Inland Empire
This was the second time I’d watched it after only seeing it at the cinema when it came out. It’s safe to say that if you’re not a fan of the direction Lynch took from Lost Highway onwards (Straight Story excepted) then you should give this a wide berth because this is the furthest out Lynch has ever gone. For some this was clearly too far and I get that. I was frustrated when I first watched it in a way I wasn’t with Mulholland Drive where despite all the dream narrative and Lynchian bollocks there still felt like a clear narrative twinkling underneath the surface that wasn’t impossible to get at. Inland Empire feels even more opaque even if its themes are recognisable and recurring (dark side of Hollywood, brutalisation of women, the creative process, the relationship between artist and audience). This perhaps isn’t surprising given the fact that there was no complete screenplay and instead Lynch wrote dialogue on the day of shooting so it was an experiment on Lynches part. It lacks the unified vision of Mulholland Drive where you felt like Lynch was in control of what was going in. Here there’s a sense of enveloping madness and loss of control which may not be intentional but maybe more a happy accident given Laura Derns journey. The films second half in particular is heavy work where multiple stories and timelines converge, characters play multiple roles and fantasy and reality blend in one giant unforgiving maelstrom. So let’s start with the first half which is pretty straightforward:
Laura Dern is an actress who lands a great part in some Hollywood melodrama which is at least partially about marriage infidelity and its consequences. It turns out however that the movie is a remake of an earlier Polish project that was meant to be cursed and which lead to the two main actors being murdered. We also see a young woman (also a prostitute) called “the little girl” watching telly in what looks like a hotel room. On the telly is some kind of weird sitcom starring human sized rabbits who speak in bizarre non sequiturs and who clearly have some kind of significance but who knows what. Prior to finding out she’s got the role a new neighbour visits Dern to tell her she will get the role and that there is going to be a murder. She also tells Dern of two stories: one featuring a little boy who caused “evil to be born” and one featuring a little girl who went through a door and discovered a “palace”.
The movie goes ahead and pretty soon reality and fantasy start to blur as Dern gets lost in the role and an affair between her and her co-star develops (despite Derns husband warning the co-star of consequences should this happen). At this point the movie disappears down the rabbit hole as Dern stumbles upon a door marked “naxxon” (a reference to the opening scene where a gramophone plays the “the longest-running radio play in history) and suddenly multiple story lines appear involving eastern European prostitutes and Dern playing seemingly multiple roles. Dern has to be “little girl” who goes through the door but who’s the little boy? What is the evil that was born? Who is this mysterious figure called The Phantom who appears to the prostitutes pimp? Who the hell are all these prostitutes anyway and what is Inland Empire? What is the “longest running radio play in history?”
I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what the hell is going on here. Maybe, like Mulholland Drive, you can join up the dots and come up with some kind of linear narrative but more so than ever with Lynch I think that’s a pretty futile exercise although one that predictably many have attempted. Unlike Mulholland Drive I’m not interested in what it exactly is happening here, and I’m not convinced Lynch intended the movie to be viewed this way anyway. What you have here is a series of stories and scenes with overlapping themes and characters that Lynch has returned to again and again throughout his career and which on Inland Empire he combines into one phantasmagorical whole.
Going on what Lynch said around the time of the movie it appears he was very disenfranchised with the cinema and I’ve read one quote where he actually says “film is dead”. I think on one level Inland Empire is ultimately a tribute to the power of the cinema and its ability to influence peoples lives. We see the prostitute in the room watching the telly including seeing Laura Dern perform and there appears to be some kind of symbiotic relationship between the two to the point where possibly Dern is acting out her life (through a previous role? The prostitutes fantasy world?) and in the end Dern actually appears to magically liberate her from The Phantom so she can be reunited with her husband and child in the moving closing scenes. On another level the movie appears to be about the brutalisation of women by men (a long running Lynch theme that we find on Blue Velvet and, of course, Twin Peaks). Is the “longest running radio play in history” men’s ill treatment of women? Is this the evil the boy inadvertently created? Is the Phantom a supernatural manifestation of this abuse?
On another level it appears to be about infidelity and the madness of love, or maybe more accurately lust (“strange what love does”). Interestingly Lynch split up with his long term partner Mary Sweeney after a month of marriage in 2006. Was there infidelity there? Is this a reflection of Lynches personal life? Actions have consequences is a line said on more than one occasion during the film.
On yet another level it appears to be about the creative process an artist embarks upon and I think you can see Laura Derns journey down the rabbit hole as a representation of this journey in all its neurosis, confusion, frustration and, hopefully, ultimately triumph. In this way Lynch touches on movies like Persona (the movie within a movie) which goes back to my point about Inland Empire being a tribute to the power and imagination of the cinema. Is this the Inland Empire of the title? The part of the subconscious where creativity and imagination reside? Is the movie about the creative process of making a movie itself and its ultimate goal of connecting with its audience?
If you’re looking for answers then you won’t find them in Inland Empire but I do think there are clear themes and ideas here and some stellar moments of Lynch weirdness and Laura Derns performance is absolutely great. In some ways it feels like culmination of Lynches career but I’m not sure I would declare it a masterpiece. I think I’ll wait a couple of years and watch it again to see if it merits that honour. I think at the very least it deserves to be watched again.