Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Inland Empire / USA/Poland/France / 2006

“And [the producer] took me aside and he said, ‘Laura, David called me this morning, I can’t figure out if it’s a joke.’ I said, ‘What did he say?’ He said, ‘Bring me a one-legged woman, a monkey, and a lumberjack by 3:15.’ I said, ‘Yeah, you’re on a David Lynch movie, dude, just sit back and enjoy the ride.’”

—Laura Dern, NPR Interview

Interesting that the most terrifying film in years comes from an American, and David Lynch at that. For three hours, Lynch toys with the divisions between reality and dream-like cinematic fiction—are we looking at actress Nikki Grace or Susan Blue, the character she’s portraying?—until the end of the second hour, when Nikki/Susan has crumbled into a raving, disoriented mass of something (a pregnant actress/character/housewife/hooker who, because of a domineering husband/boss/director, must do away with her “trouble”). What could easily have been a simple, 90-minute narrative by Lynch is shuffled, mixed with a sitcom featuring humanoid rabbits and an inconsistent laugh track, a “Locomotion” dance sequence with streetwalkers, a prostitute and her john with blurred faces, various foreign languages mixed with long moments of silence, a red lamp, tacky furniture and a deep strumming song made by the director himself, and so on. And just when we think the film has ended, that Nikki/Susan has finally found an inkling of peace in death, a camera is shown hovering over her seemingly lifeless body. She rises, and the film—the nightmare—continues. (And if you think I’ve spoiled the film for you, guess again.) Without a doubt it is Inland Empire’s most startling image, as it confounds our beliefs in what is and isn’t real. It manipulates our emotions—Nikki, stabbed and bleeding, elicits our sympathy as she staggers down symbolic Hollywood Boulevard, completely ignored, until we see the camera pull back, hear the director yell “print.”

While dissecting Inland Empire seems compulsory—I think Leo’s on the right track with his comparisons between the analogous objectifications of women and hookers in Hollywood—Lynch’s films are better when left as hyper-brutal mysteries. Everything herein forms an exquisite, confounding film that, in more ways than one, serves as yet another biting critique of Hollywood. And by the man who, in marketing this film, employed coffee, coasters, a sidewalk and a cow. For once my need to know, my need to analyze and understand, is trumped by my desire to remain an outsider—an observer of Lynch’s stark menagerie of beautiful, hapless misery.

Jenny’s Review
Leo’s Review
Rumsey’s Thoughts
Beth’s Thoughts
more of Leo’s Thoughts

by Adam Balz | Source: Asymetrical / Studio Canal Plus 35mm print
11 Feb 2007 1:59 PM | Comments (4)

Comments / 4 total / Submit Comment

1. Andrew Wyatt / 12 February 2007 / 5:04 AM

   While dissecting Inland Empire seems compulsory—I think Leo’s on the right track with his comparisons between the analogous objectifications of women and hookers in Hollywood—Lynch’s films are better when left as hyper-brutal mysteries.

   I’m not sure I agree with this. Among my friends and I, there are three of us that are die-hard Lynch fans, and the pleasures of his films always seem less experiential than retrospective. We enjoy the act of watching his films, to be sure, but the meticulous, elliptical deconstruction that follows is what seduces us. Maybe we just enjoy sounding like pseudo-intellectuals and blue-skying strange theories with one another. To me, the moment a Lynch film ends, when we turn to one another and say, “What the hell was that all about?,” is when the real fun begins. It’s also one of the reasons every Lynch film seems to improve upon multiple viewings. (I remember fondly watching Lost Highway for the first time on video, and once it ended, everyone in the room agreeing that we needed to rewind it and immediately watch it again.)

   Regardless, we are waiting for Inland Empire to arrive in our benighted Midwestern venues with all the anticipation of a fourteen-year-old girl squealing over the next Harry Potter film.

2. Adam B / 12 February 2007 / 5:37 AM / URL

   “Regardless, we are waiting for Inland Empire to arrive in our benighted Midwestern venues with all the anticipation of a fourteen-year-old girl squealing over the next Harry Potter film.”

   Odd, that was how I spent much of 2006. And also being from the Midwest, I can tell you that the three-hour drive to Chicago to see this film was well worth it. And while the first hour of our drive back was filled with theories over the true meaning—my friend and I could only agree on one thing, that the “Locomotion” dance sequence was awesome—I often think that discovering the true intentions of a Lynch film can (though not always, in the case of Mulholland Drive) take away some of the film’s wicked magic. Still, meaning or not, I was floored by Inland Empire and will, without a doubt, return to it in the near future.

3. Andrew Wyatt / 12 February 2007 / 4:04 PM

   I often think that discovering the true intentions of a Lynch film can (though not always, in the case of Mulholland Drive) take away some of the film’s wicked magic

   Do you know if Lynch has ever talked about his own feelings on the extensive analysis to which his films are often subjected? Does he approve, disapprove, not care? Does he intend for his films to be deconstructed? I recently saw Michael Haneke’s Caché—a film with some similarities to Lost Highway—and it seems to be designed to be deconstructed, if for no other reason than the main characters are often shown deconstructing videos themselves. (Paradoxically, unlike Lynch’s later films—Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive—Caché doesn’t seem to have an Answer or Solution, or at least one that is not ludicrously post-modern.)

   Deconstruction or not, no director seems to so throughly grasp or so beautifully recreate the strange logic of the dreamworld like Lynch. (Adrian Lyne got nightmare right with his magnun opus, Jacob’s Ladder, but hasn’t done much of anything noteworthy since, and has been insufferably imitated by hordes of B-horror directors.) The jumbled, slightly uncanny feel of the world of dreams seems uniquely Lynch’s province.

   At any rate, I’m anxiously awaiting Empire. It’s encouraging to hear that so many Lynch fans are embracing the new film.

4. Adam B. / 13 February 2007 / 5:39 AM / URL

   ANDREA SHAY, NPR INTERVIEWER: “Now, if you think Lynch is going to deconstruct Inland Empire, or any of his films, think again. He never explains his movies.”

   DAVID LYNCH: “Why? Because a film should stand on its own. Nothing should be added, nothing should be subtracted. It is that, it’s that, and it took a long way to get it to be just that way. So, you just take your punches. People can interpret it anyway, it’s super-cool for me, and they can walk out. But as soon as you say certain things, that’s what it becomes.”

   So, an ambiguous answer—deconstruction is fine, but it hurts how you will forever view the film. And now, for you reading pleasure: Cache.