David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006) has received a preliminary release date: April 19.
Andrew O'Hehir
Quote:
How do we explain the unlikely cultural status of David Lynch? There is no hotter ticket at this year's New York Film Festival than the North American premiere of Lynch's new picture, "Inland Empire." I know two movie buffs in their early 20s who are planning to hang around outside Alice Tully Hall on Sunday night and buy tickets from scalpers (if they can find them), and they certainly won't be alone.
What will they see if they get in? An obsessive and surreal three-hour picture, almost totally lacking in conventional plot, shot on high-definition video by a 60-year-old director. You could say, I suppose, that "Inland Empire" is about an actress (played by Lynch favorite Laura Dern) in a Hollywood film that's been cursed by Gypsies. But that's like saying "Ulysses" is a story about a guy who sells newspaper ads, or, more to the point, that the dream you had where you flew over the Atlantic Ocean with your second-grade teacher and Marilyn Manson was about air travel.
Lynch's movies have always flirted with (or, to his detractors, wallowed in) dreamlike levels of abstraction and ambiguity, associative and reiterative images drawn from the unconscious, and other tropes that have more to do with experimental cinema and avant-garde art than with narrative drama. Would someone out there like to tell me what the plot of "Eraserhead" is, or to explain why understanding it is important to one's appreciation of the film, or lack thereof? By the time of "Blue Velvet" (released 20 years ago!), it seemed clear that conventional narrative, along with the audience expectation it builds, was an element that Lynch would sometimes use, sometimes subvert and sometimes ignore altogether.
Many of Lynch's fans apparently believe, however, that the director has set out for them a massive jigsaw puzzle that has a solution. Salon's famous "explainer" about Lynch's 2001 "Mulholland Drive" remains one of the most-clicked articles in our history; it's a brilliant but bizarrely pedantic piece, full of confident assertions that the film has a unitary narrative that mostly makes sense and mostly hangs together. I would argue that A) that's not true, and B) even more important, it's missing the point.
Lynch's movies are about his super-saturated colors and meticulous sound design; his characters' terrifying glimpses of the spectral, the demonic and the divine; his sense that movies render time into a porous and malleable medium; his troubled and troubling examinations of female sexuality as an image-commodity, and other things we could discuss. Are they also about their putative narrative plotlines? Sure, in the same way that Duchamp's "Large Glass" is about a bride and some bachelors, or "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" is about a dinner party.
I'm not going to review "Inland Empire" in any comprehensive way, not least because I'm not quite sure what to say. It has not yet been acquired for U.S. distribution (which ought to tell you something about it right there) and it seems unfair to review a film that probably won't be seen by American audiences until sometime next year. (It will be released in various European countries between November and March.)
If anyone wants to explain this one in terms of its plot, though, good luck to you. The inland empire of the title refers, in my judgment, not to the suburban hills and valleys southeast of Los Angeles but to the darker regions of the self. Nikki, the fading star played by Dern, must venture into her own inland empire -- and so, I think, does Lynch. Many of his trademark haunting, grotesque and comic images are captured here, in the smudgy, caffeine-edged luster of HD video (it's obvious why Lynch is attracted to the medium, but I miss the brilliance of his pictures on celluloid).
Minimal bones are thrown to the audience. Nikki has signed on to make an adulterous love story -- it looks like a terrible film, and I can't tell whether that's intentional -- with a bad-boy costar Devon (Justin Theroux), directed by a pompous Englishman named Kingsley (Jeremy Irons). None of these people sticks around for long, although Harry Dean Stanton almost steals the movie in his tiny role as Kingsley's debauched and broke assistant. The picture belongs entirely to Dern and to the director, as Nikki seems to walk through a mysterious portal out of her own privileged life and into that of her character, and then (perhaps) into yet another existence as a battered Hollywood streetwalker.
There's also the question of the Gypsy curse and the film's haunted prehistory, some fragments of a sinister thriller set in Poland (and spoken in Polish), an absurdist drawing-room comedy involving a family of giant rabbits wearing clothes (my colleague Stephanie Zacharek says they are not rabbits but donkeys, and who am I to insist on a single interpretation?) and lots and lots of ominous images of Dern/Nikki/whoever wandering through dark places: alleys, corridors, staircases, the streets of Lodz, Poland, and the corner of Hollywood and Vine. That's without mentioning the chorus of Hollywood hookers doing the Locomotion, or the dynamite musical number that unfolds behind the closing credits and has nothing to do with the rest of the movie.
To the extent that "Inland Empire" does offer a narrative, it's largely a downer, a story about a woman who is symbolically, and perhaps actually, debased. Don't expect to go home energized by Lynch's take on the movies, art and life here. Despite its moments of inspired terror and mystery, this isn't a cult hit in the making like "Mulholland Drive," or even a contrarian critic's delight like "Lost Highway." It's an opaque and baffling work, difficult to follow and difficult to like.
That said, this may be a necessary work for Lynch, if not exactly for his audience. "Inland Empire" does not mark a new direction. Reportedly written and shot on the fly, with neither director nor actors knowing exactly what would come next, it's a distillation of, and meditation upon, the themes that have possessed Lynch since at least "Blue Velvet" and seemed to come to climax, pun intended, with "Mulholland Drive." But Lynch's questions and obsessions are always big ones; there's nothing insincere or inauthentic about him. Good or bad, his films imitate no one else's, and serve as a constant rebuke to the parasitical industry that loves him but can't quite handle him.
Pro-B
Last edited by Deciazulado; 03-21-2023 at 11:35 AM.
That's an unexpected but welcome surprise. I hope Optimum / Studio Canal will do it justice.
In retrospect, Mulholland Dr. has remained my favourite Lynch film, but Inland Empire is never less than fascinating and should hopefully look better on Blu-ray than it did on DVD. The soundtrack should also be something to hear in lossless form.
Oh wow, that's a nice surprise. And we were hoping Mulholland would be out around then, but still no Studio Canal announcement re that yet, right?
This was shot on digital video right? but (forgive me for not knowing about this stuff) was the original digital film recorded in HD? If it wasn't, could it really look better than on DVD?
That's an unexpected but welcome surprise. I hope Optimum / Studio Canal will do it justice.
In retrospect, Mulholland Dr. has remained my favourite Lynch film, but Inland Empire is never less than fascinating and should hopefully look better on Blu-ray than it did on DVD. The soundtrack should also be something to hear in lossless form.
I still have not watched this film (I have the LE DVD) but don't the visuals change often (i.e. some shots/sequences are intentionally "better looking" than others)? I'm just curious to know if it will be an atypical 1080p video transfer.
I still have not watched this film (I have the LE DVD) but don't the visuals change often (i.e. some shots/sequences are intentionally "better looking" than others)? I'm just curious to know if it will be an atypical 1080p video transfer.
It's been so long, I can't remember to be honest. I have actually only seen it in the cinema, never on DVD (though I do have it). The whole thing was a bit sort of 'grimy' with that sort of digital, hand-held camera aesthetic present in, say, Public Enemies (though grimier than that). Obviously a BD can increase resolution and be HD whilst keeping that sort of gritty look, I'm just not sure if the master is of a type that would be benefitted by the upgrade, if it was originally shot on HD. Shot on digital HD or physical film = able to be upgraded, but if shot digitally on SD, I don't know... I'm pretty sure the whole film was shot in the same way, not sure about some bits being intentionally 'worse' than other... but then I'm not a massive videophile so am not entirely sure!
It's been so long, I can't remember to be honest. I have actually only seen it in the cinema, never on DVD (though I do have it).
lol, same here. I double checked IMDB and they say it was SD video (which was my understanding) but it certainly was transferred to 35mm. I don't know if the dvd came straight from the digital source or was taken from a 35mm print. The film obviously wont be eye candy but I'm curious to how it'll turn out. Hopefully it has lossless audio which should be worth the upgrade...
And therefor this movie shouldn't get a Blu-ray release?
Yeah go for it, if people are stuipid enough to pay.
But actually think about it technically. To get the "best possible release" on blu ray it would have to be as close to the source as possible. Try corrupting a blu ray standard to release something natively shot on an utter shit format, 480i60 to a HD format. You either release it as 1080i60, and waste time non evenly upscale 480 lines to 1080 lines and get a smeared mess. Or what is the other alternative? So how do you turn 480i to 24p? You have to frigging throw away frames. It isn't like deinterlacing and turning a film sourced 24p original NTSC to back to frigging 24 frame progressive. The original wasn't progressive. To release it as 24p you need to actually god damn throw frames away. So yeah, it is not worth it. You can't frigging turn broadcast level NTSC utter garbage into 24p without dropping frames. And start throwing away every third frigging frame and you aren't getting anything as close to the source as possible. So it is a loosing frigging game.
Or am I missing it, and lu rays can actually to 30 frame per second progressive. So they can keep all frames and turn 480i60 to 30 frame per second progressive? No? Or rather, to be perfectly accurate, can blu ray do 29.97p? If not, you aren't going to get something "faithful to the original", "as best as possible" and you are wasting your time with something shot in a crap format
It is shit source no matter how you look at it. I appreciate David Lynch trying something different, but it was pretty effing shortsighted, stupid mistake.
If my understanding of the way this was shot is correct (consumer grade dv cam--a Sony model I think), then I assume it will sport the same visual "benefit" on BD as 28 Days Later. But then of course there's the prospect of lossless audio... For me it will probably come down to the extras.
If my understanding of the way this was shot is correct (consumer grade dv cam--a Sony model I think), then I assume it will sport the same visual "benefit" on BD as 28 Days Later. But then of course there's the prospect of lossless audio... For me it will probably come down to the extras.
Looks like there are more extras on the Absurda DVD release of "INland Empire."
"Other Things that Happened"
and "Cooking with Lynch" seem to be absent from the extras on the BD.
I used to think Lynch walked on water. But after Inland Empire, and him being such a baby about Dune even after all of these years I've lost a good deal of respect. I have that Air is On Fire book, and in the CD with that, when he gets to the Dune art he won't say anything. For Fs sake Dune is still a visually beautiful film, and as a fan of the books first, I love his vision of it, and thought he did an excellent job that he should be proud of. I feel the same way about Fincher and Alien3 as well... Probably more so on Fincher as he was put in an impossible position but made something excellent out of it.
Dune is the only film Lynch didn't feel he had 'final cut' on and thus doesn't really feel its his. I get that it must've been very frustrating at the time (as with Fincher and Alien 3) but yeah, I don't really get now not having any involvement in re-releases or whatever, even if its in the form of an interview for the DVD or something.
Dune remains the only Lynch film I've never seen, I really should get round to it, the completist in me demands it!
I know people who like Blue Velvet and maybe Twin Peaks (not the new series..) but struggle with his other output. So don't think he's very marmitey
They most probably like those popular works that just happened to be by Lynch .. Blue Velvet was one of those film posters that must have hung on every Uni Student's dorm walls around the time for instance.
Twin Peaks was liked by all sorts of people , again would have had little to do with most people's perceptions of who may have directed it.
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