Editing Mulholland Drive (film) (section)

===Dreams and alternative realities===
An early interpretation of the film uses [[Dream interpretation|dream analysis]] to argue that the first part is a dream of the real Diane Selwyn, who has cast her dream-self as the innocent and hopeful "Betty Elms", reconstructing her history and persona into something like an old Hollywood film. In the dream, Betty is successful, charming, and lives the fantasy life of a soon-to-be-famous actress. The remainder of the film presents Diane's real life, in which she has failed both personally and professionally. She arranges for Camilla, an ex-lover, to be killed, and unable to cope with the guilt, re-imagines her as the dependent, pliable amnesiac Rita. Clues to her inevitable demise, however, continue to appear throughout her dream.<ref name="tang">{{cite web |url=http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2001/11/07/mulholland_dream/ |last=Tang |first=Jean |title=All you have to do is dream |date=November 7, 2001 |work=[[Salon (website)|Salon]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081229232151/http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2001/11/07/mulholland_dream/ |archive-date=December 29, 2008 |access-date=August 17, 2012}}</ref>

This interpretation was similar to what Naomi Watts construed, when she said in an interview, "I thought Diane was the real character and that Betty was the person she wanted to be and had dreamed up. Rita is the [[damsel in distress]] and she's in absolute need of Betty, and Betty controls her as if she were a doll. Rita is Betty's fantasy of who she wants Camilla to be."<ref name="fuller"/> Watts' own early experiences in [[Cinema of the United States|Hollywood]] parallel those of Diane's. She endured some professional frustration before she became successful, auditioned for parts in which she did not believe, and encountered people who did not follow through with opportunities. She recalled, "There were a lot of promises, but nothing actually came off. I ran out of money and became quite lonely."<ref name="pearce">{{cite news |last=Pearce |first=Gareth |date=January 6, 2002 |title=Why Naomi is a girl's best friend |newspaper=[[The Sunday Times]] |page=14}}</ref> Michael Wilmington of the ''[[Chicago Tribune]]'' found that "everything in ''Mulholland Drive'' is a nightmare. It's a portrayal of the Hollywood golden dream turning rancid, curdling into a poisonous stew of hatred, envy, sleazy compromise and soul-killing failure. This is the underbelly of our glamorous fantasies, and the area Lynch shows here is realistically portrayed."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-10-12-0110120366-story.html|title=Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive' takes us to a hair-raising alternate world|last=Wilmington|first=Michael|website=[[Chicago Tribune]] |date=October 12, 2001|access-date=December 2, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200617031746/https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2001-10-12-0110120366-story.html|archive-date=June 17, 2020}}</ref>

''[[The Guardian]]'' asked six well-known film critics for their own perceptions of the overall meaning in ''Mulholland Drive''. Neil Roberts of ''[[The Sun (United Kingdom)|The Sun]]'' and Tom Charity of ''[[Time Out (magazine)|Time Out]]'' subscribe to the theory that Betty is Diane's projection of a happier life. [[Roger Ebert]] and [[Jonathan Ross]] seem to accept this interpretation, but both hesitate to overanalyze the film. Ebert states, "There is no explanation. There may not even be a mystery." Ross observes that there are storylines that go nowhere: "Perhaps these were leftovers from the pilot it was originally intended to be, or perhaps these things are the [[non sequitur (literary device)|non-sequiturs]] and subconscious of dreams."<ref name="lewis">{{cite news|last=Lewis |first=Robin |date=January 17, 2007 |title=Nice Film If You Can Get It: Understanding ''Mulholland Drive'' |newspaper=[[The Guardian]] |url=http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,634856,00.html#article_continue |access-date=August 17, 2012 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080830011241/http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0%2C%2C634856%2C00.html |archive-date=August 30, 2008}}</ref> [[Philip French]] from ''[[The Observer]]'' sees it as an allusion to Hollywood tragedy, while Jane Douglas from the [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] rejects the theory of Betty's life as Diane's dream, but also warns against too much analysis.<ref name="lewis" />

{{quote box|width=40%|align=left|bgcolor=#c6dbf7|quote=Contained within the original DVD release is a card titled "David Lynch's 10 Clues to Unlocking This Thriller". The clues are:

# Pay particular attention in the beginning of the film: At least two clues are revealed before the credits.
# Notice appearances of the red lampshade.
# Can you hear the title of the film that Adam Kesher is auditioning actresses for? Is it mentioned again?
# An accident is a terrible event—notice the location of the accident.
# Who gives a key, and why?
# Notice the robe, the ashtray, the coffee cup.
# What is felt, realized and gathered at the Club Silencio?
# Did talent alone help Camilla?
# Note the occurrences surrounding the man behind Winkie's.
# Where is Aunt Ruth?
|source=2002 DVD edition insert<ref>{{cite video |title=Mulholland Drive |type=DVD |year=2002 |publisher=Universal Studios Home Video}}</ref>}}

Media theorist Siobhan Lyons similarly disagrees with the dream theory, arguing that it is a "superficial interpretation [which] undermines the strength of the absurdity of reality that often takes place in Lynch's universe."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.popmatters.com/feature/moving-beyond-the-dream-theory-a-new-approach-to-mulholland-drive/|title=Moving Beyond the Dream Theory: A New Approach to 'Mulholland Drive'|date=August 4, 2016|access-date=January 5, 2018|archive-date=October 21, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171021075857/http://www.popmatters.com/feature/moving-beyond-the-dream-theory-a-new-approach-to-mulholland-drive/|url-status=live}}</ref> Instead, Lyons posits that Betty and Diane are in fact two different people who happen to look similar, a common motif among Hollywood starlets. In a similar interpretation, Betty and Rita and Diane and Camilla may exist in [[multiverse|parallel universes]] that sometimes interconnect. Another theory offered is that the narrative is a [[Möbius strip]].<ref name="hudson">{{cite journal |last=Hudson |first=Jennifer |date=Spring 2004 |title='No Hay Banda, and yet We Hear a Band': David Lynch's Reversal of Coherence in ''Mulholland Drive'' |journal=[[Journal of Film and Video]] |issue=56 |volume=1 |pages=17–24}}</ref> It was also suggested that the entire film takes place in a dream, yet the identity of the dreamer is unknown.<ref name="lopate" /> Repeated references to beds, bedrooms and sleeping represent the influence of dreams. Rita falls asleep several times; in between these episodes, disconnected scenes such as the men having a conversation at Winkie's, Betty's arrival in [[Los Angeles]] and the bungled hit take place, suggesting that Rita may be dreaming them. The opening shot of the film zooms into a bed containing an unknown sleeper, instilling, according to film scholar Ruth Perlmutter, the necessity to question the reality of following events.<ref name="perlmutter">{{cite journal |last=Permutter |first=Ruth |date=April 2005 |title=Memories, Dreams, Screens |journal=[[Quarterly Review of Film and Video]] |issue=22 |volume=2 |pages=125–134|doi=10.1080/10509200590461837 |s2cid=194058402 }}</ref> Professor of dream studies Kelly Bulkeley argues that the early scene at the diner, being the only scene in which dreams or dreaming are explicitly mentioned, illustrates "revelatory truth and [[epistemology|epistemological]] uncertainty in Lynch's film."<ref name="Dreams">{{cite journal |last=Bulkeley |first=Kelly |date=March 2003 |title=Dreaming and the Cinema of David Lynch |journal=Dreaming |issue=13 |volume=1 |page=57 |doi=10.1023/a:1022190318612|s2cid=143312944 }}</ref> The monstrous being from the dream, who is the subject of conversation of the men in Winkie's, reappears at the end of the film right before and after Diane commits suicide. Bulkeley asserts that the lone discussion of dreams in that scene presents an opening to "a new way of understanding everything that happens in the movie."<ref name="Dreams" />

Philosopher and film theorist [[Robert Sinnerbrink]] similarly notes that the images following Diane's apparent suicide undermine the "dream and reality" interpretation. After Diane shoots herself, the bed is consumed with smoke, and Betty and Rita are shown beaming at each other, after which a woman in the Club Silencio balcony whispers "Silencio" as the screen fades to black. Sinnerbrink writes that the "concluding images float in an indeterminate zone between fantasy and reality, which is perhaps the genuinely metaphysical dimension of the cinematic image," also noting that it might be that the "last sequence comprises the fantasy images of Diane's dying consciousness, concluding with the real moment of her death: the final ''Silencio''."<ref name="sinnerbrink">{{cite journal |last=Sinnerbrink |first=Robert |year=2005 |url=http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol9-2005/n34sinnerbrink |title=Cinematic Ideas: David Lynch's ''Mulholland Drive'' |journal=Film-Philosophy |issue=9 |volume=34 |access-date=August 17, 2012 |archive-date=May 7, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130507040431/http://www.film-philosophy.com/vol9-2005/n34sinnerbrink |url-status=live }}</ref> Referring to the same sequence, film theorist Andrew Hageman notes that "the ninety-second coda that follows Betty/Diane's suicide is a cinematic space that persists after the curtain has dropped on her living consciousness, and this persistent space is the very theatre where the illusion of illusion is continually unmasked."<ref name="hageman">{{cite journal|last=Hageman |first=Andrew |date=June 2008 |url=http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/article.php?issue=11&id=1022 |title=The Uncanny Ecology of ''Mulholland Drive'' |journal=Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies |issue=11 |access-date=August 17, 2012 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120807090000/http://www.scope.nottingham.ac.uk/article.php?issue=11&id=1022 |archive-date=August 7, 2012}}</ref>

Film theorist David Roche writes that Lynch films do not simply tell detective stories, but rather force the audience into the role of becoming detectives themselves to make sense of the narratives, and that ''Mulholland Drive'', like other Lynch films, frustrates "the spectator's need for a rational [[diegesis]] by playing on the spectator's mistake that narration is synonymous with diegesis." In Lynch's films, the spectator is always "one step behind narration" and thus "narration prevails over diegesis."<ref name="Roche">{{cite journal |last=Roche |first=David |year=2004 |url=http://erea.revues.org/index432.html |title=The Death of the Subject in David Lynch's ''Lost Highway'' and ''Mulholland Drive'' |journal=E-rea: Revue électronique d'études sur le monde anglophone |volume=2 |issue=2 |page=43|doi=10.4000/erea.432|doi-access=free}}</ref> Roche also notes that there are multiple mysteries in the film that ultimately go unanswered by the characters who meet dead ends, like Betty and Rita, or give in to pressures as Adam does. Although the audience still struggles to make sense of the stories, the characters are no longer trying to solve their mysteries. Roche concludes that ''Mulholland Drive'' is a mystery film not because it allows the audience to view the solution to a question, but the film itself is a mystery that is held together "by the spectator-detective's desire to make sense" of it.<ref name="Roche" />