I realize that my choice as the best film of the year is not exactly undisputable. I know many people that quit this film before even finishing it from sheer frustration or disgust. I hate to sound like an elitist, but I truly think that most people just missed the point of this film. I have heard so many of its fans say that they have watched it dozens of times and have finally figured out the mysterious and tangled plot, and each time I shake my head. When are people going to be able to recognize a non-narrative film? I’ll grant that this movie does at first appear to have a plot going, but by the end of the film it should be obvious that this is not a linear storyline. It is possible that I missed the mark just like everyone else, but I feel that this film is clearly meant to be viewed as a dream from start to finish. The photography, the dialogue, the cheesy performances in the early part of the film, the graphically detailed sexual fantasies, the strange and indecipherable symbols, all of it has an undeniably dream-like quality and is no more understandable or explainable than your average night’s dream, or nightmare for that matter. The movie moves in and out of different stories, with the characters acting normally sometimes, and illogically other times. The director, David Lynch, is known for his very strange characters and stories, but I believe he has finally found his calling with this film. He has explored the depths of the human subconscious and recreated it in a way that no other filmmaker ever has. We don’t really know who is having this dream, but that doesn’t matter; we are experiencing in the full glory and bizarreness the dreams of someone else, which is something that we would never be able to experience outside of the movies. David Lynch has taken us to a place we could never go in our normal lives, and that is the true value and beauty of the motion picture.