INLAND EMPIRE (2006)

(Hollywood California contemporary, also extended 'flashback?' sequences, probably in Germany or Poland, most likely in the 1920's or 30's)
IMDb

After a five year absence from the big screen, David Lynch returns to feature films with INLAND EMPIRE. This third entry in his loosely defined 'California Trilogy', EMPIRE shares more in common with the two other entries in this series, Mulholland Dr. and Lost Highway, then with anything else the auteur has done (though there is a little Blue Velvet in there as well).

To start out with I should point out that INLAND EMPIRE really isn't a film, and that this statement apples in two ways. First off EMPIRE was shot on digital video, a medium whose possibility's the director was so taken with, that he has publicly stated he will never go back to using conventional film for movies again. Secondly, like the other two Lynch films previously cited, EMPIRE does not follow a traditional story structure. Exactly how we are to read the film, in terms of sequence of events, and what does and does not constitute its internal logic or reality is left ambiguous. I had previously determined, in my mind, that most of Lost Highway was 'An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge' type epiphany just before Bill Pullman was electrocuted by the state, and Mulholland Dr. primarily a women's sexual fantasy (don't ask), but EMPIRE has proven more difficult for me to place in my head. It is possibly a series of re-interpretations of an old Polish folk tale introduced early in the proceedings.

The ostensible plot concerns Nikki Grace (Laura Dern), an actress yearning for something of a comeback, who lands the female lead in a film called On High in Blue Tomorrows. Justin Theroux is her co-star Devon Berk, a performer who appears noted for bedding his leading Lady's, much to Nikki's husbands chagrin (what, is this Lynch's take on Bradgallina?). Early on in the films production the director, Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons), reveals to the two stars information that has been dug up by his right-hand man Freddie Howard (Harry Dean Stanton). It seems that On High is a remake of film (known by a different title) that was never finished because the two leads were murdered, and that the current producers had intentionally plotted to hide this fact from the cast and crew. In short order the boundaries between whats happening on the set, in the film, and in 'real life' (whatever that is) start to bluer. As the film within the film is about adultery, you can see how this could cause problems.

Like the others in the 'California trilogy', EMPIRE doesn't really make sense in any empirical way, rather it functions in a sort of 'dream logic'. Themes, concepts, key phrases, and even actors show up in different guises. Be it an existential sitcome staring rabbits, or nine prostitutes doing the Locomotion, and no I'm not soft peddling a sex act here, the prostitutes are literally doing the dance the Locomotion, you somehow know its all supose to make sense on some level.

EMPIRE was weird and long, not fully satisfying as a movie, but something you could watch to get into a state of deep mediation. Maybe that's what Lynch intended. But if I could see into the future like Grace Zabriskie's character, I would hope to find Lynch moving in another direction. Throughout the showing I kept hopping that this movie would be a little like Fire Walk With Me, the ending of one of Lynch's creative periods, when he largely set aside the small town motif, and moved onto something different and even more inventive, in that case it was Lost Highway and the start of this current trilogy. With the director now in his 60's perhaps he has a new cosmology in mind to show us, and I for one will be ready at the ticket counter when he does.