jürgen fauth’s muckworld

The films of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul occupy a fertile space between narrative and art object, where simple interactions accumulate and gain weight in a web of meaning that is held together as much by space and mood as it is by character and story. Like Tropical Malady, his new film consists of two parts, both involving a love story between doctors. The press notes explain that what can just barely called the plot is loosely based on the memories of Weerasethakul’s parents.

Both halves of the film are set in hospitals, one in the past and the other in the present, and Syndromes and a Century is probably the strangest hospital drama since Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom: Buddhist monks come to tell their nightmares and finagle pills for their entire temple, dentists sing cowboy songs, and boozing chakra healers hide their liqour in prosthetic legs. One doctor tells a lengthy tale about wild orchids, another supposes that DDT stands for “Destroy Dirty Things.” Presents are exchanged, reincarnation is discussed, hearts are — perhaps — broken.

Among recent films, the surrealist pull of Syndromes and a Century doesn’t resemble anything as much as David Lynch’s Inland Empire, bathed in sunlight and freed from violent threats. Both films have a fragmented, time-bending structure in which themes and motifs return and form strange connections. Both directors are fond of dreamlike sequences in which the camera prowls hallways to a brooding score, and both culminate in bizarre, catchy musical numbers. But here the similarities end. While Lynch dregs shocking epiphanies from the gunk of the subconscious, Weerasethakul’s mysteries lie right on the surface, in the obvious, seemingly trivial moments that are riddle and answer at once. Opens in April.

Sang sattawat. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006. ****

• Rotten Tomatoes
• At the 2006 New York Film Festival
• Official Site
• More Inland Empire, Links
• After the jump, the trailer

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The outrageous imagery of David Lynch works in mysterious ways, seeping into your dreams and gestating in your subconscious. Eraserhead presents me with a particular riddle: I was convinced I’d never seen the movie, yet felt instantly familiar with it. Did Lynch’s subsequent work fill in the blanks as if through osmosis, or–more likely–had I seen Eraserhead at such an unripe, impressionable age that my disturbed mind suppressed the memory? Either way, there it was, and I knew it: the way Henry steps into the puddle, the awkward dinner with Family X, the Radiator Lady and her song, and of course the baby, the naked helpless freakin’ baby with its shiny skin, festering sores, and butcher window eyes.

Here’s what Lynch says about Eraserhead in Catching the Big Fish:

Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is.

Eraserhead was growing in a certain way, and I didn’t know what it meant. I was looking for a key to unlock what these sequences were saying. Of course, I understood some of it; but I didn’t know the thing that just pulled it all together. And it was a struggle. So, I got out my Bible and I started reading. And one day, I read a sentence. And I closed the Bible, because that was it; that was it. And then I saw the thing as a whole. And it fulfilled this vision for me, 100 percent.

I don’t think I’ll ever say what that sentence was.

Eraserhead. David Lynch, 1977. ****

[tags]david lynch, eraserhead, 4 stars, film, bible, baby, fathers, surreal[/tags]

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.

The reason Inland Empire works so goddamn well, I think, is the structure. It’s like Trey said at Coventry: I just wanted to see how weird I could get and still have people dance to it. On the Koyaanisqatsi commentary track, Philip Glass talks about leaving space between the images and the music–the key, he says, is to leave a room for the audience, for their ideas and imagination (his example were the maneuvering jumbo jets with the etherial voices.) Somehow, Inland Empire leaves tremendous spaces without ever quite snapping the tenuous lines of connection that hold the entire thing together. It’s a strange film, but you can definitely dance to it.

A woman in trouble. The tagline suggests an entire narrative, and it’s there. Inland Empire is structurally sound; once again, you can map a hero’s journey onto the film–with hookers doing the locomotion and talking bunnies, but still a hero’s journey. Scene by scene, it’s extraordinarily compelling and loaded with clues, cross-references, and payoffs to reward and further confuse the viewer. In Catching the Big Fish, Lynch likens ideas to fish, and he says he likes to dive deep: “Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.” Because of its many disparate parts, and its length, Inland Empire is difficult to contain in words, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible to grasp it. And indeed, it’s huge and abstract, and very beautiful. It’s also very, very funny.

Some things to watch out for the next time you see Inland Empire: What do whores do? Who is the Phantom, and what kind of an “opening” is he looking for? “It has something to do with the telling of time”–so is it 9:45, or after midnight? Who lost their son? What does the tatoo on Nikki’s right hand mean? Who has a way with animals? What are the rabbits waiting for? Who’s a freaaaaak? “Take a good look and tell me if you’ve known me before.” Is there a bus to Pomona? You’re in a movie theater, in the dark, before they bring up the lights. Keep up with your angle vis-a-vis the screen. Is there murder in On High in Blue Tomorrows? And what is the significance of the bright light?

Inland Empire. David Lynch, 2006. *****

• On seeing Inland Empire for the third time
• Official Site with theatrical schedule
• David Lynch’s forthcoming book, Catching the Big Fish
• Manohla Dargis’ Review
• My review on Worldfilm
• Andrew O’Hehir interviews David Lynch
• Inland Empire on RT: 52%

[tags]film, 5 stars, laura dern, david lynch, inland empire, surreal, rabbits, ifc center, koyaanisqatsi, philip glass, trey anastasio, hero’s journey[/tags]

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.

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. David Lynch, 1992. ***

[tags]surreal, film, david lynch, twin peaks, great went, phish, 3 stars, prequel, murder[/tags]

A scene from David Lynch’s 2002 short film Rabbits. Parts of this were repurposed for Inland Empire.

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” 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.

Mulholland Dr., David Lynch, 2001. *****

[tags]mulholland drive, naomi watts, david lynch, hollywood, films, 5 stars, surreal, dreamlogic[/tags]

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]