Mulholland Dr. (2001)

Genre: Crime/Drama/Thriller/Mystery

Starring: Naomi Watts, Laura Elena Harring, Justin Theroux

Pronounced and read as: Mulholland Drive. Profound and deep movies with layered meanings and multiple interpretations are always a difficult watch for the average audience and appeals only to critics, movie fanatics and visitors of film festivals. Betty Elms (Watts) is a struggling actor who has arrived in Los Angeles to become a movie star. Her aunt is a veteran actor who is currently on vacation and has hence decided to lease her massive house to Betty to stay in. Meanwhile, a failed murder attempt inside a limousine sees the victim (Harring) escaping from the crime scene and sneaking into Betty's' aunts house without any one's knowledge. The victim cannot seem to remember her name and assumes the name of Rita. Betty at first thinks she is her aunts friend but later learns of the true story. Betty's childish detective instincts come to life and she tries to unravel Rita's mystery and find out who she exactly is. Meanwhile, a movie director, Adam Kesher (Theroux) is threatened by the mafia to cast a girl of their choice for the lead role in his upcoming movie rather than the actress that he selected. The two major plots are flanked by multiple irrelevant smaller stories that do not make any sense or add up during the initial stages but some culminate right towards the end. The movie is ridiculously long, slow and heavy. Right till the very end the average viewer would have no idea what the past two and a half hours were all about. One would probably need to Google interpretations and meanings of this movie just to simply come to terms with what they just saw. The performances are fabulous, no doubt, but the movie is strictly for minorities and not for the masses. That aside, the thought process that might have gone into this movie to create is an achievement in itself and much praise goes out to director David Lynch. Watch only with a lot of time and an aspirin in case your not prepared for it.

Thumbs up: Brilliant plot conception, good performances

Thumbs down: Too deep, profound, sow and heavy

Rating: 7.3/10