INLAND EMPIRE
I think I've been a David Lynch fan since before I ever saw any of his work. I was attracted to "art" movies and "experimental" and "cult" movies. I knew everything about Rocky Horror before ever seeing it. I was captivated and intrigued by everything I had read about 2001: A Space Odyssey and Eraserhead before I ever actaully saw them.

I finally got around to finding a place that rented Eraserhead and watched it. Soon after, Blue Velvet came out, and I became a pretty hard-core David Lynch fan. I followed his progress and ever saw DUNE in the movies. Dune was a horrible mess that changed Lynch's career. It was the only film he didn't have complete control over and it was a nightmare for everyone involved. Many hardcore fans claimed they loved it, but I believe they were just fooling themselves. I admit it has some wonderful elements, but as a film it's pretty awful. So he instead made more very very odd movies and became known as a maker of bizarre films that had a real emotional texture to them, as well as a surreal core. His next projects, Industrial Symphony, Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks, were bizarre enough to please his fans but had a commercial quality to them as well. Then he began his dual-personality puzzle trilogy with Lost Highway. Lost Highway had no traditional story arc. It began as one story, but the main character changes into a different person midway and continues from there. It's incomprehensible, but it's compelling. The next movie was Mulholland Drive. In my opinion, this is his best work. Again, it concerns a woman who seemingly changes personalities. It's certainly not easy to follow, but the storyline can be understood and explained pretty clearly. Now we get Inland Empire, Lynch's latest film.

Lynch told the world his new movie was going to be about "A woman in trouble." I think this was Lynch being playful, as the same tagline could be attatched to Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive. He also announced that his film was shot on consumer-grade digitial videotape instead of film. He FURTHER announced that the film was made up as it was filmed, with no pre-determined plot. Oh yeah, and that it was going to be 3 hours long. I was simultaneously fascinated and frightened. I didn't know if I wanted to sit through 3 hours of crummy looking video blown up to a film screen. But the movie finally came to my neck of the woods by way of the Cinema Arts Center, an art-filmhouse on Long Island.

I girded my loins and drive out to the 8:15pm show. I was excited to be out on a chilly winter night, going to an art film all by myself. It seemed so bohemian. Unfortunately, I was wearing my Mickey Mouse T-shirt with a royal blue fleece over it and my red ski jacket over that. I considered changing into a more pretentious leather jacket with a turtleneck or something, but in the end I stayed true to myself. I followed a very pretentiously arty gay couple, who were all dressed in black and grey by the way, into the theater. The pretentious dirty hippie behind the register told me it was cash only, so I had to turn around and find an ATM at the 7-11 a mile away. As I drove to 7-11 and back, I had this conversation in my head about how these people found credit cards to be part of the establishment and only real cash money was cool. I don't know if that's the case, but I wouldn't be surprised. I bought my ticket and saw another guy in the booth watching Family Guy and laughing uproriously. There's nothing less pretentious and arty than Family Guy. Struck me as odd, is all.

I sauntered over to the café to get myself some (no joke) organic popcorn and a Sprite. As I entered the teeny tiny theater, I could practically feel the people watching me sit down with popcord and a soda as if I was going to be "watching a movie!" There were 5 people in the theater. I stood there for a second and then joked out loud, "Damn, all the good seats are taken!" ...silence...
A man asked if I would like to sit in front of him. I told him I was just joking, but thanks anyway. Then the lights went down and some trailers for some cool, odd movies came on. Then, Inland Empire began. Just as my review of the film does below:

First off, it looked better than I expected. The quality was not exactly film-like, and the autofocus kept going in and out, but for the most part, it was well lit and decent looking. But Lynch obviously likes the freedom of a small camera because he just couldn't help himself getting super extreme close-ups every chance he got. The movie started off a bit weird, but sort of settled into a somewhat traditional linear story. Then it got weird. Not interesting weird, but laughable weird. It was scene after scene of unrelated images that just went on and on and on. After an interminable amou of time I looked at my watch. 1 hour had past. I considered leaving. I've never walked out of a movie before. I had gotten this far, I decided, so I stayed the entire 3 hours. I'll admit there were some moments that interested me, but overall, this was a 3 hour, 11 million dollar experiment. I read people's reviews who say this is his best work. I think those people probably liked Dune, too. I love David Lynch's movies and a lot of his other art as well, but this was a miserable failure, in my opinion. What I mean is, it isn't really a film. It was David Lynch playing around with too much freedom and not enough restraint. I believe limitations of some kind are what lead to great artistic achievements. I don't begrudge him his right to make this film, or many more like it. I simply didn''t enjoy it. The attitude of the whole place was one of pretention and "artier than thou." I like what I like and am not ashamed to say I like Abba and don't like David Lynch's new film. It's sometimes hard to cross the line of arty and popular. Many times people will automatically like something because it's unpopular, and then as soon as it catches the public attention, they switch sides. I like to think I'm above all that posturing.

All that said, I will probably rent it when it comes out. I often do that when I violently hate a movie that does show some talent, like A.I, or Unbreakable. I hated both those movies, but could see that a lot of talent went into them and aknowledge I may just not be appreciating them as much they deserve. I like to give them a second chance. So we'll see.