INLAND EMPIRE

David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE follows Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive in exploring extreme psychological states, where an individual’s identity fractures and morphs.

Lost Highway was described as a “psychogenic fugue” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugue_state) although I prefer to think of it as moebius strip ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%B6bius_strip ) – one twist then another and you are at the point where you began.

In Mulholland Drive the moebius strip was cut down the middle (which produces two interlinked moebius strips).

Well in INLAND EMPIRE the moebius strip is divided and divided and divided again, resulting in a series of linked fragments, looping around one another. Or a psychogenic symphony if you prefer.

It is tempting to view everything Lynch does post Twin Peaks as a puzzle which the viewer is challenged to solve; indeed it is hard not to, given the way that the brain works, always trying to piece together unrelated parcels of information, especially visual information (which is how people end up seeing the face of the Virgin Mary in the bark of a tree). But the films are not designed as mysteries and so any solution is unsatisfactory, is less than the sum of the parts. The films set up a series of resonances, some strong, some faint, which reverberate in the viewer’s mind. Lynch now works with digital video rather than celluloid, and whilst this has meant the loss of some of the beauty of his cinematography, he has gained a degree of freedom which he makes the most of in the 3 hours of INLAND EMPIRE.

Although he will not discuss the meaning of his films, Lynch has been unusually forthcoming of late about his interest in and practice of Transcendental Meditation, and this gives us some clues about HOW to watch the film. In particular I have extracted two principles.

First of all is the idea that “everything is in everything.” Put in terms of the creative process, because all of his ideas come from the same place (Lynch’s unconscious), there is a connection between them, however difficult it might be to detect. This could be a recipe for randomness or gratuitous or wilful weirdness, but I felt he pulled it off for the most part. Words, sounds, images resonate and connect across different segments of the film, even by as simple a device as the physical placing of people or objects in a room being mirrored by other people or objects in another room.

Second is the mental discipline of meditation. As elements in the film resonate, the viewer’s mind goes wandering off to try and understand what is meant by the connection that it senses. But this is to waste mental energy, because the meaning is elusive. Instead you have to let it go, and return to the state of concentrated viewing.

It was also interesting to me that Lynch goes further down the road of metacinema ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta ) than he has gone before, even than in Mulholand Drive – in INLAND EMPIRE not only do we have a character who is an actress blurring her role with (one version of) reality but she twice walks in on and views herself, once on set, the second time in a cinema. One part of me likes to think Lynch has seen The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pervert) and is laying little traps for Mr Žižek and his theories of "the gaze".

I do detect a playful side to the film. Although I say it is not a puzzle to be solved, Lynch plants a number of elements which appear to be code, particularly letters and numbers. There also seem to be coded references to many of his other films, such as a painting of a pair of robins which references Blue Velvet and a man sawing a log in the closing titles which made me think of the log lady in Twin Peaks. Whether these are recurring motifs which mean something to Lynch or traps to entice the puzzle hunter we will probably never know.

So is it any good?

Yeah, of course it is, but in truth one for Lynchofiles and cinema buffs only. It wouldn’t make a good date movie (although I would instantly propose to any girl who thought it did) and if your idea of a good time is a huge tub of the noisiest popcorn available with a bag of Doritos for dessert and a two litre carton of extra sugar non branded cola and your favourite film is Norbit well – oh what am I saying, if that is you, you wont be capable of reading this anyway.