Inland Empire is auteur David Lynch’s latest attempt to use the cinematic architecture against itself in a bid to refract fractured notions of identity, self and"¦
"¦and who am I kidding? After watching Inland Empire I didn’t have a clue as to what I’d just seen.
To expect David Lynch’s movies to make sense is like expecting to laugh in an Adam Sandler flick. It happens sometimes – usually, not so much.
In addition to serious traces of nuts, Inland Empire contains:
A Polish prostitute watching the events of the film on her TV.
Rabbit-headed people stuck in a sitcom as a laugh track roars.
Laura Dern playing an American actress named Nikki who is starring in a remake of a cursed film.
And Nikki’s alter-ego who may be an abused wife or a doomed hooker.
Typically there are also sinister cookouts, sinister prophecies, sinister sex"¦ and the sinister use of the song Locomotion.
I like Lynch best when his nightmare surrealism is tempered with playfulness, humour and emotion but this offers more drearily incomprehensible moments than it does head-scratching puzzles.
Inland Empire’s trading of female personalities and its revolutions around filmmaking make this a variation of sorts on Lynch’s over-rated Mulholland Drive.
It repeats a lot of the director’s motifs - menacing lamps, red-tinged rooms and rumbling sound design – but at three hours this is as self-indulgent as it gets.
There is some relief in oddball interludes featuring a chorus of dancing prostitutes and skewiff dialogue about whether we’re in yesterday, today or tomorrow.
Laura Dern, who also co-produced, does a dazed look very well – but then again, she was reading the script each morning and bewilderment can’t have been too hard to conjure.
Another hundred or so viewings might clarify Inland Empire for me, but as is this surrealistic epic rates just two and a half stars"¦ but also a goldfish, a trombone and a bi-sected eyeball.
