Inland Empire

While perusing the movie listings of the local paper, often disheartened by the innocuous and inconsequential fare that they advertise, it is helpful to remember that there are those directors whose most recent feature films are a genuine event, a significant and all too infrequent glimpse into the tantalizing and profound power and beauty of the medium. David Lynch is most certainly a member of this group even though his work has never attracted the mainstream popularity of, say, Stanley Kubrick or Martin Scorsese. Given the idiosyncratic and experimental nature of his output it would be surprising indeed if Lynch transcended his status as a cult figure, yet even if his audience is smaller, his vision less entrenched in the collective cinematic psyche, it makes the arrival of a new film from him no less momentous than those of more celebrated auteurs. Six years have passed since Mulholland Drive seduced and bewildered us, leaving in its wake near unanimous critical praise and an impressive distillation of all things Lynch. Now we have Inland Empire, a dark, mind-bending collage of movie actors, directors, 19th century Poland, prostitutes galore, and a throwback sitcom of giant rabbits complete with laugh-track. While not a radical departure from previous films (there are some of the usual Lynch trademarks such as red curtains, women in distress, ominous and atmospheric sound, ect.) Inland Empire, with its rather dark and sometimes grainy digital veneer is a new and almost alien creation. Even those well-versed in the visual lexicon of the “Jimmy Stewart from Mars” may well concede that, once viewed, Lynch’s latest work will most surely deserve that often misused phrase “it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen.”

The tagline on the movie poster reads “A woman in trouble.” That deceptively simple sentence actually turns out to be the best synopsis one can provide when attempting to describe the film. Laura Dern, in two or possibly three roles, plays an actress whose latest film turns out to be cursed, and finds her inner mental states beginning to deteriorate until it is difficult if not downright impossible to separate her identity from her onscreen self as well as that of her alternate reality self. I think. There is no linear progression though the film is not plot-less, as some critics seem to think. According to Lynch the creative process involved the filming of seemingly disconnected ideas that revealed a hidden unity after their completion, resulting in (his own words) “a story.” The difficulty of interpretation is that we often rely on narrative methods more suited for a stage play. Lynch came to film through painting, and Inland Empire is perhaps his best realization of the concept of “a moving painting”, a concept which guided him towards film in the first place. So although a story of some sort does exist within its frame perhaps it is useful to understand this film at least in part as an experience and interpretation of a series of reoccurring symbols and metaphors that visually tell a story. It is not wholly visual nor wholly dialogue: the narrative is not dispensable but neither is it primary. For David Lynch atmosphere is everything, and Inland Empire is its own world, a dark and brooding realm where subconscious struggles are visually signified in an almost hallucinatory way.

Ostensibly, the film appears concerned with the female psyche and its continual degradation and abuse at the hands of men who fetishize it for their own satisfaction and oppress it in order to reinforce their own dominance. The inner state in which Laura Dern wanders is dark but not exactly a wasteland. In it the recovery of identity becomes the key that will ultimately unlock the door to liberation. At times Inland Empire plays out like a surrealist exploitation flick with a gun wielding Laura Dern attempting to set things right, while at other times turning into a sophisticated horror film, where an almost palpable sense of psychological dread and grotesqueness permeates every square inch of available screen space. The nimble balancing act of the oddly beautiful with the darkness of the mind’s harsh lairs, the slow stirring of anticipation, the inimitable critique of Hollywood fantasy are all noteworthy achievements, but most impressive is Lynch’s ability to weave these dream-like deconstructive bits into an enigmatic but alluring whole. This is ambitious work but it will probably meet with a mixed reception due to its darker, more experimental elements. Where Mulholland Drive possessed a certain flair that one critic described as being akin to “the pop of a whore’s lip gloss”, Inland Empire is a darker, grittier affair where in extreme close ups faces are almost stretched in the manner of a fun-house mirror and the surrealism never ceases. Perhaps it is destined for a fate similar to that of Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, another lengthy, technically significant excursion whose other merits are not immediately evident. Walking out of the theater my mind was reeling: time had been in some sense altered and my senses had not been assaulted but probed. This was a new experience: the light of cinema cast on a mysterious and inner land where the rays cannot penetrate but only dimly and beautifully reflect the strange manifestations that inhabit this realm.

Pan's Labyrinth

What a joy it is to find a film that captures the true nature of a fairy tale. All too often films with a fantastical dimension resort to cuteness and sentimentality in order to become more palatable to children or extreme darkness and gore to court the older viewer. Yet director Guillermo del Toro manages to strike that delicate balance of innocence and evil and by doing so acknowledges a duality that exists in all good fairy tales: beauty and cruelty. Pan’s Labyrinth has both of these qualities; it is hauntingly beautiful and yet savagely cruel. The story centers on Ofelia, a young girl who accompanies her pregnant mother to the country to stay with her new stepfather, Captain Vidal, a fascist who is fighting the rebels in post-civil war Spain. The Captain is the father of the unborn child but upon their arrival Ofelia finds she dislikes him and later insists “he is not my father.”

Immediately after arriving in a countryside brutally ravaged by the last throws of the civil war, Ofelia, a lover of books and fairy tales, begins to find signs of enchantment in the form of a flying insect that she recognizes as a fairy. Sure enough, the creature is able to morph its winged, slender, stick-like shape into a flying sprite that eventually leads her through a stone maze, or labyrinth, and into the underworld where she meets a faun (presumably a version of Pan though del Toro says that Pan and the faun are not one and the same) who informs her that she is the princess of this realm. Long ago she left it for the world of light and forgot her father and his kingdom, but her spirit has returned in the form of Ofelia. She is given three tasks to perform to prove herself as the princess, and meets a pair of fantastical monsters along the way. The first is a giant toad that lives underground beneath a tree, and the second is the Pale man, a towering, white, nearly androgynous creature whose eyes are in his hands rather than on his face. It must be said that the special effects and visual style of the film are astonishing, not because they create something we have never conceived, but because the fantastic creations onscreen are so organic. Every thing in Pan’s Labyrinth is so visceral and tangible that it seems to have sprouted from the earth.

This film may be compared to The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Spirited Away, and Alice in Wonderland. It may have many striking similarities with C.S. Lewis’ creation, and the young female protagonist alone in a strange and enchanted world is a trait common to them all. Another is originality. Though Pan’s Labyrinth is said to have borrowed from classical mythology, fairy tales, the classic Spanish film Spirit of the Beehive, and Borges, it takes its inspiration from these rich sources and creates its own distinctive world and populates it with creatures of a most relatable sort. Some are noble and virtuous, others despicable and horrific, but none are mere archetypes and this is its brilliance. It may be impossible to sympathize with Captain Vidal, but his unwavering discipline and commitment to his military cause reveals a man of intense though ultimately inhuman devotion. A quick study of history or even perusing One Hundred Years of Solitude will give you similar characters. Undoubtedly, del Toro’s film is ripe with political symbolism though my ignorance of this era and its conflict leaves me with only the basest of interpretations. Still, some of them are very hard not to see or at least dimly perceive, and it is the issue of perception that reverberates most loudly throughout Pan’s Labyrinth. Which is the real world and which the imaginative? Or are they one and the same? Which is more real, the Pale man or Captain Vidal? Which is more terrifying? The wonderful ambiguity that results from attempting to distinguish reality from fantasy is wonderfully articulated by New York Times critic A.O. Scott when he says “Pan’s Labyrinth is a political fable in the guise of a fairy tale. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Does the moral structure of the children’s story – with its clearly marked poles of good and evil, its narrative of dispossession and vindication – illuminate the nature of authoritarian rule? Or does the movie reveal fascism as a terrible fairy tale brought to life?” Perhaps the film leaves us somewhere in-between: remembering a beautiful, enchanting dream, but seeming to exist, in the words of A.O. Scott, “in the hard blue twilight of a world beyond the reach of fantasy.”

Before Sunrise, Before Sunset

What is love? Do we see it when it is right before our eyes? What is happiness? What about meaning and purpose for our lives? Can they be found? An assortment of these and other questions are what constitute the heart of Richard Linklater’s pair of films Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. The pseudo-intellectual and philosophical ruminations of early adulthood are given a graceful screen treatment that manages to capture these innate longings and speculations with patience and affection. The principal characters are Jesse (Ethan Hawke), an American student on vacation, and Celine (Julie Delpy), a French student on her way back to La Sorbonne. Their chance encounter is introduced in Before Sunrise when they meet on a train and spend a day and night walking through Vienna. Before Sunset is another look at them ten years later in Paris. Each film is essentially an extended conversation conducted against an iconic European backdrop that revels not only in the uncanny connection forged by two lovers but also in the art of conversing itself. It is as if each film is an ode to thoughtful yet pedestrian dialogue.

An American film with European preoccupations is rare (perhaps now we may even say that a European film with European preoccupations is rare!) but the wonderfully meandering and open-ended nature of each of these films recalls the aesthetic of such classic art-house fare as L’Avventura or La Dolce Vita. As there is practically no plot to speak of it may be said that nothing happens, and this is true so far as it is extended towards the traditional plot that introduces conflict and ends in resolution. No one is murdered, or betrayed, there is no bank heist or courtroom soliloquy. The significant action is internal: the common ground staked out by two young people, in love with the world and each other, who are all too aware of the tenuous nature of their desire.

Each film’s visual beauty is enhanced not only by the sumptuous locales, but also by the careful framing of faces and the lengthy tracking shots that heighten the experience of shared time. Richard Linklater and Kim Krizan wrote the first screenplay: they were aided in their efforts for the sequel by Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, making the story’s second half a decidedly collaborative affair. Particularly memorable are the contributions by Julie Delpy, whose beautiful performance of an original song is followed by an endearing impression of Nina Simone that helps bring Before Sunset to a graceful close.