This Movie Is Worth Investigation

Rating: 10/10 (20 April 2008)

I didn't understand this movie until the third time I saw it and after reading the comments here. I wasn't sure if I liked the movie before I understood it, but now I love it. To me every second of the movie makes sense now and the investigations were worth every minute invested.
**SPOILER -- QUICK SYNOPSIS*** There are three sections of the movie: the blonde's dream, her flashbacks (what really happened), and her suicide. There are much better descriptions in this forum; I just want to make mine quick: Dream: In her dream, she flies into Hollywood from Kansas and is quickly discovered by the director. She brushes off the director to go back to the brunette. The brunette is helpless and at her mercy. The director loses his job, all his money, and his wife is sleeping with the pool man. The hit-man is a bumbling idiot. When they break into the apartment in the dream and find a dead blonde on the bed she almost wakes up from her dream (cheap visual effects, holding her head, premonition of her own suicide). Etc...
Flashbacks: When she wakes up and finds the blue key on the table, she goes to make some coffee and the flashbacks begin. We learn what really happened: her girlfriend (a successful actress) broke up with her and got engaged to the director. She was still in love with her girlfriend. She hired a hit-man to kill the brunette.
Suicide: Then in the last minute of the film she realizes it's over (because the blue key is on the coffee table): the brunette is dead, and she goes to her room and kills herself.
***Why This Is One Of My Favorite Movies*** There is so much more to this movie than just the (unconventional) story line.
I like how the director in the dream was required to say 'this is the girl' to some bubbly charismatic girl who was doing an okay but not great job lip syncing to that bubble gum pop song. (Did she sleep with the producers to get the part? Or is she related?) But then in Club Silencio, after the M.C. (who also runs the seedy motel) announces several times in several different languages that 'everything is pre-recorded' we are still surprised when the singer passes out behind the mic and her voice carries on. So the bubbly little girl gets the A movie part for whatever reason, and this amazing singer/actress is lip-syncing to a mostly empty theater behind a seedy motel. Great commentary on the movie business (as experienced by David Lynch) and commentary on art in general, and perfect casting of Rebecca Del Rio.
I also like how all the scenes that involve the blonde actress in the dream sequence leading up to her 'audition' seem mis-spoken: listen how the landlady describes the kangaroo and listen to how they talk back and forth: the ennunciation and rhythm seem like 'bad acting'. (Or is the woman who plays the landlady just a bad actor? Well, investigate that by looking her name up on IMDb -- hmmm.... this is getting deeper by the minute). This 'bad acting' not only contributes to the 'dream' feeling, it also causes the blonde's audition to really punch you in the stomach when she nails it.
I could go on and on... there is so much depth to this movie, in similar ways - not just the image and story, but casting and history and the director's experiences etc...
Please don't dismiss the comments from people who love this movie as pretentious, because when you've seen the movie a couple more times after some investigation it will make sense. Once it makes sense, that's just where the fun begins, because then it gets REALLY good. And the more you investigate, the better it gets.
The songs I like the first time I hear them usually don't please me for more than five or ten listens, but my FAVORITE songs (just like this movie) keep getting better every time I listen to them (like Tina Turner singing 'Edith and the Kingpin' on Herbie Hancock's latest). But I digress. Thanks for reading this.