David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE : The Cap of a Career
c2007 Paul DeCirce
Whether it be any of his early works: BLUE VELVET, ERASERHEAD or THE ELEPHANT MAN or his modern output: MULHOLLAND DRIVE or LOST HIWAY, Lynch always visually, and viscerally excites. Now I titled this review ‘The Cap of a Career” because I genuinely believe it may be Lynch’s last major film. When I say major I mean getting Academy attention or even getting big distribution. When Lynch hit his “Time Magazine” stride in 1986 with TWIN PEAKS and then WILD AT HEART, his brand of weird was socially cool to like. Well, the times changed and Lynch has too, but not his weirdness nor his honesty. And INLAND EMPIRE, to me, is like a culmination of all his films he’s made and will yet make, if not for the breadth of familiar subject and the cast of Lynch regulars, but also because it may be his most profound and complete statement concerning his relationship to film and the characters he’s built. It is also his most train-of-thought film as well, if that’s possible to imagine.
It explains how and why Lynch has made the other movies in his filmography, and when Laura Dern’s character is walking through the recesses of her mind at the end of the film, one can’t help but think Lynch was as nervous about what she’d find as well as us. But I get ahead of myself.
SCENE: INTERIOR. Human-sized rabbits dress in clothes and carry on the duties of the afternoon. Outside, the city bleats. ONE RABBIT is ironing.
The camera shows us a meticulously constructed stage scenery: a small apartment living room in a presumably city apartment. Moans of the city come from the window along the wall. We look down as if from a balcony (the camera is high and distant). There is a couch, a lamp, a table with a phone on it. It all seems to flicker in lo-fi revel. The walls, gaudy, seem wet. The couch facing the audience, worn yet soft and inviting. A human sized two legged rabbit is wearing her apron while she irons clothes in the corner … wait, did I say two legged rabbit? Yes, I did, and yes it’s David Lynch.
This is a scene from Lynch’s first feature in five or so years; INLAND EMPIRE. It is an oddly familiar yet totally strange experience to any Lynch fan. It is terribly long and shot digitally before a hi-press stomp onto actual film. It features long screen time for curiously attractive yet lanky actress Laura Dern — it hosts most of all living Lynchian troupe. And I daresay that this film is perhaps the closest yet that Lynch has come to succinctly portraying the images of his deeper psyche for his audience to experience. This film goes around almost all dark corners in an ever deepening spiral into soul itself, into desire and curiosity itself, only to find it wound up on the shagged streets of hollywood, to die a pauper’s death. I could go on, as the film does.
This film is rife with interpretive material and a full feast of Lynchian imagery — almost like reading a long visual diary of what interested Lynch during its filming. Most fans know he wrote it scene by scene and it really doesn’t matter. The atmosphere he creates is unforgettable. It’s much of the same he loves in film: little dialogue, a moaning muted brass horn in the distance, or a slow moose’s howl, little to no movement, still camera, a character of some purport moving slightly. Slow motion nightmares indeed.
Yet if you take the time to investigate Lynch the individual, you’d be surprised. He seems completely sane, balanced and straight-forward. He’s habitual in his methods and desires and seems completely approachable in a friendly-neighbor way. He seems to be the same kind of person your high school biology teacher might have been. And if you listen to his words, he invariably returns to the subject of meditation. Actually, while he still may use legal drugs, it comes off as if Lynch is quite centered, compassionate and sincere about helping humanity pull itself up from the bootstraps of ignorance.
Lynch is a painter, really and there aren’t many in film. Most are writers and will write dialogue to ad nauseum — it’s what moves a story, right? Lynch’s visual approach is refreshing to the point of cultism. For example, take a look at his film BLUE VELVET. Watch the first ten minutes. You’ll see a number of odd shots; one of them shows a man having a heart attack on the ground, the garden hose he was using still stuck in his hand. A small dog tries to drink from the water and a toddler approaches. Completely random elements working together, and then a second shot, a slow motion close up of the dog trying to drink. As if Lynch looked closer at the painting.
And while it’s his ‘moving picture’ style that marks him an artist, it’s his character’s one on one exchanges that we don’t forget. In LOST HIWAY, Bill Pullman meets the ‘Devil’ character at a party and calls the same demon on the phone — who is in his house! Or in BLUE VELVET, when Dennis Hopper comes by to Rossana Arquette’s apartment. Or in THE STRAIGHT STORY, when the old man is camping with the young drifter. Or in TWIN PEAKS, with Laura and ‘BOB’. At the end of WILD AT HEART, when Nicolas Cage sings. These exchanges often mark the greatness and humanity (or inhumanity) of his films.
INLAND EMPIRE is probably Lynch’s closest film to his reality we may get. Or a certain reality he experienced. Because Lynch seems to remind us things change, often before an eye can blink, often after only an eternity of blinking. As an artist, he is to be celebrated for his individuality and commitment to the higher muse — or the deeper one, the gut one. Lynch is aiming for the gut and will do so in all of his creations.
So while INLAND EMPIRE should not be anyone’s first exposure to Lynch, it would be worthy of being their last. And if I’m right about this being his last film, then it is a completely fitting finale to a large and giving career. But I think he’s going to prove me wrong about this, come to think of it. He’s got something else up his sleeve yet, and will be in wonder as its shown.
c2007/2010 Paul DeCirce
