Yeah, my friend came down from Indy last night and we had a long discussion about Lynch -- his onetime favorite director. He said, "Yeah, you know, I was thinking -- Inland Empire is probably the worst film ever, isn't it?" and we had a really great, long conversation about why the film doesn't work at all and just feels like some immature, amateur DV experiment... The biggest problem, of course, is how Mary Sweeney didn't edit it. Since she edited everything from Blue Velvet to Mulholland Drive -- taking Lynch's 4 or 5 hours of footage and always chopping it down to compelling 2 hour films -- she was the biggest contributor to how his films look and feel. And since she wrote Straight Story, she is responsible for his best film, period. Lynch shots 65 hours for this movie, and, uh, good sense must have prevailed -- I am guessing she looked at the 65 hours he had shot and was like, "There's nothing I can do with any of this!" If anyone's ever curious about how important editing it is, look at Mary Sweeney's masterful editing versus Lynch's sloppy jarring cuts. Also, if you watch any of Lynch's old films, there are so many little things going on -- characters in bars sitting around and chatting, you know.. all kinds of little details, since there was, like, a script. Since there was no script -- either things were improvised, or wrote on napkins -- there isn't much to the film besides Dern walking around a movie set, with extreme close ups of her face. Also, the Beck scene is probably the worst scene ever filmed by anyone, ever. I used to respect the film as a big fuck-you -- like, "fuck plots. Fuck characters. Fuck studios. Fuck development. Fuck my fans." You know, like the whole point of the film was to just destroy everything -- almost like how Kitano made the challenging, impenetrable Takeshis' immediately after making his biggest success, Zatoichi (and he also made his insane, ridiculous Getting Any? after the HUGE success Sonatine); he designed these films to fail, like big jokes, very cathartic for him. The thing is, they ended up being great films, but naturally they bombed. Inland Empire, to me, was almost like Lynch having a great big laugh, while playing with his DV camera. "Let's see what I can get people to buy, heh heh heh." The film has haunted me for years -- I've had it since it was released (purchased from Wal-Mart -- with a discount car!). It's always stuck with me -- like, I had to keep rewatching it.. I was trying to figure out why it didn't do anything for me... it just has this cold, weird atmosphere. I've watched it
7 times now -- obviously, it's not that big of a failure, or
really the worst film ever (I didn't say I agreed with my friend, though I do agree the film doesn't work), if I have felt compelled to keep watching it. I guess the biggest thing that confuses me is why the Rabbits footage he used in the film is the best-looking, -feeling, and -sounding part of the movie, when it was shot like 2 or 3 years before the rest of the movie. Strange.
Underworld Beauty - 7/10
eros plus massacre - 9/10
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Originally Posted by noisereductions
Scream 2 y'all.
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Yes, Scream 2 -- absolute garbage!