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Originally Posted by Count Mecha
Um, whatever. I thought it was pretty bold to completely change the plot of the film after about half an hour or however long it was, and I like how it slowly found it's way back to the original thread. But as a whole the film just felt extremely stagnant. Especially towards the beginning, all those pauses and what not. Robert Blakes character was easily the best part. Having Bill Pullman call his house to talk to him was the highlight of the movie for me.
I think my big problem with the film is that while being cryptic and deliberately elusive (which in itself doesn't bother me) it never really makes me feel like figuring it out. I could never really get interested in understanding the Fred/Pete relation, why the cabin reverse explodes, the message at the beginning/end, and so on. So I dunno, I'll probably watch it again sometime this week and see how I feel about it.
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It helps to watch this one twice to understand it. Here's my interpretation:
SPOLIERS AHEAD--SKIP THIS IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT AND WANT TO
I'm not entirely sure about the cabin blowing up backwards or the video tapes left on Fred and Renee's doorstep, but basically the first part of the movie is exposition about Fred and his background; he's a tenor saxophone player living in California who's not at all right in the head. He hates video cameras/recordings because he prefers to remember things as he wished they had happened (and "not necessarily as they were") and he suspects his wife's being unfaithful to him, leading him to brutally murder her. Now Fred has been sentenced to death by the electric chair. While awaiting execution on death row, he enters a deep fantasy/hallucination about being Pete, a young, gifted mechanic with lots of friends and gets "more pussy than a toliet seat"-basically, an idealization. But subconsciously, Fred/Pete knows in reality things are far less happy and he's going to die soon. The cops are constantly trailing him. His fantasy slowly becomes darker, more fucked up, and many allusions to death pop up, both in the soundtrack ("I'm dyin'/Hope you're dyin' too" from Marilyn Manson's "Apple of Sodom") and the dialogue (Mystery Man (Robert Blake) talking to Pete on the phone about how "in the East, the Far East, when a person is sentenced to death, they're sent to a place where they can't escape, never knowing when an executioner may step up behind them, and fire a bullet into the back of their head"). Cameras and film recordings make an important appearance near the end, representing truth rising to the surface. The final sequence, in which Fred's being chased by the cops after "killing" Dick Laurent and Andy (wish fufillment: taking revenge on those whom Renee was cheating on him with-not to mention making me resolve to never buy a glass topped coffee table with sharp edges) is the the final grains of sand in the hourglass falling through; when he begins thrashing around wildly and a sound like electricity can be heard, that's Fred in the electric chair (he's so crazy, he can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality even while he's being executed). Many think he's having a seizure, but there's no way he could keep the car on the road if he were, and it certainly doesn't
look like he's crashing...
At least, that's the way I see it. I could be way off.