(2006, 180 min) David Lynch reconfigures film noir again in his latest digital epic starring Laura Dern as, surprise, an actress. Cinema is noir, a shadow land of two-dimensional life flitting across a silvered screen. Feelings of deja vu abound, as the dream logic unfolds. Not only are the many landmarks of Lynch’s imagination here, the mysteriously lit fifties interiors, the industrial soundtracks, immeasurable depths of darkness punctuated by blinding light, but the feeling of dream deja vu is captured. Dern and Justin Theroux are being directed by Jeremy Irons in a film called On High in Blue Tomorrows. Lynch explores the spaces created by the actors, in the darkness and magic of Hollywood. The underworld they inhabit is unredeemable yet filled with spiritual light. Dern becomes other characters in her own passion play revealing the self and its countless reflections and reverberations. Lynch replaces his typical structures with a sort of elegant shorthand as he references everything from 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sunset Boulevard, and The Three Faces of Eve.
A further step away from the deconstructed cinema of Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, Inland Empire is neither a collection of vignettes and thoughts nor a cohesive whole. It is more like the outline to an imagined feminist manifesto that achieves epic proportions in spite of its willful failure as entertainment. Lynch’s fascination with the anima and the energy of thanatos is discernible yet undecipherable. The film attempts to come full circle as Dern, portraying multiple parts in what seems to be many films, arrives in a vintage movie theater, watching herself play the character she was moments before. The theater becomes the launching pad for the unconscious, branching out into sets the viewer has seen previously, exploring the contents of mind and its forgotten secrets.
Baroque in set and sound design, yet minimalist in approach to content, Inland Empire will certainly appeal to long-time fans, with its many references (and new additions) to Lynch’s rich cinematic history.
© TLA Entertainment Group
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