Dream, overtly meta-fictional Club Silencio, reality (with one or two minor suggestions that this may be the dream’s dream).
I buy into the conventional interpretation that it is a dream due to the heavily Freudian nature of the film.
I don’t care. I love not knowing or knowing that not knowing is the ultimate in knowing with this movie and that it is not the movie knowing which I didn’t see knowing that it would be awful.
I personally think that most of the film was a dream of a life that Diane Selwyn wanted to live.
I think about the “1 second before you die, your life flash before your eyes” things, in dreamy and surrealistic ways. And yes I do think it is a dream of a life that Diane wanted to live. This film is perfect. It’s so deep. One of the best film I’ve ever seen. This is a shame that I didn’t see it in a theater back in 2001. But if I saw it then, i think i would hate it :) I’m glad that I started to see it when I’m ready( after have been being a cinemaphile for a few years)
I believe analyzing this film too much diminishes it’s effectiveness. I once watched it trying to analyze it and it lost the completely cerebral experience with other viewings that I had. It’s one of the few things I completely agree with Ebert about.
Yeah, don’t even try to decipher it. It’s art at its best and most expressive… let its wild morbid fantasia of surreal, self-reflexive psychological mind-bending kaleidoscopic images satiate your mind. Walk into a dark room after watching it and just let your head spin with its provocative, cerebral immensity. It’s a movie about feeling and scope rather than conscious clarity…
… almost as if you were dreaming the whole thing yourself…
I agree with Jaeger Inkman re: the interpretation. For me, though, I can’t interpret it too much. It only makes the film more interesting.
Jaeger and Maxwell’s interpretations are spot on with how I see the film. It is filled with that hopeless ache for something so desperately desired/needed but so far beyond grasp.
Diane Selwyn was an obsessed woman who dreamed she was Diane Selwyn.
To lose that dream is to lose identity, the most precious asset of the Western mind.
The second most precious asset of the modern Western mind is the identity as it is manifested on the screen.
Lose that and you lose what Norma Desmond lost in Sunset Blvd.
That explains why Wilder’s film serves as Lynch’s subtext in this film.
Just as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the subtext of Blue Velvet,
and KIss Me Deadly was the subtext for Lost Highway.
and the wizard of oz!
Remember the opening scene, the freaky 50’s dancing scene shot in bluescreen with Naomi Watts happily looks around. At first I thought “what was that? This is so cheesy!” – but after i finished watching- wow man! that scene was sooooo depressing! I mean it could be the dream of Naomi’s character-it’s her illusion – (maybe after she killed herself) that was so freak sad and scary! Man! I just love love love love this film.
We’ve had at least two other threads on this. And I’m not sure why it’s so awful to have a film scholar (self-proclaimed or otherwise) offer an interpretation.
The explanation offered by the so called scholars seems pretty plausible to me, Betty was simply imagining her life as she would have wanted it to play out.
Here’s what I think: The blue box represents hopes and dreams. The Club Silencio is where all those aspiring to fulfill their dreams in Hollywood discover the emptiness/futility of it all (The musicians/singers aren’t really talented, they just pantomime pre-recorded songs. They only do what’s been done before).
In the end, Betty’s desires (the blue box) consume her. She wakes up from the dreamworld she created as her real self, Diane-a failed actress in a reality that is much more bleak and scary than the dream.
I don’t know what the monster behind the diner or the cowboy or the key are though. Mystery! The monster owns the blue box and he’s “the one who’s doing it.” Maybe he’s the dirty dark side of LA that no one wants to acknowledge as real?
JAEGER INKMAN
David Lynch score big in all dimensions with this? Check. Did we get to see Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring make out? Double check! But what was your full thematic interpretation of this classic? (YOUR interpretation please, not that of some self-proclaimed ‘film scholar’)