Rita wrapped, the color of the blouse in which Betty goes to the Silencio Theater. However, we should not forget that “passion” means not only a sexual feeling but redness also symbolizes every strong, all-consuming emotion: love, anger, hatred, indignation, shame.
Blue has a special meaning in the film. Traditionally, this color is associated with transformation, the transition to a different state. With the overcoming of the ontological border, there is also a feeling of strong fear, an almost insurmountable horror of the destruction of the subject, which fear forms the main weapon of the Guardian of the Threshold; the one who overcame it gets a pass “to the other side.” At Lynch, we meet a lot of blue objects – the key, the casket, the head of the woman sitting in the lodge of the Silencio theater, the luggage with which Betty flies to Los Angeles, cars, and bluish mise en scenes.
Also, blue is the color of twilight, the time of day-to-night transition, the time when the reality is like a dream, and sleep merges with reality. Dan, the ghostly hypostasis of Diana, who took on the face of the man in whom her gaze stopped in one tragic moment, tells her phantom psychoanalyst of her dream: “This is not a day or night. It’s like half the night.
The general feature of the movie is that all events, objects, and facts, the interlacing of which forms the fabric of the picture, have three aspects, or three faces, like a blue key found in a bag of a girl who survived a car accident. These three elements: literal, symbolic and mythological, are conditional and belong to a single surface, they should be remembered to understand the essence of what is happening on the screen.
Works Cited
Bradley, Daniel. “Brokenness and Hope: David Lynch’s Contribution to a Phenomenology of Anxiety in Mulholland Drive.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 29, no. 2, 2015, pp.180-193.
Mactaggart, Allister. “‘‘Silencio’’: hearing loss in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture, vol.6, no.1, 2014.
Stivers, Clint. “The Perils of Fantasy: Memory and Desire in David Lynch’s.” Book Reviews, 2015.