No… that’s just the focal point of the movie… its a good illustration.
The whole point to the movie is that Diane creates an illusory reality that she wishes were real. The whole movie is about an attempt to be real. My claim is that Diane’s understanding of acting (that it is an attempt to be real) creates her actions in the film… that she undertakes the actions she does precisely out of her agreement with Lynch. If Diane agreed with me this movie simply would not have been made, since Diane would not have undergone anything close to this kind of illusory reality.
Lynch understands the audition scene as Diane’s idealized acting performance. But does Lynch understand my interpretation of the audition scene or does he, like the Club Silencio scene, see it as merely a GOOD illusion? Taking the WHOLE context of this movie, the likely situation is the latter. If you assume Lynch appreciates the audition scene in the same way I do, the scene makes little sense… it becomes anachronistic.
I absolutely do… I just deny him the credit of understanding it. The creator of art is seperate from the appreciator of it.
That’s not an issue. It is inevitable (given realism) that a house of cards will come crashing down. My point is, the whole reason Diane creates the house of cards in the first place is that she agrees with Lynch.
Think about the movie. What does Diane lack? She’s vain, vindictive, manipulative, amazingly self-serving. In her fantasy Rita is her slave. Is this an example of a human being for whom acting is creating greater reality? Is she obsessed with Rita because she sees her as being more real than herself? Even while Rita is her slave everything she does is “for” Rita. But never due to Rita’s wishes… Rita is mute. Diane MUST help Rita… not for Rita but for Diane. Diane through Rita wants to become what she sees Rita as already being… real. Its identical to a fan of a celebrity wanting to touch the celebrity… maybe some of “it” will rub off.
Diane is incredibly desperate. What she wants is what Rita has. In the audition scene her understanding is that there she has what Rita has. But… that’s where she’s wrong. Her performance is on her own terms.
What Diane is never ever able to see due to her constant focus on “the real” is… herself. And this focus, this utter void of self-knowledge, is due to her understanding of acting as “becoming the real”.
In order to create greater reality through acting your constant focus has to be ON reality. And you have to be cold enough and analytical enough to look at what you are doing and judge that. Lets just say Diane failed this aspect of my understanding of acting miserably ;).
An actor has to find something in a performance that is stellar. Lets take a few examples…
Jim Carrey - the guy like most great comics is an emotional wreck. Carrey projects a sort of neurotic anti-socialism precisely because he has developed that personality. So any role in which this is necessary is his cup of tea. Its the director’s job to enable this performance to “create a greater reality” by placing it within a context that accentuates the role.
John Wayne - probably the most obvious example of an actor who consistently played himself. Lovers of Method Actors (see below) HATE John Wayne for precisely this reason. John Wayne is the complete opposite of a Method Actor. John Wayne gave “good” performances because audiences liked to see John Wayne.
Method Actors - These guys are sacrifices. Unlike most actors who get to draw from their own personality these guys have no strong personality… they are highly distributed. Method Actors as they age get extremely worn down… its poisonous to undergo this process. Method Actors impress not by their great acting but rather by their ability to be good in very different roles. And since they are good in very different roles they can play pretty much any part.
