But let us begin as we spin the lever and slide down the heavy door into the next room of this huge maze.   No smell of gas or sound or sight of a trap: the serial numbers are prime, and the boot we tossed in has been retrieved unscathed.   Whose turn is it to climb warily into an ominous 14’ by 14’ box of a room with eerily patterned walls and lit in vivid colours, and check if it’s ‘safe’?

Seven total strangers have awoken in a terrifying environment that seems to be some kind of enormous and deadly labyrinth made up entirely of these menacing cube-like rooms.   Theories are rife: some kind of alien abduction perhaps?   The design is certainly uncanny and inhuman, and the cross-section of characters diverse enough.   But perhaps that is just too far-fetched – more likely it is a government conspiracy or some form of military training exercise.   That might explain Quentin’s presence as a policeman or maths genius Leaven, but hardly accounts for Worth, the despondent office worker.   Holloway the doctor wails in despair “Are we being punished?”, and therefore is the hive-like construction a prison and are there more unknown criminals among the group besides Rennes the escape artist?   Surely not Kazan, the gentle and autistic child-man.   This is a science experiment then, or some “rich psycho’s entertainment” – a rat race, ‘Survivor’ in a box, a disturbing game of wits and violence.

Such are the ideas the characters struggle with during the course of the movie, until the sensational confession of Worth that he helped design the Cube.   He doesn’t know who he was working for, or the purpose behind the project, but he did know people were being let loose inside it, and that its creation was the work of many equally innocent people.   His revelation therefore doesn’t negate any of the previous theories, but what he suggests is even more frightening than anything proposed thus far.   He believes the Cube no longer has a purpose.   If it once did, it has become “mis-communicated, or lost in the shuffle”, like a single room milling about in the machinations of the maze.   So what is really frightening is that “Nobody is in charge… Big Brother is not watching you.”   The cogs of the project continue to turn as people continue to be abducted and released into the hell of the labyrinth, but no-one knows or cares what the object was anymore.   No reason, no purpose, no congratulations for the winner, no rescues for the survivors.   No point.

But the will to survive persists, and when the only survivor reaches the bridge to freedom and steps out into the harsh white light, just what is awaiting him beyond the confines of the Cube?

On the threshold of success, Leaven hesitantly asks the same question, and despite a cynical answer from Worth, is resignedly hopeful:

“What is out there?”

“Boundless human stupidity.”

“I can live with that.”

But of course, she can’t, because she is promptly killed by a rampaging psychopath…   Does that mean Worth was wrong and there’s something else outside the Cube?   Or that we can’t in fact live with the stupidity of humanity, and having let it kill the rest of the prisoners, we are sending our last survivor out into it, and thus to their doom?   Like the pre-credit sequence as Alderson steps naively into a new room, is Kazam walking into another death trap?

We’re not given enough information to have a definitive ‘realistic’ answer.   Director Vincenzo Natali quips that he refused to make ‘Die Hard in a box’.   With no context, no prologue and no epilogue, the audience must go away wondering, and debating, and making up their own minds.   However, there is another level of meaning we can unpack from the box that opens up some new possibilities for exploring outside the square…

Consider this.   The cube isn’t a separate entity created by an autonomous force; it is a metonym: a small part that stands for a whole, a unit that represents, encompasses, is the world.   A basic geometric shape standing in the void of its own universe, while its scattered populace stumbles about in search of answers.   The characters are not only a representative cross-section of society in the world, but they are allegorical – they represent facets of humanity.   Compassion, reason, violence, innocence, heroism, mediocrity: the inhabitants of the cube are less individuals than a collective depiction of that ‘boundless human stupidity’ and its triumph or tragedy.  

The clue to a symbolic reading of the characters comes from their names; each is named after a famous prison, and each prison corresponds to a driving force in their personalities.   Holloway is a woman’s prison, while Rennes was a pioneering gaol.   Alderson is prone to use isolation as punishment, and Kazan in Russia is renowned for being disorganized.   Finally, Quentin is infamous for its brutality, and Leavenworth for its corporate organization and strict rules and regulations.   The characters are thus imprisoned in this world that is actually both their own world and a part of them.

As a metaphor for modern ‘civilisation’, the Cube is a mechanical, problematic environment: technologically superior but constantly unpredictable and organic.   Deaths and triumphant discoveries are equally unexpected, as the travelers attempt to give themselves purpose and direction but are constantly thwarted by chance and their own human characteristics.   The theme of the apparently random revealing hidden patterns (as shown by the opening titles) is everywhere in the movie, both literally and figuratively.   The elaborate and haphazard decorations on the walls hide numerous devices and traps, the serial numbers for the rooms constantly reveal themselves as part of ever more complex mathematical patterns.   Leaven’s glasses, carefully left with her that she may perform the calculations needed to dissect the puzzle, also give a little visual homage to the famous text Lord of the Flies when their breaking marks the beginning of the chaos and descent into madness and inhumanity and also the terrible irony when revealing the survivors have come literally and metaphorically full circle in their effort to escape.  

Moreover, the coloured rooms stimulate human emotions and moods that not only affect the protagonists, but also come to reflect them.   Little wonder Kazan doesn’t like the red rooms that promote violence and hysteria, but prefers the calming silence of blue rooms.   His own colour is the closing tabula rasa of pure clinical white: the blank canvas upon which the fate of the human race will be written.   Humanity is offered a new start as the brilliant, naïve child stumbles towards an unknown future – what we must decide is whether he steps out into freedom as our saviour, or doom as a victim of our boundless stupidity.

Historically, perhaps anyone who has stepped outside the box is liable to be both.

…We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

(Shakespeare’s The Tempest, IV, i, 156-8)

Of all the unexplained phenomena and dramatis personae of Mulholland Drive (including the blue-haired theatre patron, Mr Roque in his glass basement, and the black book, for example), there have been three caesurae which have provoked the most discussion and confusion.   They are the mysterious Cowboy, the creature who lives behind the Winkies diner (and has been affectionately dubbed ‘the Monster’ by fans), and the voracious depths of the metallic Blue Box. Describing these three using a literary term that means “an interruption or gap in a line of poetry” is strangely appropriate when considering the works of David Lynch have been called ‘dark poetry’ and art-film rather than movies proper.

The objects in question are all inexplicable interruptions in a film narrative which seems otherwise to be finally amenable to a logical story (ie. Diane’s miserable real life story that leaks into her dream fantasy world). The Cowboy, the Monster and the Box have been variously passed off as products of the movie’s original conception as a TV series (ie. that they would have been explained in later episodes), or as more of Lynch’s favourite incongruities that are just there to be amusing or unsettling and simply are not meant to be interpretable.

However, the basic human need to solve mysteries has rendered these explanations unsatisfactory to most viewers. When I did some research into the first article in this series, I was amazed to find the amount of on-line contemplation Pulp Fiction’s briefcase had inspired. But that was a mere pearl earring in the infinite blue-box ocean of dizzying discussion that Mulholland Drive has provoked.

Fasten your seatbelts and come along for the Drive: we don’t stop here.

The Cowboy appears thrice in the movie, as he warns he might. In the flickering neon-lit corral he cautions Adam to chose the right girl for his movie, wakes the dead sleeper in Diane’s apartment, and passes in the background at the party on Mulholland Drive. He has been compared to the Mystery Man of Lost Highway, Eraserhead’s Man in the Planet, or the Dwarf/Giant of Twin Peaks. Some have dubbed him a god (who will see Adam once more in heaven if he’s good or else twice more in hell and on Judgement Day) who brings light from darkness, offers redemption or punishment, is omnipotent but promotes free will, drives ‘the buggy’ of the MD universe, and resurrects the dead.

Others insist the white hat is ironic and read him as the grim reaper, a fallen angel, a devil or the incarnation of destiny. A little less dichotic are suggestions he is Hermes the Greek messenger god and the guide of lost souls in the Underworld, or the new face of Virgil (Dante’s guide through the Inferno) who leads Adam, Diane and we ourselves through the mysteries of a movie hell.

The Cowboy has also been interpreted as a manifestation of the real-life hitman paid to kill Carmilla, or of Diane herself (controlling the dream, waking herself from it, tormenting Adam, creating the conspiracy which prevented her getting the role she deserved), or then again, as a physical embodiment of Diane’s conscience, her soul or her real-life anger at Adam and Carmilla. Viewers have pointed out that Adam himself only sees the Cowboy twice, and has therefore ‘been good’ by choosing the correct blonde for his movie, but that if one accepts the dream theory, the Cowboy appears to Diane three times: she has ‘done bad’ in having Carmilla killed, and is thus doomed to die.

The Hollywood appearance of the Cowboy with his iconic white hat, flamboyant costume and timely appearances have led some to wonder if he is an ironic representation of the modern film industry itself, where the traditional ‘good guy’ is now part of the dark plot. The self-referential nature of the film and its themes have provoked others to ponder if the Cowboy might not be the director himself, the drawling country boy who is the self-aware creator and manipulator of this enigmatic world, David Lynch’s own projected persona as god and devil and guide and killer and protagonist of his art.

The line “He’s the one doing it all” has led to suggestions that the Monster is also a representation of Lynch and his directing role, the Artist mastering all worlds and realities, and the owner of the secrets that are in the Blue Box. Most speculations about the Monster are influenced by the problematic nature of the first scene in which it appears – is this a digression back into ‘real life’, where Dan (after seeing the look on Diane’s face as she pays the hitman) continues to be really haunted by the ‘being’ Diane’s actions have called into existence? In this scenario the Monster represents evil incarnate, Death or its harbinger, or the irony of a poor homeless creature in a glamorous city of false dreams being mistaken for the wickedness that lurks in people’s hearts.

A rather ingenious solution suggests this strange scene (note the unique use of camera and sound) is actually a dream within a dream. In other words, this is what ‘Rita’ dreams as she sleeps under the table after her accident. In which case, is the Monster prophetic of her death in the real world? Was the real Carmilla assassinated behind Winkies? Is this why the place haunts Betty/Diane? Is it her decomposing body, or the murder attempt gone horribly wrong? Or more metaphorically, does it represent the evil ugly side of the beautiful Carmilla who drove Diane to such despair?

A further theory is that this section of the movie is a separate short film, a self-contained philosophy of Lynch’s creativity, where Dan is Lynch himself, who brings his audience to witness the horrors he imagines. We are skeptical, but humour him, and are thus also horrified to find there is a real monster lurking in the real world. Twin Peaks fans are rather hopeful the Monster is another face of Bob, whereupon the Cowboy as the Giant and Mr Roque in his black curtained basement are reprising their roles as agents of the Black Lodge, pursuing blonde Diane and dark Carmilla this time instead of Laura and Maddy.   The Freudians point out the neat division of the psyche with the Id Monster and Dan the ego with his incredulous superego friend, and others have remarked on the Monster being another face of the psychic at the apartments, the blue-haired theatre patron, or even the Cowboy.

Reading the episode as distinctly part of Diane’s own dream however, has prompted notions that the Monster is Diane herself – the dream keeper, the rotting corpse reanimated, her guilt or conscience in motion, the evil side of her own personality, the dark mask of Betty which she ‘never wants to see outside of a dream’, but which the real Dan saw in her face when she paid the hitman (the smiling Betty does indeed morph into the face of the Monster in the montage at the close of the movie).

This article is itself reaching monsterous proportions, and we haven’t even unlocked the Blue Box yet. Even the most blasé viewers who can pass off an occasional mysterious character as ‘one of those weird Lynch things’ are pretty sure the Box is meant to mean something. And these theories get positively macabre.

Astute viewers have noted there appears to be a blue box in the bedside drawer where Diane gets the gun at the close of the movie. Conspiracy theorists have thus conjectured the hitman’s blue key did indeed open a blue box as in the dream, which may have held a single pearl earring (such as the detectives speak of and which appears lying on the coffee table at one point), an engagement ring, or some more gruesome relic as proof of Carmilla’s death. Sceptics suggest the Box just represents Diane’s fetishised answer to what she didn’t know in real life, her own dream attempt to give meaning to the unknown – that is, a random guess at what the hitman’s key opened.

Some of the symbolic readings of the Box are applicable but simplistic: it is a casket which contains death, the gate to hell or the end of dreams, or Pandora’s box of human evil (hence its proximity to the gun at the close of the movie). More creative are speculations the Box holds Diane’s empty life or hollow heart, Rita’s lost memory, or reality/the ‘truth’: all of which, when unlocked and their secret exposed, might end the dream. More eye-popping are the science-fiction notions that the Box is a black hole, a portal to parallel universes, or a time machine – there have been some absolutely boggling suggestions that its triangle lock is in fact a clock, and that from charting its changing position throughout the film, one may mathematically map the dream time or follow complex theories of numerology…

I myself am rather taken with two intriguing suggestions about the Blue Box. One is connected to Lynch’s penchant for self-reference and intertextuality. Thus, the Blue Box is Hollywood itself, the romantic colourful dream world controlled by the dirty corrupt conspiratorial power as represented by the Monster, whereupon Lynch draws himself in as Adam, the talented but wretched director subjected to the whims of this absurd authority.

Or the Box is the actual film (linked to the theory the ‘black book’ is the movie’s script) which is full of the promise of meaning, but proves to be empty: Lynch, who offers the key and is the keeper and controller of the box and its characters and content, remains the enigmatic Monster who perhaps does not even understand his creation himself.

Even more fun is the proposal the Box is a pun on blue screens and idiot boxes and therefore a critique of the television industry: the Monster and his instrument are the evil forces behind the world of TV entertainment who rejected the script of Mulholland Drive for a television series, and cancelled Twin Peaks so abruptly.

The second speculation is equally appealing. The Box is the portable Club Silenzio, with all that the strange theatre entails and symbolizes: the place of play-acting and dream worlds and eternal silences. The square frame of the stage with its shimmering blue lights is the metallic Blue Box writ large, and may hold the secrets to everything – or may just all be an illusion.

So here I am, driving this buggy – what do I think? I’m not anxious to staple any of these enigmas down to a single encompassing meaning. I love that a friend who saw this movie said the small audience in the cinema wouldn’t leave the theatre after viewing it, because they were all too busy talking together about what it meant. Who wants to kill the fun by insisting on a definitive answer?

However, I do like the notion that the Cowboy, the Monster and the Blue Box are all elements of the same void, the same mystery. In a movie so busy playing with names – Carmilla the female vampire, Adam the ‘first’ man, Diane the goddess of hunting and chastity, with the phonetic sound of ‘dying’ and her namesake Dan, and the suggested ‘ain’t truth’ joke of Aunt Ruth – you’ll pardon my bad pun in pointing out that the Cowboy and his counterparts are catalysts. They are all the liminal beings that form links between the ‘real’ world and the dream world, the caesurae, the visible intersections between fiction and reality.

The Box representing the movie itself is indeed functioning as Mulholland Drive: the long winding journey between the dream and the reality. The good-guy movie character or real-life party goer is also the dream villain/saviour, the sordid realism of the homeless is hiding behind the wall of pretty idyllic Hollywood, the box with its blue keys is both inside and outside the dream world, and is empty and full of meaning, and appears and then isn’t there. They are the gaps. They defy definition because they are transitional and marginal and multi-faceted. They themselves are the limbo, the purgatory, the blue light and smoke of Silenzio, the place between heaven and hell, and dreaming and waking, and the movie and the reality, where meaning falls away because it is all an illusion – there is no single answer, there is no band.

Here – take the wheel. This is where I get out. This article was just a blue key I’ve left for you to try unlocking the puzzle box for yourself. You need to take the rest of the Drive on your own – enjoy the ride.

Flying cars are actually more common in the land of movies than one might think. One of the earliest examples was the creation of The Absent-Minded Professor, which was dragged out of mothballs for a further cameo in the remake, Flubber – however, as there is no suggestion in the movie that Eugene or the science department of Rydell High School has been experimenting with any green rubbery goo of gravity-defying properties, I think we can rule this antecedent out. The cheerful chuffing of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang offers no clues – Dick Van Dyke himself is flabbergasted when his restored racing car sprouts wings and takes to the skies, and Scaramanga wasn’t giving away any secrets with his flying Chrysler escape vehicle in The Man with the Golden Gun, though Q does mention to Bond that it is “perfectly feasible”, and that his branch were working on something similar at the time… We could always blame some rogue wizardry, as the flying family car piloted by young Ron in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets would indicate, but although Grease’s Principal McGee may be somewhat witch-like, I’m not sure her powers extend to levitating automobiles. Besides which, she’s too preoccupied cuddling up with Coach Calhoun at the end of the movie to do so.

Okay, so this is not helping, Tell you more, tell you more? Very well, let us look for some clues elsewhere.

From the pre-credit sequence, this film is already having fun pushing the boundaries of realism, remember. Swelling choir music, sunset, wave-washed sands, a kiss – from the outset, here is an emphatically romantic fairytale world, and this is “just the beginning”, as Danny points out. The cartoon title sequence with the lyrics “This is a life of illusion” also plays around with the messy teenage realism of Danny’s daily morning routine as juxtaposed with Sandy’s Disney princess waking moments, complete with a cute deer and those obliging song birds. Rizzo says ironically later that morning to her highness, “Maybe if you believe in miracles, Prince Charming will show up again some day, somewhere unexpected…”

And of course, so he does. Grease is a great modern musical parody of Cinderella – a funky fifties fairytale. Naïve country girl (read Australian…!) meets handsome prince of the school, relationship dilemmas ensue, prince undergoes a quest journey to prove himself worthy of his love. He fails a few times, but eventually succeeds in chivalric style (as Kenickie had already realised by asking him to be ‘his second’) by defeating the villain in a test of skill and bravery. Cinderella goes to the ball from which she is forced to make an untimely exit, but gets a fabulous makeover which proves she’s a princess after all, and they’re all going to live happily ever after, for they’ll “always be together…” Sha na na na na. Even though the fairy god-hunk appears to the wrong pink lady as far as the original tale goes, the parallels on the whole offer us some hope of explanation. The Greased Lightning car is a literal representation of the crux of all good fairy stories – the dream that comes true. The shop teacher did say that “If it was in any better condition, it would fly…” Thus, the car taking off into the clouds at the close of the movie is the ultimate happy ending where everything is in the best possible condition, and a reminder of the fun and metafictional nature of the movie as an updated and witty fable – it is the flying carpet, the white steed being ridden off into the sunset, the pumpkin which is magically turned into a dazzling coach.

You didn’t think the first glimpse of Sandy as hot chick, worthy Danny consort and Rydell’s reigning princess being a closeup of her high-heeled sexy red sandal was a concidence, did you?

Wop bama looma a wop bam boom!

The answers viewers and fans have proposed have ranged from insane to ingenious. Let me open the briefcase and show you a few.

The most obvious ones are sensible, material objects that gangster criminal types would be lugging about with them.  Wads of cash, a vast stash of drugs, a cache of gold bricks (to explain the glow, but not how it’s so easy to carry around…) Then we get to the metaphysical or spiritual theories:  the case is a Pandora’s box full of evil incarnate, a magic mirror which shows us our ultimate desires, or the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant (someone obviously got it out of storage after the first Indiana Jones movie – I suspect the janitor was bribable).

We move on to meet the literalists, who missed the whole ‘death of the author’ theory in the sixties, and insist that Quentin Tarantino is the only bloke who ‘truly’ knows what’s in the briefcase. Come on – he wrote the script, didn’t he? However, Quentin’s official verdict on the matter is that he doesn’t know. That he never had any intention of explaining an actual content for the case, and was quite happy to leave it up to the viewer. In a 1995 interview, Samuel L. Jackson says he himself asked the director what was supposed to be inside, and was told “Whatever you want it to be”. And in reality, of course, there were a couple of bright lights and some batteries, for those who remain resistant to movie magic. And for the film students, we can merely pass it off as a McGuffin – that useful phrase coined by Alfred Hitchcock to describe a diversionary plot device. That is, an object which functions as a helpful catalyst for the action, a focal point for the activity of the characters, a site of idle speculation for the fans, but which in the end has no real significance. Think the Maltese falcon, or Kane’s rosebud.

My personal favourites are intertextual. Tarantino’s trait of making his films highly self-referential mean there are recurring jokes and links between the works, including the contents of numerous briefcases making appearances in his movies, such as the heroin from True Romance and the money from From Dusk Till Dawn. One of the favourite theories of this sort is that it is the same briefcase toted about in Reservoir Dogs, and thus holds diamonds. The number of deliberate associations between these two movies makes this a beguiling idea, but purists have pointed out that Mr Pink makes an appearance in Pulp Fiction as a waiter in “Jack Rabbit Slims”, He says in Reservoir Dogs that this is something he did before he turned to crime, which puts the that movie chronologically later. I like the tongue-in-cheek proposal that the case houses Val Kilmer’s gold Elvis suit from True Romance, and the rather sentimental notion that it carries an Oscar, which the adoring Marsellus had illicitly procured for his stardom-starved wife.

But the most popular and intriguing theory of all is that the briefcase contains Marsellus Wallace’s soul; he sold his soul to the devil, and is currently completing negotiations (as evidenced by the plot) for either delivering it, or buying it back. This fascinating idea is based on the biblical references in the movie, the satirical fact that the lock combination to open the case is 666, and the clever observation that traditionally, the devil removed one’s soul from the back of the neck, just about where actor Ving Rhames sports a band-aid throughout the film. Of course, this lovely theory is left for dead like Zed when one is given the mundane ‘real life’ information that the sticking plaster was to cover up the actor’s prominent scar, which it was feared would be too distracting for the audience (they had no idea…)

It doesn’t stop there, though. There are still plenty more suggestions being couriered about, which include such incongruous things as aliens, cigarettes, portable TVs, a birthday cake, or a Royale with cheese…

So, what do I think is in the briefcase? Nothing. That’s the point. It’s what authoritative ‘post-modern deconstructionalists’ in jackets with elbow pads and with their glasses on the end of their nose would call fancy names like différance, ‘lacuna’ or ‘point of departure’. That is, the moment of slippage in a text where meaning won’t stick, where there’s no definitive answer. The moment where we as viewers become active in creating what we’re watching – there are forums devoted to this subject, web pages, dinner party conversations where hundreds of fans sit around and debate, with every conclusion crazier and more creative than the last. The briefcase is empty. We fill it with whatever we like, and the great, golden, priceless glory of it isn’t what we put in it, but the fact that we can.