My theory...

Rating: 9/10 (22 October 2001)

Before I start, I want to say I loved...*loved*...this film. It was the first Lynch film I've seen, and I was thoroughly impressed. It was most certainly the most enthralling, entertaining movie I've seen this year.
Anyways, I have a theory about what it means. This is just my interpetation, and I'm most likely wrong. But, I think there is no correct answer to what a film like this means. This interpetation is just what I would like the movie to mean. I think that that the first part of the movie represented the kind of movie that most audiences would like to see. A mysterious beginning followed by a detective story to keep the pace. The main characters are a successful, beautiful actress and a up-and-coming, beautiful actress from Canada. In between, we have humorous scenes such as the director with his golf club and the bungled hit on the man with the "black book". It culminates in a love scene between the main characters, and a trip to the theatre. It my opinion, this trip to the theatre is the key to the entire film. The recorded music represents "perfection", or what we would like to hear. Tapes can be edited and re-done so that the music does not have the slightest imperfection. The woman singing that wonderful song faints in the middle of it, revealing to the audience the true nature of the music. Notice the theater is called 'Silencio' and that the last word in the film is the same. The point here is that sometimes perfection is misleading, and that silence is a better option. I'm not sure if I want the silence to mean just silence and facing reality, or if I want it to mean death. The death idea would make sense because we can interpret the old people from when we first see Betty that were smiling and laughing as a sign that they are eagerly awaiting the silence and destruction of the attempts of "perfection" in life. Obviously, the second story featuring Diane is anything but perfect. It represents reality, and unfortunatley reality is very far from being perfect. We see the fall of Diane and her relationship with Camille. In the end, she is stalked by the laughing old people we saw earlier and Diane kills herself out of desperation. Again, I'm not sure if I want her death to symbolize the affects of trying to reach perfection in life or for it to be Diane realizing that death is the only way to silence society's pressures of "perfection". All I know is that I was profoundly moved by the movie, and my immediate reaction was that I didn't know why I was so moved and that maybe it was too deep to verbalize. Although I've obviously tried to verbalize my thoughts on it, I think that Lynch has somehow created something that is impossible to emotionally describe in it's entirty.