Stream it now Inland Empire 2006

 

I love David Lynch and I love this movie, but the only thing that's hard to get past is the acting, which is weirdly performed all the way through. this film is beautifully shot, and is extremely creepy, which every Lynch fan should love.

Certainly not one of Lynch's better films, Inland Empire, is still interesting and somehow pleasant to watch even though I'm not sure exactly why. It's very dreamy and it seems very unstructured and sometimes simply abstract. The story is simple in a sense, the protagonist (Laura Dern) is to play the lead role in a film (a film which is a remake of film which was supposedly 'cursed') and as she plays her role she eventually starts having trouble differentiating between what is her own life and what is the life of the character in the film; what is real and what is scripted? Needless to say, the story goes further and further into some surreal abstraction where eventually things don't seem to make sense at all ... and then back again.

Inland Empire seems unstructured, as mentioned, and this might be due to the fact that apparently Lynch didn't even have the full story before he started shooting the film, instead it 'came to him' as the production went along in various intervals, and this could indeed explain quite a bit. This film doesn't appear to be all that much about the actual story, instead it's about the feeling, the ambiance, the lightning or just the overall dreaminess, it's a piece of art and not a mainstream Hollywood film, and so one needs to take that into account. In that way Inland Empire is much closer to Eraserhead rather than Lynch's more 'recent' work like Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive, of which the two latter actually have far more comprehensible plots and logic developments.

So I must admit that after seeing Mulholland Drive I was rather disappointed with Inland Empire, I was expecting more. It is often too slow paced and for the first forty minutes nothing much really happens. But it's still worth watching for a reason I cannot quite understand, it is compellingly enchanting in a peculiar sort of way.

Not the best Lynch movie but still enjoyed it.

This is the most unconventional head trip I have ever seen. Some amazing images, and Dern was incredible, but I wanted it to make a little more sense. It's Lynch, so I knew it was gonna be cryptic, but it was too cryptic. Not a patch on Mulholland Drive, his masterpiece.

As a Lynch fan, there are pleasant things in here but ultimately I'm torn on this one. On one hand it's a unique and surreal ride through what feels like a dream, but on the other hand it's extremely long, very slow moving, boring (I'm sorry I sound like a little kid, but it really was), and the story made little sense. Even thinking about it symbolically was tough; nothing felt linked together.

I came up with the theory that this movie is more about the experiences and emotions you get from the sounds and imagery rather than the story; a sequence of feelings instead of a real movie. But I'm just not sure. Perhaps Lynch's toughest movie yet.

Whether you like him or not, it's great that there's room for people like Mr. Lynch in the industry.

Rating: 6.5

As a Lynch fan, I think that this was going a little overboard - things made sense in the end, but maybe it was a little too much. Otherwise, relatively interesting and intriguing.

It never really matters what a non-Lynch fan would say about "Inland Empire." Lynch creates his own world with all
of its eerie mysticism and profund and horrific realism of life as many of us can only begin to imagine. For that, he
gets kudos even before the movie begins. Who else can create
a movie where at the drop of a hat, things can change and
can challenge your viewership, your perception and your
understanding of reality. This movie is like dropping a huge
stone into a dark, calm sea. You may not hear or see the movement going on below the surface, yet you feel it and are
influenced by its power. It is not a movie, it is art. If you come to a Lynch movie with the same perspective as you come to see a blockbuster, it is probably similar to going to church like you would a sports event. Pure imagination,
creativity, innovation and film pioneering.

Crap. Maybe I should give it another shot, but this is one of the few films that I started but didn't bother finishing. I got about 30-45 minutes in and gave up. Could have been my mood, could have been my state of mind. I like some other Lynch films, so this one might be worth giving another go, but I have other films that I want to see before trying to make it through this Lynch picture.

Sprawling and wild. Ineffable and terrifying. This is the Finnegan's Wake of cinema.