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Subject: Re: life, love, death, dreams and lost souls
Date: Jul 6, 2002
After watching the movie tonight and reading about it on the boards I have the following thoughts:
The first half is a dream. Betty/Diane has ordered the hit of her perceived lover Rita/Camille and is wrestling with that fact in a drug induced semi-state of sleep. Betty/Diane starts off with a vision of what she would like to happen. The first thing would be for the hit to fail and Rita/Camille to come to her with amnesia so there could be a fresh start. She would also like to rid herself of the guilt of ordering the hit and fantasises that all the evil is being done by other powerful malevont forces. Diane/Betty is a failed actress and part of her fantasy is arriving in town again but this time with better cirumstances. She is greeted by a cheerful couple which is probably in contrast with arriving in town with no friends or contacts. This time her contact is her aunt, an industry insider and actress, who has the right contacts and can provide her with a perfect apartment to start her life in Hollywood instead of some grimy apartment that she actually wound up with. All the better, when she enters the apartment, who is there but the object of her affection naked in a shower. She finds out that Rita/Camille does not have an identity or remember anything and she is totally dependent on her. Eventually, she invites her to "share" her bed and they become lovers. Through her contacts with her aunt she lands an audition and nails it. Everything is going well until she sees the director who in real life "stole" Rita/Camille away from her. At this point, I think reality starts to set in and her perfect fantasy starts to unravel. The malevont forces (not her bad acting) cause Rita/Camille to get a part and wind up having an affair with the director eventually leading to engagement which is the probable impetus of the hit. Flashes of reality start to set in and the movie now shows the real events which climax in Diane/Betty finding the blue key and realising that Camille/Rita is dead. She then kills herself in grief and the now unfriendly couple usher her out of town.
I don't think the movie is so much about whether which part was real or not as to whether there are dark malevont forces in control or are the dark malevont forces just a way to avoid taking responsiblity for ones limitations/failures. This would help explain why lynch left a lot of the characters in the movie that may have planned on further developing in the TV series. I think it is important that they are not developed as they are supposed to be shadowy figures, strange figures. They are not the everyday knowable people that we actually meet but they are the the unknowable mob/demons/strange cowboy people that your mother told you to watch out for. But are they actually pulling all the strings or do we secretly with they are so we don't have to blame ourselves?
Further reflecting on breaking the movie into fantasy/reality segments, I don't think one can simply call a scene real or fantasy. I think that one elment is emphasized over the other in different scenes but they always contain both elements. For example, the party in my interpretation would be real but it seemed surreal in many of its elements.
Also, it seems like the truth is always presented twice, once as fantasy and once as reality. An example of this would be the mob hit versus the hit by some 2-bit hoodlum.
I don't think the movie has an answer to such things as:
Were they really lovers or was it just an obsession over a public figure. Or was Diane's real lover the women she "traded" apartments with?
Was Diane really an actress or was she a waitress/hooker aspiring to be one?
Was there really a demon beind the restaurant or was it just the people in the restaurant unable to face themselves?
I think it is up to the viewer to decide what proportion of reality and what proportion of fantasy each element of the movie is made up of and to be part of the creative process.
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Re: life, love, death, dreams and lost souls
very cool. very close to my own interpretation.
I'd like to add a few things...
First, I agree completely with the 'limbo' theory. i.e., something went badly wrong with the deaths of Diane and Camilla - sending them both into limbo. However, it's not just limbo. Note that many characters were one step off.
Examples:
First half: Waitress is Diane
Second half: Waitress is Betty
First half: Betty is a rising star - and would have been casted by Adam had he not been warned by the 'mafia dudes' (the love at first sight scene). Instead, he casts "Camilla".
Second half: Camilla is the Rita character we have known - who was in fact auditioned by Adam, who also fell in love with her.
This is also demonstrated by the poor fellow who brings his therapist to the diner. In the first half: he's the poor fellow, and he describes seeing his therapist behind him.
In the second half, the poor fellow is standing in the place of the therapist. In his place is the hitman dude.
and on and on.
in short - my addition to the limbo theory is that the blue box is somehow tied into the rotation of souls or s'thing. Perhaps it belongs to Death (totally agree with the krautman there... - brilliant character btw) and was stolen - maybe by the bum type who's just playing (this is one point very unclear).
and that the Betty/Rita reality is all about trying to fix what went terribly wrong in the Diane/Camilla reality.
i imagine it also ties into the 'love statement' that was perhaps the karma-trigger needed to put 'everyone back in their place'.
What's more - the whole thing plays itself out on the corrupt structure of Hollywood. Perhaps the movie is one big parody - the entire world worships Hollywood, so Lynch turned it into the metaphysical crux of the world.
note - it all hinged on Adam, the up-and-coming director, who was completely controlled by Death and (what i think to be) his mafia dudes.
my 2 bits'o'nonsense. :)
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Comment index:
» Re: life, love, death, dreams and lost souls « from dvdhack, Jul 6, 2002
wow from Rosanna, Jun 10, 2002
Re: wow from Joshua (editor of Offoffoff), Jun 12, 2002
Re: wow from Tashtigo707, Jun 17, 2002
PCP from Kilgore Trout, Sep 1, 2002
Aunt??? from HugeElvis, Oct 14, 2002
» Re: life, love, death, dreams and lost souls « from dvdhack, Jul 6, 2002
wow from Rosanna, Jun 10, 2002
Re: wow from Joshua (editor of Offoffoff), Jun 12, 2002
Re: wow from Tashtigo707, Jun 17, 2002
PCP from Kilgore Trout, Sep 1, 2002
Aunt??? from HugeElvis, Oct 14, 2002
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