“The dream is meagre, paltry and laconic in comparison with the range and copiousness of the dream-thoughts. The dream, when written down fills half a page; the analysis, which contains the dream-thoughts, requires six, eight, twelve times as much space.” (The Interpretation of Dreams, Chapter VI)
Having chosen the “reverse” technique of building up a dream on the basis of the real events, Lynch also applies the reverse strategy to the notion of condensation (compression). His “dream” is much longer and more detailed than the subsequent account of the “real” events. At the same time, it is true that “one can never be really sure that one has interpreted a dream completely; even if the solution seems satisfying and flawless, it is always possible that yet another meaning has been manifested by the same dream.” (The Interpretation of Dreams, Chapter VI) The dream built by Lynch for Diane provides grounds for a much more extensive interpretation than the one viewers are offered as the final forty-five minutes of the film. The first (the longer) part of the film is certainly not just a dream limited to the work of consciousness of one individual. Many analysts would say Mulholland Drive is a symbolic representation of the illusive cinematic idea, as well as of the “dream factory” in particular. Besides, Mulholland Drive is a “key” not only to Freud’s interpretation of the subconscious, but also to the mysteries of Lynch’s earlier films; being highly intertextual, Mulholland Drive gives answers to some surreal images of Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, The Blue Velvet (the dwarf and rooms framed with red curtains as a personification and visualization of one’s subconsciousness, the image of stage and singers with disembodied voices as a symbol of the illusiveness and shallowness of one’s “I”).