Inland Empire: Resistance is futile
I am writing this as if in a dream. The words go down onto the page not quite right and I am trying not to edit them to make them right because this is about a David Lynch film, and nothing is ‘right’ about that, either.
I came out of the Sky City Theatre into the light at lunchtime feeling hungry, somehow punch-drunk, with pins and needles in my butt and with my head buzzing. This is a film that grabs you by the nuts, drags you down a dark hallway into a bright alleyway, punches the crap out of you and then when you finally come round, feeling hungover and disorientated, you’re in some other place entirely.
Why? Because David Lynch wouldn’t have it any other way.
As he explains in his book Catching The Big Fish (Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity), Lynch is a man who likes a story that holds abstractions and that’s why he makes films. He also insists on remaining “true to the idea”, usually to the point of absurdity: “You fall in love with the first idea, that tiny little piece. And once you’ve got it, the rest will come in time.” My problem with Inland Empire (and let me be clear that this is my problem and not his) is its sheer surfeit of ideas. They keep coming, crashing over you like breakers, dragging you down in the undertow. You do not have time to fall in love with the 50th idea before the 100th has hit you.
In case you were wondering, the Inland Empire is an area east of Los Angeles County, including Riverside and San Bernardino County. Laura Dern’s husband, Ben Harper, comes from there. Dern gave Lynch the idea for the film’s title and delivered a long monologue that became a key scene in the film. Lynch’s parents have a log cabin in Montana. His brother was cleaning up there one day and found an old scrapbook behind a dresser. It belonged to Lynch when he was five years old. Lynch the child had given the first picture in the book the caption “Inland Empire”. Add about another million coincidences to that and you might begin to approximate what’s going on in this film. But probably not.
There have been plenty of films within films; actors muddling the character they’re playing and their own identity, with fatal results. Lynch has made some of them. It would be meaningless to try to précis the plot or attempt a description of the narrative. That is not a cop-out but it would take three hours to read and you would be none the wiser. There are about 15 ideas for feature films in these three tortuous hours (the film is 179 minutes long), not all of them great. It is as if Lynch shot them all in their entirety and then cut them up, threw them on the cutting room floor and then stuck them back together again, randomly. Well, if not entirely randomly, then certainly not according to any traditional narrative structure.
But then, traditional narrative structure is not the reason why we go to see a David Lynch film, is it. We go for that unique Lynchian atmosphere. And nobody is going to take that away from him. My trouble with Inland Empire a matter of hours after seeing it is that I am not yet sure whether there are any memorable scenes in it, and if there are, which they are. It was Phillip French of the Guardian who said this film makes you feel “not that you’ve seen it, but that you’ve dreamt it”. And he hit the nail on the head. With a screwdriver, a pivotal Inland Empire device.
Dream logic inhabits it. There are the Lynchian trademarks: red drapes, nonsense talk, strobe-lit scenes. There is exquisite silliness, some of it involving Little Eva’s Locomotion. There are a lot of director-audience in-jokes. A lot of scenes in a lot of rooms. A lot of meaningful walking into those rooms and meaningless walking out of them again. A lot of cuts and non-sequiturs. So many under-utilised cast members. So many extreme close ups. So much dialogue that is not quite right; lines that have gone into the script, unedited, as if from a dream.
Grace Zabriskie is good as a wacky old Transylvanian crone from next door (she’s the one who played Laura Palmer’s wacky mother in Twin Peaks) and Harry Dean Stanton is superbly understated as the freeloading assistant director, Freddie Howard, in what could be an oblique reprise of his role as Lyle Straight in The Straight Story. But it’s Laura Dern who carries the multiple plot lines, the multiple exits and entrances, the sheer “What the…?” factor.
I’d never warmed to Dern before, but she deserved an Academy Award for Inland Empire, if only for persevering with a facial expression that screams, “You’re confused? I’m in the fucking film and I don’t know what’s going on.” Her in-jokes include not knowing where she is, or what has happened to Time. It’s a mind-fuck, she says. You’re telling me, lady.
“Uncompromising” is another word the critics have used to describe Lynch’s cinematic twists and turns in this film. Again, no surprise. We don’t go to a Lynch film for compromises, either. But that word uncompromising isn’t quite good enough. Lynch goads us. He tests us. He jabs us with screwdrivers. He teases us with time; stretches a critical, death scene to the point of black comedy, so that even the real Lynch lovers in the audience (including me) are left laughing bitterly, restless and annoyed.
Of course you can ignore Lynch’s vision. You can walk out of the cinema before the film ends. But if you do choose to go on this journey with him, resistance is futile.
This is a frustrating, sprawling film with too many people, too many locations, too many cameos, too much dialogue, too many red herrings, too many songs, too many fucking things. It’s like a lifetime’s worth of films, a body of work, all cut together into one film to test our patience. A million little pieces of broken glass and each wickedly sharp fragment reflects a different story.
I haven’t been utterly convinced by a Lynch film since Lost Highway. Mulholland Drive had its moments, and it had those memorable scenes that have yet to implant themselves in my consciousness from Inland Empire. But I’m a Twin Peaks junkie; Lost Highway runs on as a masterpiece in the empty cinema of my mind; and Eraserhead and Blue Velvet (the rooms in Inland Empire are reminiscent of Ben’s apartment) are unforgettable works of genius.
I’ll cut the maker of a single masterpiece a hell of a lot of slack. Our own dreams are difficult enough to deal with, never mind having to interpret someone else’s. But if you have to watch someone else’s nightmare, it might as well be one directed by David Lynch.
I came out of the Sky City Theatre into the light at lunchtime feeling hungry, somehow punch-drunk, with pins and needles in my butt and with my head buzzing. This is a film that grabs you by the nuts, drags you down a dark hallway into a bright alleyway, punches the crap out of you and then when you finally come round, feeling hungover and disorientated, you’re in some other place entirely.
Why? Because David Lynch wouldn’t have it any other way.
As he explains in his book Catching The Big Fish (Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity), Lynch is a man who likes a story that holds abstractions and that’s why he makes films. He also insists on remaining “true to the idea”, usually to the point of absurdity: “You fall in love with the first idea, that tiny little piece. And once you’ve got it, the rest will come in time.” My problem with Inland Empire (and let me be clear that this is my problem and not his) is its sheer surfeit of ideas. They keep coming, crashing over you like breakers, dragging you down in the undertow. You do not have time to fall in love with the 50th idea before the 100th has hit you.
In case you were wondering, the Inland Empire is an area east of Los Angeles County, including Riverside and San Bernardino County. Laura Dern’s husband, Ben Harper, comes from there. Dern gave Lynch the idea for the film’s title and delivered a long monologue that became a key scene in the film. Lynch’s parents have a log cabin in Montana. His brother was cleaning up there one day and found an old scrapbook behind a dresser. It belonged to Lynch when he was five years old. Lynch the child had given the first picture in the book the caption “Inland Empire”. Add about another million coincidences to that and you might begin to approximate what’s going on in this film. But probably not.
There have been plenty of films within films; actors muddling the character they’re playing and their own identity, with fatal results. Lynch has made some of them. It would be meaningless to try to précis the plot or attempt a description of the narrative. That is not a cop-out but it would take three hours to read and you would be none the wiser. There are about 15 ideas for feature films in these three tortuous hours (the film is 179 minutes long), not all of them great. It is as if Lynch shot them all in their entirety and then cut them up, threw them on the cutting room floor and then stuck them back together again, randomly. Well, if not entirely randomly, then certainly not according to any traditional narrative structure.
But then, traditional narrative structure is not the reason why we go to see a David Lynch film, is it. We go for that unique Lynchian atmosphere. And nobody is going to take that away from him. My trouble with Inland Empire a matter of hours after seeing it is that I am not yet sure whether there are any memorable scenes in it, and if there are, which they are. It was Phillip French of the Guardian who said this film makes you feel “not that you’ve seen it, but that you’ve dreamt it”. And he hit the nail on the head. With a screwdriver, a pivotal Inland Empire device.
Dream logic inhabits it. There are the Lynchian trademarks: red drapes, nonsense talk, strobe-lit scenes. There is exquisite silliness, some of it involving Little Eva’s Locomotion. There are a lot of director-audience in-jokes. A lot of scenes in a lot of rooms. A lot of meaningful walking into those rooms and meaningless walking out of them again. A lot of cuts and non-sequiturs. So many under-utilised cast members. So many extreme close ups. So much dialogue that is not quite right; lines that have gone into the script, unedited, as if from a dream.
Grace Zabriskie is good as a wacky old Transylvanian crone from next door (she’s the one who played Laura Palmer’s wacky mother in Twin Peaks) and Harry Dean Stanton is superbly understated as the freeloading assistant director, Freddie Howard, in what could be an oblique reprise of his role as Lyle Straight in The Straight Story. But it’s Laura Dern who carries the multiple plot lines, the multiple exits and entrances, the sheer “What the…?” factor.
I’d never warmed to Dern before, but she deserved an Academy Award for Inland Empire, if only for persevering with a facial expression that screams, “You’re confused? I’m in the fucking film and I don’t know what’s going on.” Her in-jokes include not knowing where she is, or what has happened to Time. It’s a mind-fuck, she says. You’re telling me, lady.
“Uncompromising” is another word the critics have used to describe Lynch’s cinematic twists and turns in this film. Again, no surprise. We don’t go to a Lynch film for compromises, either. But that word uncompromising isn’t quite good enough. Lynch goads us. He tests us. He jabs us with screwdrivers. He teases us with time; stretches a critical, death scene to the point of black comedy, so that even the real Lynch lovers in the audience (including me) are left laughing bitterly, restless and annoyed.
Of course you can ignore Lynch’s vision. You can walk out of the cinema before the film ends. But if you do choose to go on this journey with him, resistance is futile.
This is a frustrating, sprawling film with too many people, too many locations, too many cameos, too much dialogue, too many red herrings, too many songs, too many fucking things. It’s like a lifetime’s worth of films, a body of work, all cut together into one film to test our patience. A million little pieces of broken glass and each wickedly sharp fragment reflects a different story.
I haven’t been utterly convinced by a Lynch film since Lost Highway. Mulholland Drive had its moments, and it had those memorable scenes that have yet to implant themselves in my consciousness from Inland Empire. But I’m a Twin Peaks junkie; Lost Highway runs on as a masterpiece in the empty cinema of my mind; and Eraserhead and Blue Velvet (the rooms in Inland Empire are reminiscent of Ben’s apartment) are unforgettable works of genius.
I’ll cut the maker of a single masterpiece a hell of a lot of slack. Our own dreams are difficult enough to deal with, never mind having to interpret someone else’s. But if you have to watch someone else’s nightmare, it might as well be one directed by David Lynch.
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