David Lynch | A sublime scene in Mulholland Drive sums up his creative genius

Mulholland Drive, directed by David Lynch
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In tribute to the late David Lynch, a look back at a scene in Mulholland Drive which speaks to his genius as an artist and storyteller.


The passing of David Lynch has robbed the world of one of its great filmmakers and artists. A painter, writer, musician and actor, Lynch will probably be most widely remembered for his feature films, which so beautifully probed at our collective hopes, fears and darkest fantasies. 

Lynch was an auteur in the true sense of the word ā€“ 1984’s Dune aside, he always had final cut, and his films were unmistakably his own. He was as fearless a surrealist as Buñuel, Magritte, de Chirico or Dalí. But Lynch’s films are also filled with a gentle humanity, subtle humour and even mischief that saw it transcend arthouse cinemas and become almost universally admired. The Elephant Man and ground-breaking TV series Twin Peaks were watched and beloved by millions worldwide; when word of Lynch’s passing broke on the 16th January 2025, the outpouring of sadness on social media was unequivocal.

One moment stands out as an example of why Lynch’s art speaks to so many people. It’s a scene towards the end of Mulholland Drive, the director’s extraordinary noir fever dream released in 2001. In it, we see the two leads, Betty (Naomi Watts) and Rita (Laura Harring) wake up in the middle of the night, suddenly inspired to visit Club Silencio ā€“ a baroque theatre located down some forgotten, trash-strewn Hollywood alleyway.

Settling down among a sparse audience, Betty and Emily listen as a sinister master of ceremonies explains ā€“ first in Spanish, then in English ā€“ that “There is no band” and that everything they’re about to hear is pre-recorded. A trumpet player emerges, dashes off a few jazzy notes, and disappears behind a crimson curtain.

Possessing some kind of demonic power, the emcee raises his hands, and Betty begins to convulse in her seat. There’s a rumble of thunder, and the emcee vanishes ā€“ a final leer vanishing into a smoky haze. 

Moments later, the singer Rebekah Del Rio ā€“ playing herself ā€“ emerges onto the stage. Stepping woozily up the mic, she sings Llorando: a Spanish rendition of Roy Orbison’s standard, Crying

It’s a beautiful performance, captured with equal beauty by Lynch and cinematographer Peter Deming: close-ups of Del Rio, drawing on some deep inner well of sadness as she sings; Betty and Emily’s reaction ā€“ first moved to tears, then seemingly on the cusp of epiphany. 

At that moment, as Del Rio’s voice reaches a crescendo, she crumples to the floor. 

Betty watches and listens, aghast, as the voice continues even as the singer’s unconscious body is scraped off the stage and bundled back behind the red curtain. 

It’s truly remarkable how much meaning and emotion Lynch packs into this scene. It serves as an eerie foreshadowing of the deeper truth that Betty has kept from herself ā€“ a truth that comes crashing in like a wave only minutes afterwards. It’s filmmaking slight of hand; even after we’ve been told that everything we’re about to hear is a pre-recording, we’re as deeply moved as Betty and Emily are by Del Rio’s performance, and shocked by her collapse. It’s a trick that cuts to the irony of our human love of movies and performance ā€“ so much of what we see and hear is a recording, or merely an act, but we’re moved all the same. There is no band. But really, what difference does that make? 

There’s also something deathly about Club Silencio ā€“ once again, Lynch sets the scene against the red curtains that were a common motif in his films. Like the curtain-draped red room in Twin Peaks: Firewalk With Me (1992), Club Silencio feels like a kind of limbo ā€“ a gateway between dreams and reality, this world and the afterlife. It’s a hallmark of Lynch’s skill that he can charge scenes like these with such electricity; lasting around eight minutes, the club sequence runs the gamut from intrigue, anticipation, anxiety and wonderment. 

Perhaps, too, there’s a hint of the quiet humour that so often ran through Lynch’s storytelling. Del Rio’s collapse is disturbing in its abruptness, but it also has the off-kilter quality of Blue Velvet’s opening montage, in which a middle-aged man has a heart-attack while watering his lawn. As the man keels over onto his own manicured yard, he’s still clutching his garden hose, sending a streak of water up into the air; Lynch frames the shot in such a way that the stricken fellow looks like a statue of a urinating angel tipped onto its side ā€“ and in a final touch of absurdity, he has a little dog yapping and nipping at the stream of water. 

Lynch constantly merges fear, wonder, middle-class comfort, nihilistic terror, dreams, nightmares, tragedy and absurdity into each other, and it’s up to us to pick apart where one begins and the other ends. It’s what makes his art so captivating, so disturbing, and so worth endlessly rewatching and analysing. 

All too soon, an artist filled with life and imagination has slipped behind the red curtain in Club Silencio, never to be seen again. The stage is empty, but his work, like Del Rio’s gorgeous voice, carries on. 

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