THE INDEFINITE ARTICLE/John Kelly: In the much debated Mullholland Drive. directed by David Lynch, the sound proves itself a winner
'There's a scene in the latest David Lynch movie, Mulholland Drive, in which a San Diego singer you've never heard of will, almost certainly, make you cry. With emotions already raw and heads already wrecked, no reasonable audience will stand a chance: Lynch's familiar flood of creative trickery will have already seen to that.
The action takes place in a typically bizarre nightclub called Silencio. Here the two female leads experience a surreal piece of vaudeville as performed by the oddballs who inhabit David Lynch's mental attic. The club audience watches and listens, and we watch and listen with them, as questions are posed about what is true and what is false, what is live and what is on tape.
The show ends with the singer - Rebekah Del Rio - performing an unaccompanied version of Roy Orbison's magnificent pop aria, Crying. From Del Rio's lips, the song swells upas Llorando, in powerful Spanish. It's a truly stunning scene. Nobody within earshot can resist and it confirms some obvious truths - music still works and David Lynch knows better than most just how effective it can be.
Mulholland Drive is a very strange movie indeed. In murky Twin Peaks style, it tells a story of innocence, evil, emptiness and love in the notoriously twisted world of Los Angeles. It's a puzzle of looking-glasses and Chinese boxes where characters become other characters and where you never know who is dreaming what and when. No wonder, then, that the outstanding soundtrack is dark, sensual, cheesy and lush - with that ominous pulse which defines most of Lynch's soundscapes. Those distorted surf guitars perhaps say as much about California as anything else and even a sweet song such as I've Told Every Little Star takes on a whole other meaning when it sparkles in the middle of a Lynch nightmare.
Speaking about a previous movie, Lost Highway, Lynch observed that half the film is picture and the other half is sound. And it is clear from all his movies that he spends as much time on the soundtrack as he does on the shots. Whether it be in his inspired choice of found or specifically composed music, the mark of Lynch is everywhere. Sometimes he even writes and performs the music himself - not much point in being an auteur only to hand over half the movie to some knucklehead from a record company who will slap on any available tracks from the corporate golden geese.
Lynch, like Woody Allen, understands just how crucial the right music is - something far too precious to be an executive's afterthought or whim. It's a commitment which explains Mulholland Drive's pitch-perfect soundtrack, which features everything from Milt Buckner's cheesy blues The Beast to Willie Dixon's real blues, Bring It On Home, sung by Sonny Boy Williamson. And while Lynch himself throws his customary Santo-and-Johnny-with-drink-taken numbers familiar to fans of Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks, it is the usual collaboration with Angelo Badalamenti which is at the real musical heart of the movie.
From Brooklyn, Badalamenti arrived inside the weird head of David Lynch around the time of the movie Blue Velvet. His job was initially to coach and accompany Isabella Rossellini, but he ended up scoring the whole thing, beginning what seems like an inseparable partnership. In fact Badalamenti's moody music - often no more than a rumble or a sigh - is as recognisably Lynchian as the beautiful women, square men, loopy seers, redneck apparitions, or tiny people who crawl in under your door. And it's always the music which, while it cannot explain it, holds all this madness together.
How much of it comes from Badalamenti and how much from Lynch is neither here nor there. The point is that Lynch understands it and knows what he wants - even if he has to hear it first. According to Badalamenti, his instructions will often be along the lines of: "I see darkness, I see a forest, I see a girl's face". Enough to be going along with for Badalamenti, who refers to Lynch as a "master sound engineer".
Back to Rebekah Del Rio - the singer at the heart of the lush, disturbing adventure that is Mulholland Drive. She was minding her own business singing in the clubs of Southern California and she was, according to the San Diego Tribune, one of the top 10 singers in the city. Her best-known song was Llorando (Crying) and on the back of it, she headed for Nashville, signed with Giant Records and scored a hit in Holland. But as soon as David Lynch heard her sing he wrote both her and the song into Mulholland Drive. It was a wise move and that scene where Del Rio is carried off stage as her taped voice continues will be named as a favourite movie moment for years to come. Whether or not the film changes Rebekah Del Rio's career is still, unfortunately, in the hands of speculators in the music industry, but she is on the Mulholland Drive CD soundtrack and has also recorded a version of her own to be released as a single.
But whatever about global stardom for Del Rio, they are sure to be queuing around the block for her next club date and that can't be bad. We'd all pay real money to hear Llorando again. Anyone in a real David Lynch mood will glad to know that among the delights of Rebekah Del Rio's website is the opportunity to peruse a Rebekah Del Rio doll as made by Donna-Marie. If you then enter the Donna-Marie website, you soon discover that, in California, David Lynch doesn't have very far to go to locate that weirdness he clearly relishes. And when it comes to chronicling that weirdness and then re-presenting the wonderful, he is the undisputed master. He also knows a good tune when he hears it.
•Mulholland Drive - Original Motion Picture Score is on BMG records. The film is at the IFC, Dublin