1) Mulholland Drive
Hauntingly beautiful and beautifully haunting, Mulholland Drive is a vivid dreamlike movie evoking every kind of emotion your mind is capable of producing, before contorting them into some other feelings you can’t quite explain. I’ve yet to see a movie that becomes so much more compelling whilst it simultaneously becomes nonsensical. It’s everything that cinema can do best, and more.
Starring Naomi Watts as an aspiring actress attempting to break into Hollywood, David Lynch’s film jumbles up the narrative, provides characters with multiple identities, and sets us up with a barrage of false narrative cues. Watts assumes a couple of names in the movie but never seems to know what’s truly going on, and we align ourselves with her as a result.
The plot is purposely peppered, yet every single scene holds an emotional resonance. We’re never quite sure who these people are, but we care about them enough to try and discover more; piecing together their behaviour, their desires, their dreams, and their outcomes.
Mulholland Drive like a picture puzzle of a serene blue sea: ultimately mesmerizing regardless of whichever way you put it together. It’s typical Lynch, and it’s typically brilliant.