Movie Review: Inland Empire

Filter magazine hosted a screening of David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE last night to help celebrate the DVD release. The film is a mesmerizing, mind bending work of art. Continuing down the twisted path explored in his more recent works, the film is a non-linear meditation on identity, reality and fate.

Laura Dern is excellent as Nikki, an actress who is cast in the film role of a lifetime, only to find out that the project is cursed. Of course, it’s not as simple as that. There are also giant bunnies with human bodies and valley girls doing “the Locomotion”.

Working with DV has clearly given Lynch the freedom to indulge his sensibilities, and this is arguably his most experimental film since Eraserhead. The film skips constantly between days and locations, and characters frequently seem to become somebody else. At nearly three hours, the film clearly tested the patience of some of the audience, but I found the ride totally enthralling. I felt like I was able to comprehend the movie, without having to dissect the layers and layers of meaning.

At the Q & A that followed the screening of INLAND EMPIRE last night, David Lynch spoke about intuition. There is a beauty in the fact that an audience can watch a movie – have no idea what the hell is going on – yet, instinctively understand it. Or as the drunk guy next to me put it: “It doesn’t make any sense, but there’s a place between your heart and your head that explains it to you.”

INLAND EMPIRE is released on DVD next Tuesday. You should probably just buy it, because you’ll want to watch it a few times.