Thursday, December 27, 2007

INLAND EMPIRE

Director: David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks)
Starring: Laura Dern, Jeromy Irons

David Lynch is one of the most frustrating directors working today. He's produced a number of near masterpieces (The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks - okay, only the first season). He has a few other very solid works in his catalog (Eraserhead, The Straight Story). The thing is, when Lynch misses the target, he REALLY misses the target. He's like that talented pitcher in Bull Durham who'd occasionally throw so wildly the ball would end up in the press booth. For instance, do not try to tell me Lost Highway is a good movie. Just don't.

Now realize that I'm a pretty big Lynch fan (of his movies that is ... if you should go to his website, beware - he's seemingly even wackier in his personal opinions). I make it a point to catch all of his films. I own the Twin Peaks DVDs, and have a framed poster in my home office. Heck, Mulholland Drive is one of the few films that I've ever paid to see twice. Inland Empire? Not so much. No, I'm fairly disappointed I paid even once.

I recall reading many reviews, and viewer comments, complaining about how impenetrable Mulholland Drive was. I disagreed. Perhaps I just got lucky when I saw the camera slowly falling into the bed pillow and immediately clued in that what followed was just an extended sequence of a dreaming subconcious mind. I think for many people, people who found it understandable or not, Mulholland was still terrifically engrossing. It grabbed the viewer and pulled them into the dream. Not Inland Empire. This was easily the least engrossing film of Lynch's canon. More so than even Lost Highway.

At first I found the images before me to be a bubbling, churning cauldron of cinema, where one scene would sink down as another rose up. It wasn't long before I became as bored as I would have been watching water boil, however. The main problem here, I think, is that the viewer isn't given much of an engaging reality to start with. I suspect that for Lynch's wacky time and plot twists to work, there must be something that the viewer is already comfortable with. What I'm suggesting is that it's Lynch's responsibility to first weave the rug, before he pulls it out from under us. This movie isn't very interesting from the start, so when the 60 minutes of utter weirdness begins there's no real reason to care. I couldn't care less about Laura Dern's character, so I couldn't care less that her reality had warped and twisted. Oh, I'll still catch the next Lynch flick, but this one will be soon forgotten.

Standouts: Some really beutiful imagery and "cinema" peppered throughout.
Blowouts: The characters were so utterly unengaging, that all of the dazzling director tricks simply bounced off my head, rather than penetrated.

Grade: C

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