My views on the film's baffling ending.

hugonme, that is a brilliant interpretation! Now I'm going to have to watch the movie again with that in mind. My interpretation was that this movie is about the destruction of an innocent. The innocent in this case, instead of being the standard-issue young girl, is a sweet-natured middle-aged man. I started viewing the entire movie in terms of hell. The nasty studio manager is a mid-level demon, tormenting everyone around him. The director is Satan - outwardly charming, but really deeply evil. The two poker-faced watermelon slayers are minor demons. When the one guy offers Gilderoy a piece of watermelon and he takes it, he's made a silent bargain with them, unwittingly agreeing to enter into this world of horror, depravity, and evil.

Yes, thank you. That is exactly what I thought, I'm glad I'm not the only one.

It was at the first scene where Gilderoy is dubbed in Italian that I came up with this theory too. That scene is the same as an earlier one in the movie, only this time it's dubbed in Italian. This is what the Italian filmmakers made out of that scene, which they shot secretly.*

I think they edited the footage they shot of Gilderoy in such a way that it seems he becomes a crazy killer. When we see him torturing the new voice actress with the sound, that is just extra footage they shot that he doesn't know about. It could just be him turning some knobs with the sound and extra footage edited in.

Also, when he wakes up because someone's knocking at his door, he then takes a knife, opens the door and enters the other room. This is probably what they were aiming for (though they couldn't be sure what he'd do exactly, they probably expected him to do something along those lines). They must have been very pleased to get that shot.

The scene where the woman tries to stab him in his sleep, is real. This gives the Italians their final scene, where the "crazy killer" dies. This also takes care of Gilderoy, so he can't take action against them because of what they did to him. Or he doesn't die and that is the ending of their movie, after which they'll dispose of him in another way.

Some people here are talking about how the film is about Gilderoy going mad. Who knows, that could be true. But maybe in "our" theory, the movie that the Italians tried to make (the one Gilderoy is an unknowing actor in) is about just that (except in this movie, none of it is in his imagination, like some suggest, and he actually goes on a killing spree).

But, why?
Because they wanted their movie to have a realistic feel, and they're willing to go very far for that.

* The only problem I have with this theory is how they were able to shoot it so well and keep it a secret from him (i.e. hide the camera's). My best explanation is that, like the storyline, the camerawork is a mix of the Italian movie and the actual movie we just watched.

I'm loving all these different interpretations although I would say mine differs greatly and maybe I'm alone on this one but here's how I saw it.

I feel like Gilderoy is either a lonely schizophrenic man spending his days in the "shed" they keep referencing thorughout the film, having these delusions about working on this insane horror film (that really just represents his depraved subconscious with imagery, metaphors and hints that explain the true details of his story/trauma) OR he's a mentally ill/madman living in an insane asylum. The sound studio literally looks like the hallways of a medical hospital and the girl at the front desk is increasingly uninterested in what Gilderoy has to say as if he's just insane patient she hates dealing with. In the scene where he finally demands his phone call with the superior who's meant to reimburse him, the man sounds like nothing more than a doctor telling a delusional patient that his flight never existed... a lot of this doesn't "exist"... etc. etc....

I think it could really be a mix of both of what I mentioned. Gilderoy seems like a very disturbed man, perhaps he was once a sound editor for those innocent films he used to make but having lost his mind he now spends his days alone, and the simple sounds of him cooking are enough to feed his imagination into believing he's a part of this horror film where every sound reminds him of an act of violence he wants to commit... hence all the transition shots. Most of them begin in his room with innocent acts of cooking or cutting food and transition into a scene from something awful happening in the "horror film" (the one I believe is just fragments of his disturbed subconscious manifesting themselves in the form of a film and a film's sound design, which plays an important part in his life as it's probably an art he loves or holds dear)

I'm sure it sounds like kind of a stretch but there are just a lot of mysteries tossed in the film that I don't see as anything other than David Lynchesque metaphors. There are a lot of allusions to religion, the constant repetition of the prayers and religious motifs. Crosses are seen in the studio AND in his room. That could represent some form of repression or abuse due to a heavy religious upbringing... the letter he receives from his MUM is him recalling the time that HE in fact killed all those chicks outside his house, perhaps when he was a young disturbed boy. This is the film telling us his first symptoms. Later there's a scene where a response is written on a random piece of paper with what seems to be a reply to her saying "yeah I think it's just the magpies"... he's lying.

Another big scene for me is the one where the director forces the fruit into Gilderoy's mouth... he tells him "swallow the seed"... c'mon... this is almost heavy handed sexual abuse imagery. It's awful and nasty to think about... but hey, so is the film he's "working on" (aka his subconscious). That scene is there for a reason. The SILENZIO reccurring image can even refer to how his abuser would order him to be SILENT during the ordeal. Oh god.

The scene where he becomes too repulsed to continue to participate in... they mention he's "sticking the picker into her vagina"... idk maybe his mom would force him to have sexual relations with her? Perhaps in the "shed" they keep mentioning... he even mentions in the beginning of the film that his studio is "ONLY ABLE TO FIT 2 PEOPLE"... and that's why he completely loses himself in the lettuce stabbing scene... in "REAL LIFE" he's at home just cutting lettuce but in the film, in HIS MIND he's picturing himself stabbing his mom, getting revenge... maybe he actually did already, hence the murder scene, or the scene where the actress is yelling in the booth "getting killed". Hell, later one the actress leaves his "film/mind" and attempts to be replaced with another who eventually CANT replace the original. And SHE recites the letter his MUM sent him WORD FOR WORD later!

I'm sure I sound like i'm stretching for some of these but it's not uncommon for films like this to be mostly collections of abstract submeanings of a larger, subconscious picture. I think of Lynch films, Altman's 3 Women and the recent film Enemy, all the same way. And I'm definitely not the kind of anal/obsessive person who tries to find meaningless symbolism in everything, I truly don't, I just really really did in this film.

Anyone else see things this way somewhat more or less at all at all? Lol whatever this film means, I loved it.

I recall a scene where a woman tries to stab Gilderoy in his sleep, who awakes and struggles with her. Your theory would cope with this how? The scene simply fades out and there's no further explanation for it whatsoever. If he wasn't aware of it, I doubt he'd ever awake from sleep in such a movie-like fashion. Given he did arise, we should assume he was somewhat conscious of what was going on, in which case the theory provides no explanation for. If he was aware, then what is this? A fourth layer? Frankly, this movie seems pointless, an artistic exercise of sorts and not else.

I wondered as I watched Berberian, if Strickland had been influenced by Greenaway's The Draughtsman's Contract, which has the same idea of a craftsman being seduced into playing a part in some conspiracy (if it is that) that he has no knowledge of. Just speculating. I found that your movie>movie>movie analysis is fascinating.