+ Best Art Film of the Year + Best Character Study of the Year + Best Comeback Actress of the Year: Laura Dern
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| The brights lights of Los Angeles are glamorous on top, - but below lies terrifying darkness. - So this powerful poster for David Lynch's Inland Empire seems to infer |
Hollywood star Nikki Grace wins a lead in a new movie, which, however, turns out to actually be a remake of an old, cursed film, which was never completed in the past.
Inland Empire is written and directed as the 10th feature from Montanan master filmmaker David Lynch (The Straight Story (1999)). It may well be Lynch's last major theatrical work, if we choose not to count Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces (2014), which is made up of deleted scenes from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992).
Laura Dern (F Is for Family (2015-17)) gives a lead performance which deserves praise; fearless and deeply disquieting, it leads us on the epic excursion into a reality that in both fascinating and deeply disturbing ways crackles down for our protagonist. We sense that we are moving in clearly defined story universes in Inland Empire, which are merely presented mystically and in inexplicable ways to us. In this way the film is never pretentious nonsense, (although Lynch novices may think so and are therefore adviced against beginning their journey into the man's body of work with this particular film.)
SPOILER A very specific criticism: There is a scene in Inland Empire of Dern relating stuff to a man with glasses, which is simply too long.
If this turns out to be the last real movie in Lynch's oeuvre, it somehow seems fitting, since Inland Empire must be the most radical, strange and unsettling film of his since his debut, Eraserhead (1977). Both are fiercely original and rare works that require a lot from their audiences and deserve several revisits. Inland Empire is truly an art film, which at times resembles a performance or an exhibited art piece; it has unforgettably unpleasant scenes and an eccentric and original ugly video aesthetic.
Related posts:
David Lynch: 2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2006 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Blue Velvet (1986) or, The Strange World
Dune (1984) - Lynch heads to space, with an (unsurprisingly) strange result
Top 10: The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The Elephant Man (1980) - Lynch's deeply moving second feature
Eraserhead (1977) - Lynch's extraordinary, unconquerably strange and surreal debut
Watch a trailer for the film here
Box office: 4 mil. $
= Uncertain
[Inland Empire premiered 6 September (Venice Film Festival, Italy) and runs 180 minutes. Lynch co-financed the film himself, (he has only revealed that it had a budget of under 100 mil. $), and shot it over a 3-year period in California, including Los Angeles, and in Poland, - without a script. The actors were given pages of freshly written dialog on the day of shooting them and never knew exactly what Inland Empire was about. It was shot with a Sony digital camcorder by Lynch himself, - the first time he has worked in digital video instead of film. He also edited it himself and stayed involved in its distribution. It opened #52 to a 27k $ first weekend in North America in 2 theaters, where it peaked #44 and in 15 cinemas (different weeks) and grossed 861k $. The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 609k $ and the UK with 542k $. It was likely made for somewhere between 1-5 mil. $, but that span is too great to establish whether it was a theatrical hit or flop. Lynch campaigned for Dern to be nominated for the Best Actress Oscar without luck. The film did win an award in Venice. Lynch has stated on the occasion of his Twin Peaks revival season (2017) that he had made his last feature. In between the two major projects, he has made at least 26 short films. Dern returned in Year of the Dog (2007). Inland Empire is fresh at 73 % with a 7.2/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Inland Empire?
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