Only One Explanation Possible

Rating: Null/10 (31 August 2002)

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I have read with much interest all of the interpretations of Mulholland Drive, including the very insightful question and answer session on salon.com. Having seen the movie a second time, I must generally agree with all of salon.com's analysis but for one critical point.
The first two-thirds of the movie do indeed represent Diane's dream, but not a dream she is having while masturbating. The masturbation scene is there to inject one more source of frustration which leads Diane to commit suicide.
The "dream" occurs between the time Diane pulls the trigger and the time she actually dies. It makes a lot more sense that way since the two old folks she "travels" with at the beginning of the dream are the last thing she saw (hallucinated) before she pulled the trigger, so naturally they would be there in a new manifestation at the beginning of the dream.
In the other interpretation, these two show up in the dream out of the blue, and then return as devil hallucinations to hound her into killing herself. This makes less sense to me as it fails to explain what stimulus activated their appearance at the beginning of the dream. I do like the idea that the two could have, in Diane's life, been judges of her jitterbug dancing. In that way, they represent dashed hopes and failed ambition.
The dream is an attempt by Diane to reconcile the failures of her life before she ultimately dies. In real time the entire thing may have taken place in a few seconds, like one's life passing before one's eyes at the moment of death.
This also makes more meaningful the last scene of the movie as the Mexican singer utters the word "silencio," which signifies that Diane's existence has been silenced at the conclusion of her "dream."
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Mulholland Drive is a very fine offering from David Lynch. I do not, however, think it surpasses Blue Velvet. Time will render his earlier work to be his definitive masterpiece, until or unless he surpasses it, which he has not done yet.