Inland Empire
Posted by Maggie Van Ostrand (maggie@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 25, 2007
Black and white to color, varying speeds, different languages, from the snows of Poland to the palms of Hollywood, and such extreme close-ups that you know now that one of Laura Dern’s nostrils is narrower than the other. A member of the audience will find himself inside a Kafkaesque nightmare. One must wonder what David Lynch’s dreams are like in real life.
As Thomas Wolfe wrote in stream of consciousness, so David Lynch films in stream of subconsciousness. His own, we presume. Inland Empire was written and directed by Lynch who also composed and performs some of the music and, based on what we can see in the disc 2 extras, paints, devises some props and creates sets.
Inland Empire (Lynch insists all letters be capitalized) is his first film in five years. Apparently, he was storing up bizarre incidents the entire time and now lets ‘em fly. The best way to see this is to stay as loose as water. Don’t try to find a plot line or anything literal. Take each scene as it comes and if one seems to appear to connect with another one, let it go anyway. Otherwise you’ll end up in the Rubber Ramada in the room next to Lynch. Let me put it another way. In Inland Empire, a family of humans with the heads of rabbits are the normal ones.
We can understand why Lynch uses subtitles when the characters are speaking Polish, but not when they’re speaking English, as he does in a great scene where a homeless Asian girl is telling a story, in English. At the very end of the film, we see a monkey cavorting in a hotel lobby (he may or may not be the monkey in the story relayed by the Asian girl, which belongs to a woman from Pomona with a hole in her vagina), prostitutes dancing and singing to “Sinner Man” (Nina Simone), and some unexplained guy sawing away at large log. I think that last guy was just a prop man who asked Lynch for extra work.
We believe all the characters so beautifully played by Laura Dern, who also co-produced, are really facets of the same woman but then, who can ever be sure? And we have not seen such a weird director as Jeremy Irons portrays since Peter O’Toole’s maniacal turn in The Stunt Man.
Such a surreal experience as Inland Empire is like being carried along on a swollen river with no destination, except maybe death.
The film is long at three hours, some moments of which don’t exactly race along, but when they do, the intensity is exhausting. It would not surprise FSR to learn that walkers were given out at the premiere to aid people in leaving the theater. Lynch has given us a profoundly unnerving experience and, whether you appreciate it or not, you won’t forget it.
The Upside: Some of the fringe greats of Hollywood appear briefly, such as Diane Ladd, William H. Macy, Julia Ormand and Harry Dean Stanton, not to mention the greatest cult actress of them all, Grace Zabriskie.
The Downside: Someone from Crest should tell Jeremy Irons to quit brushing his teeth in the Yangtze River.
Notes: Extras include stills, more things that happened, a ballerina scene that was cut from the final print, trailers, an interview with Lynch, stories, and quinoa, which is food.
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