David Lynch's Inland Empire
June 21st 2007 07:49
Inland Empire (2006), his first feature in five years, is possibly the strangest, most perplexing full-length film he has ever made. Even Eraserhead (1976) comes across as having a vaguely linear narrative when compared to Inland Empire. It’s taken two years for the movie to reach the shores down under, due mostly to distribution problems (it aggravates distributors no end when you present them with a three-hour film that defies conventional plotting or narrative, even if you are David Lynch).
So what's my motivation again?
Director Kingsley Stewart
Assistant director and troubled star
Nikki ... or is that Susan ... delves deeper
Inland Empire might very well be David Lynch’s lost masterpiece. “Lost” is the operative word here. Nikki Grace is also Susan Blue. But which character is the real person? Which reality is fiction? Which situation is a fabrication? Where does one narrative thread pause and the next begin? Inland Empire is loaded for individual interpretation. Convoluted to the point of abstraction, yet hauntingly serene. Sub-text floats like flotsam and jetsam. There is more rampant symbolism being thrust into the film’s mise-en-scene than a Sigmund Freud lecture!
Certainly there are key themes being explored; identity, trust, deception, sex, death, role-playing, even the transparent element of expectation. It could be safe to assume (correction: nothing is safe in a Lynch film) that Inland Empire is the third part to a "trilogy" which began with Lost Highway (1997) and was followed by Mulholland Drive (2001). Each of these films deals with multiple distorted perspectives. Characters striving to understand a predicament they find themselves helpless in, becoming further embroiled in a “foreign” realm of danger and desire, mischief and menace.
Welcome to Lynchland
Inland Empire is a brilliant dream of dark and troubling things (to use the words of the maestro himself). Lynch not only wrote and directed, but he produced, shot and cut the film too, as well as camera operated (along with a few others), and provided the superb sound design. This is arguably Lynch’s most personal film, if only for the technical aspects.
The Lynchian Mist of Logic
Because Lynch has a body of work that is, on the whole, very similar in terms of mood and themes, context and atmosphere, we are familiar with his style and technique, and so are prepared for his diversions, we allow him to lead us into unknown territory. For the most part we actually relish this director for doing so, since very few filmmakers with the imagination of Lynch’s get to have casts and technicians as talented as the ones he uses.
There's always time for a song and dance!
David Lynch, the smirking maverick in the dark tower.
Inland Empire, the nightmare noir for romantic cinephiliacs.
Here are two trailers (US and French):
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Comment by David
A new Lynch film?
That's enough for me.
Daivd ...
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
I am even more anxious to see this film now.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Coffee? I make a fine brew, you know ...
Comment by Damo
I may need to see this just for the bunnies.
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Cibby, perplexed? Um, that'll be putting it mildly. Leave your thinking cap at the door and just enjoy the ride.
Comment by Fashion
Fashionista Files
Generally I agree with you on the approach to Lynch. He's so fascinating as an instigator of thoughts, not a concluder.
Have you seen his artwork with the plaster moulds filled with meat, left in the sun and then when they're covered by small creatures Lynch coated them with resin and hung them on a wall. Way cool.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
He was an artist before a filmmaker .... No, I haven't seen the meat works. It does sound interesting.
We are conditioned into watching an accepting conventional film narrative, so that when someone presents a narrative that operates in a non-linear fashion we either think its peretentious or self-indulgent, yet we are frequently bombarded by images and concepts in life which we don't necessarily always understand, so why should we have to understand everything in a cinematic context?
I feel Lynch employs enough intelligence into his films that I never feel he's simply jerking off, if you know what I mean ... There are other directors who I think are far more self-indulgent, and far less clever. The films of Catherine Breillet (Romance, Fat Girl, Anatomy of Hell) annoy the pants off me. For me she is pretentious. I don't get anything from her movies. Actually that's not entirely true, I did get something from Fat Girl, but the other two I can't stand.
Comment by Miswanderlust
Killer Beats
Ramble On
Hipnotherapy
I am so glad to hear that David Lynch has a film "in the oven". Can't wait!
Mis
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile