Better late than never.
and
The Appropriate Tune - "Black Tambourine", by Beck
Generally speaking, I’m not the type that gets upset when I hear about a celebrity passing away. Already feel too much grief during my everyday life perhaps, that there isn’t much left for people who are way better off than I am. However even I was left in a melancholic daze for a while when I heard that David Lynch passed away, because it really felt like the world had lost a true artist. Someone who couldn’t help but push forward on his own creative path, whether he was doing original works, big budget adaptations or PS2 commercials, and gathered critical and commercial success along the way. It’s the archetypal vision of a filmmaker, or at least the kind of filmmaker that I would have wanted to be, and losing that meant losing a small part of me.
Lynch’s last major work was Twin Peaks: The Return, the follow-up to his famous crime drama series from the 90’s, but his last feature film was actually all the way back in 2006, with Inland Empire. Frequent Lynch collaborator Laura Dern stars as Nickie Grace, an actress who lands the female lead of a new film called “On High with Blue Tomorrows”. When the time comes to start filming however, Nikki learns something: that the film she’s acting in is not original but is in fact a remake, which itself is adapted from a Polish story. That previous film was never released, supposedly because the two leads were murdered. A morbid but otherwise innocuous fact, until the lines between reality and story start to collapse
Blurring the lines in such a way is not unusual for David Lynch. Both Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive move in similar directions, with Lost Highway literally featuring the main character being rewritten in the middle of the story. Stylistically too, there are visual aspects that would later be familiar to those who have seen The Return, but it feels like Lynch was trying to push things to another level here. Lost Highway was dreamlike but it was still a film, it felt like a film, whereas Inland Empire is a film that feels like a dream. Nonlinear time, actors playing multiple roles, repetition of sounds and images, the changing of POV from the traditional shots to shaky cam and awkward closeups and back again, as if we were seeing parts of a bizarre home movie. Lynch’s films are often described as giving one a sense of unease or dread, but Inland Empire is the most disorienting of his filmography, to an aggressive degree.
As for what the film is about, if Lynch were alive he wouldn’t tell you, so your only recourse is to analyze it yourself, or to find some film nerd’s opinion and accept that as truth. I’m out of practice with this stuff though, so unfortunately if you’re looking to me for definitive theories then you’re out of luck. Certainly a story that revolves around infidelity, betrayal, murder, perhaps we’re seeing a tale of catharsis. In movies we are often made to empathize with the characters, perhaps we are seeing a literal reproduction of that, as Nickie Grace loses herself in her role, takes on the suffering of the character, in order to exorcise the emotional trauma of the viewer? Maybe. Or maybe I’m completely off-base. Better to think about these things than not think, I suppose.
David Lynch never made a bad film. That’s not me blowing smoke up his ass now that he’s dead,I genuinely think that every movie he made is worth watching. Even Dune, the movie he reportedly did not like making, shines through its flaws. However, if I were dipping my toes into Lynch’s filmography for the first time, or introducing someone to it, I would not choose Inland Empire as the first watch. It’d be a bit like taking someone who wants to try coffee and giving them espresso and cough syrup. Other than that scenario though, definitely give it a shot.
STATUS: RECOMMENDED
