[Bitscape's note: When I first started writing this, I was going to rate this movie *** 1/2 stars. Upon further reflection, which entailed much spouting and babbling below (but even more additional brain activity than I could type), I am upgrading it to **** stars. I base this on the premise that any movie that can mess with your brain this badly is really a masterpiece, whether you know it at the time or not.]

Strange, wierd, and ominous. That's what this film is. Some people (such as my parents) think that many of the films I watch are strange and wierd. But this one is by my standards. Very, very strange.

David Lynch is the king of wierd. Many years ago (pre-dating the movielog era by about 8 months or so), I went to see Lost Highway at this very same venue. It employed a similarly bizarre, twisted narrative. (If something so nonsensical could even be called a narrative, but I think it could.)

You leave the movie just shaking your head, wondering what the hell any of it means. Thinking too hard trying to figure it out could lead one to go mad. But somehow, it all has to fit together. It must!

So many scenes with so much apparent significance. A word of dialog. The way the camera pans. Some striking angle where a light hits an object. A look. A gesture. Associations. Characters. Something in the background, or maybe it was hiding in plain sight. There must be a way to figure it out!

Or, one could choose the non-analytical approach, and just take each and every bit for what it is without trying to make any cohesive sense of it all. Then what are we left with? A vague feeling... deeply fearful... sad... apprehensive... wondering... unquenched.... a sense of urgency that must be confronted. And this leads us back to trying to figure it all out. Arrrrrgggggh!

Perhaps some sort of dream interpretation method could be applied, except it's not a dream, it's a movie! Certainly not my dream. Or will it be?

So much of what is conferred could have double meanings, or maybe none of it means anything it all. Or maybe there's some unknown subtext to the whole thing. (Ok, sorry, that was a silly and obvious Xenite pun. I just couldn't resist throwing just one in there. I mean... hot lesbian sex... come on!)

Hmmmm... I'm debating whether it would be a good idea to discuss spoilers. I don't think I can resist, so I shall hereby run the customary warning. SPOILERS BELOW THIS POINT. DO NOT READ FURTHER IF YOU DO NOT WANT THE ENDING (and my speculative interpretation(s) thereof) to be revealed. There.

...

In fact, I'm going to jump right to the end. There have been many movies with non-linear plots in the last decade. Probably much of that has been inspired by Pulp Fiction. In any case, I am led to a semi-certain conclusion (although nothing can be truly certain in regards to this picture) that the end is really the beginning.

Betty is, and has been, in a long-standing love affair with Camilla (later (earlier) known as "Rita", the amnesiac). Eaten up by jealousy when she sees Camilla become openly sexually involved with the director, she hires a hit squad to kill her lover. When she sees the sign that the deed has been done (or so she thinks), and the blue key is resting on her coffee table, she is driven mad by her inner demons (the tourists seen earlier when she arrives at the LA airport), and commits suicide.

At that point, the film really begins. The opening credits bring us into the limo driving up the road, the attempted execution of Camilla/Rita by the hit men, the car accident, and the escape. Rita, struck with amnesia, stumbles her way to the home of Betty's aunt, who is about to leave. And then Betty arrives, finds Rita, etc etc etc.

No, no, no. Not just a non-linear plot. A circular plot. But it doesn't make sense, because.... (stating the obvious again)

Ok, here's my take: When Betty (or whatever her name was toward the end of the film... Diana)... When Diana commits suicide, we can jump back to the beginning of the film, and see the ideal world from her perspective from the beginning. Her Heaven.

Think about it. Diana (named Betty, in this other life) is the smiling young niave girl, coming into Hollywood, thinking she wants to become an actress. She finds her aunt's wonderful place, and gets the run of the territory. Once there, things only get better. She finds a woman in the apartment who has amnesia, and turns out to her dream love (for the second time, although we in the audience don't know it), they gradually fall for one another. Almost too perfect.

When she auditions for the acting job (word of which has mysteriously found its way to her lap via the landlady "Cocoa"), she does exceedingly well (which, we later find out, was something she was never truly able to accomplish via her own merit in her "first" life, at the end of the film).

Tina remembers vague bits and pieces, including somebody named "Diana", and they manage to find Diana's residence. In what is probably the most numbingly creepy scene in the whole film, the two of them explore Diana's house, and discover a dead, rotting body in the bedroom (crouched in the same position as Diana was in when she shot herself at the very end).

[shivers]

Oh God, I'm just going on and on, aren't I?

And then there was that whole other plot with the director... the conspiracy... the cowboy.... Yeeeeek!

And then there was that recasting of "the girl" in that film he was going to make. That's totally stretching my brain. And what was with that guy sitting in the chair in the nearly empty room behind the glass, presumably calling all the shots (although that wasn't necessarily clear)?

I'm making no sense, and I am totally rambling now.

What a crazy, crazy film. I think I like it. I'll have to watch it again though. The whole thing is just so circularly insane, that it's just rotting my brain. Was that the cowboy who woke her up?

That was the other thing that's just messing me over... That blue box. Just before Rita opened it, Betty totally disappeared! Since she had just walked in with Rita, we were given the illusion that she was just out of frame, but then she wasn't there at all. When Rita opened the box, that's when the time loop jumped back to Diana's house, where the rotting dead body became reanimate. Or something like that. From there, it all went to hell. Hence, the opening scene of the film.

ARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGH!

And that creepy dude on the stage in that theater in the middle of the night. Followed by the singer / lipsyncer who passed out in the middle of the song (despite the illusionist's obvious demonstration of all the sounds being recordings, it still caught me off guard when she fainted and the music kept playing on).

This film is driving my mind NUTS! NUTS NUTS NUTS. Ever since walking out of the theater, and the whole drive home, it hasn't been able to stop.

The true sign of a masterpiece. I'm upgrading it from 3 1/2 stars to 4. Any movie that can do this to ya is that good.

I think I'll refrain from spouting more incoherent bits and pieces in a vain attempt to figure it out, shut up, finish my burrito, and read what Roger Ebert thought.