‘Mulholland Drive’ Ending, Explained: What Is Actually Real?
Hollywood has always been sold as a place where dreams come true. But the reality of chasing them isn't always as glamorous as it seems. In David Lynch's 2001 movie, Mulholland Drive, an aspiring actress arrives in Los Angeles hoping to make it big, only to find herself caught up in a really strange mystery involving a woman with amnesia.
The story begins when a brunette woman (Laura Harring) escapes an assassination attempt due to a car crash. She manages to flee the scene and wanders into Los Angeles without any memory of who she is. She eventually meets Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), a cheerful actress who has just arrived in Hollywood. Together, they decide to figure out who the brunette is.
Calling herself Rita, the brunette follows a trail of strange clues with Betty, including a blue key and a woman's decomposing body. At the same time, filmmaker Adam Kesher (Justin Theroux) finds himself dealing with intimidating businessmen with mob connections, who want him to cast a particular actress in his latest movie.
Several confusing plot twists later, Betty and Rita disappear after opening a blue box with the strange blue key. The movie then jumps to Diane Selwyn, a struggling actress who looks exactly like Betty. Diane is heartbroken over her relationship with Camilla Rhodes, an actress who has found success in Hollywood and is engaged to the director who passed on Diane for a role.
A jealous Diane hires a hitman to kill Camilla, with a blue key promised as confirmation that the job is done. But how does Diane's story connect to Betty and Rita's?
What Is Actually Real in ‘Mulholland Drive’?
One way to make sense of Mulholland Drive is to see the first part of the movie as a hallucination Diane experiences right after shooting herself. The story we see before we meet Diane is her mind trying to rewrite the events that led her to take her own life. After getting confirmation that Camilla is actually dead, Diane is left with the guilt of what she's done and the fact that the woman she loves is gone.
But in her mind, things play out differently. She becomes Betty Elms, who has just arrived in Los Angeles, while Camilla becomes Rita, a woman with amnesia who needs her help. Betty proves herself to be a talented actress, impressing everyone at an audition. It's a far cry from Diane's life, where she's struggling to find work and watching Camilla succeed.
Even so, the fantasy isn't entirely free of the things Diane resents. Betty still loses out on a role to Camilla. But that's only because the film industry is being controlled by powerful people who decide who gets a chance and who doesn't. It has nothing to do with Betty, who is clearly the best actress for pretty much every job. But there are times when the fantasy seems to slip.
The biggest clue comes when Rita starts randomly chanting “silencio, no hay banda,” which translates to "silence, there is no band." The phrase leads them to Club Silencio, where the host explains that everything the audience hears is prerecorded. Although it's open to interpretation, it could be Diane's subconscious trying to tell her (and the audience) that what her mind is showing her isn't real.
What Do the Final Moments of ‘Mulholland Drive’ Mean?
In the final part of the movie, Diane wakes up in the same bedroom where Betty and Rita found her decomposing body. But this time, we're seeing her real life, which is a far cry from the one we watched her live as Betty. Diane is depressed and struggling with her career. And when she sees the blue key, she's reminded that the hitman successfully killed Camilla.
Forced to face what she's done, the guilt becomes too much for Diane. The elderly couple who welcomed her to Los Angeles at the beginning of the movie also come back. But this time they are figments of her imagination that act manically. Their taunting is likely linked to Diane being unable to reconcile the hopeful, bright-eyed person she used to be with the one she's become.
Diane runs into the bedroom, takes her own life, and falls onto the bed. It's the same moment we see at the very beginning of the movie, when someone lands on a pillow. The strange story that follows is Diane's hallucination in the moments before she dies, as her mind imagines a version of events in which she gets another chance at the life she wanted.
At the very end, the blue-haired woman at Club Silencio whispers "silencio" (silence), which marks the moment Diane finally dies. Lynch never revealed exactly what Mulholland Drive means, leaving audiences to come up with their own interpretations. But this reading suggests the movie is about what happens when the life you've dreamed of falls apart.
