| Product: |
Inland Empire (DVD) |
| Date: |
28/10/07 (72 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Excellent performance from Laura Dern; a couple of interesting ideas; decent piece of art
Disadvantages: Vacuous; lacking atmosphere, mood and emotion; too experimental and amateurish; few new ideas
The beauty of the work of David Lynch is that his films work on so many levels; as pieces of surrealist art, as entertainment, and, notably, as extremely accomplished technical achievements also. His debut, Eraserhead, is the ultimate director's film. Lynch drenches his films in atmosphere, menace and mystery, and has always been brilliant in that his darker films are so graphic yet so inexplicit. His work, though inaccessible and superficially puzzling, engages the imagination in this way, and it's often been the case that the films play on the mind long after the final credits have rolled. But despite intense critical appraisal, his newest project, Inland Empire, falls short of these standards.
Although the narrative of Inland Empire is not hugely relevant, the basic premise of the film is that an ageing actress, Nikki (Laura Dern), lands a comeback role in prestigious new film, alongside a dark charmer, Devon (Justin Theroux). However, it turns out that the film is in fact a remake of a cursed Polish production, wherein the two leads were mysteriously murdered by an entity existing within the story. Soon, as she becomes increasingly immersed in the role and attracted to Devon, Nikki embarks on a surreal personal odyssey, one embued with enigma and the weirdness of dreams. As said, the story isn't what's particularly important here, it just lays out a rough sketch for the film, if one can indeed call Inland Empire a conventional film. Rather than a specific story, Lynch favours an overriding theme, one of female fidelity across countries and years, and this is what keeps Inland Empire together, albeit tenuously. The real problem is that Lynch never actually set out to make Inland Empire as a feature film; it was a project that unravelled as he continued to film various segments of it, writing the screenplay in steps. Narrative coherence as a result is extremely sparse, but unlike Eraserhead, this isn't in a particularly good way. Inland Empire comes out certainly as a dreamlike, artistic experience, but unfortunately Lynch went wild with it, over-indulging and doing away with the vast majority of what makes a good film. In the end, Inland Empire plays out like a ridiculously prolonged experimental short-film, and any potential it has in the first act, is soon squandered as it deteriorates into something slow and dull.
It's because the film is so sketchy that it turns out like this. The story isn't really developed enough to absorb the viewer. Whilst comparisons aren't often helpful in judging a film, it's notable that in Mulholland Drive, for instance, the story is unravelled throughout the film, with this constant lurking menace throughout, which is unleashed in all its weirdness in the final act. Inland Empire is the opposite of this; the story is barely given time to get going before Lynch lets the dreamy surrealism overwhelm it, but soon it's not bizarre or chilling or scary, it's just frustrating and repetitive. One gets the feeling that the film is going in circles, repeating the same theme over and over, with the odd variation. In order to make something compellingly weird, there has to be some kind of reality to ground it, otherwise there is nowhere for weirdness to appear out of place. Lynch in Inland Empire seems to be weird for the sake of being weird, and while this may work in segments or short films, it really does not work in a three hour film. His past work is really excellent in this sense because the darkness of these parallel worlds manifests itself in reality, which is what makes it so unnerving. Inland Empire, for all its apparent ambition, does not have this quality.
Indeed, whilst it is epic in scope, with dozens of characters and subplots, the film has very little sense of place. To a certain extent, this may be the point, but unlike in past productions, Lynch does not make a character out of the surroundings, namely in this case Hollywood and Lodz; at times we cannot tell where the film has gone, America or Poland. By no means is it necessary to be spoon fed such facts, but there's a cold isolation that surrounds the set and the characters, and whether that's intentional or not, it makes it very difficult to relate to anything that's going on. The film is full of monologues and often vacuous conversations that try to establish a certain point, namely that of infidelity, which the film just rubs in the viewer's face. Very little new ground is explored and Laura Dern's Nikki's self-revelation never seems to probe deeply, it repeats itself. I keep wondering it I'm missing the point somewhere, but Inland Empire is quite simply dry and emotionless; there's no sense of what Nikki is going through, none of the paranoia of Lost Highway, anxiety of Eraserhead, or selfish guilt of Mulholland Drive. Lynch creates no mood or atmosphere, everything, like many dreams, just seems to be disjointed scenes leading on from the previous ones. He doesn't try many clever quirks as he did in the past, save a few subtleties, making what seems to be quite a vacuous film with little craft involved.
For the man who defined the "director's film", Lynch doesn't do much directing with Inland Empire. His use of music is clumsily inserted into various scenes, he neglects the opportunity to really use the brilliant Angelo Badalamenti's strings, and again, unlike his past films, the songs he uses and how he uses them don't create a mood or atmosphere, adding nothing (apart from the implementation of one very beautiful song). The scenes in the film are not a complex web, i.e. music, editing, lighting, imagery, effects, all combined; they're lazily assembled. Lynch tries a lot of decent tricks with lighting, but never goes for the dreamlike effects of Eraserhead or Lost Highway. It's as if he's making a superior amateur film, with what seems to be a scant budget, which he pulled off in Eraserhead but not here. His use of the DV camera adds something new and different, making the imagery feel much more real and broader in scope in its capturing of detail, but Lynch's mistake is that dreams and nightmares aren't detailed, and in a film dominated by a nightmare it's not very appropriate. There's none of the haze of Mulholland Drive, for example, and his restraint in use of effects (note: not CGI) and intelligent camera tricks hampers the film, so it's not hugely accomplished. On the other hand, when the film completely loses any sense of reality after the first act, one really does feel lost and Nikki's initial confusing of identities is much akin to unconsciously trying to stay awake as you drift into sleep, a nifty touch. But tricks like this are few and far between, and it's hard not to get bored and frustrated by the time the film is halfway through its three hour running time.
And the length would be bearable if Lynch kept his material eclectic, interesting and meaningful, but his choice to abandon narrative when he edited the film together was a bad one. It was not a good idea to have such an undeveloped blueprint; there's nothing to entertain or grip, all Lynch has here is a piece of art with quite a basic meaning. There isn't much to ponder over with regard to interpreting what it's all about, only with regard to how frustrating and endless the whole experience was! Inland Empire is sadly not a rewarding film, even on multiple viewings, as it's just the same repeatedly with nothing to keep up with or look out for. Whilst that may be the case, it's not entirely without merit. Laura Dern gives a brilliant performance as this woman of dual identity and forever remains a strong anchor and medium, showing immense range, although considering she takes up nearly all the 180 minutes, and being as much an acquired taste as David Lynch, if the viewer is no fan then the film may become even more frustrating. The rest of the supporting cast are also great, Justin Theroux seductive as the boisterous Devon, Jeremy Irons brilliantly eccentric and pretentious as the film's director, Peter J. Lucas simultaneously menacing and anguished as Nikki's dual-identity husband, and Harry Dean Stanton comically stoic and stingy as the assistant director. But the supporting cast are horribly underused, a Lynchian crime since they add so much of the humour and weight to the film, as they always do. Instead he goes between dozens and dozens of various characters, who often don't add much as they are undeveloped.
This undevelopment of what's important is the fatal blow to Inland Empire. It's fragmented and unwieldy enough as it is, and it's a massive shame that Lynch didn't make more of it. He went into overdrive in all the wrong places, making something too experimental, something weird for the sake of being weird (his use of clips from his mini-series Rabbits is a prime example of this) and feigning meaning when any meaning is scant. There is so little behind everything that it's impossible to feel fear or emotion for anything that's going on. David Lynch has been accused of being pretentious many times, often without much reason other than that viewers didn't understand his film, but with Inland Empire he truly is being pretentious, and not in a good way. Sometimes it seems like it's all just a joke, since there's barely any understanding to be had, rendering the film really quite superficial and there's nothing substantial to be gained from repeat viewings. For what has been recently been ranked amongst his best work, Inland Empire is only such because of its bold ambition and epic status, but aside from that, what could have been so brilliant lacks so much.
Summary: An over-indulgent and clumsy effort by the master of atmosphere
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