Inland Empire

According to Internet Movie Database (imdb.com): “During a conversation between David Lynch and Laura Dern, Laura mentioned that her husband was from the Inland Empire (an area east of Los Angeles County, including Riverside and San Bernadino County). Lynch confesses he stopped listening to what she was saying because he loved the sound of the words "Inland Empire", and finally decided on these words as the title of his movie because "I like the word inland. And I like the word empire."

The whole movie is like that, an abstract and seemingly random collage. I don’t think there are fifteen consecutive minutes of immediately comprehensible film. 172 minute movie. It makes “Eraserhead” look like a commercial film.

At the beginning of the movie the plot seems to be about an actress named Nikki (Laura Dern) who gets a part in a movie without knowing that it’s cursed. Trying to describe the rest of the “plot” doesn’t seem worthwhile, or even possible at this point. It’s shot on video, which is often effective in this movie, but equally often tough to watch.

There are several non-sequitur scenes that are very effective in the context of the movie (if that makes any sense). There’s a scene in which a Japanese street person sitting on Hollywood Boulevard tells another street person about her sexually abused prostitute friend with an absurdly severe wound. After literally hours of incomprehensible sequences, this brief narrative is hilarious. At another point, after an endless series of trips down dark corridors, a group of trashy girls in house dancing to "The Loco-Motion" is a huge relief.

Speaking of dark corridors, this is the third film in which David Lynch makes liberal use of what’s becoming his signature for me these days – the build up of suspense with no pay off. There’s nobody better at building suspense – appropriate lighting, music, sounds, timing, creeping down dingy hallways. Most of the time, however, there’s no climax, we never get to the scare. When there is a scare, it’s made all the more effective by the previous false starts. He can also present more subtle imagery as being scary because the audience is already prepped to freak out. In “Inland Empire” the spooky build-ups seem to have multiplied out of control, which gets monotonous, but for some strange reason I don’t mind the fact itself that there’s typically no pay-off.

I can’t imagine anyone who I would recommend this movie to. If you’re a big David Lynch fan this movie won’t need a recommendation, you’ll just know what you’re getting into beforehand and deal with it. Though this was a difficult movie to get through, it was very effective in inspiring me to get creative. I had the very same reaction to “Mulholland Dr.”. Time to do some analytical reading.

P.S. Per Wikipedia: In an NPR "Weekend Edition" interview, Laura Dern recounted a conversation she had with one of the movie's new producers. He asked if Lynch was joking when he requested a one-legged woman, a monkey and a lumberjack by 3:15. "Yeah, you're on a David Lynch movie, dude," Dern replied. "Sit back and enjoy the ride." Dern reported that by 4 p.m. they were filming with the requested individuals.