First of all, I would like to say that without a doubt this is Lynch's worst film effort to date. Having received at best lukewarm reviews in most of the film publications I'd read, I went to see it with a slight sense of trepidation but an open mind - which I guess is the only way you can see a Lynch film, unless you're a die-hard fan. The trepidation was not only justified but actually shocked at this blurred and obfuscating mosaic of incoherence.
Ostensibly a follow-up to 2001's Mulholland Dr., this film evidently has a similar premise in mind as we meet Laura Dern's Nikki who lands the lead role in an exciting new film. However, this thematic construct ("plot" is NOT the right word) is not as pronounced as in Lynch's earlier effort as it is hidden among sequence after sequence of pointlessly minor-key music saturating long, long shots of lampshades with a ridiculous air of foreboding, and a whole bunch of confused and frankly pointless diversions.
What made Mulholland Dr. interesting was that it consisted of a first half that almost made sense, and a second half that then went about mystifying everything we'd seen up to that point, but because the essential players remained mostly consistent and their reactions and mentality changed inexplicably, it at least gave the viewer a sense that this tangled mystery could be solved. What's more, it had wonderful colour, style, and a beautifully satirical sense of Hollywood even as it subverted the very myth of Hollywood.
In Inland Empire, delightful eccentricity plummets into sheer infant-like dementia. The grainy texture and hand-held camera work which can stand up so well in the hands of Mexican filmmakers here lends the whole film an amateurish air, but that's mainly because the film itself is so badly constructed. The over-enthusiastic use of Dutch camera angles, unusual lighting effects and shrill screaming violins makes it look like something that a first-year Cocteau-wannabe film studies student might put together the night before an assignment is due - while on an acid trip. What I'm trying to say here is that what Lynch managed with subtlety, humour and precocious genius in Mulholland Dr. goes much further in this film, and extends far beyond the pretentious lunatic fringe.
I personally don't believe this film, like other confronting and obscure pieces, is love-it-or-hate-it. Your options are to hate it, or not get a single second of it but don't mind. It's interesting that it took 2000 years for the literary world to flush Aristotelian notions of plot construction down the toilet and Lynch has achieved the same thing some 100 years after the advent of film.
However, I don't mean to suggest that this is some post-modern masterpiece. It isn't. In fact I think many critics in writing about this film have been extremely generous, understating its sheer blind absurdity for one of two reasons - either they would like to forgive the director for wasting three hours of their life, or because they are so firmly convinced of Lynch's genius that behind this incomprehensible drivel must lie some prodigious meaning.
But I for one am firmly convinced that there isn't, and that Lynch's undeniable genius has here bypassed any semblance of reason, and the "touch of madness" which to some extent may constitute genius has ballooned into excess. Furthermore, I believe that if Lynch's name were not attached to this movie, it would not find a release in any market. What makes this ironic is that if Lynch were locked up in a mental asylum, he himself would never be released.
That's all this is: the unleashing of a twisted mind on an unsuspecting public.
Ostensibly a follow-up to 2001's Mulholland Dr., this film evidently has a similar premise in mind as we meet Laura Dern's Nikki who lands the lead role in an exciting new film. However, this thematic construct ("plot" is NOT the right word) is not as pronounced as in Lynch's earlier effort as it is hidden among sequence after sequence of pointlessly minor-key music saturating long, long shots of lampshades with a ridiculous air of foreboding, and a whole bunch of confused and frankly pointless diversions.
What made Mulholland Dr. interesting was that it consisted of a first half that almost made sense, and a second half that then went about mystifying everything we'd seen up to that point, but because the essential players remained mostly consistent and their reactions and mentality changed inexplicably, it at least gave the viewer a sense that this tangled mystery could be solved. What's more, it had wonderful colour, style, and a beautifully satirical sense of Hollywood even as it subverted the very myth of Hollywood.
In Inland Empire, delightful eccentricity plummets into sheer infant-like dementia. The grainy texture and hand-held camera work which can stand up so well in the hands of Mexican filmmakers here lends the whole film an amateurish air, but that's mainly because the film itself is so badly constructed. The over-enthusiastic use of Dutch camera angles, unusual lighting effects and shrill screaming violins makes it look like something that a first-year Cocteau-wannabe film studies student might put together the night before an assignment is due - while on an acid trip. What I'm trying to say here is that what Lynch managed with subtlety, humour and precocious genius in Mulholland Dr. goes much further in this film, and extends far beyond the pretentious lunatic fringe.
I personally don't believe this film, like other confronting and obscure pieces, is love-it-or-hate-it. Your options are to hate it, or not get a single second of it but don't mind. It's interesting that it took 2000 years for the literary world to flush Aristotelian notions of plot construction down the toilet and Lynch has achieved the same thing some 100 years after the advent of film.
However, I don't mean to suggest that this is some post-modern masterpiece. It isn't. In fact I think many critics in writing about this film have been extremely generous, understating its sheer blind absurdity for one of two reasons - either they would like to forgive the director for wasting three hours of their life, or because they are so firmly convinced of Lynch's genius that behind this incomprehensible drivel must lie some prodigious meaning.
But I for one am firmly convinced that there isn't, and that Lynch's undeniable genius has here bypassed any semblance of reason, and the "touch of madness" which to some extent may constitute genius has ballooned into excess. Furthermore, I believe that if Lynch's name were not attached to this movie, it would not find a release in any market. What makes this ironic is that if Lynch were locked up in a mental asylum, he himself would never be released.
That's all this is: the unleashing of a twisted mind on an unsuspecting public.