David Lynch's "Inland Empire"

Or Lost Highway or Blue Velvet, I mean come on David's always been prone to certain amount of repetitiveness.

Hahaha.

I don't mind, either way

(U.S.-France-Poland)

A StudioCanal (France) presentation of an Inland Empire Prods. (U.S.) production, in association with Camerimage 2 (Poland)/Asymmetrical Prods. (U.S.). (International sales: StudioCanal, Paris.) Produced by Mary Sweeney, David Lynch. Executive producer (Poland), Marek Zydowicz. Co-producers, Laura Dern, Jeremy Alter. Directed, written, edited by David Lynch.

Nikki/Sue - Laura Dern
Kingsley - Jeremy Irons
Freddie - Harry Dean Stanton
Devon/Billy - Justin Theroux

By JAY WEISSBERG

Laura Dern plays an actress in David Lynch's 'Inland Empire.'

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Nobody loves a mystery more than David Lynch, but the king of the unexpected is awfully predictable in what he doesn't do: He doesn't give answers, he doesn't solve anything and he doesn't try to make sense. "Inland Empire" may mesmerize those for whom the helmer can do no wrong, but the unconvinced and the occasional admirer will find it dull as dishwater and equally murky. Almost held together by Laura Dern's intense performance, the three hours pass slowly by on unattractive digital. Despite frisky international sales, even arthouses may find it difficult to keep auds in seats.
Lynch always resists attempts at interpretation; here, he defies any kind of narrative description as well. Two and a half years in the making, this is seat-of-the-pants filmmaking at its most baffling. There was never a complete script, so thesps turned up each day with a new set of lines and no idea where they were going, making Dern's central turn even more remarkable for its coherence.

Dern plays Nikki, an actress offered a role in a film directed by Kingsley (Jeremy Irons). Co-star Devon (Justin Theroux) is warned to keep things professional, since Nikki's husband (Peter J. Lucas) is fiercely possessive.

Nikki's playing Sue, Devon is Billy, and the two characters are about to launch into an affair. Early in the shoot they learn the script, based on a Polish gypsy folktale, is a remake of a movie that never got finished because the original protags were murdered.

Inevitably Nikki and Devon wind up in bed together, but, during their lovemaking, she starts calling him Billy and he starts calling her Sue. They realize they're mixing lines from the movie into their own lives.

From here on Dern's character fragments, passing through realities in a state of barely concealed terror where everyone is menacing and it becomes impossible to tell whether she's Nikki, Nikki playing Sue, or Sue herself.

But that's the easy part. There are the Poles, who are possibly the first version of the movie's story. There's Grace Zabriskie as a menacing neighbor. There's Julia Ormond's character, first seen with a screwdriver in her gut and later cropping up as Billy's wife. And, of course, there are the giant rabbits on a stage -- two on a sofa, a third ironing (voiced by Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Scott Coffey).

It could be that these (brown) rabbits are reminders of the White Rabbit in "Alice in Wonderland," taking Alice down the hole into bizarre lands. With the strange and terrifying occurrences, the low ceilings and the non sequiturs, there's more than a whiff of a threatening Wonderland. But since the rabbits first appeared in shorts on Lynch's Web site, it may be that he simply likes the image of people dressed in rabbit outfits.

A possible explanation for Nikki's switch to Sue and back could come from Lynch's deep-seated interest in transcendental meditation and the concomitant belief in reincarnation, making the shifts a kind of transference between lives. But since Lynch believes all things are ultimately connected, and he himself didn't know what he was going to add, there may be no true explanation.

Who knows, maybe the reason a group of prostitutes start singing "The Locomotion" is because Lynch heard it on the radio the day before. Does it belong? Does it matter, since everything belongs?

The usual Lynch trademarks -- intense close-ups, monumental headshots, red curtains -- are all here, but noticeably missing are the deep, rich colors and sharp images. Instead, they're replaced by murky, shadowy DV, which may give him more freedom but robs the pic of any visual pleasure.

Lynch's own experiments with music lead to repetitious spooky sounds and tension-filled noises, repeated so often in dark corridors that they, too, fail to enhance a mood already gone awry.

Camera (color/B&W, DV), Odd-Geir Saether; art director, Christine Wilson; art director (Poland), Wojciech Wolniak; costume designers, Heidi Birens, Karen Baird; sound (Dolby Digital), Lynch; associate producers, Sabrina S. Sutherland, Erik Crary, Jay Aaseng. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (non-competing), Sept. 6, 2006. Running time: 179 MIN.

With: Terryn Westbrook, Julia Ormond, Peter J. Lucas, Grace Zabriskie, Ian Abercrombie, Diane Ladd, William H. Macy, Karolina Gruszka, Krzysztof Majchrzak, Mary Steenburgen, Nastassja Kinski, Laura Harring.
Voices: Naomi Watts, Scott Coffey.
(English, Polish dialogue)

Inland Empire
James Christopher at the Venice Film Festival

EVEN by David Lynch’s weird standards his latest thriller is an exasperating stretch. For three chilly hours we shadow a small cast of artists and prostitutes as their identities are deliberately blurred in one of the most impenetrable films ever made.

The character played by Jeremy Irons is trying to shoot a psychological drama about love and terror in some sort of crazy labyrinth but there’s something deeply wrong with his script.

The last pair of actors he hired to play the lead roles ended up being gored to death with a rusty screwdriver. He is suitably apologetic about this bizarre mishap. But the omens are not exactly promising for the new replacements, Laura Dern and Justin Theroux.

It appears that the film script has a Machiavellian life of its own. An increasingly hysterical Dern is pursued from one fraught scene to the next by a queue of assorted creeps. Shot for the most part on digital video, Inland Empire is a medley of deliberately blurred faces and grainy handheld action.

Some of the scene-setting is technically quite brilliant with actors in character watching themselves on screen playing other mysterious roles. The sense of being trapped and devoured by your own film creates an atmosphere of claustrophobia.

But the story is hopelessly lost in surreal mazes and pointless dead ends. There’s no telling where doors will lead. One opens inexplicably into a Russian village; another on to the seedier end of Hollywood Boulevard, where streetwalkers ply their trade.

Dern is no stranger to Lynch’s bizarre universe. She starred in Blue Velvet (1986) and Wild at Heart (1990). Yet her bedraggled performance is swamped by Lynch’s impulsive tangents. The only consistent element is a string of heart-stopping fright moments that reach out and rudely clobber us with ear-splitting shrieks.

Few directors can touch Lynch when it comes to experimenting with form. The best example here is a spooky family of giant grown-up rabbits played by stage actors who deliver non sequiturs to an empty theatre auditorium. The absurdity is deeply unsettling. But so is the wilful refusal to explain a single motive or frame. “I don’t know why people expect art to make sense when they accept the fact that life does not make sense,” wrote Lynch by way of introduction to his latest film.

Surely, if the director himself doesn’t have a clue, what hope for his baffled fans?

Out of all the movies I saw for the first time last summer, Lost Highway was definitely my favorite.

finally, the truth about Rancho Cucamonga can be told

Are you Alan Titchmarsh?

Naturally the Times review is the kind of review which, when I read it on the bus this morning, made me want to see the film right there and then.

Yes, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me was unfortunate, and Lost Highway a bit of a shaggy dog parlour game, but Mulholland Dr left me in total awe; when Lynch is great, he's the greatest. So of course I'll go and see it, as I always do with his work.

needless to say - WICKED PSYCHED!

Maybe change thread title to Inland Empire...

I am a Film Society member, and get an advance order form.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was published in 3 parts from 92-95. Prior to 92, the only relevant Lynch films were Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Dune, Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart. Twin Peaks was not exported to Japan until 1993.

I'm not saying that Murakami does not have any obvious influences, I just think a Lynch influence on WUBC is pretty far-fetched.

usenet?!

The very same. Only now it's oceans of copyright violation. Apologies for the reddit link but this is how usenet works now: https://www.reddit.com/r/usenet/

it's easy enough to torrent as well if you feel like resorting to that.

don't see it on youtube but it's available as a netflix dvd if you have a subscription

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JENvk5Pq8zM

does that show up?

yes, thank you!

does that show up?

Video unavailable
This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by The Criterion Collection

meanwhile

turns out the "new master" of Inland Empire was made by taking an HD upscale from the SD footage... downscaling it back to SD... then doing an AI upscale to 4K. Basically they edited in SD NTSC, then did a 1080p/23.98 HD master which they graded then output to 35mm. And Lynch compared a 4K scan of the 35mm and an AI upscale of the HD, and decided to do the upscale. But he wanted to get rid of "false detail introduced during the original HD converstion," so they downconverted it to SD then did the AI upscale from that. (Presumably they didn't use the original SD footage bc it was totally ungraded.)

“Turns out” via what source? The person seems to know what they’re talking about (not that I really understand it anyway), but isn’t it unusual how there’s no official info* about this release, but everyone seems to know all these details about it(?) Or is that how things work in Criterion Collection land?

*that copyright claim sure seems to validate that the thing will soon exist, anyway!

The person posting is a film programmer who used to work in film/video preservation, so they seem a plausible second hand source for information about an upcoming theatrical film release with a weird master

awww, sadface/ooooh, intriguedface!

Chicago folks: The Music Box is doing a Lynch retrospective (including related works like, uh, Boxing Helena), so now is your chance to see Inland Empire on the big screen.

is there a date for the Criterion release yet? wonder if it has the extra scenes movie... apparently not been issued since the original DVD.

There is no announcement of a Criterion release yet, and one would not expect it before the theatrical release.

This guy analyzes the image quality of the trailer, and isn’t happy:

A couple people have asked me what I think of how the restoration for Inland Empire looks now that high quality footage is out. This is a complicated subject and my feelings on it are complicated, so I'm going to try to go at this with all due humility. pic.twitter.com/Nhr5098md7

— Will Ross (@SadHillWill) March 23, 2022

It always looked bad, and now apparently it looks almost exactly the same.

I haven’t watched Inland Mpire since I saw it in the theater and I’d sure it’ll be a different experience!

Nathan Lee on remaster:

https://www.4columns.org/lee-nathan/inland-empire

https://www.avclub.com/david-lynch-inland-empire-interview-dune-restoration-1848795394

Particularly liked his answer to the script question:

The A.V. Club: With Inland Empire, I understand there wasn’t a full script before production. Were you writing scenes as you went along?

David Lynch: Let’s clear this up. When you write a script, at least what my experience has been, you don’t suddenly see the whole script and spit it out and type it out with no typos, just perfect, in one sitting. That never happens, never will happen. You get an idea, and you write that one out, then you’re going along, you don’t have any script, you had an idea and you wrote it out. Then you go along, you get another idea and you write it out. Now you have two ideas, but you don’t have a script. You go along a little bit more and you get a third idea, you write it out. And you look and you say, “Wait a minute, I have three ideas, and none of them relate to one another.” Fine! No problem. There’s no script, just three ideas that don’t relate. You go along and you get a fourth idea, and this fourth idea relates to the first three, and you say, “Oh, something’s happening.” And then, when something starts happening, more ideas flood in, quicker! Quicker they come, like schools of fish, schools of fish! And the thing starts to emerge, and a script appears. That’s exactly the way it happens. And that’s exactly the way it happened on Inland Empire.

The only difference was that I happened to shoot each of those first three ideas. Not only did I write them down, but I shot them. I built a set, or I went to a location and I shot them, and they didn’t relate. And then I got the fourth idea, which related to them, and now I’m stuck with the [technical format], because I’ve already shot these three. But now the whole thing has come together and I’m starting to write and I’ve got the whole thing now coming. That’s the way it happened. So it wasn’t that I had no script. I had a script all along the way. It just wasn’t complete until it was complete, the way every other script is.

restoration looks great. i had never seen this movie in a theater and it scared way more of the shit out of me than it did at home. it is also always way funnier than i remembered

I took my kids to see it tonight at our local indie theater. They're both David Lynch fans, we've watched most of Twin Peaks and Blue Velvet, and the oldest has seen Mulholland Drive too. So they were relatively primed, but it still blew their minds. And they were rapt straight through the 3 hours, which is not always their tendency in long movies. I really enjoyed seeing it on a big screen again, and I did like the restoration. It definitely retained its lo-res graininess and harsh light, but just felt a little richer. But man, what he does with that harsh light. Anyway, my oldest said he thinks it's his favorite Lynch movie. I wouldn't go that far, but it's in my top tier.

Also the jump scares in this movie scare me even more now that I anticipate them.

xp “Took my kids to see Inland Empire and they loved it” is pretty wild, assuming they’re not fully grown adults. How old are they?

14 and 17. The oldest is really interested in film, especially weird film, so he's been a Lynch fan for a while. But the younger one is pretty open to it all too. He's an anime fan, I think weird stuff doesn't faze him much. He was into all the doubling and repetitions in the movie, the way certain references or bits of dialogue got repurposed from scene to scene.

i also think it's his best movie

I had an incredible time watching it in the cinema.

Seeing this tonight at a rep. Not a big fan the first time, 15 years ago...

I went last night, it is still an amazing movie, although it would flow better if a bunch of stuff in the 3rd hour were significantly trimmed. I couldn't tell any difference with the image, but I was blown away by how loud it was. The bass rumbles during the opening scenes were very intense.

I could do with less of the Polish plot overall, and maybe one or two fewer rabbit scenes. But I don't begrudge him his doodling.

imo the final hour is the best

poland stuff is the weakest and sort of disrupts the spell for me every time bc i never remember it’s there

I really hope the remaster plays here but I doubt it will. I did finally see it at the cinema, must have been just before the pandemic, and it was amazing: it was a v battered 35mm print, which added an extra layer of inland empireness (I’d only ever seen the Blu-ray) and for much of the runtime there was a fly crawling on the projector, no shit

https://i.imgur.com/b9TkOrA.png

Now imagining that the fake news secret lynch project at Cannes this year was an angriest dog feature

Or dumbland

Or Ronnie Rocket

15 years didn't change my mind much. I admired Laura Dern's performance (thought I was hearing Ozark's Ruth in her long monologue with the bespectacled guy), and I liked the street woman talking about her friend near the end, Little Eva, and the end-credit sequence. Most of it was still an ordeal-and-a-half.

A couple of interesting reviews that cover the spectrum:

If you dislike the film as much as I do (I often disagree with Richard Brody, but I'm 100% in sync here, especially with his last two sentences): https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/movies/inland-empire

If you love it, Manohla Dargis's rave: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/06/movies/06empi.html

(But not with Brody's "saccharine pop music" charge, if by that he means Little Eva or Etta James.)

maybe he means beck

lol every adj-noun phrase in that long parenthesisis is equally bad lazy thinking: also none of them are per se methods or motifs (or if they are u shd say how)

Jejune Sex Play never matched the power of their first EP.

i hate the word jejune tbh but it has a genuinely interesting (if slightly baffling) etymology: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=jejune

lol every adj-noun phrase in that long parenthesisis is equally bad lazy thinking

If you like the film, sure; I don't, and describes what I don't like extremely well.

He could mean Beck--those three are maybe the only songs I'd count as pop music.

i was joking, he almost certainly means that chrysta bell song

black tambourine too thwacky to be saccharine

Don't know that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcXKtIBYqGg

In Inland Empire Laura Dern says something like “oh you sweet baby infant boy” and I tried to search for the exact wording but parent SEO stuff made it basically impossible. Anyway I’m surprised there aren’t hundreds of accounts on here called that.

— Don Hughes (@getfiscal) May 16, 2022

Now imagining that the fake news secret lynch project at Cannes this year was an angriest dog feature

― gop on ya gingrich (wins), Sunday, May 8, 2022 1:29 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Eraserhead: The Next Generation or bust.

So my initial take after seeing this Friday was "A David Lynch movie about making a David Lynch movie." Subsequently I can see connections with Lynch's Twin Peaks works. (Can two TV series and Fire Walk With Me be treated as a trilogy?) But I'm not interested in pursuing them further right now.

would be nice to see a movie about the Eraserhead baby in middle age