Mulholland Drive (soundtrack)

Summarize Fact Check

Lynch's frequent collaborator Angelo Badalamenti had provided the score for Mulholland Drive; it was also their last film together.^[1] Mulholland Drive was initially envisioned as a television pilot for which Badalamenti had thought of a synth score in mind. But as Lynch had the option to make this into a feature film, Badalamenti then changed the landscape to an orchestral score and further wrote 90 minutes of score for the film. However, he further admitted on writing even more music for the film as "there was a tremendous amount of musical options for it."^[2]

Badalamenti described a particular technique applied to the sound design of the film, where he would provide multiple ten- to twelve-minute tracks which layered at a slow tempo, that they describe "firewood", and then record them with a full orchestra while also adding a bit of synthesizers. Lynch then took those tracks and experiment it with resulting in the eerie sound design.^[3] Badalmenti admitted that Lynch liked a variety of musical styles ranging from Russian to Eastern European and he wanted him to emulate the style for the title music, but for it to be beautiful at the same time. Lynch then asked Badalamenti to use that pieces in different places and different ways, as he wanted the audience to relate to the main theme.^[2]

Lynch then asked Badalamenti to play a sample of classical music for the film, ranging from artists such as Dmitri Shostakovich and Richard Wagner. Upon playing the particular pieces, Lynch then noticed on how the notes would fly and ask Badalamenti about the same, only to replay it and then repeats it until he finds a particular note that intrigued. Eventually, he suggested Badalamenti to play the pieces together to form the theme of Mulholland Drive. Lynch was also credited as the composer for the film, providing few musical pieces with John Neff.^[4]

The opening music resembled a big-band swing of the 1940s which was however recorded in an abstract way, so that the audience would not understand the events happening offscreen, despite the piece having a Glenn Miller-kind of rhythm. Further a "strange and off-center blues piece" was written for the theater magician scene, which Badalamenti considered much closer to him. Specific themes were written for the main characters. The string ensemble for the recording consisted of 62 players, with some synthesizers, while Badalamenti also used brass, woodwinds and percussions for the magic scene and opening dance.^[2]

Summarize Fact Check

Reviewers described Mulholland Drive as one of Badalamenti's darkest scores.^[6][7] Music critic Jonathan Broxton felt that the film's music, "could almost be taken as an exercise in sound design than anything resembling conventional music."^[8] Describing the soundtrack as "equally eerie, elegant, and eclectic", Heather Phares of AllMusic said, "More focused than the Lost Highway soundtrack and more traditionally Lynchian than the score for The Straight Story, Mulholland Drive is a mysterious and affecting soundtrack from one of the most consistently creative teams working in film."^[9] Chris Feil of The Film Experience summarized that "The awe Lynch creates hides the moebius strip of its two narratives, with music being the primary tool – if we're not singing along, we find ourselves surprised to be crying."^[10]