Saturday

Inland Empire is an astonishing film. The theatre was reasonably busy - did all of them know this film would be three hours long, and contain very little narrative sense? I had been avoiding seeing it for this very reason, and only chose it because it was a Saturday and I knew the cinemas would be busy. Well, about five people left after half an hour, but the rest, amazingly, staid with it. The first ten minutes are confusing, but it does become incredibly gripping. Soon enough, however, in fact for more than the last hour, you get lost in scenes that seemingly bear no relation to the ones before or after them, and have characters playing multiple roles. As one of them at one point says 'I don't know what comes before or after'. Entertainment might be had in comparing this to For Your Consideration. However, David Lynch's work is demonstrably the better, and leaves a far more devastating impression on your memory. Art and life become horrifyingly confused in this film. 'These sound like lines from our script', she says in one scene, then turns to realise there is a camera filming her, and she was acting all along. You are never quite sure. Perhaps it is a cheap trick to play on the audience, but at one point a camera on a boom drops into view, then creepily slips away, as if it were alive itself. But, despite all this, it is the type of film I can never fully understand. I am too logical, or too focused on narrative. This movie is the concise development of an atmosphere, or a mood. I don't know how to criticise it, or talk about it sensibly. The performance of Laura Dern dominates. She is incredible. In fact, it was rather like an extended screen test: now do 'angry', now do 'happy', now do 'someone has just put a red shirt in with my whites'. Anyway, I was astonished by this movie. It is difficult, and it does stretch the meaning of the word 'film', but I believe that was Lynch's intention. Seeing it is the only way for you to decide for yourself.