franzelneekburm

I'd say that's a little oversimplified. It's not so much that Hollywood is "fake", but (as you said earlier) that cinema in general is not real, I don't think that's meant in a derogatory manner.

Take the Silencio scene for example, 'Llorando' isn't "fake" in the sense that the criticism is often leveled against Hollywood, rather it's beautiful and moving and has a profound effect on the audience; it's just not real, and apparently it's execution is quite taxing on the performers.

I don't think the whole "dream" thing is a cop-out, rather just an attempt to placate (at least somewhat) the people he knew would be crying 'WTF???'. I (and probably many of those who enjoyed the movie) would've been perfectly happy if the transition between the two "realities" had no explanation whatsoever. The whole point of it was that Lynch is getting two completely different emotional responses from the audience, with the same cast of characters. You only need the contrivances if you insist on a literal interpretation of the whole thing as some sort of metaphore.

Oh, and so what if it's indulgent? All of cinema is, people just seem to get upset when they personally don't have an interest in a specific indulgence that the director did.