I think David Lynch's Inland Empire is interesting for about an hour, but after about a third or so of its runtime and after we've jumped from one thing to another and back to something else before finishing on an item which I think was supposed to tie it all together but I'm not sure, the film looses sight. Here is a piece that will leap from people dressed in rabbit suits ironing and talking on the telephone whilst acting in a TV sitcom; to a look at somebody experiencing unrequited love; to a bunch of what I presume to be Polish gangsters doing what it is they do; to the tale about production of a film adapting a cursed fable and then onto something else entirely different in the slight hope you're still keeping up. Perhaps that's the point; perhaps nobody can keep up, much like in the vein of, who I think is the lead character in Laura Dern's Nikki Grace, cannot keep up with her world around her which is rapidly spiralling out of control; maybe that's the point: maybe it's all one big viewpoint of a film within a film from someone severely deranged.
Whatever it is, it is interesting if only for a while. There is a point you zone out, a point in which everything collapses in on itself by way of the amount of stuff that Lynch continues to pile on top of you. Just as I was starting to figure out why it was that a certain rabbit in a mock TV sitcom was sitting on a sofa in a specific manner was linked to a Polish prostitute and the stalker on the set of a film production which is having a second crack at getting made, was I bombarded with a scene in which I was forced into calculating what binded a jam-like substance vomiting clown had in common with a troupe of dancing bikini-clad women.
You can call it avant-garde, you can call it what you like; but the underlying message I got out of Inland Empire was that the world is a strange and disorientating place, and that it's alright to exist within it and be a little confused now and again. The film begins with some sort of footage resembling a mock-undercover trafficking documentary, the kind that sees the faces of those that are guilty blurred out as hidden cameras capture all the evidence the authorities need to put the people on screen in prison. From here, we jump to the crying eye of a Polish girl as she watches a television, in what seems to be a self-referential sequence linked to the capturing of one's gaze as she sits looking transfixed and evoking emotion over a number of rabbits pottering about on the TV screen, talking out of sync and evoking warm laughter from a diegetic audience despite not actually doing anything. Later, the room will revealed to be sort of connected to the wider (real?) world when Dern's character seems to stumble across it – is the Polish girl aware of, or indeed actually watching, the plight of Dern's character within Inland Empire? Does that render Dern's fictional character a fictional character within a fictional piece? Most probably and not at all both at once.
Dern's character is an actress called Nikki Grace, at least initially. When we first see her in the place she plies her trade, that being a studio set, we get some deliberately soppy romance genre-infused music as it becomes apparent her next project is an adaptation of a supposedly doomed piece of Polish literature; doomed in the sense it has an uncanny reputation in having whatever acting talent that plays its lead roles die mysteriously. Nikki must spend some time with actor and co-worker for the piece Devon Berk (Theroux), someone she unexpectedly falls in love with. At least I'm pretty sure this is what happens. There are only very few occasions Lynch informs you of what's actually going on, or provides you with stone wall occasions in which you think you know what's going on. Nikki's period of panic as she comes to terms with what she's done in spending the night with Devon is highlighted when the aforementioned sequence in a blood red drenched bedroom evokes terror amongst the audience when generic sensibilities of mockumentary and romance clash with an approach of pure avant-garde.
Rather depressingly, Inland Empire is, I think, border-line nonsense which, in a somewhat merciful manner, does feel like it's actually about something at sporadic, intermittent times. There are occasions the film leads you into thinking you've sort of cracked what's going on, but, rather annoyingly, I think it takes more pleasure in pulling out the rug from beneath you more than it does in delivering a comprehensive film-watching experience for you. Sure, there were times I was unnerved but what I was unnerved at, I have no idea - any film can plunge the audience into the unknown with a digital video aesthetic; low-level lighting plus off the wall content and get a desired effect of sheer panic born out of ambiguity. I'm torn with the piece - I didn't hate Inland Empire; I cannot recommend it but then again, I cannot explain it although there are those that cannot either but give the go ahead in seeing it anyway. It's an ambitious piece; a piece that feigns as if you need your head tuned in at all times but might very well work just as well if the viewer is less attentive that first appears. I don't ask for a film-going experience to spell everything out for me, but I ask for a degree of clarity; and in Inland Empire there simply isn't that degree. It got people talking upon its first release in 2006, and it'll continue to get people talking more in time, but I wonder if anyone actually knows just what it is they're all talking about.
Whatever it is, it is interesting if only for a while. There is a point you zone out, a point in which everything collapses in on itself by way of the amount of stuff that Lynch continues to pile on top of you. Just as I was starting to figure out why it was that a certain rabbit in a mock TV sitcom was sitting on a sofa in a specific manner was linked to a Polish prostitute and the stalker on the set of a film production which is having a second crack at getting made, was I bombarded with a scene in which I was forced into calculating what binded a jam-like substance vomiting clown had in common with a troupe of dancing bikini-clad women.
You can call it avant-garde, you can call it what you like; but the underlying message I got out of Inland Empire was that the world is a strange and disorientating place, and that it's alright to exist within it and be a little confused now and again. The film begins with some sort of footage resembling a mock-undercover trafficking documentary, the kind that sees the faces of those that are guilty blurred out as hidden cameras capture all the evidence the authorities need to put the people on screen in prison. From here, we jump to the crying eye of a Polish girl as she watches a television, in what seems to be a self-referential sequence linked to the capturing of one's gaze as she sits looking transfixed and evoking emotion over a number of rabbits pottering about on the TV screen, talking out of sync and evoking warm laughter from a diegetic audience despite not actually doing anything. Later, the room will revealed to be sort of connected to the wider (real?) world when Dern's character seems to stumble across it – is the Polish girl aware of, or indeed actually watching, the plight of Dern's character within Inland Empire? Does that render Dern's fictional character a fictional character within a fictional piece? Most probably and not at all both at once.
Dern's character is an actress called Nikki Grace, at least initially. When we first see her in the place she plies her trade, that being a studio set, we get some deliberately soppy romance genre-infused music as it becomes apparent her next project is an adaptation of a supposedly doomed piece of Polish literature; doomed in the sense it has an uncanny reputation in having whatever acting talent that plays its lead roles die mysteriously. Nikki must spend some time with actor and co-worker for the piece Devon Berk (Theroux), someone she unexpectedly falls in love with. At least I'm pretty sure this is what happens. There are only very few occasions Lynch informs you of what's actually going on, or provides you with stone wall occasions in which you think you know what's going on. Nikki's period of panic as she comes to terms with what she's done in spending the night with Devon is highlighted when the aforementioned sequence in a blood red drenched bedroom evokes terror amongst the audience when generic sensibilities of mockumentary and romance clash with an approach of pure avant-garde.
Rather depressingly, Inland Empire is, I think, border-line nonsense which, in a somewhat merciful manner, does feel like it's actually about something at sporadic, intermittent times. There are occasions the film leads you into thinking you've sort of cracked what's going on, but, rather annoyingly, I think it takes more pleasure in pulling out the rug from beneath you more than it does in delivering a comprehensive film-watching experience for you. Sure, there were times I was unnerved but what I was unnerved at, I have no idea - any film can plunge the audience into the unknown with a digital video aesthetic; low-level lighting plus off the wall content and get a desired effect of sheer panic born out of ambiguity. I'm torn with the piece - I didn't hate Inland Empire; I cannot recommend it but then again, I cannot explain it although there are those that cannot either but give the go ahead in seeing it anyway. It's an ambitious piece; a piece that feigns as if you need your head tuned in at all times but might very well work just as well if the viewer is less attentive that first appears. I don't ask for a film-going experience to spell everything out for me, but I ask for a degree of clarity; and in Inland Empire there simply isn't that degree. It got people talking upon its first release in 2006, and it'll continue to get people talking more in time, but I wonder if anyone actually knows just what it is they're all talking about.