What if today was tomorrow

 INLAND EMPIRE (2006)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

David Lynch is the absurdist nightmare master of cinema - his films are intricate puzzle pieces that can fit together with some measure of coherence if you think long and hard about it (though not always coherent, of course). "Mulholland Dr." was one of those lyrical "Hollywood" dream movies that few directors can ever hope to achieve, yet one understands that it is at least about an actress in trouble with a dual personality, possibly.  "Inland Empire" uses the tagline "A Woman in Trouble" and it is, once again, about an actress in trouble with two personalities, her own as an actress and the character she is playing in a new movie. This time, however, I could not really fathom what was happening with this Hollywood actress or what director Lynch was aiming for. I am still perplexed and frustrated, yet deeply fascinated and absorbed all the same.

Laura Dern is Nikki, an actress who has just won a part in a new film called "On High in Blue Tomorrows", a remake of a cursed, unfinished movie. She is married to some man of high importance and they live in a mansion. A Polish neighbor (Grace Zabriskie, in a terrifying performance) visits Nikki and tells her that the movie role she won involves murder. Nikki is disturbed by this neighbor who has decided to drop in and introduce herself. Then the neighbor tells her an old anecdote about a girl lost in a marketplace only "half-born." Segue to the cold reading of the script with Jeremy Irons as the film director, Kingsley; Harry Dean Stanton as the director's assistant who has access to valuable information about the screenplay's inception; leading actor Devon Berk (Justin Theroux) and of course Dern herself. Devon always sleeps with his leading ladies yet Nikki is not his type. 

Once we learn the origin of the script they are filming, "Inland Empire" becomes completely absorbing. Then it runs on a highly surrealist fever dream pitch of Nikki getting lost with her character as the realities become ever so distinct yet ultimately the same. Nikki hangs around a group of prostitutes on Hollywood and Vine St. and sometimes these women dance in uniformity to the "Locomotion" song. Sometimes Nikki goes to some stripper club where a silent therapist resides a few staircases above the stage, and she talks about being raped and beaten by men. Sometimes we get a glimpse of some European prostitute who is beaten by her wealthy clients, and sometimes she watches a sitcom about humanoid rabbits! Whether all this is in Nikki's mind or only the character she is playing as the movie-within-the-movie unfolds is not always clear. It is all too fragmented and we know the movie director Kingsley is not filming any scenes of Nikki running into bizarre barbecues or her own husband's bedroom they share, or doors leading to other dimensions or some phantom wearing Nikki's face or a woman with a screwdriver in her abdomen. As I said, hard to decipher the dream from reality. That's David Lynch in a nutshell.

"Inland Empire" is 3 hours too long and either you go along with this frustrating, occasionally repetitive, insanely high-pitched nightmare or you don't and check out early. Shot on low-resolution digital video, some darkly lit shots are indecipherable though most of it is brilliantly dank along with those lamps that illuminate only sections of every room. The snow scenes of presumably Poland in the 1930's are exquisite. So is Laura Dern in easily one of the most powerful performances she has ever given - she holds this puzzling film together. I greatly admire experimental films and especially David Lynch's work so even if I don't rate this as highly as "Mulholland Dr." or "Lost Highway," I was still along for the ride. Unpredictable from first frame to last and sometimes quite frightening, it is definitely about a woman in trouble though how much trouble, I can't say. Just do the locomotion and you'll be okay.