A never-ending nightmare of incomprehensible terror, David Lynch’s Inland Empire begs to be seen in the darkest room imaginable.
Eclipsed from the daylight and the normalcy of society, Inland Empire exists in a Hollywood cursed, by strange neighbors feighning warnings of “brutal fucking murder,” by blinding Eastern European dance sequences appearing out of thin air, by a tearful Laura Harring watching a life fall apart on a TV screen. I hardly slept the night after I saw it, as distorted images of Laura Dern’s face and ominous rabbits danced through my consciousness. The fear and jumpscares are intensified from Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, and they are only exacerbated by the three-hour runtime.
Led by Lynch’s eternal muse, Laura Dern, and featuring other Lynch regulars such as Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, and Laura Harring, an electric, unnerving ensemble of characters define the horrors of California, lacing Hollywood boulevard with fear and confusion. They’re framed by an array of nauseating extreme close-ups, switches from artificial white lights to terrifying darkness, and lapses in narrative linearity.
Though the lack of understanding emerging from audiences and general mixed reviews from those whom David Lynch is astronomically difficult-to-understand makes this appear like an intensified “psychogenic fugue,” à la Lost Highway, the themes still tie together and there are moments of possible cohesion. Still, it’s a film meant to be experienced rather than easily understood. It strays from easy-digestibility and leaves space for interpretation, for deep thought and confusion.
Inland Empire is a Lynchian formula that delves into pure insanity. There is a woman in trouble. She is being watched, she is being filmed, she is being questioned, she is being terrorized. The line between reality and fiction ceases to exist, as we watch her plunge deep into the treachery of Hollywood.
Seeing Inland Empire in theaters is a profoundly changing experience. There is no place in the three-hour runtime that gives room to breathe, it is challenging while watching it and the endless void of questions only deepens when attempting to process it. Inland Empire is arguably the most convoluted of Lynch’s filmography, harrowing and unrelenting, it’s a transformative theater experience. I can’t recommend it enough.
Inland Empire
2006
Dir. David Lynch
168 min.
Playing at the Harvard Film Archive on 10/31 at 6pm.
Followed by a discussion and signing with Melissa Anderson, author of the new book Inland Empire
