Mulholland Drive
Out of context: Reply #3
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- Jaline0
Yeah, I know about David Lynch and Naomi Watts is one of my favourite actresses. Those are the two reasons I wanted to see this film after years of it being out. Thanks though :)
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Okay, here's someone's interpretation. It's long, but you have to join up and login on a site and I don't want to make ppl do that so here:
"The general plot: Diane moves to L.A. after jitterbug contest to get into acting. At an audition, she meets Camilla with whom she falls in love. Diane becomes enraged with jealousy since Camilla sleeps with other men and women. Diane discovers the other man (the director) at a film shoot and discovers the other woman (a random blond) at the engagement party for Camilla and the director. Motivated by her rage and possessiveness, Diane hires a hit man to kill Camilla. After that is done, she is overcome by loneliness and slips into an unconscious fantasy world where she lives the life she wants to. Diane is then awakened. In her conscious state she is haunted by what she has done.
The significance of the fantasy: The film starts out, after the credits, with a 1st person p.o.v. shot depicting somebody collapsing onto a bed and slipping into unconsciousness. This is where Diane's fantasy starts. The accident is there as an excuse for her to "bring back" her dead girlfriend and justify the fantasy life. She depicts her girlfriend as meek and innocent because that is what she wished she was. In the meantime, she acts like everything is "like in the movies" because she has an escapist personality. She also, in a sense, kills herself off and assumes the identity of a waitress named Betty at a diner. The story revolving around the director is a direct result of her feeling that he was in someway victimized in reality just as she was and "convinces" herself that he was forced to choose Camilla. It was also an unconscious expression of the lack of control she felt during the party. Camilla Rhoades in the fantasy is actually the random blond from the engagement party. She hated her so much that she turned her into Camilla and made the ultimate antagonist. She then took the real Camilla and turned her into a perfect, submissive out-of-the-movies girlfriend and used Rita Hayworth as an inspiration. She also paints the hit man as a very clumsy and incapable person to further justify the survival of Camilla. Her fantasy world, unfortunately for her, was a search for Diane which ended up being herself and made the dreamworld die by taking her through a series of reminders of reality. The first reminder was Club Silencio which chanted that "there is no band" and the "instruments" you hear are not really there; this is a metaphor for the fantasy. She begins to shake violently because it shakes her perception of her surroundings. The other reminder is the blue box... Actually, the blue box is not the reminder itself (more of a Pandora's Box, really), but the blue key that opens the box. The blue key reminds her of the actual death of Camilla because it is what the hit man said would show up when it was done. Along with having love, this entire creation of hers is an escape from reality by living in the idealized Hollywood that she expected to be part of when she arrived.
This is a story showing the psychology of a very troubled woman who lost a dream. It is not series of random things specifically designed to disturb and it is not a cryptic philosophical message. It is an unfortunate chunk of the human condition that is presented beautifully. "