Inland Empire

Does anyone know anything about Lynch? I mean, why is he so freaky in his films? Is there a reason, what's the philosophy.

I did recently rent Eraserhead, man, I'm still getting over it.

I'm not sure. I think the only Lynch movie I've seen was Blue Velvet, which I thought was long winded, corny, and dull, but seeing the amount of cult status he's got I'd like to check out another one of his films.
Does anyone have any recommendations?
Was Eraserhead worth a watch?

I personally like "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me" and "Dune", but the first is best if you've seen the series too, and "Dune" is kind of atypical for him, maybe. I'd recommend "Mulholland Drive" over "Lost Highway". Still never seen "Eraserhead" or "The Elephant Man".

The Elephant Man was great, but hard to believe it was the same director as Eraserhead, that movie was disturbing to say the least. I don't feel qualified to comment on that movie, it seems to have more to say than what I can weakly put into words, except to say it's powerful and very disturbing.

David Lynch has said he considers Dune a failure because he was prevented from editing the final cut.

"Is Eraserhead worth a watch?"

Josh, if you are willing to watch one more Lynch movie, see Eraserhead without delay.

Seeing that movie for the first time, in 1978 at age 17, at a packed midnight screening with an audience who'd never heard of David Lynch (it's his first feature film) ranks as one of my all time high points as a filmgoer. I love all his movies, though if I had to rank them, Elephant Man and Wild at Heart would be low on the list, Blue Velvet in the middle, while Eraserhead is still #1.

Barb, I think the themes of the film are far more relevant to me now, as a newly married guy, than when I first saw it. And I agree with you- to describe its meaning in words is pointless.
Thinking about it now makes me want to watch it again tonight.

Peter, it never occurred to me how relevant that film could be for you now. I see your point.

I would definitely put Eraserhead in an artistic category. I admire Lynch for his courage to express feelings not often portrayed in films. Work of a true artist.

Btw; there are some interesting investors in Eraserhead, including I think Sissy Spacek. I was surprised at the end of the film to read the credits.

The scene in Eraserhead, where the main character has dinner with his girlfriends family, is my favourite. For me, the moments captured are totally relevant to human social habits.

I feel like the ideas expressed were located through the authentic experience of removing, to some degree, a perspective normally located within typical human social structure. Perhaps this relates to why words (social structure) do not suffice to explain the ideas expressed. And perhaps that is largely due to the amazing (sociopathic?)level of integrity, suspectably present, in the state of preservation these ideas are delivered to us in.

I love listneing to David Lynch talk about ideas, and his processes as a story teller.

“Perhaps this relates to why words (social structure) do not suffice to explain the ideas expressed.”

I actually disagree. I rented Eraserhead and finally got around to watching it last night, and I've got to say, if you can't use words to describe the idea's to something, and their justification, then it means those ideas probably aren’t there.
If someone argues toward something, but their rational is either faulty or missing then it just means their stubborn and unreasonable. Why is it not the same for art?
I'm in a poetry workshop right now and the first thing the teacher asks is "how can you justify having that there?" And if you can't, then you have to take it out. At first it bothered all of us, still does for some, but most of us saw the reason in it. If you can't justify something being there then it shouldn't be there. That's why I think that not being able to explain the elements of something in words really doesn't speak highly for the work.

As for Eraserhead I would say, meh. I thought it was moderately funny, but I don't think that's what he was going for.
I'm pretty sure I got most of the symbolism. His happiness, or content, in the radiator didn't want the mutant baby, which would explain why she was stepping on the mutant sperm, and why they were dancing in the end after he killed the baby. But why was she in the radiator? Then how the role of father made him feel like his identity was being taken over by the presence of the child. I must admit, that one scene of the stage, and the blood running down the middle with his head in it, and his body with the mutant head twisting the pole, that was really cool.
The eraserhead thing though, I did not get at all. If anyone wants to tell me their take on it, I'd be happy to hear it.

The social interaction was interesting at first, but after a while it's awkwardness and over dramatization got really boring. I did like that dinner scene, until the chicken shited and the mom seized, but I think that was pretty much the peak of the movie. I also liked the scene of the mother with the baby, and the one where they are both in bed, but they were pretty much lost in a sea of monotony. The one where they sink into the bed was alright as well, but I thought it was ruined by the sudden eraserhead thing. Although maybe that’s just because I didn’t get it.

Overall I thought the movie took a lot of time to say really very little. I guess it might have to do with my lack of experience with these types of films, but I don’t know, I just thought it was pretty bad.

I didn't say I couldn't explain the movie, I said I felt I didn't feel qualified to comment on it. The meaning of it was not blatantly obvious. It can't be watched for the sensational imagery without questioning the horrific nightmarishness of it. Why would such a surreal dreamlike movie to be written? It isn't a mindless film.

I think he was trying to express his feelings of depression and insecurities of facing the loss of control in that situation of fatherhood, poverty and unwanted or unexpected pregnancy with a woman. The monstrous baby was created from his reactions, not for what a baby really is.

The woman behind the radiator to me seemed to signify the unconscious mind. He displayed a suicidal wish to go to 'heaven' because one only gets there when one is dead. Death being the only way out to his mental anguish.

Crudeness unintended, the scene with his head separated and used to manufacture erasers seemed to me to be a reference to the situation of that relationship with the woman and the baby, and his own loss of control. His complete loss of being. Seperated from his actual self.

I thought it represented the penile head and it's ability to erase a man's identity through the creation of a baby. There's my take on it, but it is not very eloquent.

"I didn't say I couldn't explain the movie, I said I felt I didn't feel qualified to comment on it."

Actually I quoted Sam Grayson, and I wasn't trying to bash him, I was just saying that if you can't describe something in words, maybe there's not as much substance in it as you get from a first impression.

As for the eraser scene trying to display that the action of his penis erasing his identity, I suppose that makes sense. Sort of. But then wouldn't it make more sense to get an eraser from one of the mutant sperm? I don't know, I guess this is why it bothers me. I know someone is going to say that everything doesn't have to fit together easily, but I would think that it would need to be a little more rationally.
I mean, then who was the boy who found his head, and the guy at the counter, and the boss. They had clearly defined personalities, but seemed to only serve the purpose of extending one analogy to some twelve or fifteen minutes. An analogy that's ultimately confused by too many stray and unimportant, I think, elements.

By the way, I hope I'm not stepping on anyone’s toes by trying to pick this film apart.

Plus, the entire film is about how this one guy looses his identity to the birth of a child, but it gave no indication that he ever really had an identity. I mean, his habits don't seem to change, and the worms were beneath the radiator both before and after he found out about the baby, which I guess were the maggot recesses of his mind. So I guess the change was just the fact that he had the baby, his new role as a father, and the responsibilities that ensue?
Plus I know I'm going to get yelled out for this, but THE SCENES WERE STRETCHED TOO LONG!! I have no problem with making scenes that work like his did, but I think they should be spliced by quicker paced segments. It would give the long pauses more meaning and make them seem slightly less excruciating.

I must admit though, and I'll reiterate, that a lot of my disposition towards the film could just be the fact that I'm not used to this sort of cinematography.
Maybe I should watch it again in a few months.

"if you can't use words to describe the idea's to something, and their justification, then it means those ideas probably aren’t there."

Josh, I couldn't disagree more with this, which to me, is a very academic prejudice, widely taught, which places the primary value of aesthetic experience on text rather than the experience itself. I do think the principle may apply justifiably to literature, including poetry.

But film is not a literary medium. It's an experiential one- visual and auditory. This applies especially to Eraserhead, which contains very little dialogue. Would you dismiss any claim a musician has that his composition has meaning just because that meaning cannot be reduced to a verbal description? Or the work of a painter?

If anything, this tendency to filter all experience of art through the artificial symbolic matrix of words is getting increasingly prevalent-- such as filmgoers who demand that the director explain everything to them on a dvd commentary track-- which, incidentally, David Lynch absolutely refuses to do.

It comes down to the presumption that words possess some innate ability to convey the totality of human thoughts and feelings. The fact that an artist chooses to paint, play music, dance, or make films is because there are states of mind and emotion that defy verbal expression.

Whereas the written word is, after all, just another medium of expression. No closer to any other at being able to accurately convey the sensation of seeing a sunset, or of the anxiety a man feels when faced with fatherhood-- both of which have as their origin the physical interface between the individual's consciousness and the world. The convention of words is merely a convenience, with merely the hope of approximating, through associations, the raw experience of life.

I agree with you in some respects, and I understand there are elements in film that are there to create just an atmosphere, in all films actually, like architecture and lighting. They may not always be justifiable, although I think they could usually be written off with words regardless, but they're there essentially to create the mood of the film.
I'm not sure I agree that the same principles can be used for plot though. Entire scenes and motivations that seem unjustifiable. I suppose it may just be because I didn't experience the emotion, or intangible message, that it was trying to present. I'm not a father, nor am I married. I also don't have the patience for seven minute walking scenes. I'll admit it. I don’t. I may be jaded by mainstream media, or spoiled, but I got incredibly bored during the film, which in turn, may have affected my inability to absorb it's latent dispositional content. I don't know, but I have no reason to enjoy a film for what someone else felt.
I'd also like to add that I'm not an art major. I don't go to art shows and I don't usually associate with artists, so I wouldn't think an "academic prejudice" would have anything to do with my stance. I am a psychology major though, which entirely might. You say that not all emotions or experiences can be summed up into words, but that's what we do. That's Exactly what we do, and it seems more after then not something can be rationalized if It Is There. But that just may be the practice of psychology, the dehumanizing nature of it, and may be able to account for why I was unable to grasp the unspoken for, and unspeakably deep, I guess, qualities of the films presentation.
Maybe it’s like a MagicEye.
Or maybe it’s like a specter that only some people can see.
Maybe the film superimposes experiences only some of us can identify with.
Or maybe it’s simply a generational gap.
Who knows?!?
I’m sure some time later I’ll watch it again, and maybe then I’ll see it for what it might possibly could be.
Until then, I still though it was pretty bad.
I’ll probably try to watch some of his other films though, I’ll admit he’s at least different.

In the end, no amount of verbal justification by an artist or a critic is going to convince a viewer to feel something which he just doesn't. No art, even very good art, is going to affect all people the same way, and that is as I'd expect. I've listened to people effuse over Richard Linklater, Charlie Kaufman, and Jean-Marie Straub, giving detailed reasons why their films are well made and/or important, relevant, meaningful, moving, etc. Sometimes those appreciations can sound very convincing as rhetoric. All it means is that they've succeeded in constructing reasonable arguments. That has little to do with whether or not the work itself has merit as art.

I just wanted to add that this film was shot on DV, digital video. I just saw an interview with Lynch where he said that he will NEVER use film again. Pretty interesting... since the quality of film itself seems to give his older films especially a very particular look.

Leaving Inland Empire, I felt like I was coming out of a seance. The ritual of watching it releases spirits that will haunt you for days afterward.

People say it's Lynch's most difficult film. It's not difficult, just formally dense. His usual style of expositing through metaphors is in effect. Metaphors that catch, tangle and coil together in a serpents' mating ball, mind you, but metaphors nonetheless.

You have to suspend disbelief. Surrender to its metaphysics. Eventually, I parsed it as a rational, psychological, linear story, but that sure wasn't how I felt in the darkness.

Can this movie be understood? In your dreams...

Interpreted: Who was dreaming and why, the reconstructed flow of events, the space the characters inhabited.

Didn't interpret: the letters on Nikki/Susan's arm (what letters were they, again?), the word "AXXON" painted on a wall (Exxon + axon maybe - oil spill + neurotransmitter?), lots of little details.

Has Peter watched it yet? Anyone else?

P.S.: Barb, Lynch is into transcendental meditation and drinks fifteen cups of coffee a day.

Kaufman's alright. Eternal Sunshine... and Adaptation had a lot of forced humor, which took me out of the experience a little bit. Still, the shot of the waves breaking inside the house, from Eternal Sunshine, is one of my favorite movie moments.

I saw "Inland Empire" tonight. Seeing a new David Lynch film, for me, is like wrestling with something uncomfortable, getting frustrated, but I find something beautiful in the end. At first I was thrown by his use of digital video, yearned for something crisper and cleaner, less shaky, but after awhile I decided it was the perfect medium for him. I never thought of it this way before, but it occurs to me that Lynch manipulates film in the way an animator might.

The story to me is about an actress (or an artist, or any of us) who is horrified to discover that one's own life, unlike the lives that we can inhabit temporarily for creative purposes, cannot be so easily discarded or escaped for another. An actress can take the role of an adulteress or a whore, then drop it and forget about it later; but the real adulteress can't walk off the stage and finish the movie. When the actress becomes the subject herself, flirting with an affair that may as well have been pulled from her script, she becomes trapped in her own film. But none of us writes our own movie, and so her movie is not hers, either. It's frightening and unfamiliar, and the ending is a mystery. She goes through a catharsis; she comes to understand the character she is playing, and all the real people who may have inspired it, because she is one of them. She sees herself on the screen, and then embraces the one who has been watching her there, allowing each other to return to their proper places. Each sees the other through the screen, which is really a mirror.

On a lighter note, I loved the final scene as the credits rolled. I do love movies that end with dance scenes, the music was great, Laura Harring shows up, monkey dances in the strobe light, the red-lit stage curtains (in my very Lynchian theater in Portland, anyhow) close at just the right moment, and I've just had one of those rare, once-every-few-years moments that is a new David Lynch film.