who is s/he?

Discussion of INLAND EMPIRE

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applesnoranges
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by applesnoranges »

This thread is covering what I am most interested in understanding. I think other things will open when we see what is going on in the Polish scenes. I'll just add a few more thoughts here. They are not new; I'm just adding them as additions to things JFK has mentioned.

"¢ First, when Devon goes to investigate the sound, down at the end of the hallway or alley, at the end, we see the repeating street in Poland, the one just down the way. After the Dern death scene, before which we have seen all the Polish material, we return to Kingsley making his movie. So all that Polish part is seen, in this way, as part of Kingsley's movie, even though, seen through the silk, it is from a parallel universe, or the parallel universe of someone else's perception etc.
this brings me to the fact that i think the polish scenes are not the unfinished 4/7 film(which most probably would have been german by the hint kingsley drops)
I hadn't noticed that, but it is a point that does seem to clarify those scenes somewhat.

"¢ Next, about Ormond in the police station. The entire film is structured around yesterday-today-tomorrow. "What time is it?" is a joke to the Rabbits' audience. Visitor #1 says she can't tell today from yesterday from two days from now, and tells Nikki that if it was tomorrow she would be sitting over there. Then there is the rehearsal scene which is observed by Dern's character in the future, then related to Theroux's character in bed as a scene we did yesterday but I know it's tomorrow. Well, the police station scene seems just like that to me. She is there in the present talking about the future when she will stab someone but we can see that she has just been stabbed in the past. What I'm getting at is that I don't think anything will be gained by thinking of this scene as a depiction of some one thing happening in time. So in a way it is unlike our own way of experiencing reality but then again it is just like it too, because in each present moment, unless we turn them off through meditation, the past is always there as memory and the future as speculation.

"¢ I should add also that another thing that Kiddo said that went some way toward convincing me when I thought about it afterward is that the murdered woman with the gut is played by an uncredited actress. There was a lot of controversy over which of the two brunette actresses played her, but it makes as much sense to think it was someone else. More in fact, because the "Who is she?" about her would require that a different actress play her part. In other words, I think she is (at least) one of the other main characters in the story but played by someone else so that we can discover her identity through the way the story goes, rather than by who plays her. And for the same reason, TWIW, the other "Who is she?" character, may be played by Gruszka or Ormond, even though she may be neither of their other main characters. Her back is turned specifically so that we can't know who played her part for sure, and it tends to match both Gruszka greeting Dern at the end and Ormond walking down Ivar Street at the end of MTTH.

"¢ For a long time, I believed that because the record player was seen first, that it was a sort of umbrella layer of the story within which everything else occurs. Then I noticed that when it recurs later, Lost Girl is watching it on TV.
and as for the woman in the background being lanni, those caps are a good arguement. there are definte similarities to them. but at the same time, a couple of differences, which may be attributed to the digital quality of the film. im going to have to mull that over...
I'm comparing this scene to what happens before and after on Hollywood Blvd. This is a mirror in the other universe of what happens there, though a little different. Ormond walks down Ivar Street from the north. Yet, we see her peeking out behind a tree from both the north and sound sides of Hwd. Blvd. (Once with a plain building side behind her and once with the ATM machine behind her that she passes after stabbing Dern's character. So she is on both sides of the street just as Nikki is, laughing at her frightened self. We see her crossing the street, yet, when she comes after Dern she has not crossed the street but is simply walking down the north side of Hwd. Blvd. from west to east after she turned left off of Ivar. So in the picture, all three women look the same to me, though I too can't tell exactly in the dark and I'm not that good on faces anyway. I don't think Lori and Lani are played by twin actresses, but whoever that is there looks the same to me. Anyway, the point for me is that someone who looks something like that is seen both behind and in front of Gruszka.
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by JFK »

applesnoranges wrote:This thread is covering what I am most interested in understanding. I think other things will open when we see what is going on in the Polish scenes. I'll just add a few more thoughts here. They are not new; I'm just adding them as additions to things JFK has mentioned.

"¢ First, when Devon goes to investigate the sound, down at the end of the hallway or alley, at the end, we see the repeating street in Poland, the one just down the way. After the Dern death scene, before which we have seen all the Polish material, we return to Kingsley making his movie. So all that Polish part is seen, in this way, as part of Kingsley's movie, even though, seen through the silk, it is from a parallel universe, or the parallel universe of someone else's perception etc.
i can see the movie within a movie within a movie perspective, but i think its also valid that the polish scenes are just as real as the beginning third of the film, nikki grace's world. the fact that LG is the one to show dern how to see with the silk, which she then does(and her vision is of LG's poland(and an opening, kind of what the phantom is seeking in his first scene, another thing that ties the phantom and dern together)) is to me a signifier of something beyond OHIBT. one could make a similar arguement that IE is almost completely seen by LG on the TV that materializes in the hotel room after the man leaves(and she's fulfilled the role of 'whore'), sort of how apples had said that the record player was an umbrella layer to the film. i think all are valid. and this is where i disagreed with kiddo, in that objectivity in regards to IE is almost non-existent, or deliberately impossible, a term apples used which i like. not all the ambiguites of IE have answers. some have plausible interpetations, but some are obscure enough that we, the audience, supply the answer. many times without even knowing it. i mean, we cant even agree on the basic facts of what is on screen sometimes, so the 'why?' of what is on screen isnt something that general consensus really affects. im not saying i dont enjoy the discourse, which i do, and have had my views changed by others comments, but just because i am outnumbered by interpetations isnt going to change mine automatically. which brings me to your next point:
"¢ Next, about Ormond in the police station. The entire film is structured around yesterday-today-tomorrow. "What time is it?" is a joke to the Rabbits' audience...What I'm getting at is that I don't think anything will be gained by thinking of this scene as a depiction of some one thing happening in time. So in a way it is unlike our own way of experiencing reality but then again it is just like it too, because in each present moment, unless we turn them off through meditation, the past is always there as memory and the future as speculation.
i think this is a very good point, and relates to the film as a whole. more less, it is all happening at once, an evolution of MD and LH in that those films were mobius strips, warping in on themselves. IE has that quality, but the complete unstability of time is so prevalent, that is has that parallel universe effect, yet the universes are being criss-crossed together.
"¢ I should add also that another thing that Kiddo said that went some way toward convincing me when I thought about it afterward is that the murdered woman with the gut is played by an uncredited actress. There was a lot of controversy over which of the two brunette actresses played her, but it makes as much sense to think it was someone else. More in fact, because the "Who is she?" about her would require that a different actress play her part. In other words, I think she is (at least) one of the other main characters in the story but played by someone else so that we can discover her identity through the way the story goes, rather than by who plays her. And for the same reason, TWIW, the other "Who is she?" character, may be played by Gruszka or Ormond, even though she may be neither of their other main characters. Her back is turned specifically so that we can't know who played her part for sure, and it tends to match both Gruszka greeting Dern at the end and Ormond walking down Ivar Street at the end of MTTH.
im still not sold on TWIW/the corpse being an uncredited actress. i REALLY think lynch would have credited her, even if it is the ambiguous woman #1 or something similar. i say this because lynch shows a consistant ethic in his credits by not leaving anyone out, no matter how small the role. BUT, the fact that she is one of the largest enigmas in the film, explicitly said so by the films characters, does give the uncredited or played by another actress idea credence. again, another question that may have no concrete answer.

I'm comparing this scene to what happens before and after on Hollywood Blvd. This is a mirror in the other universe of what happens there, though a little different. Ormond walks down Ivar Street from the north. Yet, we see her peeking out behind a tree from both the north and sound sides of Hwd. Blvd. (Once with a plain building side behind her and once with the ATM machine behind her that she passes after stabbing Dern's character. So she is on both sides of the street just as Nikki is, laughing at her frightened self. We see her crossing the street, yet, when she comes after Dern she has not crossed the street but is simply walking down the north side of Hwd. Blvd. from west to east after she turned left off of Ivar. So in the picture, all three women look the same to me, though I too can't tell exactly in the dark and I'm not that good on faces anyway. I don't think Lori and Lani are played by twin actresses, but whoever that is there looks the same to me. Anyway, the point for me is that someone who looks something like that is seen both behind and in front of Gruszka.
but if the mirror idea was applied, it would have to be gruszka as the woman in question, as behind dern is dern in hollywood. or it would have to be TWIW, whoever she is, as gruszka murdered her(at least thats how i see it), and in hollywood dern is stalked by multiple ormonds across the street and walking down it. so that could be another mirrored relationship. lori and lanni look quite differnt from each other, most easily seen in sue's house(lanni is the one who exposes her breasts and lori is the one slouched next to her). after looking at your pics, and the film a couple of times, im personally not convinced that the woman behind gruszka in the scene in question is a valley girl. she is younger to my eyes. the only valley girl i see a resemblance to is kari, but she is never seen in poland, or in relation to the question posed by dern and gruska, only lanni and lori are( the phase "look at me and tell me if youve seen us before" being lanni's first line in the film). which makes me think they are the only two valley girls present in the short polish scene places within the dern/ormond chase, and more than just guardian angels for dern/nikki/sue/L.B./etc..... so im still partial to her being TWIW, or a manifestation of her, being behind gruszka in this scene. but, of course, thats me.
Last edited by JFK on Sat Aug 30, 2008 5:24 pm, edited 2 times in total.
applesnoranges
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by applesnoranges »

JFK wrote:im still not sold on TWIW/the corpse being an uncredited actress. i REALLY think lynch would have credited her, even if it is the ambiguous woman #1 or something similar. i say this because lynch shows a consistant ethic in his credits by not leaving anyone out, no matter how small the role. BUT, the fact that she is one of the largest enigmas in the film, explicitly said so by the films characters, does give the uncredited or played by another actress idea credence. again, another question that may have no concrete answer.
It's true that credits are given to pretty much everyone (whose odd character names make it more confusing and so probably amusing to Lynch; who is the Engineer anyway?), so that may be right. On the other hand, I don't see credits for the various people watching the Gruszka Majzrzak encounter in MTTH. When the controversy was going over who plays the corpse, votes were very heavily in favor of Ormond. So what if she is played by Ormond and TWIW is played by Gruszka, but they are the same character and someone different from either of their major characters? What if both took turns playing "the other woman"? One wants to kill and one is seen dead, so that makes them seem different, like killer and victim, but in this story, any of the three could be both killer and victim and this could be a device to show that. Just half an idea....
but if the mirror idea was applied, it would have to be gruszka as the woman in question, as behind dern is dern in hollywood. or it would have to be TWIW, whoever she is, as gruszka murdered her(at least thats how i see it), and in hollywood dern is stalked by multiple ormonds across the street and walking down it. so that could be another mirrored relationship.
I didn't mean that I saw Gruszka stalked; only that she too is there with the same girls who accompany Dern. Especially the curly haired one tells us that this much is happening here because we see her laughing face in Hollywood and then in Lodz. (Then for some reason I haven't caught, disappears, isn't in the scene any more.)
lori and lanni look quite differnt from each other, most easily seen in sue's house(lanni is the one who exposes her breasts and lori is the one slouched next to her). after looking at your pics, and the film a couple of times, im personally not convinced that the woman behind gruszka in the scene in question is a valley girl. she is younger to my eyes.
Yes, I don't see how to describe this. L&L do look different, but in the Polish scene Gruszka uses the same catch phrase with the two she encounters, which makes me think they are equivalents; and yet they look alike, and the one in back (compared in the composite) looks like them too. Either they are L&L who somehow look more alike bundled up or they are someone else who has the same function. I don't know. But the scene is definitely a mirror of the one in the barbecue sequence. So I was just saying that if the one in back is one of the same actresses who plays the pair, then we see her in different places, so that makes here a mirror image. That's the extent of it.
... which makes me think they are the only two valley girls present in the short polish scene places within the dern/ormond chase, and more than just guardian angels for dern/nikki/sue/L.B./etc..... so im still partial to her being TWIW, or a manifestation of her, being behind gruszka in this scene. but, of course, thats me.
I can't follow what you are saying here. I've read it quite a few times and I just don't see what you are saying.
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by JFK »

... which makes me think they are the only two valley girls present in the short polish scene places within the dern/ormond chase, and more than just guardian angels for dern/nikki/sue/L.B./etc..... so im still partial to her being TWIW, or a manifestation of her, being behind gruszka in this scene. but, of course, thats me.
I can't follow what you are saying here. I've read it quite a few times and I just don't see what you are saying.
i was saying that since kari(the only other valley girl who look similar to lori and lanni) isnt in any of the polish scenes, the idea that another one of the valley girls could be the woman standing behind gruszka doesnt hold up to strutiny from my view. my point being is that lanni and lori are the only two valley girls who 1) get asked the question "look at me...", which happens three times in the film. once lanni says it to dern in the valley girls first scene, then dern says it to lanni and lori at the barbecue, and then gruszka says it to lanni and lori in the polish sequence in question. lanni is the curly headed one, so she doesnt exactly dissapper, as when the camera pans back to her, she is there leaning against the brick pillar with lori on the right of the screen(yes apples is right in that they are dressed in the style that LG dresses in these sequences). 2)therefore, because they are the only two of the girls to function between worlds(as they do during the ghosts of love sequence, that is lanni and lori on the street in poland, which is the "this is the street" street, also they are the two women running down the hall that LG sees on her TV right before dern enters her hotel room), i do not think another of the valley girls is the woman in question. sorry if i wasnt clear, i had two disks in my spine slip earlier this week, so the pain can be distracting. :cry: anyway, that is what makes me think that this woman is someone else related to the polish part of the film. and the most glaring and ambiguous person, TWIW/the corpse, seems like a fitting character to be looking on to gruszka and lori and lanni.
i dont think that the absence of credits for MTTH should be taken into account. since it is not the film proper, but more things that happened(or just more footage lynch thought he wanted to share and add to the IE story). in the IE credits are pretty much every character, even ones without dialoge. maybe it is just my personal conviction, but i just dont think this actor( or actors, as apples alludes to(which is also a plausible idea)) would be left out. i have already pointed out that though similar from the back, TWIW has a much higher tone of voice(and i dont just mean because she is angry) but the timbre of her voice is to my ears noticably different to gruszka's, which is lower and gutteral sometimes. that doesnt mean that gruszka may not have actually played TWIW, that is an intersting idea too. but why? lynch couldnt find another actress? i seriously doubt that. also i have heard ormond never traveled to poland for the film, so either that information is wrong, or TWIW couldnt be played by ormond. as for the corpse, which i am convinced is TWIW due to their images being superimposed during the "who is she?" scene, orginally i had thought it was ormond. kiddo actually changed my mind about that, and now when i look i cant see any similarities to ormond. plus, ormond is part of the OHIBT plot, and a character in it moreover. so i dont see the sense in ormond playing gruszka's mirror in poland AND playing dern's mirror in hollywood. using another actor just makes more sense. not just by logic, but intuitively as well. so based on that, the woman behind gruszka in the scene in question, being neither gruszka's double or a valley girl, and having that strange close up during the dialogue of gruszka with lori and lanni, makes me believe it is an important character. and the most ambiguous one(ambiguous in the sense that all of us cant even agree on what actor she is) being TWIW/the corpse, the woman piotrek walks out on for gruszka, and who is eventually murdered by her(tho as to her volition in this act, i ascribe it to the phantom's power to control others). if you were confused by the 'guardian angel' reference, ive seen a number of posts that call the valley girls that. but i dont exactly see it that way. sure they are guiding her, sort of, but definitely not watching over her and keeping her from danger, which is how i would define guardian angel.
you really cant tell such beautiful women as Kristen Kerr(lori) and Emily Stofle(lanni) apart?
i see no resemblance whatsoever. when i get a chance i think ill make a diagram of which valley girl is which, if that would help anyone.
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by applesnoranges »

OK thanks for expanding that; I see what you mean. Sorry about the disks; that sort of thing can really change one around. The only thought about it I haven't mentioned yet is hard to express but I'll see what I can do. Each of the three women seems to be both victim and killer, so the "who is she" woman, if she is one woman played by two actresses, seems like someone who could stand for any of them in their roles as killer and victim. In my mind I'm thinking of one of those little hand puzzles whose name I don't know where you move squares around to try to match up all the blue or red squares or line up all the numbers or whatever you want. There is always a square with no piece in it so there will be a place to move the other pieces to wherever it is. The "who is she" woman seems like that space for a piece with no piece in it to me. I guess that doesn't help much, but it's a thought.

As for who's who: If I look at my composite a few posts up, I see three people who look almost exactly alike. Maybe not quite the same person, but at least like sisters. What the actresses look like in real life or in other movies doesn't have any effect on that. And none of them has curly hair. In IE Lanni and Lori seem to have been made to look very much the same because they are some sort of pair with something in common, beyond being two of the valley girls. The curly haired laughing one is on Hollywood Blvd. and then in an instant she is in Poland. If she is one of the two who speaks the magic line (whom I have understood are called Lori and Lanni, the two who run down the hall at the end), then she would have to have been given curly hair just for that scene and then immediately reverted to her rather straight haired appearance and appeared next to the other one. But it doesn't look like that. She disappears and then we see the two straight haired women pop out of nowhere. So, since she is the only curly haired one, I have assumed she is another character whose name I have not learned. At least she is presented as another character by means of that hair.
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by JFK »

admittedly, i have said there are few objective things in this film. but, i am positive that lanni is the girl with curly hair who is in the transition of hollywood to lodz. the valley girls are working that night, and her curly hair goes along with the other valley girls being in vamp mode in order to better sell themselves. i am also positive that the women gruszka talks to are lanni and lori in different garb. when the camera moves back to the place where lanni with curly hair was, there is lanni again, except her hair is straight and her clothes look of the stylized poland. and then lori joins at her side. i have never doubted this fact, even on first viewing when my mind was spinning, i was able to tell them apart. i dont know what else to say. i admit that the girl in question in this thread behind gruszka does bear reselmbance to lanni, but only slightly. again, differnt noses, differnet eyes, more elongated face whereas lanni's is rounder...
i dont see how what they look like in other contexts does not matter. when i was trying to figure out who is who, it was necessary to go outside of IE for clarification, as not all the valley girls have entries on imdb. but again, even in IE, there are scenes with the valley girls that clearly distinguish each of their appearances, so i guess im just confused as to why there is confusion. i find it easy to tell them apart as well as to know that none of the valley girls play another character(i.e. the woman behind gruszka) because of their facial features.
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by applesnoranges »

JFK: OK, thanks. I'll assume that explanation then and watch for it. What you may have noticed is true: I can't tell people apart in movies unless they are made to look very, very different. For my first few viewings I couldn't be sure if I was watching Theroux or Lucas. I don't think this is only my inadequacy here; casting, wardrobe, makeup, etc. are arts of their own which can be articulated, so something is being expressed there about the transitions between the identities of the characters.

So now I wonder why she has been given curly hair for that scene. There must be more to it than just as part of an outfit for street walking. It must be something to do with distinguishing between the Hollywood and Lodz versions, and that the Hollywood version is seen in Lodz for a second tells us something. I think it tells us that we are seeing what someone sees, someone's dream.

As for the woman in back, I still don't have a clue, except that she is similarly dressed and on the street, so seems to be one of the street walkers there. I'm interested though.
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by applesnoranges »

Yes, I see that Curly is Lanni. She is especially identified as such in MTTH by being called that a number of times. It seems to me that the reason for that is to point out her identity when shown not only with a different hair style, but with what seems to be a different personality. (I don't think I'm the only one who wouldn't recognize her otherwise.) The personality of this character seems to have gone through as much of a transformation as Dern's. It's more than her just being in a different state of mind while on the street or even on drugs or anything like that. Same for Lori (whom I am guessing is the woman in pink who knocks away the bottle). Early in the movie they seem to be almost twins, almost the same person with two bodies. But here they clearly have no sense of sisterhood at all.

So this brings up another aspect of the question of why she has that hair style in L.A., then for a second or two in Lodz, and then returns to her previous appearance similar to at the barbecue scene. It's another aspect because, for now, I had been thinking it was something like the two halves of the story being dreamed by one person. But the difference between the appearance and attitude of the two characters at the barbecue, chatting in Smithy's House, and on the street (especially dramatized in MTTH) seems to be accountable as different versions of one character dreamed by different people. I don't yet see how to reconcile the two.

One other thing that sticks in my mind. The line, "Tonight will be different." (Because it is.)
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by JFK »

i forgot one thing
they are also the two woman in the "Room to Dream" scene on that DVD. maybe that is why i was able to tell them apart in IE, as i had seen them quite awhile before i saw IE.

"yes tonight will be different" is interesting. i can only think of the hollywood and vine scene at the end of the film.
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by applesnoranges »

Yes, I saw them there. I was going to mention that too. But why the curly hair follows Lanni into Poland for a second and then changes I'll have to just hold as a question for now. No new thoughts. I do see why the girl in back reminds you of Ormond's relationship to Dern on Hwd. Blvd. No new thoughts there either for now.

But I have another question and have had for some time. What is different about Lori and Lanni from the others? They are the ones with the "Look at me" line, they are the ones that escort Dern's character to "the street", who greet her at the barbecue, and they are the ones who run down the hall at the end (twice). Yet in some scenes they seem to be part of the gang of other girls.
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by Carl »

I don't think they are 'different', just that it seems to provide more thematic effect when the same two girls deliver the same lines.
**As others have said, the girls, in general, seem to represent a part of the WIT's identity ( maybe in the Past) that she has repressed. They are explicitly shown as hookers ( who in effect turn sex into a RPG). Nikki, lost in her own Role, perhaps senses that she needs to remember that 'one becomes what one pretends to be.'
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by moscatomg »

JFK, on at least a couple of occasions you talk of "L.B." with some degree of certainty--more so, as if "L.B." is a person and not simply some cryptic initials printed on Nikki/Sue's hand. Nowhere have I read anyone write with such sureness or assumption about these initials. However, from these posts, I can't make out who you believe "L.B." is or stands for? Can you be more specific about this point? I would really like to know, especially if someone has that one (so far elusive) convincing answer.
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Re: who is s/he?

Post by JFK »

first id like to say that one of my main ideas about IE is that the primary characters(nikki, lost girl, piotrek, devon, the phantom) are self-aware that they are characters in the film IE and, as such, that they are in (our) reality, simply actors. ive found it easier to just refer to the actor's real names for the many incarnations they play, because sometimes(such as piotrek in the polish scenes) they are not even a named character and remain an abstraction of that actor. my usage of L.B. as refering to a "character" is shorthand for one of the personas dern plays. i used the term in reference to the dern of the monologue with Mr. K, the street whore, the persona that is beyond the character of nikki grace and sue blue, and may be the amalgamation of dern's and gruszka's characters. the L.B. on her hand comes and goes, and changes orientation. as dern's character also does an hour into the film, where she is lost "in the story", to quote kingsley, living as, not playing, sue blue. and then at the two hour mark, sue blue starts to crack up, fragmenting, doubling(the two derns on opposite sides of the street) into who ive refered to as L.B.(since those initals are one of her unique traits which distinguish her from the characters of nikki and sue, and that "character" dern plays is not refered to by name in the last parts of the film) sure the monologue is peppered throughout the film, but another idea i have about the film is that time has no linear progression, and much of IE can be seen as taking place at the same time(to quote vistor #1 "i suppose if it were 9:45, i would think it was after midnight", and the many semantic variations on today and tomorrow spoken about by different actors). so we see dern in different personas in a non-linear(from the audient's point of view) way throughout IE. i do not pretend to know resolutely what "L.B." actually stands for, or how and why it is on her hand. only that the dern with L.B. on her hand is a different persona than that of nikki or sue(different, but still part of the greater whole of dern within IE). but, as ive said, this is a film with very little objectivity, so this is but my interpetation and way of understanding the film. that being so, just from these threads on this messageboard, my interpetation has also been shaped by all of you too. somewhere in there is a metaphor for the experience of cinema, which, if id have to give a limited synopsis of IE(beyond "a woman in trouble" and the mortality play aspect of the film that is about paying for the consequences of ones actions, especially metaphysically), then this is what i see its all about. but im not sure i can or even want to put that into words. if i havent answered your question i apologize. there are multiple levels or dimensions that IE works in, and this is only mine.
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