jürgen fauth’s muckworld

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. ****

• My review at worldfilm

[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]

Didn’t have the patience. Caveh Zahedi does an admirably honest and mildly entertaining job dramatizing his life, but perhaps it’s a little too honest and not quite entertaining enough. Do I really want to watch some guy reenact his rape fantasies with a porn star, or have him tell me about his masturbation habits as if there was nothing more fascinating in the world? Do you?

So I turned it off. Unprofessional, I suppose, but there’s a war on and a film festival and I really can’t be bothered. But here’s what’s curious: if this wasn’t advertised as a true story, I’m sure I would have yanked it much sooner–so there’s a lesson here about memoir vs. fiction.

I Am a Sex Addict, Caveh Zahedi, 2006. *

Bodily fluids flow freely and passions run high in Lower City, Sérgio Machado’s oh-so-earnest debut film about a love triangle between two friends and a prostitute. Brazilian actress Alice Braga almost carries the movie. Lower City opens today. Read Marcy’s review.

Fascinating life, dull biography. Patrick McGilligan’s book could have used some editing–there are typos everywhere and in the later years, he bogs down into the repetitive format of contentious pre-production, awful shooting anecdotes, mixed critical recepetion, repeat. Lang was quite a character though–from the early Weimar years to the (probably made-up) meeting with Goebbels to his emigration and Hollywood years. There is some evidence that Fritz shot his first wife, his second wife went over to the Nazis, and his third wife had to take calls from prostitutes after his death at 85: “Haven’t you heard? He’s dead.”