Inland Empire

Saw INLAND EMPIRE last night. Jezuz crispity crackers on a bunny head. Laura Dern's psycho cracked operatic multi-faceted schizo actress trapped between mirrors in her infinite reflections of a lost alice dropped down the rabbit hole and down into the basement below hollywood's shifting impossible labyrinth is a heady, spacey, downright freakish exercise in maddening the sheepish flocks that frequent normal movie fare, and presenting the rest of us w/a recipe for nightmares & hollywood squares stacking up against the innocent dream of fame & fortune one might wish the film industry provides, well, not according to ol' squirrel obsessed master of misfortune David Lynch, who almost predictably provides an abject lesson in the inherent whoredom of hollywood's lush ever tightening trap for wide eyed innocent girls who otherwise might have thought their aspiration for success would provide a life free from duress. INLAND EMPIRE is a twisted, savage masterpiece sure to leave the majority of its hapless audience in the dark wondering why they wasted nearly 3 hours of their lives along with 8 dollars gone, but for the tenacious Lynch fan it is a plethora of warped dream pretzel logic tied up in pretty conundrums of an Escher-like nature, setting up a premise of a cursed movie in which the starring roles of the lead actor and actress have been murdered in past efforts of filming it. This basic premise sets us up for an ever -maddening yet compelling tightening of the screws of nightmare and insanity as Dern's character wanders deeper and deeper into The Black Lodge - here revealed w/its signature red velvet curtains as a possible metaphor for the line between fantasy (cinema) and reality (audience/actor participation). It is as if Lynch is stating metaphorically in cinematic terms what Renee Magritte stated w/his "This Is Not A Pipe" painting. This is not a movie, but a reflection of a portrayal of what movies are; which, when you get right down to it, are reflections of what our own fears and aspirations in life happen to be.

There be plenty of bewitching performances in the classic Lynchian tradition here, of particular note is the startling and eerie gypsy oration given by Grace Zabriskie, who plays "Visitor #1", a bizarre neighboring lady who knocks on Dern's door and begins intoning mysterious things of a cryptic & uneasy nature. I also appreciated Jeremy Irons' quaint, easygoing portrayal of the devious director of the cursed film, and of course what true underground cult movie fan wouldn't smile from ear to ear to see Harry Dean Stanton cast once again as a charming con man on the mysterious movie set.

The thing one must realize about this movie is, at a certain point, you just gotta GIVE UP trying to figure out wtf it's all about, and instead, let yourself go deeper into the unconscious dream realm Lynch has woven, like a spider preparing a fly for a future feasting. Therefore this is NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, your typical linear narrative picture replete w/understandable characters or plot. It is instead, that rarest of hollywood endeavors, the true, blue, cinematic equivalent of surreal poetry, and if that ain't somethin' you imagine wanting to sit through, then by all means, stay the fuck away from this picture for god's sake, or at least your very own. I mean, don't even go there: this movie is strictly for "art fags" (I say that with loving defiance), David Lynch fans, and purveyor's of the darkest and strangest arts.

It is, in short, a hallucinatory exposition filmed entirely in symbolic terms about the soullessness inherent to the hollywood process of putting would-be stars through the grinder of exploitation. It is a modern fable that uses the world of making movies as a metaphor for the danger of wandering too far beyond the fringes of ordinary reality and becoming lost in the mirroring realm of one's inner fantasy life.

It is rich, vivid, uncanny, disturbing, wrong, perplexing, insane, and brilliant. Lynch's infamous use of sound is developed to its unnerving extreme once again, wherein he brilliantly utilizes the soundtrack to keep the gravity of the narrative anchored to a sense of "realtime", which juxtaposes beautifully with the slow crystallization of the developing nightmare, like a polaroid photograph slowly revealing images focusing up out of the darkness, some of which, once revealed, you almost wish you hadn't seen.

Guaranteed to be reviled by those innocent souls who wander in to "see what its all about", but at the same time a worthy addition to the David Lynch canon, of which this latest installment is replete with all the familiar trappings yet somehow manages to delve further and deeper than ever before into the true, stark Lynchian landscape his devoted followers have learned to love since Eraserhead bewitched us so long ago.

It is an odd sort of "anti-film" which quietly rages against the forum of its own production, a sort of suicidal love note fired into the darkest region of our hearts, with the secret intent of planting a seed there which will later grow to bloom open most likely as a nightmare while our conscious minds are trying to get some rest after we go to sleep at night. Sure to reveal more petals of significance upon repeated viewings, but at the same time maddeningly daring the most stalwart amongst us to sit through it all again, something I'm afraid only the most die hard would consider doing. In other words, an ultimately challenging film, which I find admirable in the face of Hollywood's normal drive to provide blissfull, mindless escape for its audiences. "Escape" is the last thing INLAND EMPIRE aspires to provide for its hapless viewers; it is, instead, rather like a self-imposed incarceration in a stark prison wherein the mind is enriched immeasurably from deprivation of the normally longed-for nutrients of entertainment. INLAND EMPIRE is solely for the devout explorer of the inner realms of the human psyche, the monks of abstraction who, like those that fast to purify their systems, wish for nothing so much as an antidote to cure them of the infectious malaise propogated by your average blockbuster.

See INLAND EMPIRE and be purged of the mindless filth plaguing Hollywood today, and walk out of the theater unable to get the dirty taste out of your mouth. Then go home and rinse thoroughly with dreams.
Do not say I didn't warn you.