A Wicked Dream that Seizes the Heart
How do you review someone else’s bad dream? One Sunday morning at the New York Film Festival, insomniacs and hardcore cinephiles assembled to see David Lynch’s first movie in five years. His latest plumbing of the unconscious is three hours long and his first to be shot on digital video, but not the first featuring Laura Dern (Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart), shifting identities, and creepy characters doing truly creepy things. There's a spooky Russian neighbor who mumbles veiled threats into the fish eye lens, and then William H. Macy announces: “Hollywood, California, where stars make dreams and dreams make stars!”
David Lynch and Laura Dern on the set of Inland Empire
© Studio Canal
INLAND EMPIRE is so Lynchian that it often appears to veer into self-parody, but somehow this works for the movie; like the unmotivated laugh track of the recurring sitcom where everybody wears a rabbit mask, the audience can never be quite sure what's meant as a joke and what's dead serious. INLAND EMPIRE is in turn maddeningly absurd, haunting, and bizzarely funny (such as Harry Dean Stanton's monologue about his "damn landlord.")
Some of the shivers are all too real, and I'll admit that the film contained moments of subconscious recognition that frightened me to the core. At the end of INLAND EMPIRE, prostitutes lip-synch Nina Simone’s “Sinner Man” while a pet monkey frolicks and a man in a red wool cap saws a log. I have no idea what it means, but I'm glad that as unique a visionary as Lynch can still get funding (in Europe) to make exactly the movie he wants. A fertile and overwhelming work of art.
Some of the shivers are all too real, and I'll admit that the film contained moments of subconscious recognition that frightened me to the core. At the end of INLAND EMPIRE, prostitutes lip-synch Nina Simone’s “Sinner Man” while a pet monkey frolicks and a man in a red wool cap saws a log. I have no idea what it means, but I'm glad that as unique a visionary as Lynch can still get funding (in Europe) to make exactly the movie he wants. A fertile and overwhelming work of art.
INLAND EMPIRE screened at the 44th NY Film Festival on October 8 and 9. It is currently playing at New York's IFC Center. The official site lists the complete theatrical schedule.
