Inland Empire
October 1st, 2006
How do you review someone else’s bad dream? With a sprained ankle swollen to the size of a coconut, I found myself joining the other insomniacs and hardcore cinephiles at an ungodly hour to see David Lynch’s first movie in five years. His latest plumbing of the unconscious is three hours long and his first shot on crappy digital video, but not the first to play like “a wicked dream that seizes the heart,” nor is it the first featuring Laura Dern, shifting identities, and creepy characters doing truly creepy things. William H Macy announces: “Hollywood, California, where stars make dreams and dreams make stars!” After Justin Theroux, Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton deliver some hesitant exposition about a movie with a history of murder, a suburban BBQ party is overrun by Eastern European carnies, a Kafkaesque interrogator listens to Dern’s curse-word peppered confession, a gaggle of hookers dances the locomotion, and blood is vomited up on the Walk of Fame.
Inland Empire is so Lynchian that it often appears to veer into self-parody, but somehow this works for the film: like the bizarre sitcom where everybody wears a rabbit mask, the laugh track at the Walter Reade was disconcertingly out of whack. Three hours later, while the rest of America gathered for church, we were watching prostitutes lip synch Nina Simone’s “Sinner Man” while a pet monkey frolicked and a man in a red wool cap sawed a log. Remember: there are consequences to one’s actions.
Inland Empire. David Lynch, 2006. ****
[tags]david lynch, pet monkey, prostitutes, laura dern, 4 stars, film, surreal, bad dreams, murder, poland, harry dean stanton, justin theroux, jeremy irons, hollywood, nina simone, sprained ankle, nyff[/tags]
October 7th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
YouTube video with highlights from the press conference
October 8th, 2006 at 11:31 am
[…] Had to watch this a few times after Inland Empire, just to regain a certain amount of sanity: it still makes a heck of a lot more sense than the latest three-hour freakout, especially if you take a look at some of the theories. Allen B Ruch’s “No Hay Banda” especially does a good job at teasing out some of what’s going on, and if that’s not enough, there’s an entire site dedicated to the film. I always thought that dreamlogic should stay dreamlogic, and while some of these theories go a long way toward making sense of Diane/Betty/Camilla/Rita (and even the Blue Box), Lynch included too many loose ends that will stick in your craw no matter how you try to resolve them. An astonishing movie that gets ever more astonishing the harder you try to unravel it. There’s a wholeness to it that I couldn’t see in Inland Empire after one viewing, and it looks stunning: it’d be a damn shame if Lynch really gave up film for DV. […]
October 9th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
[…] A scene from David Lynch’s 2002 short film Rabbits. Parts of this were repurposed for Inland Empire. […]
October 12th, 2006 at 12:28 am
[…] The INLAND EMPIRE-induced Lynch kick continues. Fire Walk with Me is the much darker prequel to the TV show and ends with Laura Palmer’s death. In retrospect, you can see Lynch groping toward equally untethered and disturbing but more rewarding and complete work like Mulholland Dr. The best scene is set to an endlessly repeating blues riff in a red and blue-strobing underground club, where Laura and Donner meet the Great Went. […]
November 16th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
[…] I lucked into an advance copy of David Lynch’s book about “meditation, consciousness, and creativity,” and it’s splendid. Composed of short sections, the book is equal parts inspirational guide to using your creativity, anecdotal autobiography, and advocacy for Transcendental Meditation. In simple, direct language, Lynch graciously shares what he has learned about living “the art life” and his techniques for “catching” and developing ideas. There are brief sections on all of his major films (including INLAND EMPIRE) and proud stories about meeting Fellini and hearing that Stanley Kubrick considered Eraserhead his favorite movie. I ripped through this in a day but I’m looking forward to savor individual bits again and again–a generous and inspiring little book. […]
December 3rd, 2006 at 3:48 pm
[…] You can watch good movies again and again, but only great movies get better every time. Helen Mirren is getting all the press for her outstanding performance as QEII, but the writing is what made that performance possible. Peter Morgan’s screenplay manages to be at once historically specific and archetypal, using a very unique week in English history to illustrate eternal truths about the balancing of power, innovation, and tradition, and he does it all with heartbreaking candor and genuine British wit. The Queen is superbly structured, doesn’t waste a second, and continues to reveal new layers of brilliance every time. I’m still trying to rewatch Shortbus, INLAND EMPIRE, Volver, and Pan’s Labyrinth before we vote for our awards next weekend, but this is definitely one of my absolute favorite movies of the year. […]
December 9th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
[…] You notice a lot seeing Inland Empire a second time. First of all, you realize you’ve been getting tired of capitalizing the title like that. Then, it sinks in that David Lynch is right: Inland Empire makes perfect sense–and it’s about a woman in trouble. […]
December 11th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
More and more interesting commentary about this movie is popping up online, so I made a page collecting the best articles.