That was actually the last film I saw. I am hard of hearing but fortunately the entire script is viewable online and the subtitles for the Polish bits meant that I got through it okay.
Had zero expectations because of its notoriety but found myself enjoying what I saw so much I am going to watch the whole thing again fairly soon.
What Lynch is very good at is evoking the hypnagogic imagery of the dream state and he does that especially well here.
From an online article:
‘The only hint that Lynch has ever given about the film comes in the form of a quote from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad: “We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.”
It could just be me but I also get the impression that Lynch is suspicious of the idea of the self as a kind of essence with a fixed and given nature. Instead it is something theatrical in the sense that it is better understood in terms of the roles a person plays in life. Our personality (or personalities) are analogous to the characters an actor or actress might play on the stage.
There was a lot of that going on in the Twin Peaks revival too, with the two Coopers, the tulpa of Diane, the two Trumans, and so on.
Better stop there as it is also probably not a good idea to analyse Lynch too much as you run the risk of coming across as a bit of a twat, as I do in this post.
