The 909
Last night I went to the Providence opening of David Lynch’s new film, Inland Empire, with a couple of pals from the department. I’ve seen a couple of other works by Lynch, but this was much zanier than either Mulholland Drive or Blue Velvet. I couldn’t tell what I thought of the film throughout most of it. Most of it I was battling trying to figure out what was going on and why, wondering if at any moment Mr. Lynch might throw the audience some clue as to what vague sense of continuity there might be, and hoping that he would take this scene as his last scene. One thing is certain: Lynch knows his conventions and he knows them well enough to defy them like crazy (there’s a certain gripping and jarring sequence towards the end that plays so heavily on defying the standard conventions of filmmaking and also demonstrates Lynch’s beautiful creativity). Eventually (after three hours) the movie ends (the closing sequence very reminiscent to the closing sequence of 8 1/2 for me), the lights come up, and I still haven’t decided what I thought of the film, what the hell has been going on for the past three hours, and whether or not I liked what I just saw.
Then we left the theatre.
In Providence, Rhode Island.
And walked to the Volvo parked in four-degree weather.
It was only at that moment (about a minute and a half after the credits closed) did I realize what had been going on for those three hours. David Lynch had invited us into a world that, at the beginning looked quite like a world which we could inhabit, and slowly and cautiously took us into a much more surreal world, one that still closely mirrored ours, but was so unlike the world I was used to, that after three hours, the world I was used to seemed itself surreal in its own way. This is the gift that Lynch offers in each of his works, and in Inland Empire he so sneakily slips this into your hand that you don’t even notice it until it’s gone.
If it’s zanier than Mulholland Drive, then it must be pretty damn zany. I guess I can’t really make myself enjoy those extremely inscrutable films.
Yeah, it’s totally way zany! It’s definitely a head trip; so the film is recommended if you like your reality deconstructed and reconstructed in a different order; not recommended if you don’t, :-). (I mean, there’s at least some payoff at the end of Mulholland…)