Who's more self-important--me or David Lynch?

A handful of my friends think David Lynch in as asshole who makes annoying, inaccessible, masturbatory art for the simple purpose of entertaining himself. This same handful of friends think I'm quite pretentious because I'll admit to getting a kick out of Lynch's inaccessible and masturbatory films. It's not as though I claim to actually understand them. I'm just intrigued by the ride, really. Yeah, I, like everybody else, have a theory about what happened in Mulholland Drive (a theory about which I'm pretty convinced I'm right-- and, no, it's NOT the one in which the first half is a fantasy and the second half is real--how could a plotline as mundane as THAT have come out of a brain like Lynch's?), but I would never purport to actually have access to any authentic Lynchian machinations. It's just that I like stuff that's not easy. And I like stuff that alienates me a little-- or rather, bewilders me and hence, opens up some heretofore unknocked-upon portal in my own mind. This is why I'll also go see Matthew Barney films in the theatre and why I'll spend a good chunk of my film-festival time watching experimental student shorts. But anyway, while I do think that Lynch's films are, for the most part, designed to be in conversation with Lynch himself, rather that with any other audience in particular, I happen to think that whatever this muck is that keeps pouring out of him happens to be pretty interesting muck. I also happen to marvel at the fact that something as downright oddball as Twin Peaks actually aired on prime time television. And for that alone, I'm willing to declare Lynch an aesthetic hero of mine.

Yep, you've probably guessed it. Inland Empire is now out of DVD. And as you may have heard, it's three flippin' hours of Lynchian muck, shot on cheap, poor quality DV, as opposed to celluloid. For the most part, the film is pretty ugly. Imagine The Blair Witch Trial, but with decent acting and no plot. Or, maybe, 40 plots that are only tenuously connected. Or two plots that continually fracture. Or one plot as seen through a psychotic subjective point-of-view. Or, really, actually, kinda... no plot, after all. And no chopped liver. Truly, this movie doesn't have the lushness of Lynch's previous films, but something in his exploration of this new technological medium gives Inland Empire a rare immediacy. It's as though, in this haunted, moody meandering, Lynch has removed the polish inherent in real film and has replaced it with a home movie of the insides of Laura Dern's character's, Nikki Grace's, head.

Folks have been proclaiming the death of cinematography since this digital technology first creeped into the marketplace. And someday, it may, indeed, become the lingua franca of visuality-in-motion. However, regardless of whether or not this is "good" or "bad" for filmmaking, Lynch seems to have commandeered the medium and, truly, was able to accomplish some stuff I've not yet seen. More than anything else, Laura Dern's tortured, Modigliani-esque face is the subject of this film. From creepy up-the-nose shots, to distorted, fun-house-mirror images, never before have I seen an actress be asked to show so much of her own ugliness. And Lynch is known for pushing beautiful women to a point at which the audience begins to wonder where the laying-bare of acting ends and where the degradation of humanity begins. (Let's all recall Naomi Watts' masturbation scene in Mulholland Drive--as she tells it, she wasn't supposed to be crying. Lynch kept pushing her to the point where her humiliation must've been quite real.) There is one scene in which Nikki is watching herself through a window (just go with it-- in this film, there are multiple dimensions and metaphysical doppelgangers galore). She appears to be picking her way, on her long toothpick legs, around the walled edge of some sort of back yard or garden. As she nears the camera, her face full of red lips, chimp-looking teeth and horrified eyes swells to fill the screen before you. It's terrifying and you're not quite sure why because there does not seem to be reason for such terror. It's like your lover, looming up out of bed at you, suddenly, after you've shared a bad dream. It's so fast and so intimate. Again, I've not quite seen anything like it in film before. Probably because it couldn't happen, were such a thing to be attempted, within the inevitable remove of film.

Aside from the visual curiosity embodied by this movie, Lynch's score is a big part of what carries this film. Other than a couple of humorously chosen old familiar standards (Etta James' "At Last", the original "Locomotion," by Little Eva...) and an excellent placement of Beck's "Black Tambourine," most of the noise you hear throughout is Lynch's, with the help of Angelo Badalamenti. What's crazy about the score is that it's all absolutely relentless suspense movie music. It builds and builds and crescendos and... and... and...then the scene changes and it starts over again. While there are, actually, moments of heightened drama within this utter absence of linearity, the music, which is most filmmakers' most reliable method of cuing the audience, functions here as yet another disorienting device.

Actually, I would argue that the whole thing is something of an exercise in cinematic device operation. If Lynch were a painter, he'd doubtlessly be an abstract expressionist. In the way that abstract expressionist paintings are about paint on canvas, his movies are about movieness. Sure, he throws a bone in the direction of "meaning" every now and again. Here's his description of the film: "It's about a woman in distress." Dern says she played Nikki as though she were devolving into psychosis. Personally, I find his explanation to be the truer one in its nonchalance. Dern could have played her any way she pleased and Lynch's camera angles and everlasting-dread melodies would have made the film into a film "about a woman in distress."

This is not to say, by any means, that Dern's performance is anything short of astounding. She changes physical locale, accent, clothing, socio-economic class, hairstyle, and plane of existence in virtually every scene. Despite Lynch's every attempt to leave us stranded, at every turn, in some inter-synaptic storm of his own making, Dern's focus is the specter and dark heart of the anti-narrative. It's just that, ultimately, Inland Empire is not a movie "about a woman in distress." It's a movie about being a movie. And I would say that even if it weren't, incidentally, full of deadpan Hollywood commentary. I say "incidentally, " because the Hollywood setting and characters whose occupations happen to be acting and directing are ultimately not that important. Why would they be when there are so many creepy surfaces to explore?

Now, it's true that Lynch has creates an unremitting and pervasive ambiance of menacing dread in this film. But it's also true that Lynch is funny in this way in which you're not ENTIRELY sure he knows he's funny. I mean, what IS David Bowie doing standing in that hallway in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me? And the man himself.... good god. If you've ever heard him try to relay some narrative, he's probably the most boring storyteller, even with that nasal mid-Western accent and that wild hair, on the planet, but you can't help but listen because you can't help but think he's amusing himself by testing his audience to see how much prattle they can take.

So, while the majority of Inland Empire pours out of your TV screen like so much green, ominous fog, there are still a few choice moments during which Lynch's weirdness just becomes funny. Midway through the film, Nikki somehow acquires a Greek chorus of hot, languorous chicks. One flashes her tits while the others admire them (let's not forget Lynch likes tits a lot. A lot.). Three of these girls snap their fingers and say, "You gotta swing your hips, now," in what seems to be a totally random reference until, two or three minutes later, the entire chorus launches into a full-out line dance to "Locomotion." While Nikki stares at them in dismayed disbelief, you wonder, am I mimicking Nikki, or is she mimicking me, little anonymous audience member that I am? And Jeremy Irons (*swoon*) plays a self-important film director who appears to have a relationship with irony that is as obscured as Lynch's own. How is any of that stuff not funny?

Interestingly, though, Lynch's tiny pin-pricks of poker-faced fun do not function as comic relief. They do not, in any way, mediate Nikki's sensations of impending doom. In fact, because they make so little narrative sense, they only serve as more layers of labyrinthine disorientation. Really, it's not until we get to the closing credits that Lynch lets up on us at all. And the closing credits are NOT to be missed. They're a director's send-up to, uh, himself--full of references to the Lynch oeuvre in general (Dern wears a blue velvet dress (no scissors, thanks!), there's a capuchin monkey a la Twin Peaks, Laura Elena Harring from Mulholland shows up...). Beyond that, the scene this great celebration in which the Greek chorusgirls-cum-prostitutes dance while another woman lip-syncs into the camera to Nina Simone's "Sinnerman." One might question the choice of ending the film in this manner if it didn't provide such desperately needed release. You've just sat through three solid hours of dream-scape-like anxiety and you're not sure whether or not you've trusted the directorial eye for a single second of it. So then, you get a party at the end! What's better than that?

Watching DVD extras, that's what! This DVD comes with a whole second disk of extras. I can't really, in good conscience, recommend that you sit through them. I did, of course--just call me Pandora. If you, too, are oft goaded into doing things against your better judgement by your bald-faced curiosity, please allow me to make a few suggestions. The "deleted scenes" section, entitled "Other Things That Happened," will make you feel grateful Lynch deleted them. You see Dern in a pink fuzzy bathrobe. You watch Dern take out the kitchen trash. You see some footage of some torches around a pool. You see some footage of some lamps (the lamp image is a recurring one with indeterminate meaning in the film proper). You see a couple of the chorusgirls playing with a toy flying saucer. None of it will grant you sudden enlightenment about the film. Sudden enlightenment is not to be had. Move on.

I will, however, recommend the little film short entitled "Quinoa." Yeah, it's the most boring 20 minutes you may ever spend. Except that it's so friggin' funny! Quite literally, it's Lynch narrating the process of cooking some quinoa with broccoli and then eating it while his camera guy watches through the lens. This isn't like Robert Rodriguez' film short in which he teaches us how to make puerco pibil (DEEE-licious! My brother made it!) in the extras on Once Upon a Time in Mexico. This is, "You take out the pot. You pour a little quinoa into a measuring cup. If you get to much, you pour some back. You get a paper towel because the pan lid is too hot..." all the way up until, "You get out a spoon and take it into the dining room to eat." The fact that Lynch thought people would actually want to watch this kinda stuff just cracks me up. I mean, nobody could possibly be so self-important as to assume people will give one shit or two, right? Right? See, this is what I mean by not quite being able to tell of Lynch is in on the joke or not. Regardless, I was perfectly scandalized to watch him scrape out the bottom of his lovely Viking pot with a little paring knife. Mr. Lynch, I know you've got plenty of money, but can you please take better care of your cookware?

Also in the extras was a little film of a ballerina dancing to the creepy score of the movie. She danced in and out of what I suspect was a digitally-derived fog. The music remains creepy. I have no idea for how long she dances because, by this point, I'd sat through 5+ hours of Lynchian madness and I needed to go to bed. However, if you do watch this particular DVD extra, I suggest doing so during a massive thunderstorm, such as what we had last night here in northern Virginia. It lent drama to the piece. And by that time, I was in need of excitement.

So, no, Inland Empire isn't going to wind up being a favorite of any of my aforementioned nay-saying and name-calling friends. I realize this stuff isn't for everyone. But really? Do I have to call myself out on being pretentious AGAIN just because I actually see value in wallowing in this weird man's cranial matter every now and again? I call myself an egotist all the damn time in this blog. Can't we let me off the hook this time?

And for those of you who are afraid I've spoiled the experience for you, never fear. There are so many more oddities awaiting you in this film that you'll quickly realize I've barely scratched the surface of description here. Enjoy the rabbits. That's all I'll say.