Inland Empire

WARNING: overuse of metaphors ahead.

After seeing Mulholland Drive, I declared myself a David Lynch fan. I might have been overly hasty.

Let me explain. Mulholland Drive, like for instance Donnie Darko and to a lesser extent No Country For Old Men, is all about playing with our narrative expectations. From scene to scene the Hollywood style of continuity is obeyed: weird things may happen, but every scene leads to the next one and there seems to be an underlying "sense". However, in the end, they pull out the rug from under us: there is no "sense", there is no solution that will tie up the narrative strands in one neat bow.

(As an aside, this aspect is exactly what I hated about the celebrated Dutch book "the Darkroom of Damocles" by W.F. Hermans, which plays with our expectations in a similar way, but that was five or six years ago. I should reread it)

Inland Empire, in contrast, doesn't even try to fool you that there is any cohesion. It has a certain dream logic between scenes sometimes, true. But in dreams, everything seems logical, doesn't reveal its absurdity until you wake up and look back. In this film, everything is absurd from the get-go. Luckily, since this is Lynch, it's not like listening to someone recounting their dream -which is universally acknowledged to be dreadfully dull - but like being right inside of someone else's dream.

And a strange dream it is. I counted at least three, probably four different representations of Laura Dern's character. The one that fascinated me most is the cursing, crass one who tells her story to the private investigator, but all throughout the film it's great to see Lynch use her face as a canvas, doing anything he can think of with it, using make-up, distortions, and her great performance.

I enjoyed watching Inside Empire, not so much as a film but as an experience. In the end, though, I prefer the more ordered, more formally constructed puzzles. There are scenes featuring rabbits in this film, but I didn't even bother thinking about what they might mean, because I'm almost sure the answer is "nothing": they're probably just there as an idea, an image conceived of in a dream, without any significance. I like thinking of what Chigurh represents because there are so many possible answers, each of which can be defended. In that film, you can try to find the answer that fits the puzzle best, even if you know the puzzle is at best a Möbius strip with missing pieces. However, Inland Empire is like having a handful of pieces from half a dozen puzzles, and even the most dedicated puzzle fanatic wouldn't attempt that. I won't, in any case.

Lynch's subconscious is an intriguing place to dwell for a few hours, and I certainly don't regret my visit. Ultimately, though, this kind of film is too vague for me, too 'floaty', to translate a Dutch term literally, and my logical mind bristles.