Favorite Scene Friday! Mulholland Drive: Winkies

This FSF was written by Lindsay from French Toast Sunday! Now try not to freak out, but this is just the first of TWO FSFs today. Lindsay wrote this one a little while back, but the scene vanished from the world wide inter-netz. It recently resurfaced on YouTube (split into two parts) and we jumped at the chance to feature it. It serves as a late addition to FTS' David Lynch. September. celebration, but it fits in quite nicely with our month of horror scenes as well. Enjoy!

iamgabz via JoBlo

Director David Lynch is best known for his bizarre, surreal films and Mulholland Drive might be his most recognizable. The movie kick started the career of the lovely Naomi Watts and was critically praised, but I don’t know if it’s a movie that is as easily accessible now. I first watched the film in high school after searching for movies that were "a little on the weird side." Well, this film certainly had that shit covered. It’s a dreamy masterpiece of the strange and confusing, changing narrative and character focus more times that the viewer can count. But I love it. I was mesmerized and curious and yearning for more after the credits rolled. Admittedly there are a lot of special scenes in Mulholland Drive, but none so perfect as the one chosen here. The scene below describes a man’s dream in eerie detail and prompts the viewer to question the reality of the event. The scene works wonders because of Lynch’s absorbing direction and an unnerving performance from Patrick Fischler.





I'm not entirely sure how this scene plays out of context from the rest of the film but on my first viewing of the movie I was stunned at just how effective it was. Within minutes, Lynch completely draws you into this small story. There is a foreboding sense of dread that starts to mount with such urgency that the viewer can't backtrack fast enough to figure it out. You don't know why the scene exists or how it will play into the rest of the story (it happens fairly early on in the film) but you submit that it must be important. As you follow Dan's (Fischler) recalling of a dream, you don't realize exactly what you're in for. The scene is telling, in a way that almost never fits on a first watch. As Dan becomes more nervous, so does the viewer. What cold possibly be behind this dumpster? How could anything that exists there be so awful? Luckily for us, Lynch answers those questions with a moment of arresting shock felt at the end of the sequence. This entire scene is without question one of my all time favorite scenes of any film I have ever watched. It solidified my quest to barrel through David Lynch's filmography and started my love/hate relationship with the challenging director.

This Favorite Scene was partially excerpted from the post 7 Scenes You Shouldn't Miss From Movies You Might Have.

You can check out all of Lindsay's FSFs right here.

What's your favorite scene from Mulholland Drive?