Inland Empire

Saw Inland Empire. It was amazing. David Lynch's films all take place in a sort of nightmarish nether-world. In the beginning of this film, a possibly crazy woman pays a call on her neighbor, a rich actress. Long awkward pauses and our sympathetic uncertainty about exactly when it's polite to kick out a crazy woman prepare us for the rest of this film. This film takes place in these anxious places where normal society just begins to break down. And then the crazy woman completely accurately predicts the future which we are suddenly in. (Notice, there's no big reveal that the crazy woman is psychic here. We may be inside her fantasy from now on, we may be seeing through the eyes of the bewitched actress, or possibly the woman predicted the future. This is yet more queasy, understated uncertainty.)

The plot (or rather, the lowest-hanging bits of the plot) follow the rich actress as she starts in a new movie. It turns out this movie is actually a remake of an ill-fated Polish film where the lead actor and actress were allegedly murdered. The actress begins to have feelings for her co-star, but her rich, jealous, mob-affiliated husband keeps a jealous eye on her. We think we see where this is going. But of course, no, now she's a poor woman living with her poor husband, now she's a whore indolently lounging on the floor of her tiny home, laughing fraternally with her whore-friends. Throughout it all we flash back to a Polish prostitute who is crying and watching a wierd TV show about rabbit-people. But the Polish prostitute may only be a character in a radio play. These stories intertwine and overlap in confusing, cryptic, ominous ways.

Everything in the film is repeated at least twice. The rabbits, for example, come up again in conversation: the actress's husband kept horses and rabbits for a circus. At the circus there is a man who would hypnotize the audience. There is a woman who claims to be hypnotized with orders to kill someone. This woman horrifyingly reveals she has a screwdriver stuck in her abdomen. The actress's husband invites his circus friends to a weenie roast, where he spills ketchup all over his abdomen. The film is full of meaningless dream-associative chains like this. There is a feeling of almost-logic to it which makes me feel deliciously as though I've lost my mind. David Lynch's films are like nightmares where nothing really makes sense and everything is vaguely unpleasant.

There's great fun to be had arguing interpretations of what's "realy" going on in Lynch's films (I personally believe this film to be the Polish prostitute's fantasy, borne of feelings of rage and envy stirred by an insipid cheating-on-hubby drama she was watching on TV.) but I think they are really best enjoyed with the mystery fully intact. Just enjoy the confusion, the hostile world of conspiracies and omens. They are sensual and terrible and wonderfully rewarding.