Inland Empire (2006)

Just perfect...

Highly Overrated But Still Good

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This is officially the worst thing I have ever seen on the screen. I mean including anything you can see on any screen, from those error messages, windows blue screen to cheap action movies, bad advertisements, and even those annoying physically damaged cellphone screens, this "Inland Empire" is the worst.There is nothing, a whole 3 hours of nothing. The more some Lynch fanboys try to extract something from it, the more ridiculous it gets. And don't get me wrong, I gave 8 stars to some of his other works so this has Nothing to do with a name. The fact is, the movie is a piece of garbage that is an insult to everyone who watches it.Don't waste your time.

After devouring the incredible journey that was Twin Peaks: The Return, I went on the hunt for more things Lynch. Inland Empire is probably his most obtuse and difficult film, yet I must admit that I enjoyed it. I won't pretend to you that I had any single clue about what was going on for the majority of the feature, and whilst at times it did come across like a student film (you can thank the use of the Sony PD-150 for that) I was left feeling very unsettled at the conclusion.Simply put, nobody does dream sequences or dream worlds like David Lynch, and considering this entire film blurs the lines between dream and reality from beginning to end, this is the ultimate expression of that art-form. The budget is minuscule, but you will be left questioning what is real, and what it is that really matters, if anything. Laura Dern is excellent, as usual, and there is a pure- Lynchian (sorry to use that term!) scene where she gets stabbed with a screwdriver, and the people around her continue the most morbid conversation, in the most nonchalant way. It is hard to describe, you just have to watch it to see how twisted it is.

Don't have much to say about the movie in general. One of Lynch's best.I wish to comment on why I had trouble understanding why Lynch chose "Inland Empire" for the title. Sure, I could have looked it up. Maybe it was for this or that reason. But after watching the movie a few times, here's what I came up with.Having an inland empire means stagnation, without escape except by intruding into the self, or migration. This is a forced-upon situation on the citizens. Now take the main character. She is in a controlling marriage, is exposed to sensual temptation and, living in an inland empire, takes the route of deception (infidelity). Were she not in an inland empire or, as I argue, a suffocating marriage, she would not seek pleasures elsewhere.So this folk tale has two meanings, in my opinion, because of the title. Mine takes another look at the concept of karma, reincarnation - that the bad deeds which result in steps downward may be actions resulting from unjust conditions.

This feels like the natural culmination point of Lynch's films. Mulholland Drive was a masterpiece, whereas this feels like the indulgence that the latter film afforded him. That's not meant derogatorily. Mulholland Drive was a perfect Lynch film, but Inland Empire felt like he'd finally got the green light to follow all of his artistic tendencies as far as he wanted (even jokingly acknowledged in the final scene). It's a descent into madness, and the rule book went out of the window. This has some of Lynch's most memorable scenes, but it also pushes the viewer's natural inclination to apply order beyond the limit.It's not free form stream of consciousness, but is right on the line. There are hints all over the place, but unlike Mulholland Drive there isn't a suggested interpretation that emerges. I have my own ideas about what this film is meant to be, but that's my personal reading. I believe that Lynch aimed to make a film that invited multiple interpretations, and which resisted definitive resolution. It's this open-ended approach that makes it such an enigmatic and imaginative film. It provokes your imagination.