Saw Mulholland Drive a few days ago.
What a film.
It's easily the weirdest movie I've seen in years, and it's probably the best film of the year. Of all the movies of 2001, I think that this will be the one that people still talk about in 50 years, long after Pearl Harbor and Tomb Raider have been (thankfully) forgotten.
I still haven't figured out entirely what it's about, though I think I've got a pretty good handle on it by now. It's a film about Hollywood, and it's a film about how Hollywood accidentally seduces people and chews them up. To say much more would be to give away too many of the film's secrets. If you really want to know what I think it was about, email me.
It's David Lynch's best film since Blue Velvet, and I think that it's a more focused film with more to say. Blue Velvet (as was Twin Peaks) was about the horrors lurking beneath the suburban facade, which is a pretty generic subject that's been tackled many times in many different ways; Mulholland Drive is specifically about something and he says something rather unique. I think. Certainly the way he says it is unique.
Perhaps the most amazing thing is that it was originally a TV pilot for ABC.
I think that "Mulholland Drive" the television series would have a very different beast than Mulholland Drive the movie, but I think it also would have been similar in many ways. Certainly the resolution of the film never would have made it to the small screen.
It's interesting that in a day and age where special effects rule the day, that the most technically advanced trick this movie uses is the simple expedient of having the camera go in and out of focus.