Inland Empire (2006)

Most people consider "Mulholland Dr.", David Lynch's Masterpiece. I can see why they would say that, but I think this film is hugely underrated, and most people dislike it, probably because of the way this was shot, the run time or maybe even the context. But for me David Lynch's content just gets better and better with each movie you see, and this is no exception, this could be Lynch's Masterpiece, not just because of the really surrealist quality to this film, because of the message, the way this was put together, and how it came to be. I recommend first experiencing this film, and then analyzing it if you are into deconstructing stuff, so you can get the message or anything. But, if you're just in it because it just "mindfucks" you, then you still won't be disappointed. If you didn't like the movie because of the aesthetic or anything, I urge you to give it a second chance. And if you're a David Lynch fan, let's just hope that he makes a new film soon.

I thought 'Inland Empire' has a basic story, about a curse. 'Axxon n' was a Polish story of a prostitute that evolved into murder, allegedly cursed and sympathetically passed on. At the start there is a scene from the play, with the actors faces obscured enigmatically. A film was attempted of it, '4/7' , clips of which are shown periodically, and the curse was passed along. Finally 'On High in Blue Tomorrows' was made based on the other stories and the star, Nikki Grace (Laura Dern), comes to realize how the curse is working and actually ends it. I am guessing that David Lynch added some dream imagery, mostly Nikki's. It seemed to me that one of the victims of the 4/7 movie, a young girl, apparently a prostitute, is trapped in some sort of limbo, in a room and has a metaphorical view of how the curse is working. She also had contact with some sort of hypnotist wizard who seems to be the protagonist in all the stories. Nikki Grace seems to come into psychic contact with this ghost girl, who tells her if she folds a slip over, burns a hole in it and looks through the hole she will see visions that explain some of the mysteries. Nikki does this. While filming 'On High in Blue Tomorrows' her costar Devon (Justin Theroux) also gets the feeling about the curse as Nikki tries to explain it to him. She is having constant visions of the original story 'Axxon n', and tries to explain it to Devon who really wants to understand but doesn't quite, although their lives seem to be somewhat of a parallel to their movie script. I thought Nikki was also having dreams about her situation, symbolized by some rabbit people in a Room 47 who say symbolic things about the stories. Devon and Nikki are also having an affair and their spouses suspect and both plan on doing something about it.Clever, eerie story I thought.

Let me preface this by saying that not only am I very familiar with Lynch's work, but I've loved every movie of his that I've seen and the only ones I haven't seen are "Wild at Heart" and "The Straight Story". I even watched the entirety of "Twin Peaks" and loved it. "Inland Empire" is just too much."Inland Empire" starts out seemingly on the same track as "Mulholland Drive". That is to say, an actress hoping for a big break who gets caught in an endless downward spiral of crime and guilt, and for most of the movie, even after it gets absolutely nuts, this seems to be what the movie is going for (emphasis on "SEEMS", because there is no way of really knowing with this one). The thing is, this movie has no real plot, no consistent characters, no space, no time, and as far as I'm concerned, nothing in it is reality, but it's never truly clear. And it's three hours long.What the movie descends into is an absolute nightmare. I can say with certainty this is the weirdest film I have seen, and it's probably the scariest one too. Usually the latter would be high praise, but with this one... I don't know. This movie really, genuinely unsettled me, and it probably has done the best job of any film to recreate what it actually feels like to be in a nightmare. Everything about this film just feels wrong. The way it is shot, with these poor quality digital camcorders, usually uncomfortably close to people's faces with an ultra wide angle lens, distorting their faces. There are full scenes in a foreign language without subtitles. The mic quality isn't that great, there'should no studio lighting (or lighting of any kind for that matter. I don't know if this one was intentional, and frankly it made me laugh, but it has horribly bad sound effects for people being hit, and that is probably just a flaw, but honestly I couldn't tell. It just generally doesn't look or feel like a movie... even for Lynch it's absurd.Here's the thing: I can appreciate the movie for how it made me feel, considering no movie has ever made me feel that way, but at the same time it was really just not enjoyable. Usually I can love movies that make me feel really sad, or afraid, even though those are negative emotions, because I can appreciate the filmmaking aspect that was required to make me feel that way. No one would say "Schindler's List" made them feel good, but many of the people who watch that film love it. So when I say it wasn't "enjoyable", I also mean that it was just too bizarre and unorthodox to truly be able to analyze the specific filmmaking aspects, and there were no characters or symbolic imagery to analyze either. I roughly understood the themes and felt the mood of the film, but that was about it. This is what makes it different than other Lynch films: all the rest of his films take place in psychological landscapes, but are grounded in reality, and it's possible to find this in "Mulholland Drive", "Eraserhead", and even "Lost Highway" in my opinion.I do not exaggerate when I say that I did not want to watch this film during it's last hour, not because I thought it was necessarily bad, but I just really didn't like the way it made me feel, and there was even a moment near the end of the film where I stopped watching for a few minutes because the film made me feel so strange and anxious.The film has the unique feeling that literally anything could happen at any moment. The only thing truly consistent about the film is its mood, which can only be described as a nightmarish fever dream.In short, I have mixed feelings about this strange amalgamation.Edit: It's been a day and I haven't stopped thinking about it since I finished watching it. I still don't really know what I think about it, but no movie has had this effect on me before, so I bumped the score up to a 7/10.Edit: Been three days. In retrospect, I think this was kind of great in its own way.

So you have the director, played by Justin Theroux, who is obviously supposed to be Cameron Crowe, and you have the actress, longtime Lynch companion Naomi Watts, who is obviously supposed to represent Cameron Crowe's ex-wife, Nancy Wilson. Cameron Crowe writes a film for her, to win her over, and casts her in the lead role. Pretty straight forward where this leads off to, some interesting twists, paranoia, a couple of Jungian dream sequences, maybe a dance interlude, I can't remember. Then at the same time, a victim of the sex-trade industry in Poland is kept captive in a motel room for the night, and the film playing on the television is the same film that is being filmed by Naomi Watts. Through Lynchian logic, the Polish girl summons Naomi through her image on the television into the room, and the two of them attempt to solve a murder mystery that has a peculiar similarity to another case going on back home in LA. It's all very easy to follow, though byzantine, Lynch has struck gold with his ability to tell a cohesive story and still be sadistically erotic. A good Hollywood meta-thriller, with great production values all the way across the board, from Lynch, who is filming on a hand-held camera, to Lara Flynn Boyle, who some might say reprises a "version" of her role from "Twin Peaks", even down to Terry Crews from "Everybody Hates Chris", making his dramatic role debut as a clever conman on the streets of paradise in the film within the film. Look no elsewhere for a solid block of fun, a little long in the expositional dialogue, but it's so snappily edited and framed you'll look back and go, huh? How could I not have seen that coming? Sort of thing. 10/10 A+ murder mystery