Inland Empire
(2006)
David Lynch’s last feature film (to date)
begins in typically Lynchian fashion; a scratchy record plays, subtitled Polish
is heard. Figures are seen in a hotel room, their faces blurred; one of them, a
woman (a prostitute), is then seen crying as she watches a peculiar “sitcom”
involving the domestic lives of characters with rabbit heads. The music on the
soundtrack suggests the kind of melancholy Julee Cruise evoked in decades past,
while the eerie sound effects are the director’s calling card.
Even more than the most obscure of the
filmmaker’s previous pictures, there appears to be an almost willful attempt
this time to elude any grasp of what is going on. This is most evident in
the rejection of a tangible narrative line. For the first third or so, there
appears to be an identifiable theme. Laura Dern’s Hollywood star is visited by
a gypsy woman (Grace Zabriskie) who proves to be typically unnerving and
semi-threatening. There are strange shifts in perspective and time. Zabriskie
informs Dern that she has the part she wants, before this is announced to Dern, and Dern sees “herself” talking
with friends on a sofa across the room.
As scenes unfold, Lynch makes it unclear
whether what we are experiencing relates to Dern or the role she is playing in
director Jeremy Irons’ film. In addition, we learn that the film is a remake of
a Polish film (47), based on an old folk tale, which went unfinished when the
leads were murdered. Entering into the storyline is Dern’s jealous and threatening
husband and Justin Theroux’s lothario male lead.
Many of the early scenes have a sense of
the surreal fracturing perspective and reality that are signature Lynch; one
memorable moment has Dern walk in on the other side of the stage, only to
realise that she represents the noise
and intrusion that caused a disturbance some days earlier. One can’t help but
think of The Shining in the references to urban myths, significant numbers and
confusing architectural geography. But the problem this time is that Lynch’s
choices become increasingly random. Not in a pleasurable way, but in one that
causes the film itself to lose overall cohesion. And, at three hours, it just
goes on… and on… and on…
Dern is outstanding, an actress who,
possibly due to insubstantial roles, I had never paid much attention to
before. And Justin Theroux, in his second film with Lynch, brings some
much-needed charisma to the screen (tellingly, he is absent for most of the
second half). Harry Dean Stanton makes a brief impression but the rest of the
known actors are in blink-and-you’ll-miss-them appearances (Diane Ladd, William
H Macy, Julia Ormond, Mary Steenburgen).
There’s clearly an extent to which this is
a meditation on the beast that is Hollywood and the fakery and artifice of its
function; the blurring of lines between playing a role and becoming it, to the
point that no one is sure what the truth is (so picking up from Mulholland Dr.). At around the halfway mark events
appear to veer off into a succession of abstracted encounters concerning Polish types and prostitutes and Polish prostitutes. And then Lynch brings it back round
to his main theme. Eventually.
But there’s no sense of discipline here,
something that could be found in even his most oblique earlier work (Lost
Highway). It’s almost as if he didn’t have a finished script (he didn’t). There’s
a point where a disturbing scene or image or sound no longer has any impact
because you are no longer engaged.
There’s little doubt that the restrictions
of finance frequently add to the unsettling nature of what we are seeing. There
is a raw quality resulting from the choice of hi-def photography that creates immediacy and a verité sense. But it also results in an absence of
the beautiful and seductive qualities that vied with the darkness and distortion
in his previous works.
It’s almost as the freedom of a micro-budget
(filmed on hi-def) caused Lynch to think, “Fuck it!” (I’m sure he would have
been much more polite) and decide to be as inscrutable and unyielding as
possible. Apparently Lynch is has referred audiences to the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad with the following quote:
We are like the spider. We weave our
life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then
lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.
Which is all very well as a guiding
principle behind a piece of work, but a lofty idea doesn’t automatically translate
successfully.
There can be a tendency for those who don’t speak glowingly of a
celebrated work or auteur to be dismissed with, “You just don’t get it”. And
may be that’s so in this case. I don’t know; perhaps I will revisit this one in
time and do an about turn. The director’s work is particularly ripe for
re-evaluations and fresh perspectives. But, right now, Inland Empire is a bit of a chore. One
with flashes of the genius that made Lynch so invigorating but without the
guiding principles that made him compelling.
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