alt Hacker NewsVery strange choice to use Mulholland Drive as an example of conforming to the hero's journey "complicated by dream sequences" (?!)
The second half of the film reveals the hero's journey to be a self-serving narrative constructed by the protagonist to retell her own tragic and shameful history, casting herself as a hero instead of a villain. By extension, the film is a critique of Hollywood, American myth-making, and the exact trope it supposedly conforms to.
"Three-act storytelling, three-act storytelling everywhere — especially if you squint hard enough to ignore parts that don't fit into the three-act storytelling framework".
After all, if there is some clump of tension/action in the middle of the story, and less of that at the story's ends (which is almost always true), then it quite naturally slices into three parts; does it mean it is a three-act narrative? Not necessarily.