Inland Empire by David Lynch

A review gleaned from my Letterboxd

Preface

I’ve known about David Lynch for a long time now, and as I explore more the realms of film as cinema, he becomes a figure unable to ignore. I haven’t seen his entire oeuvre, and until now (Jan. ‘25) the only full film I’ve seen of his is Inland Empire, but I have seen snippets of other works of his, from Eraserhead to Twin Peaks and most everything in between. I have a horrible habit of starting films and putting them down when I get bored — this is not an indictment of the movie itself, but rather a habit I’ve formed from my main vocation: that is, reading. When reading I can put a book down when I’m done for the moment and return at a later time when I’m ready to read again; it’s not expected to read a book in one single sitting. This is not the expectation for film, but I do not have the wherewithal to sit still for around 2 hours while watching a movie unless I’m in the theater. It is entirely a product of my reading habits and I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, although the stretches of not watching a film can be quite long. In any case, this is how I watch movies. Crucify me, I don’t care. But I need to address this, as David Lynch has just passed, and even I, not having watched all his works, was and still am sad about it. The tributes that poured in online for him, the things people said about him, it was all terribly beautiful. I’m going to continue my diving into his filmography, and first I rewatched what I would consider my favorite film of all time, 2006’s Inland Empire. There might be more I have to say about his other works, but for now this is my tribute to him, and my analysis of his most difficult to understand work of art.

Mild spoilers too, by the way. You should really go watch this movie.

Review Proper

I don’t know if it’s the responsibility of anybody to understand art: of course you can identify the themes and the overall messages of more straightforward films, but I don’t think it’s necessary to say you understand art of try toward understanding it. Art is all about the feeling: I define art as a creative act done by a human being wherein emotions are invoked and evoked. Art is supposed to make you feel something, more than anything. It is a statement of intention, and not always is that intention clear of identifiable — and in Inland Empire it is veritably so that this movie defies explanation, and that’s OK. The constant need to explain movie endings comes from a desire to understand and know the unknown, which is the case for any discipline such as science or theology; but ambiguity is perhaps the strongest facet of art. In science and math and engineering and the like it is important to be clearcut and empirical because any mistakes made here could be disastrous, as these disciplines have more pragmatic and corporeal consequences: I think medicine or spaceflight trajectories or architecture, respectively. But with art as I experience it, it’s the unknown that really tantalizes and titillates and makes art so exceptional, because it can bridge gaps between experiences and feelings in ways that pure science cannot do.

Now, for Inland Empire — which is my personal favorite movie of all time — manifold explanations have been proposed, and I am here proposing another: this is the story about artists in general and the subsumption of our lives into the cosmoi of our works. I am a writer — an aspirant and yet unpublished novelist — so I will use my life as the examples: my writing is so integral to who I am (seeing as I’ve been writing since I was around 6-7yo) that if I feel unconfident in what I write I feel as though I, as a person, am worthless. And this film speaks intensely on that experience, in my opinion. We see Nikki Grace become Susan Blue because she believes in her art so thoroughly and viscerally, and she is so involved and emotional with her roles that she inhabits them, as I’m sure all actors do to a degree. But this is not just acting, or writing, or what have you: all artists feel this way, or at least I believe so. It is the nature of artists to become so consumed by our art that we lost track of our physical selves — our art is our second soul. and when On High in Blue Tomorrows finishes shooting, we see a return to reality as it exists in this iteration of Hollywood. Nikki gets up from the ground and walks outside, out from the soundstage, and this is where she becomes herself again, I feel: she has completed the project and so can return to her original persona: she is no longer Susan Blue, but Nikki Grace. Is this method acting? Maybe! But this is the common experience for artists who pour their heart and soul into their art and once it’s finished are yanked back violently into their bodies.

But is this movie about actuality? Or is the old polish lady at the beginning only regaling Laura Dern with a possibility of a future that could come to pass? We may never know.

As for the film’s feeling and atmosphere: this is a film unlike any other. I truly believe David Lynch ripped his own heart out of his chest and slapped that still-pulsing organ onto the lens of the camcorder and shot the film. I mean it thus: this film feels more human than anything else. No other mother I’ve seen in my life so far has felt as comforting in a strange, roundabout way as this one. I’m not saying it’s more authentically Lynchian than any of his other films, but more so that the quality of the digital camera and the atmosphere and aesthetic of the movie feel lived in a well-worn, as like your grandma’s smallish, cluttered home or a book you read over and over. Maybe that has to do with the camcorder itself being reminiscent of home videos and a shared experience of joy and discovery; or maybe it’s that the veins of this movie run red, like every American.

There’s probably more I could say, but these are the main points I wanted to hit on. This movie changed me, ruptured my sensibilities and tore me asunder only to lacquer me with gold and make me more beautiful than ever.

Always and forever, David Lynch.

Additional Thoughts

As I said in the review I have more to say, and here is where I’ll say it:

The phantasmagoria that Laura Dern’s character(s) Nikki Grace/Susan Blue experience(s) is, in my interpretation of this film, a visual manifestation and expression of the feeling of being so lost in your art you become one with it. It is the closest we as humans have come to visually representing negative mental spirals. It makes sense of all the disparate noises and colors in our minds and pastes them together to get this quilted textile that is just outside the realm of comprehension as to be grasped at but not fully understood, and I feel that that is David Lynch’s greatest achievement with this film.

There’s always more to say about this film, but these are just my thoughts on my second go around watching it. I cannot tout this enough as perhaps the greatest artistic achievement in the modern age, maybe ever, and definitely in the American Artistic Canon.