To those who insist this film is deep, I must say: No Hay bando!

Rating: Null/10 (22 October 2001)

SPOILER CONTENT
I read the reviews here with some amusement. They tend to fall into two neat categories: (a) "What the f---?, I don't get it." and, (b) "This is a great movie, if you are savvy enough to 'get it', like I am."
The folks who contend that they "get it" appear to generally believe that the first part of the film is a dream or fantasy, the second part is reality (or, on occasion, vice versa.) I am confident that I can punch at least one hole in every re-construction of this film by the "get it" crowd.
Ironically, I think the the "get it's" and the "don't get it's" are in a sense of a piece, cut from the same cloth. Both responses betray, or reveal, a desire TO "get it", and an assumption that there is indeed something there to get. And with that last point, I disagree. There is nothing here to get.
Ostensibly, this is a deep film. Deep tends to connote, the "deeper" you dig, the more meaning and truth you will find. I think that those characterizing this film as deep ascribe a motivation and aspiration to Lynch that he simply does not in fact possess. It aint deep. It is what it is, and it is like an Escher, in that you aren't going to "get it" (that is, wrap it up tidily) because Lynch has no desire at all to encode the internal consistencies that the get it/don't get it crowd assume ought to be there. That are indeed necessary for the film to be "get"-able.

DON'T look beneath the surface. It is what it is; take this film at face value.
One of the key phrases in the film (especially at its most surreal) is, "No hay bando." As in, quite literally, "You hear music, but it is a tape playing, there isn't a band here." But I couldn't help but flash back to Twin Peaks, to the scene where one-armed Mike describes a "perfect circle" to Cooper, and Cooper says, "The giant has my ring." A ring... a circle... a BAND.
I posit for your disapproval that Lynch is actually telling us, with "No hay bando", that "There is no circle"; that the fabric and consistency, the "loop" of completion the viewer seeks, simply isn't there.