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.
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.
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