Some thoughts on INLAND EMPIRE.



Having seen David Lynch’s ‘Inland Empire’ on Sunday night, (and having coincidentally suffered from constant, crippling headaches ever since), I would venture the opinion that it is hands down the best film released so far this century (certainly the best I have seen). I am truly awed.

Rest assured - the various critics / idiots who have proceeded this film like the four horsemen, moaning deathlessly about it’s self-indulgence, incomprehensibility, tedium… forget ‘em. Dullards with little understanding of what Lynch is doing and too little sense to appreciate a genuinely powerful expression of cinematic art when one is placed before them.

A thorough analysis of ‘Inland Empire’ could (and hopefully one day will) fill books, so for the moment I’m gonna keep things brief and give you an overall low-down of my impressions of the film:

1. Lynchness

'Inland Empire' is Mega-Lynch, Uber-Lynch, more unrefined Lynch than one could ever hope to see, the towering pinnacle of Lynchitude. Thus far, this is the apex of Lynch with all that entails. There is enough Lynch-meat to keep Lynch scholars chewing for years to come.

You want the established Lynch signifiers? Well you got ‘em!
Every box on my old ‘Lynch correspondences’ sheet ticked.
Plenty of new elements to add to the on-going… whatever it is… too, but I won’t give those away.

The main thing that differentiates ‘Inland Empire’ from prior work in Lynch terms though is this:

The previous films (with the exception of ‘Eraserhead’) have been content to occasionally meander (or leap) into The Other Place / Weird Evil World / Lynch-Space (delete as applicable) before returning to the ‘real’ world as the audience breathes a sigh of relief. ‘Inland Empire’ on the other hand plunges into Lynch-Space within the opening 45 minutes and NEVER LEAVES.

The prior winner in terms of Lynch-Space intensity was ‘Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me’ (his other square-upsetting box office failure you will note), but ‘Inland Empire’ gives us a full world tour from the inside out (maybe the inscrutable title hints at this intention).

2. Cinematic and technical stuff:

On this level, ‘Inland Empire’ is absolutely STUNNING.

Going by the grumpy and misleading advance word on the film, I was half-expecting some patience-testing marathon of blurry black & white, wobbly camera-work, abstract long-shots etc. Well not a bit of it!

In purely visual terms, this is the most thrilling, imaginative, beautiful and unique thing I have seem at a first-run cinema since, well... ever. There are sections where I swear I could have been watching some bizarro Lynch-Space reinterpretation of (Fellini's) '8 1/2'.

If Digital Video allows people to get their artistic vision across with this much power and clarity, then bring it on, and a bit of pixilation be damned!

Oh, and seriously: see this one on the big screen. It’s worth it.

3. Emotional reaction:

I realise this should hardly be a surprise given his previous work, but for a film allegedly lacking in any conventional narrative (obviously it isn’t, but more of that later), the range of powerful emotions 'Inland Empire' commands from the viewer is incredible. Even when you've lost any solid grasp of who characters are or what they're doing, the film nonetheless keeps you profoundly connected to them and the feelings they're experiencing, a connection which is only intensified by the masterfully expressionistic cinematic technique.

People have been saying this is a 'dark', 'nightmarish' film, and yes, it is, more deeply so than any other film you're likely see this decade.... but it is most definitely NOT a cold or alienating film; for every moment of tormented misery or stark, screaming terror there is another of spell-binding beauty or utter hilarity...

...ah yes, the hilarity: there aren't quite as many laffs in 'Inland Empire' I would have appreciated (being a particular fan of Lynch's oft-misunderstood sense of humour), but the ones which are there are absolutely EXQUISITE. I laughed myself half to death in places, before being terrified to the point of blackout by the very next scene... did all these people proclaiming it "boring" actually watch the same film I did??

4. Explanation / Plot Interpretation:

Ok, the big one. This section is, I suppose, largely for the benefit of those who have already seen the film, so if you haven’t, you might like to skip forward.

For the rest of us, let’s lay down some theories:

4.1 A good reductionist strategy for those who find themselves wanting to approach Lynch films as purely psychological/emotional investigations: ‘Inland Empire’ is about an actress who is given a big part in a film. She has traumatic stuff in her past. She goes mad. This film = her experience of madness.

4.2 An online forum poster suggests that the vast majority of the film makes clar, linear sense if you keep track of it’s movements / intersections between three separate strands: 1. The story of actors filming a movie, 2. Footage from the movie that's being filmed, and 3. The (Polish, scary) events upon which film is based. Harry Dean Stanton’s speech toward the start of the film about the origins of “On High in Blue Tomorrows” is obviously the focal point of understanding these three strands. This interpretation is straightforward, helpful and allows the viewer to get the most out of the film’s drama and mystery I think.

4.3 Another poster on a different forum suggests that the whole Hollywood-set sections of the film are the aspirational dream of the crying Polish woman who is watching the rabbits. Thus the central axis of the film centres on a conflict of identity as the Hollywood fantasy(?) world tries to retain it’s shape against the intrusion of brutal Eastern European reality, the woman’s traumatic experiences twisting the latter into unspeakable shapes of terror and violation as she hopelessly begs salvation from her already corrupted Hollywood alter-ego.

4.4 Or, let me know YOUR favoured interpretation and I’ll add it in here. That the film allows all of the above, plus no doubt hundreds of other personal understandings, to fit perfectly over it like an Ordinance Survey grid of the senses, reveals the crystalline genius of it’s construction. BUT, we should remember the golden rule: never mistake the map for the territory. It would be singularly disappointing to try to believe ‘Inland Empire’ has anything like an objective ‘X = Y, The End’ meaning, no matter how much we might have tried to squeeze one out of Lynch in the past. ‘Inland Empire’s beauty lies in it’s capacity as a cipher for innumerable stories; perhaps a different one for each individual viewing experience.

5. Miscellaneous questions / talking points (a few of many):

5.1 The ‘rabbit’ sections of ‘Inland Empire’ are extracted directly from a series of short films entitled ‘Rabbits’ which David Lynch released via his website a few years ago. He described the project simply as follows:

"In a nameless city deluged by a continuous rain... three rabbits live with a fearful mystery"

You can watch them here.

5.2 About two thirds of the way through the film, the tough-Laura who is telling her story to the guy in glasses on the top floor talks about a sinister carnie called ‘The Phantom’. But the film’s ‘in order of appearance’ cast-list reveals that ‘The Phantom’ was actually the THIRD PERSON WHO APPEARED ON SCREEN…. Who is he?

5.3 What does the phrase ‘Inland Empire’ mean – specifically, where is it? And who is the man who has gone there? Is it just me, or does the completely confounding scene where those two guys (the Polish husband and the man who was controlling access to the Rabbits room at the start of the film?) drive to the shack in the middle of the woods in search of this man form in some strange sense the very CENTRE of the film? The sort of axis of it? No?

5.4 So – ‘AxxoM’, the significance of ‘4 7’ – does anyone even want to give it a shot?

5.5 The cigarette-burn-thru-silk trick: could this be the first explicitly revealed folk-magick method of opening up Lynch-Space? Fascinating stuff; could very easily be a Burroughs-esque ‘gimmick’ too, if Burroughs had ever dared truck in feminine imagery.

5.6 Are they gonna release a soundtrack to this movie?? It would be insane!

6. Conclusion:

If you have a genuine interest in film, an active mind and a human heart, please DO NOT miss the opportunity to see ‘Inland Empire’ in the cinema.