The Journey with Jesus: Film Reviews
Film Reviews by Dan Clendenin
INLAND EMPIRE (2006)
Writer and director David Lynch has earned many film awards, but he asks a lot of his viewers. Five minutes into this film life-sized rabbits appear in a living room dressed in suits and ties. Prostitutes dance the 60's Locomotion. This film also lasts three hours, and has no linear plot. Time morphs back and forth between past, present and future. Place moves between Poland and Hollywood. Lynch is either coy or just brutally honest when the only description he will give of INLAND EMPIRE (he insists that the title be capitalized) is that it's about "a woman in trouble." Other than that, many viewers compare the film to human dreaming or the interior landscape of human consciousness—disjointed, disassociative, vivid, scary, and sometimes an unrelated stream of consciousness. Laura Dern's performance alone makes the film worth watching; she plays three roles. As a movie about a film and the actress who stars in it, there's the sense that reality is a social construction that depends upon the viewer, and not something objective with a fixed meaning. Lynch shot the film with an off-the-rack Sony digital camera, and as with his other films the soundtrack is alternately ominous, eery, and quirky. Lynch fans will rave at this film, while the average movie goer will just scratch her head.