"If you fix your attitude, you can ride along with me"

Rating: 10/10 (8 January 2002)

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD

Some of my observations about the film (based on the assumption that the whole of the first section is Diane's dream on the night that her contract killing of Camilla is carried out):
The cowboy - In the real world, he is a character Diane sees at Adam's party. In her dream, he is a mysterious controlling figure. I think, in fact, his main function is to represent David Lynch himself, and Adam in that scene represents the (increasingly confused) cinema audience. He thanks Adam for coming such a long way out to see him (thanking the audience for watching a film that appears to have wild plot deviations); Adam then asks him what's on his mind, and where this is leading to (this is the audience wondering exactly the same thing about the film). The cowboy mildly rebukes Adam for wanting to 'get straight down to it', and then delivers the greatest piece of advice for any audience watching this movie: 'I want you to think - can you do that for me?'. This whole scene is Lynch gently warning us that this whole film is going to take some careful thought to figure out, and not to expect some simple explanation on a plate.
We then see him twice in quick succession opening the door to Diane's room, right at the end of her dream. For her, this signifies that she has done wrong, and as it's the last thing in her dream before she wakes up, it is probably what she is thinking about when she's sitting on the bed - that it was wrong for her to have Camilla killed. For us the audience, the reappearance of the cowboy (as a representation of Lynch himself)and his words that it's 'time to get up' are possibly a clue that the dream section of the film is about to end, and the real section is about to begin.

The mafia people - again, these are people Diane knows from Adam's entourage in real life, though she may not know very much about them. In her dream, she turns them into gangsters running the film business - but their real reason d'etre is to humiliate Adam as much as possible (more below) and to stop him from giving Camilla the part. Although it is never stated in the dream, it must be assumed that if Adam were to have his choice of leading lady, it would be Camilla. But this is the very last thing Diane wants, so in her dream, the mafia stop it happening.
Humiliation of Adam - Diane's dream is also her fantasy, where everything she wanted to happen does happen. She is friendly, vivacious and purposeful. Everyone she meets is nice to her. Camilla depends on her. She is a fantastic actress, and her ability is recognised as soon as she arrives in LA. And all the way through the dream, she exacts her revenge on Adam for stealing Camilla from her. The mob force him to change his leading lady. His wife is in bed with the swimming pool cleaner (a scenario Diane dreams up from the remark he made at his party); he gets beaten up and covered in paint; his film is shut down, all his money is cut off, and he's reduced to living in a seedy hotel. And finally, in the audition scene, she dreams that he lusts after her, but then she turns and disappears, out of reach and unavailable.

Club Silencio - probably means many different things - but a possible interpretation is that it's one huge clue that we're watching a dream, where we can hear a band, but of course because it's a dream, there is no band - nothing of what we see is real. The reason both girls become so upset whilst in the club is because they have both realised this very fact - they are inhabiting a dream, it is not real, and the love they have shared is nothing more than a fantasy.

Hope someone out there agrees with all this! I think MH is quite possibly the greatest film I've seen - it is so rich, inventive, beautiful, hilarious, sad, terrible and just light years ahead of anything else I've seen.