surreal masterpiece

Rating: Null/10 (29 August 2002)

wow. God I loved this movie. This really is one of the best new movies I've seen in a long long time. Possibly the best film of the new millennium (since beginning 2000 I mean). The only other David Lynch movie I'd seen was The Elephant Man. Well this movie really couldn't be more different. Some people have said that the final scenes make no sense. That's what I thought the 1st time I saw it, but I still loved it. I'm not sure what it is that makes this movie so fascinating. I rented it and I've seen it 3 times, and each time I discover new things that make me understand the plot better. But it's not like making sense of the plot makes it any less fascinating. The movie has a certain atmosphere of bizarre dread that sometimes it really does seem like you're experiencing some dream. Lynch really understand better than anyone how the subconscious and the twisted logic of dreams works. I really love the way he shows the blond girl waking up near the end without making it abundantly clear that that is the waking moment of the film. What happens next are events that happen before and after that long dream she's just had. In her dream appear all the people she's met since she came in Hollywood but they have different names and in some cases slightly different personalities. That makes perfect sense to me in "dream logic". But that's all I'm going to say in case I spoil the experience for you. When you understand it you truly see that it's a sad, moving story. But before you do, you can simply enjoy the style and the bizarre vignettes and the intrigue on your first viewing, as I did. Only the second and third time you see it you understand how extraordinary it is, a bizarre masterpiece that in my opinion beats the hell out of recent weirdo flicks like the horrible star project Vanilla Sky, the interesting Memento, and the uneven but critically acclaimed Being John Malkovich.