[click here to print this entry]
By: Martyn Peddler
Date: 14th Nov 07
Format: Cinema
Mood: Make a therapy appointment now
What:
Inland Empire
Where:
Kino Dendy
Cinema Nova
When:
Opens Nov 15
Official site:
here
Or YouTube the trailer:
here
For one of America's most famous auteurs, David Lynch's best work has always been with someone else reining in his more insane impulses - like Barry Gifford co-writing Lost Highway, or TV writer Mark Frost co-creating Twin Peaks. Inland Empire, though, is 100% Lynch, Lynch-up-to-eleven, too-much-Lynch- is-never-enough-Lynch.
The high-concept - a story of a haunted film production - gives him the leeway to do, well, whatever the hell he wants. Three hours of ominous corridors, random screaming, dream sequences, and a Beckettesque sitcom starring humans with the heads of rabbits.
Shot on consumer-grade digital video, the traditional two-shots look a little like cut-scenes from dated video games, but the close-ups are intimidatingly, terrifyingly close, and there's a strange warmth in the large pixels and topographical lines.
Mulholland Drive was disappointingly Lynch-by-numbers; except for the stark humanity in its final act, it felt like a cover-band stuck playing greatest hits. Love it or hate it, this does feel like something new. It's moments like these that I'm glad we don't use star ratings, because I'd have no goddamn idea how to rate Inland Empire. A better question might be: is it something or is it nothing?
It's something.