David Lynch's "Inland Empire"

-- TOMB07 (tombo...), Today 1:53 PM. (TOMBOT) (later) (link)

i thought that meant the next bit with the screwdriver.

As for the Lost Girl, I guess being stuck watching TV in an attic is the perfect definition of Purgatory. I don't quite understand why her liberation is the joy of being reunited with her/Nikki's husband, who in all his previous guises has been a scary bastard.

anyway, need to see this again.

one of the two guys sitting next to me to his friend, both of whom left about an hour and a half into the movie: "this is the worst fucking movie i've ever seen, screw this shit..."

also: bjork and matthew barney were in attendance!

also, i completely forgot that william h. macy has a ten-second cameo in this

this was discussed, i guess on the sandbox, the song is by lynch, also sung by lynch

btw, happy birthday david lynch, and happy birthday to me

But I'm surprised that so many folks (not here, necessarily) have complained about the DV look. Thought it suited Lynch's style very well. Loved the heavy graininess on the blown-up and darker shots. Loved the bleary, blurry, supersaturated reds. The endless, swollen close-ups were great, as were the rougher, hand-held sequences. Visually, I thought it was a breakthrough for Lynch.

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!!!SPOILERS!!! Read at yr. own risk.

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Saw it as a film about redemption -- about "rescuing" oneself from the burden of guilt. Mulholland Drive was (arguably) about a character who is eventually consumed and destroyed by her own guilt and shame. In Inland Empire, Laura Dern seems to betray her husband and, as a result, is plunged into a purgatorial dreamscape of lost identity, madness, prostitution and murder. Her very powerful husband curses her: she becomes a whore, and her identity fragments. She tumbles through worlds-within-worlds and seeems, even, to die. But somehow, in finally, quite horribly, dying, she escapes the curse. She frees herself from self-loathing and self-destruction. In the endless hallways that seem to represent her unconscious mind, she confronts her demons, killing them and unifying the world -- which seems only to be her self.

Was she ever really an actress, or a whore? In a "real world" sense, did she ever betray her husband or lose a son? It's hard to say. So much remains unexplained. In the end, all I can say for sure is that the murderous Polish husband (in the historical sequences) and the screwdriver-weilding woman who stalked her and competed for her identity seemed only like fractured, male and female reflections of her own self-loathing.

In destroying/escaping these beings, she regains the power to author her own identity. Which leads into the very upbeat version Nina Simone's "Sinnerman" over the end credits, with its celebratory refrain: "power!" A movie about escaping cursed narratives (those placed on us by others and those we author for ourselves), about self-redemption.

But what or who is "LB"?
Why all the weird hostility toward Hollywood?
Whose star was it? ("Dorothy...")
What's the deal with looking through a cigarette burn in silk?
Does it have anything to do with the "cigarette burns" that match one reel of film to the next (visible frequently in the print I saw)?
"Good with animals"?
So, ummm, the rabbits...

And Allyzay's right. Kinski is sitting to Dern's left on the couch in the final party scene -- wearing a yellow dress, I think.

yeah i wondered that too. was the in-film cigarette burn in the top right corner of the frame as well? i forget now.

I believe that a "cigarette burn" (small white circle in the upper right-hand corner of the frame/screen) did appear during -- or right before or right after -- the first literal cigarette burning scene. Have to see it again to be sure.

Why all the weird hostility toward Hollywood?

Any kind of hostility toward it seems nonweird to me, esp regarding the exploitation of women.

I believe it was Dorothy Lamour's star.

Is it ever clear that the original attempt to film the Blue Tomorrows story was American? or Euro?

The "exploitation of women" angle you bring up is interesting, though. This film's primary character is both an actress and a prostitute. Mulholland Drive seemed to make a similar comparison, if more obliquely. Women frequently appear as victim/objects in Lynch's films: they’re subject to male desire and anger, powerful in their "mysterious" allure, but fundamentally other-than. Inland Empire is the only Lynch film in which the camera eye & authorial voice seem to genuinely identify with a female protagonist. Dern isn't an exotic bird that Lynch and his audience observe, perhaps pity -- she's us. While we're watching the film, we're experiencing her story, from her POV. This, too, seems like a breakthrough.

Is it significant that it was Lamour's star? Can anyone expand on this?

DEFINITELY appeared, i think during.

I wouldn't particularly see any signif re Lamour, unless the Hope-Crosby movies were cursed by gypsies.

Yeah, and that bugged me. You don't see many cigarette burns these days. It's my understanding that they're kinda obsolete. Most theaters no longer punch holes in the film to line up reels.

And when they do occurr, they should take place at the beginning or end of a scene, during a cut or fade-to-black. Not right in the middle of the action. Which suggests that the very visible cigarette burns in Inland Empire are a device. In-film events or footnotes of some kind. Not an artifact, but an intentional part of the movie.

They're especially strange in that Inland Empire is a digital film (see Morb's post, above). So the CBs call attention to the fact that we're watching a film made from a non-film source. The fact that Blue Horizons appears to be shot on traditional film just exaggerates the dissonance.

HO DAMN

Lynch's Dorothy wd be Vallens, of cawse

But I getcher point, blood. Still, I suspect that these ostensible "cigarette burns" appear in the print of the film itself, and show up even if the film is being digitally projected. Wonder whether we'll see 'em on the video...

Reason you wouldn't want to place the splice in the middle of a shot is that if the leaders were damaged (which is common), the shot would end up jumpy and fragmented. Dang. I have to see this thing again.

cf. fight club

Saw it on Saturday night of opening weekend, in Seattle. Theater was 1/3 full at best. This was an 8:30 pm showing in the crowded "University District" of a city that's always been art art-film oriented. While there hasn't been much by way of press hype & media blitz, word was definitely out. David even presented a screening on Wednesday night. Hell, I bought tickets online and showed up early, expecting lines around the block. Nope.

Kinda depressing. Hope word of mouth is good and that audiences give Inland Empire a shot. I can see why it wouldn't appeal to everyone, but it's hardly a failure.

Also, the cigarette burn in silk seems to connect to the hard drugs which made the hole in the vagina wall of the woman in the blonde star wig.

Reminds me of Lost Highway, with its split-in-two storyline, and split-in-two murder victim.

What are the other ones? Apart from the three above, the abortion-with-a/killing-by-screwdriver seems to fit.

Anyone know if Lynch's new book Catching the big fish is good?

Another easy example is the heroine's seeming death near the end of the film. That violence allows her a kind of rebirth. And there's a definite sense of breaking/fragmentation when the lights begin to flash and loud electrical buzzing appears on the soundtrack, heralding the transition from one world to the next. Lynch pulls the same trick in Lost Highway, to similar effect.

I don't know that there are so many different ways the theme is expressed, but certain devices are used over and over again.

Anyway, I think it's likely that TM is a shitpile, but I dug the movie. Go figure.

Dennis Lim finds that cheap DV suits the nightmare perfectly, and compares IE to Scott Walker's The Drift:

http://www.cinema-scope.com/cs29/cur_lim_inland.html

Lynch interview at Reverse Shot (rhapsodizing about Billy Wilder's sense of place!):

I couldn’t and wouldn’t work in a studio if I didn’t have final cut. It would be the theater of the absurd. How could anyone do that? Absolutely pure suicide. Sadness. Ridiculousness. Absurdity upon absurdity. Never in a million years. A person’s voice is what’s critical, and staying true to the ideas. No one should interrupt that, it should be supported, there should be enthusiasm and inspiration for that. The other is totally wrong, a horror.

http://www.reverseshot.com/article/strong_an_interview_with_david_lynch_strong

Rosenbaum (like me, not a huge DL fan), likee:

Lynch also seems to have realized that in Hollywood remaining disengaged and innocent ultimately compromises his freedom as an artist, and like it or not, he's had to take a political stance. Dern spitting gobs of blood on the Walk of Fame couldn't make it plainer.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/moviereviews/2007/070126/

I'll still probably buy the DVD when it comes out...

It's much better than being trapped in Will Ferrell's nightmare world.

Rosenbaum's point about the gang's-all-here karaoke dance party accompanying the long-awaited end credits is something I wholeheartedly agree with. That was the Rolaids: girls dancing, fan service, Laura finally smiling, etc etc. It's a more fulfilling payoff, after everything that precedes it, than most movies I've ever seen. And I really, really needed a happy ending after all that drubbing.

The sound design was top notch, btw. I keep thinking about that, too.