INLAND EMPIRE: masterpiece? piece of shit?
 

i saw it yesterday and was furious and disappointed. i had to struggle to a) not walk out of the movie b) stay the fuck awake. it bored me (literally) to tears. however, i cannot stop thinking about some scenes & laura dern's spectacularly changing face. perhaps this movie is just a sad example of self-indulgent masturbation, but one cannot underestimate david lynch. i could go on and on but im wondering who else has seen it. did he catch any big fish? or has the maharishi loaded his brain with a load of bollocks?

??

Damn... I was looking forward to it more than god too.

me too but i was disappointed as fuck at this... amorphous wankery.

don't go there hoping for a "story" (though he misleads you for the first 40 minutes or so). it's mostly abstract shit. so to speak. not exactly abstract either... hm...

http://www.sonicyouth.com/gossip/sho...61&postcount=6

I haven't seen it, but yet feel I can safely assume that it is shit. It's probably even worse than Lost Highway although that would take some doing.

Personally, I never understood why you or anyone else here ever thought that Mulholland Drive was particularly good or remarkable cinema.

ack.. mulholland drive is one of the best films ever.

I get the feeling this is going to be the Finnegans Wake of movies.

Looks like Lynch has done it again. Confuse people, that is.
We've all been warned in advance, that this film won't make sense.
I'm looking forward to seeing it. :)

Hmmm, you don't like Lost Highway or Mulholland Drive, very strange.
Lynch is truely an undisputed genius of cinema, I suggest you watch these films again. Most people who don't like these films, are just looking for too much meaning, you just need to let yourself go a little. If you still don't like them, then I'm affraid you're a lost cause!

I'm really looking forward to seeing it too.Why do things always have to 'make sense' in the arts,i really don't know.

well no they dont have to make sense. but i do wonder if this is kind of the equivalent of endless guitar noodling. i have to say i dont know. i defnitely will require a 2nd viewing. but after 3 hours of your ass parked in a seat watching random footage you begin to wonder if you've been conned. now, im not making pronouncements nor definitive judgments-- im asking questions. my reaction of initial viscera rejection however has been shared by other people who now love the movie. see this: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/30544

im just saying, if you go, be prepared, don't believe the.. hype... and judge for yourself. if you go there with the wrong expectations you are bound to suffer.

i love it and i havnt even seen it yet.

ha ha. good luck to you.

Sure,there is nothing wrong with disliking something or finding it boring because it is not of your taste.Personally,i'm really excited at the idea of watching it because it is pretty much the sort of movie that i've always expected Lynch to make.If you found it to be rubbish it doesn't mean that you haven't got good taste or anything,it just means that it's not your sort of stuff and i still respect that.........but that's only because i like you.:rolleyes:

Why do I always hear the same stories about Mulholland Drive and other Lynch films? That it's full of holes, confusing, boring, etc. I think MD's a great Lynch film. Not my favorite, but still brilliant.

Here's A Long, Strange Trip Down David Lynch's Mulholland Drive
by Allen B. Ruch, where he gives us his interpretation about the film.

Introduction

I realize that it's unusual for The Modern Word to be reviewing a movie; but for David Lynch's Mulholland Drive I'll make a happy exception. A film noir "open work," Mulholland Drive is rich in textural density, invites multiple readings, rewards repeated viewings, and contains frequent allusions to itself, previous Lynch films, and countless other classics of cinema. Indeed, Mulholland Drive shares such a natural kinship with the works featured on this site that I feel obligated to feature it. Oh yes, it is my duty.
Of course, this may be my flimsy rationale for publicly airing my latest obsession -- from the moment I first saw Mulholland Drive in the theaters, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Like most people, my first reaction was a stunned sense of bafflement. While I loved certain parts of the film, and thought it was stylistically brilliant, I was afraid that maybe this time Lynch had finally missed the last exit ramp on the Lost Highway and would never be seen again. But still, I just couldn't get Mulholland Drive out of my head. Its images remained fixed in my imagination, Badalamenti's music haunted me at random moments, and its characters dropped by to visit my dreams. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that anything this compelling couldn't be random or pointlessly surreal; only a puzzle awaiting a solution can engage one's attention for so long. So taking that as a challenge, I set about trying to figure out whether Mulholland Drive made sense, or whether Lynch was just nutty. I began discussing it incessantly (some would say neurotically) with my friends, trading theories across the Internet, and matching my theories against a second viewing, this time in the proper sobriety of a Sunday afternoon. As soon as the DVD was released, I bought a copy and watched it again, and the next day I was back on the Internet. (Just think, we cranks used to be confined to writing letters to newspapers!) I was surprised by Ebert's admission that even after going through it frame-by-frame at the University of Colorado, he was still perplexed. I was also unhappy with Salon.com's explication, which did a lot of good work, but was still incomplete. So, rapidly approaching the limits of geek obsession, I went through the film frame-by-frame myself, scribbling down notes and finally pulling together my various ideas into a unified interpretation. Of course, being abnormally immersed in postmodern literature has given me a somewhat biased perspective, and I couldn't prevent comparisons to Finnegans Wake, Pynchon, etc. from creeping in, even if I tried. (And, well, I didn't try. Lynch is one of my favorite filmmakers, and if I had the time, I would add him to the Libyrinth in a heartbeat.) So the following essay is bit of a pop-academic hybrid, a combination of film review, detailed explication, thematic analysis, and fanboy rant. I nevertheless offer it in the hope that it may assist some people who remain baffled, reinforce the theories of other obsessed devotees, and hopefully introduce a few ideas of my own into the general conversation. While I make no claim to having the single correct interpretation of the film, I do believe that I offer a model that works; and that's reason enough to throw my hat into the ring.
Of course, if you have yet to see the film, stop right here: it is impossible to discuss Mulholland Drive without spoiling the plot.

And even more importantly, the film should be seen the first time with little or no expectations... more

ha ha. you know, when i watched eraserhead for the 1st time i rented it and it took me like 4 or 5 tries because i kept falling alseep. i was just out. ZZZZZZZZZZZ. eventually i managed to stay awake and really liked the movie. perhaps if i had a cup of david lynch brand coffee before inland empire... anyeway i hope you like it and dont fall asleep. there is some fascinating stuff there. but it's really really long...!

anyway i have to start this morning a 2000-mile road trip. 3 days of driving in the ice. yikes! so i might not be around much... have fun & all...

---
ps i loved mullholand drive. this is way way beyond that.

My feelings exactly, well put!

I can understand why people make excuses for Lynch, I really can.

Eraserhead is an artistic achievement. The passion of which Lynch is not likely not be able to duplicate ever again. It changed fillmmaking in some ways, (the launching of the midnight movie at a theater, for instance)...ways aside from the obvious broadening of the filmmaker's palette. His new work in the immediate digital medium with handheld Sonys is an attempt to revisit artistic territory that free. He even aims to establish his own experimental company to keep those juices and an influx of ideas flowing. Guess what? He can't. If he tries to go back to it, it's already a contrivance. Weird-for-weird's sake isn't art. Never has been, never will be. There simply has to be some kind of narrative content with tendrils to some at least some notion of linear consciousness in film, or, at the very least, there has to be resonant unconscious non-linearity that is relevant to unconscious archetypes that in their own way give content to the piece*. If these forces of motion are not present, then a film turns into a big turd that just sits there.
If Lynch wants non-objectivity, then he should make video art, short experimental films, or return more to abstract expressionist painting, because the motion picture is, like it or not, an objective medium. Lynch knows this himself. The bringing-in of the complimentary coffee at showings of Inland Empire is an attempt to make the 3-hour experimental movie a happening of sorts and not just a "normal" moviegoing experience. If you like to read about films as much as (or more) than you like to watch them, then maybe Inland Empire will be a "good" "Joycean" movie experience for you.
A running time of nearly three hours is a slap in the face to the "short" form that this content is better suited for, and it is a deliberate "fuck you" to the audience. David Lynch is not John Coltrane, sorry. It's also safe to (more relevantly*) remark that he's no Andy Warhol either.

Go ahead and find fault with my expectations, but since Lynch certainly does have the potential to be uncompromisingly brilliant, it renders the later work disappointing in comparison.
His exemplary work on The Elephant Man garnered him enough critical buzz to be annointed to make Dune.
Take Blue Velvet. He wrote it himself, he directed it on a shoestring with a group of highly talented actors that basically did the film for free. It's a labor of love. It's a meditation on what would happen if he did something with the unconscious heart of Eraserhead, but with a bit more, just the right smidgen more, of a palpable plausible reality for the presumed audience to relate to and invest their senses. Blue Velvet is archetypal in its complex simplicity and answers that artistic muse with more connections to a conventional plot in a way that redefined, or at least enhanced, the cinematic language. The leap is accomplished by the filmmaker's art. It's one of the best if not the best film of the eighties, and many people, like myself, esteem it extremely highly.

Yeah, it's really tempting to make excuses for Lynch, for a guy that meticulously makes sure the dust bunnies under the radiator in Dorothy Vallen's womb-like apartment "look right" for the shot even if they happen to not get included in the frame.
Lynch's current philosophy (more like methodology) of filmmaking is the devil-may-care "everything fits" opposite.

"There simply has to be some kind of narrative content with tendrils to some at least some notion of linear consciousness in film or at the very least there have to be resonant unconscious non-linearity that is relevant to unconscious archetypes that in their own way give content to the piece. If these forces of motion are not present, then a film turns into a big turd that just sits there".

Why? What do you mean it turns into a big turd? Why do you have to have meaning? Surely this is just a prescribed necessity that Hollywood demands.

Life (& Death) demands meaning. Film is a slice-of-life. It cannot help but be that (even in a fantasy film.)
If, as an artist, you want to represent life in more non-objective ways then there's modern visual art for that, or you can truly make visionary cinema that rewrites the language. In Zen, "this" is "that," but with Inland Empire, it is a case of "this" isn't "that." Haha...It's no Joycean portrait-of-absurdity with postmodern ironically romantic pathos. It's no visual Camus; it's just utter cack.
Warhol deftly managed to combine the two (film and modern visual art, the objective and the non-objective) by keeping the camera static and interference absolutely minimal. His remarkably Duchampian instincts and choice of subjects is what made his early non-conventional films important. Andy's films are about archetypes and the turd that lays there in Warhol is truly fertilizer for the imagination.


Inland Empire seems to be little more than a cut-up of failed digital shorts and travelogue footage (unlike Rabbits, he got out of the house) with a constant eye out for the weird. Lynch mistankenly assumes that since the camera moves (also unlike Rabbits (which is, by the way, included) and since there's phantasmagoria with the sound and editing, that the project won't lay there like a turd when viewed by audiences.

It's a shame that Lynch feels like he has to try and be some sort of American version of a surrealist filmmaker to secure his place among directors when his star shone so brightly early in his career.

Heh? Don't mean to burst your bubble, but Lynch IS a surrealist filmmaker, and I don't think that he needs to "secure" his place amongst directors, because he's already achieved that.

i would class him as a surrealist filmaker too.

prophetic visions or idol worship?

i mean-- expectations are one thing-- i had very high ones-- but reality is not wishful thinking.

i'm guessing i'm the only one here to have actually seen it so far??

meanwhile...

http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/inlandempire

I will not be paying money to see this envelope-breaking film.
I respect your honesty and insight, !@#$%!; I do realize though that you're merely stating what you think, and not discouraging anyone from seeing it necessarily.
It appears to me that half of the metacritics didn't really watch the movie, and anyone with any sense should know the "half" to which I'm referring.

Inland Empire premieres here in Belgium on February 7nd, I for one can't wait.
Check out this funny campaign by David Lynch for Laura Dern.

"Cheese is made from milk, get it?" -this guy's priceless

the funny think is, i don't know what i think, though my visceral reaction was that of being had in a confidence scheme. what i will think of it, i guess, is where things pivot. i have not made up my mind yet in that regard.


well, the movie is not at all like that video. i stand in awe of laura dern's performance by the way, but i feel that this is a way to make amends for having sent her into this absurd maelstrom-- kinda like 'you trusted me now i owe you'. my favorite performance of 2006 is perhaps penelope cruz's, but it's the camera on laura dern's mutating facial geology that does a spectacular job.

i think that lynch may have blown it though.

as for "cheese is made of milk" i do get the metaphor, at least simplistically, that just like 9 gallons of milk are used to make, what, a pound of cheese, or so, lynch expects that a delicious movie will coagulate from the mess of his random meanderings, after properly aged and matured. a good premise, but i'm not sure it applies. not yet anyway. being sure, i mean.

What I was kinda hoping was that the statement of INLAND EMPIRE being Mulholland Drive's 'evil twin' would nurture my needs :)

The thing with MD to me was I really liked the first hour and a half but wasn't satisfied with the last half hour glued to the rest, like Lynch was explaining dreams like Freud would. I was hoping that IE would just intertwine with scenes / rooms / dreams and no explanations - I don't mind an absurd maelstrom. I see his films, as do some critics as well, as a canvas of moving paintings (as Lynch own earliest paintings).

Then again I think being into making videos and bending my own ideas into images myself can preoccupie ones mind while watching his movies.

We'll see how it turns out

well if that is the case then you might enjoy it immensely at first try. its tricky though, for an abstract movie to be shot on video, because it even eliminates that visual element -- bu video for itself... well i think you are n the right mind to enjoy it, and if you do, when you do, please tell me how.

i just found a cd with some lynch treasures i hadn't seen for a while.

Rabbits episode 1-5: I don't know if these are the same episodes as in IE or he made some new ones.

Darkened Room: a 8 minute short as what seems like Lynch experimenting with video. Although I must admit it makes it harder to get into that Lynch world it feels like you have to wrestle yourself through a closed door where in previous Lynch films you were just sucked in.

just nice that Lynch is still pushing himself: which in my eyes he hadn't done with Mulholland Drive, but sure as hell did with Lost Highway and definitely The Straight Story.

im normally into all the hip/arty stuff, but i hated MD....and I really dont get how his measure as a 'surrealist' can be compared to other great 'surrealist' stuff like 8 1/2 or any Fellini stuff....perhaps I need to watch eraserhead or blue velvet or something...but how much should one 'try' to like something like Lynch?

I never considered Lynch as part of the hip/arty stuff. He's never there to create a hype surrounding his films, they always just kinda arrive.
This ain't arthouse shit in my opinion. But you don't have to 'try' to like David Lynch. You just like 'all' 'most' 'some' 'one' 'none' of his work.

I remember being very young when Twin Peaks aired in Europe and it were my folks that were watching it. they told me about it, taped it and that was my first contact with the work of Lynch without knowing him. Now my parents can't stand watching his films as they would knock asleep while watching it. i remember ranting about Lost Highway and when some friends came over to watch it my enthousiasm was ill-tempered as they thought
it was shit. luckily i have some other friends that are into the same shit as me.