On another note, the screening I attended was surreal in itself. When David Lynch was introduced, he walked onto the stage with a man holding a trumpet. Lynch stepped to the microphone and said he’d like to begin with a trumpet improv. The man played his solo, the audience clapped and Lynch then read what I believe was a tribal poem of some kind. After the movie was over, Lynch talked a little about the digital video camera he used and how people tend to have problems with movies when they stray “just a hair” from being easily understandable. Of course Inland Empire is more than “just a hair” away from being easily understood and Lynch provided no additional clues, though I’m not sure I’d want to know anyway. Audience members were also rewarded with “David Lynch Signature Cup” coffee sample packs on their way out. “It’s all in the beans… and I’m just full of beans,” is printed on the label along with Lynch’s partially obscured face.
Some people will hate Inland Empire while others will declare it a masterpiece. I can’t say I’m in either camp. I found a lot to like about it after thinking about the movie for a while, but I was frustrated while watching it. It takes you to a place that’s far from pleasant and not somewhere I’d want to return to anytime soon. Then again, the only way to make sense of the thing is to see it again, as though repeating a nightmare. We’re all voyeurs. Lynch knows this. That’s why I’m sure I’ll see it again at some point.
Article comments
1 - handyguy
I am envious that you got to see the film with the added 'performance' by Lynch. If this was the screening at Lincoln Center on Saturday, it was sold out before I even heard about it. Even when his movies are a mixed bag of the good, the bad and the incomprehensible [as nearly all are], he is a national treasure.
2 - Christopher Soden
1. I am thrilled as I didn't realize that Lynch had released a new film.
2. I heard in a conversation recently that Mullholland Drive began as a television project that was scrapped. I've got to say I've always had greater appreciation for his films than TWIN PEAKS.
3. I never thought I'd live to see a time when audiences could embrace the associative intuitive logic of a director like David Lynch. It gives me hope for the human race.
4. I think a lot of folks don't realize that many "traditional" films (predicated on linear narrative) have the sort of disturbing subtext that Lynch simply brings to the surface.
5. The first time I watched MULLHOLLAND DRIVE, I'd rented the tape and by the time they got to the heavily made up beehive singing Roy Orbison's CRYING, in Spanish, to a weeping audience, I had to shut it off. It was so profoundly upsetting that I couldn't take anymore. And I couldn't tell you why.
6. I never cut off before the end of a film.
7. David Lynch seems to have discovered a way to fuse the hallucinatory, revelatory, ridiculous, profane, intense and transcendent to a single....what? Tableau? Image? Take? Scene?
8. Consider the bruised brunette, Isabella Rosellini showing up naked in the living room of Hope Lange. Consider Gloria Grahame showing up naked at the home of teresa Wright, say. Or Jean Simmons.
9. Remember "The Cowboy" in Mullholland Drive and how preposterous he seemed? And yet he scared the hell out of me.
10. My friend David and I once made a list of recurring themes and images in David Lynch films:
a. Accidental car collisions that turn into infernos.
b. The grotesque spectacle of grief.
c. The blurred lines between waking and repose.
d. The blurred distinctions between the identities of say, 2 people of the same gender.
e. Roy Orbison songs.
f. Depavity as slapstick.
g. Sorcery.
h. The collision of naivete and despair.
i. Smoking./Matches.
j. amnesia or the loss of identity
k. dance those blues away
l. your subconscious attempting to contact you
11. Some directors' mistakes are far more compelling than other directors' successes.
12. "Here's to your fuck, Frank."
Cheers,
Christopher
3 - steven
If you want to know where David gets his ideas, then check out his new book, Catching the Big Fish. It's an eye-opener and the first time he reveals what the source of his creatvity is. You can get it at Amazon.