Watching
Inland Empire, I got the feeling
that David Lynch has gone as far, in this particular direction
at least, as he could go. The film is like a big mulligan’s
stew into which Lynch has thrown all of his previous themes,
motifs, obsessions, and stylistic tics. The critics naturally
fall into two camps: one group rolling its eyes or giggling
at Lynch’s willful obscurity, the other in awe at the
film’s genius. I find myself, however, in a critical
no-man’s land between them. I wish I didn’t.
Lynch’s most characteristic films are dream plays of
the mind, dramas of intense and disoriented inwardness. In
Lost Highway and Mulholland
Drive, for instance, the key to understanding
lies in a single event or situation from which the resulting
fantasy/nightmare emerges. Which isn’t to say that the
mystery disappears once the key is grasped: a Lynch film is
not like a whodunit where things fall into rational order
once you “figure it out.” Dreams remain weird
and unsettling, even when they reveal their own kind of logic.
In Inland Empire, on the other hand, Lynch has thrown
away the key. There is a meaning, or multiple meanings, but
our attention is directed to the labyrinth of fear and repression
that frustrates the search. The following, to the best of
my feeble ability, is what appears to be occurring on screen.
Nikki (Laura Dern), a movie actress living in a coldly luxurious
home in Hollywood, is visited by an eccentric old Polish lady
who makes some disconcerting predictions regarding Nikki’s
career. Suddenly it’s the next day, and Nikki has been
offered a role in a picture taking place in the South, with
lots of
romance and adultery, and she soon meets her director (Jeremy
Irons) and co-star (Justin Theroux). The screenwriter (Harry
Dean Stanton) reveals that this is actually an old script
being reworked. The previous script was based on a Polish
gypsy folktale of some kind. The truth is, the original film
was never made because there was some sort of curse on it—apparently
the leads were murdered.
Parallel to all this, there is an enigmatic scene, or memory,
of a Polish prostitute and a john, which is somehow connected
to the despair of a young woman quietly freaking out in a
hotel room while she watches a play on TV in which the actors
sport large rabbit heads.
Nikki starts an affair with her co-star, or perhaps it’s
just her character in the movie having an affair with her
co-star’s character. Or more likely, they’re the
same thing. Nikki’s husband is a sinister expatriate
Pole with shady connections of some sort. As the picture goes
on, Dern morphs into a different woman than the actress we
first meet. Constantly struggling to find her way through
winding hallways and staircases, an interview with an enigmatic
interrogator shows her to be a tough, white trash street person
with a long history of abuse by men, as well as self-abuse
in various forms. She searches for “Billy” (the
name of her co-star’s character), for power over a sort
of “other” woman played by Julia Ormond, and for
a memory that always seems to escape her regarding a man,
or a boy, perhaps her son. The Southern movie set seems to
be connected to her own house, the house of her rival (Ormond),
and a brothel. After being stabbed, she lies down to die with
a couple of other homeless people on a street corner, but
then…this turns out to be part of the movie. Or is it?
Describing the film this way (and believe me, there is much
more that I left out) makes it almost sound like fun, but
it’s not, and I don’t think it’s meant to
be. The dominant mood is stunned horror mixed with anxious
foreboding and puzzlement. Lynch seems to be linking dread
with the mechanics of film language itself
rather than dramatic content or plot details. Thus we have
music and editing that yells “climax!” or “significance!”
without matching what we’re actually seeing. The viewer
is put in the position of always looking for the next clue
or surprise, as if the situation or character around the next
corner will finally resolve things for us, but we just keep
going. Like the hapless sufferer in a recurring dream, Dern’s
character (and the viewer) returns to the same spooky winding
hallways, the same alleys or staircases, the same doorway
that she’s not sure she wants to open, and then…another
hallway, room, door, mystery. Lynch keeps everything at the
same level of tension, with few heights or valleys, and it
really becomes an endurance test for the audience. It’s
not that the film is boring or inept—not at all. But
Lynch's deliberate focus on absurd banalities (is this a device
to prevent the dreamer from discovering the truth?) can almost
make you grind your teeth. In one scene, there's a whole dialogue
involving the question of how to catch a bus to Pomona.
If there’s one theme that takes prominence in Inland
Empire, albeit quite gradually and as if in a fog or
stupor, it’s the idea of leering, self-satisfied misogyny.
A group of nubile whores, in the brothel to which Dern’s
dazed character has somehow
wandered, talk about their own objectified bodies in the most
banal way you could imagine, as if this was the way that women
are supposed to think. One of Nikki’s repeated lines
in the film is “There was this man I once knew…”
which seems to be the starting point for whatever memory she
can’t grasp. Her metamorphosis into a ravaged street
person is somehow linked with her adultery, as if the violation
of her husband’s ownership (there is no other word to
describe his attitude towards her) plunged her into a world
of whores. The film links sex, romance and marriage with an
empty, even ghostly, sense of acting and performance, and
women’s self-perception (in the male-dictated world)
as permeated with the image of the whore. Nikki’s struggle
in the final reel can be seen, then, as a struggle against
this self-perception, a sort of rescue of the different parts
of herself.
This by no means exhausts the many-layered puzzles of Inland
Empire. Nor does it resolve my own ambivalence about
the film. It’s shot in digital video, and it has a soft,
visual quality that matches the picture’s vague and
elusive screenplay. The free-floating atmospherics often seem
overdone, with Lynch throwing everything into the mix just
to make you feel exhausted—at one point there’s
even a shot of a twitching man speaking in an electronic beep-stutter
a la Twin Peaks. Despite its length, the movie seems
unfinished, perhaps intentionally, like those white spaces
in Cezanne’s later work. Inland Empire never
coheres into a whole work, but quite a few of the parts are
fascinating. The film’s inwardness is fragmented. If
you go along for the ride, expect it to be bumpy.
Watching
Inland Empire, I got the feeling
that David Lynch has gone as far, in this particular direction
at least, as he could go. The film is like a big mulligan’s
stew into which Lynch has thrown all of his previous themes,
motifs, obsessions, and stylistic tics. The critics naturally
fall into two camps: one group rolling its eyes or giggling
at Lynch’s willful obscurity, the other in awe at the
film’s genius. I find myself, however, in a critical
no-man’s land between them. I wish I didn’t. 
In Inland Empire, on the other hand, Lynch has thrown
away the key. There is a meaning, or multiple meanings, but
our attention is directed to the labyrinth of fear and repression
that frustrates the search. The following, to the best of
my feeble ability, is what appears to be occurring on screen.
of
romance and adultery, and she soon meets her director (Jeremy
Irons) and co-star (Justin Theroux). The screenwriter (Harry
Dean Stanton) reveals that this is actually an old script
being reworked. The previous script was based on a Polish
gypsy folktale of some kind. The truth is, the original film
was never made because there was some sort of curse on it—apparently
the leads were murdered. 
Nikki starts an affair with her co-star, or perhaps it’s
just her character in the movie having an affair with her
co-star’s character. Or more likely, they’re the
same thing. Nikki’s husband is a sinister expatriate
Pole with shady connections of some sort. As the picture goes
on, Dern morphs into a different woman than the actress we
first meet. Constantly struggling to find her way through
winding hallways and staircases, an interview with an enigmatic
interrogator shows her to be a tough, white trash street person
with a long history of abuse by men, as well as self-abuse
in various forms. She searches for “Billy” (the
name of her co-star’s character), for power over a sort
of “other” woman played by Julia Ormond, and for
a memory that always seems to escape her regarding a man,
or a boy, perhaps her son. The Southern movie set seems to
be connected to her own house, the house of her rival (Ormond),
and a brothel. After being stabbed, she lies down to die with
a couple of other homeless people on a street corner, but
then…this turns out to be part of the movie. Or is it?
itself
rather than dramatic content or plot details. Thus we have
music and editing that yells “climax!” or “significance!”
without matching what we’re actually seeing. The viewer
is put in the position of always looking for the next clue
or surprise, as if the situation or character around the next
corner will finally resolve things for us, but we just keep
going. Like the hapless sufferer in a recurring dream, Dern’s
character (and the viewer) returns to the same spooky winding
hallways, the same alleys or staircases, the same doorway
that she’s not sure she wants to open, and then…another
hallway, room, door, mystery. Lynch keeps everything at the
same level of tension, with few heights or valleys, and it
really becomes an endurance test for the audience. It’s
not that the film is boring or inept—not at all. But
Lynch's deliberate focus on absurd banalities (is this a device
to prevent the dreamer from discovering the truth?) can almost
make you grind your teeth. In one scene, there's a whole dialogue
involving the question of how to catch a bus to Pomona. 
somehow
wandered, talk about their own objectified bodies in the most
banal way you could imagine, as if this was the way that women
are supposed to think. One of Nikki’s repeated lines
in the film is “There was this man I once knew…”
which seems to be the starting point for whatever memory she
can’t grasp. Her metamorphosis into a ravaged street
person is somehow linked with her adultery, as if the violation
of her husband’s ownership (there is no other word to
describe his attitude towards her) plunged her into a world
of whores. The film links sex, romance and marriage with an
empty, even ghostly, sense of acting and performance, and
women’s self-perception (in the male-dictated world)
as permeated with the image of the whore. Nikki’s struggle
in the final reel can be seen, then, as a struggle against
this self-perception, a sort of rescue of the different parts
of herself.
This by no means exhausts the many-layered puzzles of Inland
Empire. Nor does it resolve my own ambivalence about
the film. It’s shot in digital video, and it has a soft,
visual quality that matches the picture’s vague and
elusive screenplay. The free-floating atmospherics often seem
overdone, with Lynch throwing everything into the mix just
to make you feel exhausted—at one point there’s
even a shot of a twitching man speaking in an electronic beep-stutter
a la Twin Peaks. Despite its length, the movie seems
unfinished, perhaps intentionally, like those white spaces
in Cezanne’s later work. Inland Empire never
coheres into a whole work, but quite a few of the parts are
fascinating. The film’s inwardness is fragmented. If
you go along for the ride, expect it to be bumpy.