Tonight at The Royal in Toronto, I saw the new David Lynch film, Inland Empire. Clocking in at over 3 hours and shot on mostly grainy video, I was attracted to a review in a local weekly that called the movie Lynch’s most inscrutable film since Eraserhead. I’ve seen that film a baker’s dozen times, and I love it without need for scrutiny; it is what it is! Seeing this new flick in this strange, delightful city seemed like a good idea, and man it was a little more than I could have hoped for.
As could be expected of a Lynch film, Inland Empire is brutal at times, way over the top, occasionally terrifying, oddly humorous, and verging on a parody of Lynch’s work now and then, especially his work as codified by Twin Peaks. I dig his excesses, however, and although this 3-hour movie felt like it was 8 hours long (in a good way – it seemed like it actually could have gone on that long and kept my heart beating). Laura Dern was excellent, picking up on her Best Actress in a Ridiculous, Occasionally Terrible Movie skills, as developed in Lynch’s Wild at Heart. This better tempered movie was able to take advantage of Dern’s sweet and nasty sides.
I won’t even bother trying to summarize the plot. There are few excercises less useful than plot summary in any of Lynch’s typically absurd films. Let’s just say it’s a film within a film that mixes terror, Polish-language segments, a sitcom within a film within a film, dancing prostitutes, and more. What really struck me and capped off this film full of heart-stopping moments and uncomfortable laughs, was the conclusion. Just when I expected to see the film wrap up and have to hear the rumbling of “What’sitmean?What’sitmean?” from people around me, Lynch clearly conducted a communion of artist and audience, paying homage to the commitment of both the artists, specifically his actors, and those who engage in works of art and work through their own psychoses along with those of the artists. It was a beautiful wrap to a strange day in the life!
That’s my musical tie-in: Lynch’s films often work like a piece of music – a thematically linked album or orchestral piece. The whole thing was very musical – and not just the great soundtrack that Lynch put together. Lynch’s use of sound took me back to Eraserhead, which also had a very “orchestrated” use of sounds.I don’t think it was a coincidence that the backing music in Inland Empire featured a lot of choppy crescendos along the lines of the punctuations in the middle and end of “A Day in the Life”.
Has anyone else seen this movie yet? Is it even out in most US cities?
It’s interesting that you interpret Lynch’s films as musical pieces. As music is your art do you view a lot of non-music art as musical?
As a visual artist, I have for years referred to Eraserhead as a “motion painting” (as I do Dead Man and others) and indeed I feel that most of my favorite albums are “very visual”.
Some sort of visual tie-in can help me absorb music- whether it be a live performance, a music video or even as background in a movie. Most recently it was the use of a few Spoon tunes in Stranger than Fiction. And it wasn’t even a particularly great film or scene… But now I’m a Spoon fan whereas I’d heard them before and politely passed. Somehow just being visually stimulated opens up my receptors.
Has the use of music or sound ever opened you up to a visual piece that you might otherwise not have noticed?
Are you familiar with synesthesia? And are you familiar with synesthesia?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia
Sammy asked:
I don’t think so. I usually see movies in terms of how I read books – keeping a close eye on the symbols and character shifts that lurk beneath any given plot. With Lynch’s movies, I do see them as developing more linearly than most films with a strong emphasis on aural cues and motifs. Think about the factory noises in Eraserhead. They’re a musical motif to me. He also throws in his share of shit-hot aural “solos.” In this new film there’s a scene in which the stars of the film within a film have their first onscreen embrace, which of course is also their first embrace within an embrace and all that jazz. As they come together, shot in extreme close up and a fairly dark, statis shot, Laura Dern’s breathing “kicks out the jams” with a blistering hot breath solo. The movie reaches a new pitch with almost nothing going on in terms of visuals and plot. That’s one example that stood out for me, but there were plenty of other solos and textures of the Alan Ravenstine/Eno variety.
From your perspective, I know what you mean about the moving painting take as well.
Other directors use sound to great effect – Altman’s overlapping dialog, Scorcese’s sudden LACK of sound (eg, key fight scenes in Raging Bull), the French director I’ve gotten into – Melville…but no one’s coming to mind whose movies I tune into probably 50% based on the sound as I do Lynch’s.
By the way, any attempt at bringing the effectiveness of Wes Andersoun’s soundtracks into the discussion will be shot down without hesitation:)
Oh, I am familiar with synesthesia, but I’m not sure if I am in the Hendrixian way that you suggest. However, our youngest son is getting tested for his possibly overly attunded sensory perceptions, so we’ll see how much more familiar I become…
Well, what’s being talked about here, and well enough, I guess, is how we think about the arrangement of films (and books too) when ordinary narrative development is done away with. Talking about it as music is okay, but it’s arbitrary to a certain extent, because mainly what you’re doing is applying another vocabulary that you’re familiar with to an unfamiliar context. Sort of like what one says in saying that Lester Young’s sax solos are like short stories because they have narrative development–which they do, without literally being short stories.
It’s not completely arbitrary, of course, since Lynch is indeed using these musical cues. But to be completely accurate, one would have to talk about it as multi-media: how do the images and the sound interact. And what Mr. Mod is saying, I think, and pretty well, is that sometimes the sound is given priority over image and narrative, and leads the story. That’s a multi-media effect, of course, not music as such.
Lynch is indeed an MTV-era director, and at his worst I feel like he he succumbs to MTV-era image babble. For instance, I’m willing to hear otherwise, but I found the image sequence at the end of Mulholland Drive to be almost total hogwash. Friends have tried to argue me out of this position, and if you’d like to, whoever you are, I’m willing to hear what you have to say.
All this talk of Lynch’s new movie is making me remember the intensity of watching Fritz Lang’s movie “M” for the first time. It has pockets of sound happening for certain parts and then a deafening silence for others that make you feel like you’re watching or hearing something unreal… Like when the crowd chases after the murderer and the sound goes in and out, or when everything is silent and you can hear the murderer’s tell-tale whistle… I always wondered where that whistle came from. Shiver…! I’m actually reading a book right now called Cinema Nirvana that’s written by a Jersey author named Dean Sluyter. It’s topic is based loosely around interpreting spirituality (buddhism) within american cinema. This is also making me think of Wim Wenders’ “Until the End of the World” – great reading topic (very interesting) on wikipedia, sammy. thanks for posting your review Jim – I’m glad you got the chance to hit the Royal, what was that theatre like? It’s been remodeled I guess? It looks like it already played at The Ritz here in Philly (sadly) and now it’s gone (bah!!)
http://www.amazon.com/M-Criterion-Collection-Peter-Lorre/dp/0780021150
It’s buggin the shit outta me that we hafta go to Toronto to see films like Inland Empire and last year’s What Is It?(Crispin Glover’s directorial debut with an all retarded cast)
Isn’t this (PHILLY) a first class city?
Hey, Shawn — what makes you want to see that Crispin Glover movie?
Shawn, did you go see it?
He’s been working on that for years…
I’m a huge Crispin fan. i think he should’ve been willy wonka in the new version that came out two years ago.
I saw it already in Toronto last year.
I can’t say it was enjoyable, but it certainly was cingular. It’s so different than everything else out there. It pushes every button you have and a few you don’t know you have. Mr. Glover hosted a Q&A after the screening, and quite a few people screamed at him for being a horrible enough person to make a movie like that. Yet they sat through the whole thing. If I were old enough in the 70’s, I would have gone to see El Topo and Eraserhead and Pink Flamingos in the theater. Dogshit and all!
Hey Art,
I got an autographed copy of the book Oak Mot.