An interpretation of the film's 'meaning'

Rating: Null/10 (7 October 2004)

Here's my take on that film. In a nutshell, the film's theme is "Hollywood dream turns into a nightmare". The rest is just embroidery.
I'm not much of a linguist, but I like the concepts of 'semantics' and 'syntax'. One is to do with meaning, the other to do with structure. MH seems to be heavy on syntax, in the sense that there are some syntactic games being played-characters being played by different actors along the lines of, to relate this back to syntax:
"The DOG chased the CAT" "The CAT chased the HOUSE"
I.e. there is a syntactic structure that is being played around with. When you do that, meaning may lag or be absent from the sentence. Just because a sentence is syntactically valid, does not make is meaningful, or perhaps an interpretation has to be arrived at, one that makes that syntactic expression meaningful. E.g. has one been arrived at for the final trip scene in 2001: A space odyssey?
So, what does it MEAN when actor x becomes character y then z in the film? Maybe it's just a game...or maybe that is where deeper meaning comes into the film.
Also, at the start of the film, I thought that the acting was really bad, but it improved. I can give a charitable explanation for this-apart from the acting starting out bad...the film is sort of like a parody on the wannabe actor phenomenon...people going to Hollywood with stars in their eyes-being undeveloped people/characters. These wannabes are interchangeable-hence, perhaps, why the actors/characters in the movie are interchangeable-i.e. these people are a dime a dozen. Once the grim reality of trying to make it in Hollywood dawns on these people, they become more real as people-they no longer have stars in their eyes...much like the female leads in this film.
As for those people in the lunch-box...your guess is as good as mine!
Confusing movie, sure, but boiled down, it is, like a say, a fable about the Hollywood dream turning into a nightmare.