The Purple Rose.. is a fantasy/romance movie by Woody Allen where a character from a movie falls in love with a "real" woman and steps of the screen starting a love affair with her. This begins to be a problem when the real guy who played the character in the film confronts his persona and demands that he return to the movie and everyone resume their "real" lives where movie character are fictional and people are real. There's more to it but this is essential. <br /><br />In IE Lynch puts forward the following basic idea that structures the whole movie and makes it have a meaning: what would happen if the characters in a film start assuming a "real" identity interfering with the "real" people? What if, added to this, those characters are only remakes of characters from an older film that was never finished because the actors were killed? In my opinion this is what the "curse" meant, that the fictional becomes real. This theme can be associated with Mullholand Dr. and the idea of illusion. Cinema is just an illusion, you can't actually "play it real when it gets real" because IT (cinema) never gets real. The character in Bergman's Persona (referenced in M Dr) stops talking because she feels the pointlessness of acting, that it never solves any real, life problems. <br /><br />I think the characters in IE are on the one hand the so-called "real" Nikki and Kingsley etc who make On High in Blue Tomorrows, the "fictional" Sue, Billy etc who are In the film and the Polish counterparts from the 47 unfinished movie. All of them are trying to find the passages that will give them their TOMORROW, their sense of being in time and space. Because the film is cursed and never finished the characters have a truncated identity. Just like the guy that comes down from the screen in Allen's movie has no idea you need keys to drive a car, the characters in IE have no idea that they sometimes play in a movie that is not theirs and has other rules. This is why sometimes they are bewildered that another character IS THERE, in their movie. The confusion maybe never really stops, though I think the Lost Girl character may be the only "real" character because she is the only one watching what all the others play, she is the only one who plays it for real. Her family reunion at the end may be also real and maybe her watching those movies on the screen is just a way to refuse to deal with real life problems, just as the girl from The Purple Rose...<br /><br />The Rabbits are a metaphor of entrapment given the fact they are only filmed from one perspective (in the series). In IE the perspective changes only once towards the end and it means that the characters are starting to find their way through the passages, through the rabbit holes, if you like, and maybe are getting somewhere. It may be that given the film is cursed there is no actual solution for none of the characters, they are meant to lurk in this disjoint world devoid of yesterdays and tomorrows, causality and agency. Actions have consequences only in real life not in a movie that as we know was filmed during five years (I think Lynch uses self-irony in IE). <br /><br />The first scene Lynch filmed was the one with the Polish actor coming out of the house with a light-bulb in his mouth. No movie is filmed in a linear manner, it may start with the end. But if the Polish movie was abandoned and assuming the hypothesis of the reality of its characters just think how emotionally and cognitively frustrated they must feel not knowing why their god the screenwriter made them as they are. Their actions have no consequences, a movie character can die today because the director films the last shot of the movie and he/she can happily make love the other day when another shot is filmed. <br /><br />Lynch knows very well cinema can play tricks! Don;t loose hope, no hay banda but there is a passage to get there...over the rainbow!