Imperial labrynth

Movie Review: Inland Empire

Directed by David Lynch

Like Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire is a place name in that strange American fun-house of a town, Los Angeles. But instead of snaking, it sprawls, and of course it’s much farther from the comfort of shore.

So we find ourselves in Lynch’s new Dadaist horror masterpiece, which he filmed on grainy digital video and (gulp) without a script. Perhaps the plainest indication of what we’re in for is that the movie isn’t even set in its eponymous locale. Whereas Mulholland Drive had Internet message boards buzzing with theories as to its Gordian-knot plot, Inland Empire is a movie best contemplated in the Internet of one’s own dreams … or nightmares. Only here can our interpretations fail gracefully, dissolving into psychedelic fuzz or falling down rabbit holes – much as the heroine does throughout.

At the beginning of the movie, Nikki Grace, an obscure film actress (Laura Dern), lets in a strange visitor. The awkward conversation that ensues is as hilarious as it is frightening, setting the stage for all the sublime discomfort to come. The woman’s two ominous parables, one about the birth of evil and the other about a girl who gets lost at the marketplace, both nod to the freakish Hollywood world that Lynch’s movie concerns and inhabits.

Nikki has just landed a new role (enter Justin Theroux and Jeremy Irons) in a movie called On High in Blue Tomorrows, which, of course, is cursed. But we’re cursed too as we follow her through the slippery worlds of the movie set, suburban barbeques, tripped-out whorehouses, an assortment of anonymous women in trouble and an apartment inhabited by a family of catatonic rabbits. Unlike the real Inland Empire, so I’m told, this one is a very fine place to get lost. Alex Pasternack