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:: Wednesday, May 16, 2007 ::

INLAND EMPIRE

"Will you look at me... and tell me if you've known me before?"

That was interesting. Pretty much what I expected. The Lynchian themes of identity swap, dream logic, and dark humour etc are all there. Maybe slightly less violence than one might expect. Having made the move to digital production Lynch has been freed of all of the restraints of traditional film making techniques (notably cost of film stock) and has let ideas run away with him. It seems to have brought out the worst in him.

It was well publicised that neither he nor the actors nor anyone else had any idea what this film was about and that there is no real story as such. It’s about a "woman in trouble" Lynch says. That doesn't necessarily make it a bad film. You haven't had the true David Lynch experience if you come out of the cinema not asking, "so what happened?" Part of the appeal of Mulholland Drive was unravelling the mystery, although I'm not convinced there actually is a solution to it. It was developed as a TV series pilot with the intension of replicating Twin Peaks success but when no network picked it up and extra half hour was whacked on the end and it got a cinema release. That final half hour didn't appear to make any attempt to close off the multiple story arcs that had been opened. INLAND EMPIRE has less excuses and seems to have sprawled into a three hour monster simply because Lynch couldn't contain himself.

Technically it's hit and miss. The sound design is wonderful; if you are interested in use of sound in film you sould watch this. The music too, is great, and to his credit some of it also written and performed by Lynch. There's some brilliant lighting, and intriguing sets (dark corridors adjoining garish pink rooms), and even some comedy dance routines. As many reviews have commented there is some very good acting, especially from Laura Dern. Her confessional scenes with the guy with the wonky glasses are riveting. However, some of the acting is also decidedly below par, like in the barbecue scene where pretty much everyone is poor (Dern included). The camera work in places is reminiscent of the most ill conceived, pretentious, student wank. The extreme close-up tracking of the coffee cup near the beginning is terrible. There is far too many facial shots held just slightly too close for the camera to be able to focus. The focus, in fact, is all over the place, sometimes it is used as a very effective artist tool (like when characters walk up to a fixed focus lens then move on again), sometime it just looks like Lynch hadn't yet learnt to work without a focus puller and wasn’t any good at doing it himself. With the exception of one good cut scene the footage shot in Poland and the footage in the US don’t really fit together at all.

As the image above shows, The Cube decided to put an interval in the middle of it. (After real four for anyone who cares.) This broke it up nicely and despite detracting slightly by interrupting the flow it didn’t take too long to get back into the swing of things. The first few minutes of the break were strangely quiet, as everyone stood around quietly introspective and unsure how to interact. I stood in the cold courtyard huddled around the glowing cigarette ends of Slim and Sam. After a few exchanged shrugged the silence was broken with a question of, "any idea what's going on?"
"No. And it's not going to get any clearer I'm sure," was the best response I could muster. Most of the rest of the conversation is reflected above, as it would appear the conversation caused me to galvanise my views at the half way point.

The second half seemed to include more humour, more dance, and more whores that the first. The final scene, under the credits, brought together some of the jokes very nicely. In all it's not one of Lynch's best films and although he seems to be very excited about the possibilities of digital cinema it's nothing for fans to get excited about yet. Hopefully over time that will change.

Others comments:

• Lynch on Lynch
  
• Wikipedia
  
• Rotten Tomatoes
  
• Fanny Magnate does a good job of pulling some meaning out of it.
  
• warm n easy on Hijack brilliant captured most of the audiences reactions:
  "no idea what went on - I think I was visually raped yet don't recall"
  
• Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian provides the perfect summary:
  "Unlike the plasma TV screens in Dixon's, David Lynch is evidently not HD-ready"

Labels: Film, Lynch

:: Dan 16.5.07 [Arc] [0 comments] [links to this post]    ::
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