Clear as in you get the feeling the director knows exactly what they're doing. Knowing you're in the hands of a master puppeteer is an encouraging thing.

Not once, for example, do I question whether Lynch, or Roeg, has any idea of what he's trying to say.

I think that Mulholland Dr.'s premise alone, a woman getting confused by the invasion of her own fantasies into her real life, begs for some kind of narrative abstraction. It would have been antithetical to the premise had it been any clearer than it is.

Some people might prefer a documentary on the nature of dreams, but I think Lynch's film is as short and as clear as it needs to be, and very convincing because of that.