FILM REVIEW:
Inland Empire
In a presentation preceding the 20th anniversary screening of "Blue Velvet" at the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival, writer-director David Lynch revealed his intention to abandon film and concentrate on digital production instead. Inland Empire is Lynch’s first feature-length foray into digital video, a format he now prefers for its lower cost, simplified production requirements and characteristic visual aesthetic. In terms of narrative structure and visual style, "Inland Empire" is probably Lynch’s most experimental film since 1977’s "Eraserhead," his feature debut, and audiences will likely find it challenging, even frustrating.
Once again pursuing a meta-filmic structure (as he did in "Mulholland Drive"), Lynch opens "Inland Empire" with the visit of a strange new neighbor (Grace Zabriskie) to the Los Angeles home of Nikki Grace (Laura Dern), an actress contending for the lead role in a new movie. The odd woman seems to know a great deal about Nikki’s new project and asks the actress progressively personal questions, finally warning Nikki away from the film.
Shortly afterwards, Nikki learns she’s landed the part in On High in Blue Tomorrows and begins rehearsals with director Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons) and married co-star Devon Berk (Justin Theroux), who has a reputation as a serial philanderer. On High concerns an illicit affair between their characters, Susan Blue and Billy Side, and as their movie relationship heats up, so do the offscreen dynamics between Nikki and Devon, even though her jealous husband has warned Devon to keep his distance from Nikki. Meanwhile, the cast and crew of On High become increasingly agitated following the discovery of a mysterious intruder on the set and rumors that the script is based on a Polish folktale adapted into a film that was never completed after the two leads were murdered.
Early in the second hour of "Inland Empire," Lynch departs from this relatively coherent plot as Nikki’s character appears to fragment, entering several other storylines that intersect the main narrative only tangentially. Through a house built on the set of On High, she transits to Poland, where she takes up with a group of prostitutes who reside in the house, making bored pronouncements in English and at one point performing a syncopated dance number to the 70s novelty hit, “The Loco-Motion.”
In another thread, she consults a strange man who listens to her rant about the men in her life who’ve mistreated her and how she took revenge against them. Periodically, Lynch inserts disorienting segments from a Polish drama about ill-fated lovers, which may or may not be the precursor to On High in Blue Tomorrows. And then there are the occasional scenes from what appears to be a stagy sitcom featuring actors dressed in rabbit costumes who make banal remarks to the sound of canned applause and laugh tracks.
By the time Nikki’s journey through these alternate worlds concludes after she briefly re-enters the principal storyline, the plot has become so completely snarled as to defy straightforward description. Perhaps Lynch intends "Inland Empire" to refer to the inner landscapes of the unconscious, but the movie lacks the internally consistent dream logic of films like "Lost Highway," "Mulholland Drive" and even "Fire Walk With Me."
Despite the wobbly plot, Dern gives an impressively fierce performance as a frightened woman navigating uncertain narrative territory. Lynch directs the cast with his usually penchant for creepy characters, but the other actors principally serve to support Dern’s role and lack sufficient screen time to adequately register.
Lynch’s direction heightens a sense of unease running throughout the film, with an abundance of shaky handheld camerawork, atmospheric lighting and jarring editing techniques, abetted by Angelo Badalamenti’s score and a range of ominous sound effects. However, many shots appear poorly focused or underlit, creating murky images that fail to enhance either the performances or the narrative.
As the writer, director and occasional producer and editor on his films, Lynch is one of the few acknowledged contemporary auteurs of American cinema, with a career of intriguing, provocative movies, but "Inland Empire" seems to have lead him astray. Perhaps the ease and affordability of digital video was too much of a temptation, but at three hours running time, Inland Empire is an indulgence perhaps best suited to true believers.
Directed by: David Lynch
Starring: Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, Grace Zabriskie
Running Time: 179 mins.
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
posted by CinemaPlanet @ 12/21/2006
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