Emory Cinemateque: “Mulholland Drive” (2001)

From the venue:

Emory Cinematheque Presents “The Cinematic Worlds of David Lynch”

An abandoned ABC television pilot that Lynch recalibrated into one of his finest feature-length films, Mulholland Drive is a gripping examination of personality set amid the dreams and nightmares of Hollywood. The film’s opening follows Betty (Naomi Watts), a naïve and cheerful aspiring actor, whose arrival in Los Angeles for an audition is unexpectedly sidelined by her quest to help an injured, amnesiac woman calling herself Rita (Laura Elena Harding). As the pair pursue discovering Rita’s identity, their unlikely bond intensifies while intimating deeper, perhaps hidden, correspondences to outwardly unrelated vignettes and characters, including director Adam Kesher’s (Justin Theroux) odyssey to cast his latest film and an ethereal cabaret performance at Club Silencio that shakes Betty and Rita to the core.

Recalling Lynch’s division of Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive additionally involves the story of Diane Selwyn (also played by Watts), an aggrieved struggling actor living in the shadow of her ex-lover, A-list star Camilla Rhodes (Harding), and Camilla’s storybook, celebrity romance with her fiancé, who happens to be Kesher. The Hollywood dream encapsulated by Betty and her goal of identifying the “real” Rita thus transmutes into Diane’s waking nightmare that threatens to consume her. Featuring a career-defining performance from Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive continues to be hailed as not only one of Lynch’s cinematic masterpieces but as one of the best films of the century.

White Hall, Room 208
301 Dowman Dr, Atlanta, GA 30322