...that is the saddest explanation I've ever heard, of any film.
Ok, here is my explanation. It's not 100%, there is still a lot that is vague, but here is the movie that I saw:
The movie is separated into 2 sections.
1) Diane Selwyn's sad, symbolism-filled re-imagined fantasy of a better life, in lieu of the sad reality that is her real life.
2) The sad reality that is (was) her waking life, told via a series of short but powerful scenes that shed light on things.
What Really Happened
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Diane Selwyn won a jitterbug contest in her home town in Canada, and moved to hollywood, starry-eyed and aspiring to be an actress. Only she turned out to be a failure as an actress. She was overlooked by directors in favor of Camilla, and naturally, as all failed actors do, feel it's unfair and don't accept the simple truth that they just aren't very good. She had a lesbian affair with Camilla and fell in love with her. Camilla fell in love with the director and ultimately rejected Diane. Diane does not handle this rejection well. Not only does Camilla not return Diane's love, she actually seems to cruely flaunt it, for example having her stay on the set and watch Camilla make out with the director, inviting her to their wedding announcement party, etc. Having hit rock bottom, at this point Diane sees Camilla as the cause of her failure as an actress, and the source of her emotional torture, so she decides to have Camilla killed. Sort of a love\hate dynamic. She hires the scumbag to do it. While in the restaurant, she makes eye contact with the tall lanky guy, who seems to almost have a knowing look of fear when he looks at her. The scumbag kills Camilla. Diane switches apartments to try to avoid the police. Her life after Camilla's murder is bleak and shattered. Wracked with guilt over having killed the person she loved most in the world, she snaps, and blows her brains out.
The Symbolism
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The dream\fantasy that is the first hour of the movie is a re-imagining of Diane's life where everything goes right for her, as opposed to her real life. Just as with any dream, it is filled with symbolism, and constructed from re-arranged elements of our real life.
The most important elements of this fantasy are:
Camilla (Rita)
- in Diane's fantasy, Camilla is re-imagined as having almost no descernable personality, a 1-dimensional person who is completely dependant on Diane for everything. Rita's entire world revolves around Diane. Which is what a possesive mind truly craves in a relationship. Remember to keep in mind as you watch this entire section of the movie that you are watching Diane's fantasy. It makes it all the more tragic as you watch Diane make love to her dream Camilla, while desperately whispering "I'm in love with you" over and over again. So this is the first major wrong that is righted in her fantasy - Camilla, who in reality rejects Diane, is basically her slave in the fantasy. She can't make it without Diane, and follows her around like a lost puppy.
The Movie Conspiracy
- In real life, Diane was an utter failure as an actress. But being the weak, selfish person that she is, she can't accept this, she doesn't understand why. So in her fantasy she concocts a bizarre conspiracy within hollywood where the really talented actress (how Diane sees herself) gets overlooked for someone who doesn't deserve the role (Camilla, in her mind) due to pressure from some kind of Hollywood mafia. The element of real life that she draws the members of this mafia from, is the hollywood party that she attended. Almost all of the participants in the fantasy conspiracy are people that she noticed at the hollywood party, the cowboy, Jason, the espresso guy...
The Blue Box
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The blue box is the symbolic gateway between Diane's dream world and reality. When the box is opened, the dream is no more.
The tall guy at Winkies, and the monster behind the restaurant.
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In the fantasy, the tall guy tells a story about a dream he had where he was able to see through the restaurant, and that something terrible was hiding out back. He goes out back to investigate and sees that he was right, there really was a monster there.
In reality, the tall guy locks eyes with Diane at the moment that she's making a deal to have her lover murdered. He has a strange, slightly fearful, and knowing look on his face. Now anyone who has ever felt guilty about something you've done will understand this symbolism completely. When you have done something wrong and you are afraid of people finding out, a level of paranoia sets in. Often when people make eye contact with you, there is a fleeting instinctive fear that
they know or that they can see right through you, to what's really inside, which is really just a reflection of how you feel about yourself. Diane experiences this. The man looks at her, and for a brief moment, like most people experiencing guilt, it's like he's looking right through her, he can see what she's doing, what she really is - a monster.
So in her symbolic fantasy, the monster hiding behind the restaurant is her, Diane. It's how she sees herself at that moment, and then her dream revisits this, only makes it more literal, giving 'the hiding monster' a physical form.
The monster part II
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At the end of the film, we see the monster again. Only it's not a monster anymore. It's a pathetic bum, stripped of everything, sad and deshivled. Which is exactly how Diane feels at that moment. She no longer feels like a monster, now she just feels empty and broken, and she's lost everything. We see the bum holding the blue box, he stuffs it into a brown paper bag and discards it. Anyone see anything symbolic about discarding your box of dreams?
The monster\bum that represents Diane's self-image shows us that she has given up on life, and 30 seconds later she blows her brains out.
The crazy old people
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No way of knowing for sure whether they were Diane's parents or Aunt\Uncle in real life. As far as them emerging from the blue box at the end and terrorizing Diane until she shoots herself, well, they obviously represent her conscience. Just like your conscience, they started out small and insignificant, then grew and grew and got louder and louder until Diane couldn't take it anymore. They are the voice, the nagging realization that Diane has murdered her true love. As you watch the movie and see them get closer, bigger and louder, what you are watching is a visual representation of a horrible realization that Diane can no longer ignore. Then BANG.
The only part that I really have no idea about, is whether the first-hour dream segment is what Diane awoke from when the cowboy knocked, or if that segment was the last moments of conscious\subconsciousness in her dying, freshly ventilated brain. The fact that in her dream sequence, Betty and Rita discover Diane's dead body in the exact spot she died indicates the latter,