Standing as a much anticipated follow-up to 2001’s surprise box office and critical coup, Mulholland Dr., David Lynch’s Inland Empire shares many cues and codas with that tauter, more entertaining film. While it makes equal use of oblique narrative formats and shares a characteristic Los Angeles setting, this movie goes a step further, introducing whole playbills of ciphers and thematic MacGuffins which, though clearly not designed to infuriate, surely will.
The plot (if you will) focuses on an actress (Lynch fave Laura Dern from Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart) who begins working on a film which may be the subject of a Gypsy curse. Off to the side, there are tendrils of other stories, including idiosyncratic and abstract interludes direct from the director’s online sitcom Rabbits (literally populated by people with rabbit heads). Nowhere in the film’s three hour running time, however, is there anything as conclusive or direct as Mulholland Dr.’s central thesis – which is impressive, given that film’s intangibility.
Shot entirely on video, and written scene-by-scene on the run by Lynch, Inland Empire is a befuddling and experimental effort all the way through to its song-and-dance number finale.
Still, assuming that internal logic and narrative veracity aren’t of essential value to a film, there are successful elements which are impressive to suitably primed audience members.
As always, Dern is terribly good and, even after three hours of uneasily long close-ups of her face, it is not her Nikki Grace (or Susan Blue, depending) that is the problem here. Rather, it is on Lynch’s genius that the film dies its long death, unable to satisfy any but the most simpatico, open-minded fans.
Dreamy, strange and largely incomprehensible, Inland Empire is David Lynch at his most obscure, and the film’s slow pace and near-excruciating running time makes it a serious labour that will appeal only to the director’s most hardcore fans.
Filmink 2.5/5
