By Buzz Byrne

Are you someone who has three hours to kill? Do you like non-linear story-telling and lighting that doesn’t illuminate anything? Do you like lots and lots of camera shots of Laura Dern looking surprised, shocked and horrified? How about people in bunny costumes on a HONEYMOONERS-type sitcom set as a motif and a commentary on entertainment versus art? Are you a fan of Baltic mysticism? If you like all that then David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE is for you.
 
Shockingly enough, I found out it was for me as well.
 
Laura Dern is fading starlet Nikki Grace who is about to get the role that will bring her back to prominence when a frighteningly creepy neighbor, played by Grace Zabriskie, comes to warn her about the project. Time distorts, evil is imminent and nothing is seen very well for the next few hours. This is David Lynch after all.
 
Jeremy Irons shows up as the director of this project and after a trailer load of hollow clichés regarding talent and filmmaking he informs Dern and her male co-star Devon Berk (played by Justin Theroux) that the movie is actually a remake. The original was never shown because both leads were murdered. The movie is, indeed, cursed because the story was stolen from Polish gypsies. Now I’m pretty sure I could spend the next four hundred words making “Polish gypsies” joke but if this movie is any indication, these are not folks to mess with.


Reality for Nikki starts to blur as she becomes lost in the role of tempted but taken Susan Blue. The curse of the movie takes hold with the Slavic sub plot and logically following this middle couple of hours is close to impossible. And yet it is gripping. Nothing is lit fully so you find yourself straining to make out the visuals as well as the plot. Plenty of viewers will grow weary of this, I am sure. I was close many times myself but I found this queer nonsense compelling. Lynch seems to be seeing how far he can lead interest in this abstract art piece mystery.
 
As one of the foreign characters mumbles, “Cast out…This wicked dream has seized my heart.” I felt the same way. Susan’s world has a group of friends (a coven? The other portrayers of the role of “Susan”? Simply costars?)They break into a line dancing routine to “The Locomotion” for no apparent reason. You get to hear dialogue in Polish like:
 
“I do not see her.”
“Do you work for someone?”
“…Yes…”
“This is the one she spoke of.”
“The horse has gone to the well.”
“It is red.”
 
And then we shift back to the bunny motif. If you can follow it, you are much smarter and much more insane than I am. Normally I wouldn’t care for this type of filmmaking that feels a bit like a director working out their filmschool/arthouse angst. But Lynch has somehow made this accessible and fascinating. The sound work is unnerving with discordant violins and other stringed instruments stinging and stringing along the horror.
 

As Susan lies dying just past the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, she is flanked by homeless. She coughs and expires and we hear a story leaden with symbolic language skewering Hollywood and therefore the movies themselves involving a prostitute with a hole in her vagina who has a pet monkey that defecates everywhere and she is going to die so she plans to fix a few times beforehand and somebody pukes right on a star on the walk of fame and…well, you get the picture. I didn’t, of course, because yet again only about a quarter of the screen’s image is discernable. But it wasn’t boring.
 
Jeremy Irons yells cut and slowly Nikki/Susan arises and stalks lifelessly off the set to finish what has been unleashed. When we meet the face of horror it is Lynch at his disturbing best. I looked behind me to make sure this creature wasn’t coming for me next.
 
The ending is almost uplifting. The entirety becomes touching, like the journey was part of a freeing process. Nikki and Susan become active players and heroes, not the gawking victims they seem throughout. Art and Feminism succeed. Male dominance is escapable as “A woman in trouble” (INLAND EMPIRE’s subtitle) becomes not just her own savior but ours as well.
 
I was shocked by the visuals, the storytelling and how much I enjoyed this movie.