The Sharp Side

No, this is not a woman who has just emerged from a branch of McDonald’s... And although the pleasures of Inland Empire are not those of narrative in its orthodox forms, this post does give away one or two aspects of its stories. So you might not want to read it before you see the movie.

David Lynch has said that his new movie is about a woman in trouble. Which is true.

The central feature of her condition is bewilderment. Which the movie replicates in the viewer. We share the Laura Dern character’s perplexity about what in hell is going on.

And wasn’t it a long way down
And wasn’t it a strange way down...

Inland Empire made me think of many things but particularly of Carnival of Souls: another movie about a troubled, puzzled woman who doesn’t quite understand her condition. The title ‘Inland Empire’ – apparently the name of an area in California – evidently signifies consciousness – those vast private dimensions of dream, desire and memory. In that sense, everyone is in Hollywood: we direct the drama of our life, we star in it, we view it alone, from inside the movie theatre of our mind. Although no one I’ve read on the movie has mentioned this, the giant rabbit figures perhaps allude in some way to Donnie Darko, another movie about a world coming to an end. Maybe the Laura Dern character once saw the movie and that experience feeds into her mind. But Donnie Darko has nothing on this movie. What Lynch does makes commercial cinema seem bogus and inauthentic.

For me, the key scene in Inland Empire came after the first two hours had elapsed. Laura Dern is stabbed with a screwdriver. She bleeds to death on Hollywood Boulevard. As her life ebbs away the two female down-and-outs either side of her begin a deadpan discussion about getting a bus to Pomona. One of them is a physically unattractive black woman. The other one is a cute, beautiful young Oriental woman. The Oriental woman starts to tell a story about a damaged woman she knows. And the story she tells seems to have strong parallels with what is going on in Inland Empire.

My take on the movie is this. The primary narrative, at first, is about a successful American actress who wins the lead female role in a new movie, On High in Blue Tomorrows. Later, the director (played by Jeremy Irons) discovers that the movie is a re-make of an earlier film which was discontinued after the male and female leads were murdered. However, this narrative is all a fantasy on the part of the Laura Dern character. As her life ebbs away she relives (re-makes) the events that led to her murder but in a distorted, fantastic fashion which is partly shaped by the story the Oriental woman tells and is partly shaped by desire, channelled into the fantasy that she might have made it big in Hollywood and that her life has the depth and intensity of a movie. But deep down she knows she is dying and that her dreams are false; intermittently this dreadful recognition explodes, forcing her into a new sequence of strange events and fantasies. The closing credits give us the final moments of the Laura Dern character’s life. The black woman who lip syncs ‘Sinnerman’ is an upbeat version of the black female down-and-out who stares at Laura Dern as she dies.

Upon this inner core of meaning is built the rest of the movie: layer upon layer of stories which amplify Laura Dern’s life experiences in a contorted, twisted form. That she is murdered seems certain. That a man has also been murdered seems likely – probably by Dern herself. She probably also has a Polish husband and some form of involvement with a Polish community. Her life has fallen apart; possibly she has taken up prostitution, in an amateurish fashion. Already there are acres of space devoted to an exploration of what is really going on in the movie – the most illuminating that I’ve come across is the one by Mrs Waggish.

In one sense Inland Empire is David Lynch’s Waste Land – an account of emotional extremity which never quite adds up, expressed through collage, with abrupt shifts of register. But it’s also his Finnegans Wake: it’s a dark tale of night which restlessly circles and repeats its themes, one story bleeding into another. It is a movie full of shadows and darkness, of questions without answers. Perception does not lead to understanding. Information is missing.

Two elements puzzled me. Firstly, is any part of the movie actually set in Poland or are the Polish scenes simply memories, fantasies, distortions? If Laura Dern is in Poland, how does she get to the USA? My guess is that the Polish dimension is imaginary, a warping of something once real rather than actually existing.

Secondly, which characters are imaginary and which are real? I opt for the fractured selves hypothesis. The woman weeping, watching TV, is perhaps a projection of the Laura Dern character. Phantoms co-exist with real people. No story or character has priority; all are equal. Inland Empire exists in that space between the question posed by the Laura Dern character in Blue Velvet - ‘What’s going on here?’ - and her later, somewhat complacent conclusion that ‘It’s a strange world, isn’t it’. But whereas that question is neatly answered in the earlier movie, it can never be confidently answered in Inland Empire. This is a much darker and more disturbing movie than Blue Velvet.

Lynch also possesses Joyce’s acute self-consciousness of form. Inland Empire relishes its medium. Lynch’s embrace of low-cost digital technology acknowledges and accepts a future which spells the end of conventional Hollywood movie-making. Inland Empire also exploits it as a medium – not just the coloration or the graininess but also those amazing close-ups of the human face. Lynch is also very attentive to sound, incorporating at times even the rough crackle of raw cheap-mike recording. In its own way Inland Empire is an innovative as Citizen Kane. It’s an homage to cinema, a way forward, and a nostalgic look back – a farewell, perhaps, to those vast sound stages which feature in the making of On High in Blue Tomorrows, as well as to those old plush red velvet cinemas from the golden age of twentieth century commercial cinema, in one of which Dern views herself, as she is at that moment, on the screen.