O (Nelson 2001)

Film Reviews | Regular Feature Rita (played by Laura Harring), after seeing a movie poster featuring Rita Hayworth. Together, they decide to keep Rita hidden from the apartment building's tenants (including Ann Miller and Lee Grant in fine, purposeful cameos), find out what happened to Rita, and discover why she has $50,000 in her purse. As they track down clues, Betty prepares with Rita for her first big Hollywood audition. At the audition, she turns in the performance of her life (opposite Chad Everett), and is destined to get the part. After this success, Betty takes on another role— detective—as she and Rita track down a woman named Diane, who may know something about what happened to Rita. But after breaking into Diane's apartment, the duo finds Diane's dead and decaying body. They soon realize that Rita's life is in danger , and decide to disguise herjet black hair with a blonde wig. After the two consummate the budding romance between them, Rita has a dream about a club called "Silencio" that they must visit. While there, Betty experiences something akin to an epileptic fit as the recorded performances drone on; after recovering , she finds a blue box in her purse. When they return home and open the box the worlds of Betty, Rita, and those who knew and met them all change. Or, at least they change for the audience . The people the viewers thought they knew are now completely different people—but ones we have seen before. Betty is not Betty, but is actually Diane, but perhaps was "Betty"—freshfaced , full of dreams, full of promise—at one time in her life. To say more would be to give away too much of the film, but I will say more about the film. A cynical interpretation oíMulholland Drive would accuse of Lynch of once again misanthropically condemning American culture and its nostalgia—arguing that all Lynch sees is the façade and that he believes only evil and deceit lie beneath it. Lynch does seem to argue that deceit and manipulation are inherent to thepopular culture that Hollywood creates (and, as much as Lynch denies it, it is hard not to wonder at how much this film was influenced by ABC's decision to not make Mulholland Drive a nighttime television drama, à la 7win Peaks). However, as much as there are parts ofthe film that seem to argue against our nostalgia for "Golden Hollywood" and our idea that we have one identity and one history, there are other parts of the film which rebut those arguments. First, Lynch seems to argue that real art can come fromHollywood—Betty can in fact act, andthe "Hollywood types" all recognize her ability. Further, Lynch brings people from an earlier Hollywood—Everett, Miller, Grant—to the fore as more than just a nod to our nostalgic vision of Hollywood, but as a testimony to the work done in those days (in typical Lynchian fashion, he also includes a cameo by country singer Billy Ray Cyrus to undercut that sense of quality and history). Finally, unlike Lost Highway, where viewers ended up right where they started, there is a sense of closure to Mulholland Drive because Lynch reveals that individuals only have one identity—no matter how hard they try to escape from or reinvent forms of that identity —and we must live with the history attached to that identity. Mulholland Drive is certainly nothing like Lynch's last film, the aptly titled The Straight Story (1999): it meanders, itjumps back and forth, and it takes more than a little effort to begin to get all the facts straight. However, the drive onMulhollandDrive is worth it—especially for its captivating view of personal and American cultural history. Gregory Weight University of Delaware gweight@mail.com O (Nelson 2001) In Othello and Interpretive Traditions, Edward Pechter argues that Shakespeare's tale of the noble Moor may be "the tragedy of our time" (ix). Pechter, one of the world's authorities on the play, tracks the strange history this tale has had in text and performance. This history includes numerous cases of illness , and involuntary outbursts and interventions from both...