p.s., before anyone suggests that 'silencio' is Spanish for 'silence,' I found this Italian proverb on the web:

"Il silencio è d'oro e la parola è d'argento." (Speech is silver, silence is golden.)

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Adam Pound:

First, I haven't listened to the Flak commentary, so forgive me if I'm repeating that interpretation.

Now, I'm always surprised at how people view Mulholland Drive primarily as an intellectual mystery to be solved, rather than as one of the saddest, most emotionally devastating movies ever made. Anyway, I'll get back to that. Here are some thoughts...

As far as the two halves of the movie being equally 'real', I think that the film's structure itself prevents that interpretation: the fact that the second half comes temporally after the first immediately makes it more 'real'. Also, it's clearly Diane who falls asleep at the beginning of the movie, as her awakening before 'the second half' is clearly a counterpoint to that beginning. Taking it as a given that Diane is the 'narrator' of the first half, the interesting question, to me, is whether she is still the 'narrator' of the second half. The striking difference between the two halves is that in the first half Betty is never judged (Rita is a non-entity, which Betty/Diane can form as she will), while in the second half she is always judged-- she is cast out of her 'small god' status, cast out into the world, always aware (almost exclusively) of how other people judge her. The distinction has little to do with 'sordid' versus 'sentimental', and everything to do with experiencing the world as being-for-yourself versus being-for-others (to steal Hegel and Sartre's terms). This is why the second half seems more real-- because Camilla is an Other as Rita is not-- Camilla can judge Diane, and Diane is always aware of herself as an object to be judged. Since Camilla's judgements seem imbued with cruelty, I think that it is still Diane who 'narrates' the second half-- an omniscient narrator would not be so subjective. Which only supports your view that both halves are equally real: each half presents a picture of a mode of existence, and both modes of experiencing the world are equally real, and are interdependent.

But, as I said before, the second half is more real because it comes after the first, which brings me to the movie's 'plot'. You describe it as 'one woman's disillusionment', but that strikes me as a tremendous oversimplification. It's not disillusionment, it's heartbreak-- the realization that the Other whom Diane loved (i.e. whom she wanted to be an object for) has chosen another object instead. Since Diane's objectivity has been cast aside by Camilla, her place as an object in the world is unstable, and she can only view herself as the repulsive object that tried desperately to cling to the Subject (Camilla). Thus, she tries desperately to reassert her Subjectivity, by reducing the other Subject to an object-- which she can only do by killing it (a drastic Eternal Sunshine procedure). And isn't this what so many people do after a breakup, when they suddenly decide they must hate that person who they loved a month or two earlier? Of course, Diane really did love Camilla, she really did view her as the ultimate Subject; so, having killed Camilla, Diane only exists through her memories of Camilla-- specifically, memories of killing her. Having killed the infinite subject, Diane has no choice but to kill herself, the finite object.