Group 1 (Josh M., Todd, Reid), use the comments field to discuss and plan your presentation (or do this via e-mail, as you said you preferred to do, just let me know that each person's making a contribution).
This link takes you to the Club Silencio scene.
You'll give your presentation in class Nov. 29.
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Club Silencio Scene
Hi Todd and Reid. After watching this scene around thirty more times and focusing each time on a single aspect of the film. I really like the idea of the dream Diane is having and the point where she is coming to grasps with the fact that this relationship is over. She realizes this just in time to kill herself and allow Rita to escape her demented world.
Color Theme with Red and Blue, first camera movement
I really tried to watch for alliterations for the heaven/hell aspect that people were talking about in class; however I felt more that the setting and colors were more representational in regards to the inner emotion of our main character Diane. The blue filter that is outside of Club Silencio I really feel is the reality world that exists outside of the dream Diane is constructing. They rush into the club just as the “camera”, or what I think is Diane’s real life, tries to take her back into this world of unhappiness with her relationship with a manipulative Rita. The camera movement suggests that they are being followed and chased at this point. This movement makes me feel that this outer world does not want Diane to enter this Club. Once we are inside the club it is the warm and dim lighting of the red hue. This I feel is the mise-en-scene of Diane’s inner feelings; her soul or heart. This is where the outside blue didn’t want her to go. It didn’t want her to let go of Rita.
The Blue thunder brought on by the emcee, I agree with Todd, is the point where Diane has killed herself. The blue hue is the interruption of the outside anger into Diane’s inner conscious. The emcee could be acting as her conscience, the all powerful force that brings Diane’s demise. At this point we need to connect/re-edit the film so that this blue hue and thunder scene is connected directly with the very last scene in the film. The part where there is the same blue hue and then the blue haired lady says “Silencio”. In essence this is where the film ended, in Diane’s reality, back at Club Silencio. However David Lynch felt it necessary to cut the film in a disjunctive style, so it wasn’t the end. Then after Diane commits suicide, the blue thunder and hue, we slowly let the dream version of Rita become aware that the relationship is over. This is really the point I feel is where our strongest argument lies.
Theatre
The main reason I feel we are in a theatre is due to the fact that Diane exists and projects herself in a performer’s life. Diane constantly wants to be in a major role and have control of the stage/screen and now in her last moments she mentally chooses to end it all in a theatre. It is almost as though Diane needs someone to act out the breakup between herself and Rita. It is the only way an actress can think up to end the relationship. The other people in the theatre sitting in groups of couples/dyads, are symbolic to the idea of the theatre revealing something to an audience. I take this as a visual cue to pay attention. It is almost a reflexive move from Lynch, a breaking of the fourth wall, as if he wants to tell us to pay close attention to what we are going to see in the next few moments. After the thunder scene we no longer see the people or the big theatre in the back. Also I bring in the emcee’s prompt that this is all an illusion. The theatre and the screen is the place for illusion.
The Emcee
The emcee in the beginning proves more or less as Diane’s Id; the psychological term for the utter subconscious. At this level of subconscious the carnal and the emotive are fleshed out and the persons good or bad nature wins or looses. He acts as Diane’s identity telling everyone, including us as the viewer that we are witnessing an illusion. David Lynch is so nice to tell us that we are watching a dream sequence. This illusion of sound and space is a cue that in reality there is no theatre, there is no Club Silencio, there is only the depth and width of Diane’s mind. Then the emcee does a dramatic and fantastic display of thunder and special effect and I feel this is where Diane dies in “real life” outside of the dream. People could argue then that the Crying song can not take place. However if the sound is an illusion and the space is an illusion then the temporal/time space is also an illusion. There is no Band, Sound, Space or Time. So in the dream events can occur in a given time space but not necessarily in order.
Crying
The song is so beautiful in its delivery and its emotion because it really allows for the understanding for the emotion that Diane and Rita are expressing on their faces as we watch the scene. Del Rio is Diane’s swan song towards Camilla/Rita.
Crying
I was all right for a while
I could smile for a while
But I saw you last night
You held my hand so tight
As you stopped to say, "Hello"
Oh, you wished me well
You couldn't tell
That I'd been crying over you
Crying over you
When you said, "So long"
Left me standing all alone
Alone and crying, crying
Crying, crying
It's hard to understand
But the touch of your hand
Can start me crying
I thought that I was over you
But it's true, so true
I love you even more
Than I did before
But, darling, what can I do?
For you don't love me
And I'll always be crying over you
Crying over you
Yes, now you're gone
And, from this moment on
I'll be crying, crying
Crying, crying
Yeah, crying, crying
Over you
As the song progresses throughout the scene I watched and tried to pinpoint the emotions displayed by Diane and Rita.
1. Rita at the beginning looked very confused as to what was happening, and why was this message being sung.
1. Diane looked almost defiant and then her lips turned to the anger and crazed look that she gives with the coffee scene.
2. Rita is beginning to internalize the words and meanings of the song and is working out the meaning regarding their relationship.
2. Diane goes from angry to broken, as she begins to realize that she needs to let go. Don’t control this dream anymore, end it.
3. Rita needs consoling from Diane and almost looks as though she wants validation from Diane that her feelings are wrong and that the words of the song are wrong about them.
3. Diane knows she needs to end this relationship and begins to reach for the Blue Box.
Blue Box.
The blue box I really believe is the way out of this dream, almost a way back into reality and out of Diane’s dream. Rita had the key the whole time however Diane was the gatekeeper. Rita had the box for the key the whole time, she just wasn’t ready to let her go.
So these are some quick ideas I felt after watching the scene. I will read your responses and then rethink my ideas with yours. I really think that we have an exciting scene and can illuminate some confusing areas for the class.
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