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I think it would be entirely wrong to suggest Lynch started out with the intention of making a conventional narrative film and gave up halfway through. A commonality between all of his films from 'Blue Velvet' onward has been the use of a 'normal' starting point to essay characters' (or the whole world's??) descent beyond the realms of sanity, emotional normality or cause & effect reality.
I know, but this one felt *wrong*. Even in the most abstract Lynch films there's an assumed spine of reality towards which the "narrative" tends, often reattaching itself by the end, but in this case it just seemed to waver and lose itself. My instincts couldn't lock onto this one. I think he just took it too far for me. I couldn't react to it...
'Inland Empire' does exactly the same thing, only with a more sudden and uncompromising slide into Lynch-space, and with a more sustained duration (unlike the previous films, IE never "comes up for air" by returning to the conventional world).
Yes, and the sequences in which Laura/Nikki/Sue goes on her Out Of Reality Experience into Lynchland worked... for a while. And then I just had to let go, she lost me. My threshold for being dicked around with IRL is low, and used to be far higher for films than it is these days, I'm much more critical and less accepting of being able to see the seams. While watching movies these days I have I have a sort of continuous internal wordless dialogue of sneering eyerolls and irritable sighs. My cinema appreciation apparatus has become the magician's nightmare, the kid in the audience pointing out how he's doing the trick. Ever since Phantom Menace...
My bad. Maybe it's just that I'm losing attention-span through approaching the beginnings of middle age. It certainly sounds like you got a lot more out of it than I did, so there must be stuff there, but it's gone... well, not "over my head", but...*under* my heart... if that makes sense...
It's all totally relative and subjective, obviously. And I probably will see it again. I might even change my mind.
That's a REALLY GOOD THEORY! Like it!
Although having said that, I did find myself arguing quite strongly with someone that those L.A. girls were NOT supposed to represent prostitutes... and then realised I had absolutely no idea why it mattered either way, except that I liked them as characters and found them a very comforting and human presence in the film amidst all the black, howling terror.
I'm slightly confused, was it you or your friend who was arguing that they weren't prostitutes? *I* thought it was madly obvious that they were.
And... I'm beginning to think it *does* matter what they are, as I think one of the films strongest themes is the destructive use of women.
Yes, I like them as characters, too.
I think one of the strongest moments (and also the most *irritating*, because it's one of the most disconnected-feeling incidents) is when Nikki/Laura/Sue is with the prostitutes in Hollywood and suddenly gets sick of... something... the role, I think, and I don't really mean the role of Nikki playing Sue, I mean more the role of Nikke/Laura/Sue playing Nikki/Laura/Sue... and starts parodying herself, saying: "Where am I, I'm *scaaaarred*" and all the rest of the gilrs join in laughing uproariously at the revelation.
And that's one of the things that's getting to me about this film. That moment, to me, looks like the Crisis Point, the point where the main character makes the Big Plot Decision. Plots have to have this for there to be stories, basically in all stories (all stories that work properly as stories, that is) the hero or heroine comes to a crossroads and chooses a direction. The rest of the story is about getting to that place and then finding out what happens after you've got to it. I think.
And this movie isn't supposed to have a plot! It's OBVIOUSLY not supposed to have a plot. Um, I thought...while I was watching it... UNTIL I saw that scene and felt the story-understanding machinery inside me wake up and go: "Oh! she's done it! This IS a story!" But there was no reasonable way she could have got to that crossroads! It was a thing that made "sense" in the middle of a movie that wasn't supposed to!
Perhaps we can take it that the humanising influence of the prostitutes within that part of the story *enabled* that development... the positive attitude and the story-sense. By magic. In fact... I think we have to.
And she DID go and complete the quest and kill the baddie after making that decision, essentially, that the monstrous role of victim she was being expected to play was ludicrous.
More things are coming out as I type. I'm NOW finding myself deciding that the Polish Girl Watching the TV is the FIRST actress / prostitute to be taken in and consumed by the story. (Is she the same person who meets "Polish" Cramp in the brown, snow-filled streets where he remarks casually about how strange it is to find her wandering about the streets instead of in their home? I think she is, isn't she? (And... could she be the same actress in the *very first* scene with her head blurred out...? In black and white, old film stylee... OH! As I recall, that scene cuts *directly* to the first scene of Polish Girl Watching the TV!))
And so Nikki/Laura/Sue releases *her* from the fictional mess and everyone else gets to wake up too, like in Bagpuss.
I'm beginning to realise that I'm probably going to *have* to see this movie again.
I'm fascinated by the way that I've heard an entirely different interpretation of 'Inland Empire' from every person I know who has seen it.
I've long been convinced that Twin Peaks-era Lynch DOES usually have a single, objective 'meaning' behind it, even if it's one which will never be fully revealed by the big man. But 'Inland Empire' strikes me as being more of a cipher for the individual viewer's own ideas/preoccupations, and a BRILLIANTLY constructed one at that; I honestly think it is capable of having a different story and a different emotional context for every viewing experience, with each seeming as valid and plausible as the next, which is, well... staggering fucking artistic genius, to state the obvious.
Well.... umph.
IS it? Why, if so? Why is it genius to make a story that no 2 people can agree on what it's about? I've no IDEA what happened in "Inland Empire".
Genuine Question. It's probably not easily answerable.
I must bear in mind that I've been praising "Science of Sleep" in the thread of the same name, partially on the grounds of its ambiguity... I'm trying to figure out why it's worked for me in other films in the past and is more difficult to get hold of in IE. Maybe it's just that there are so *many* possible interpretations.
I liked the scary Polish woman a lot actually, thought it was an excellent scene - all the more powerful for it's in-yer-face OBVIOUSNESS (try not to cringe and/or gasp when she starting talking about "..BRUTAL fucking murder..").
But then I always really like the gothic horror movie-esque "warnings" people receive in Lynch films... in a regular horror context they'd come across as rather ham-fisted once the predictable/silly threat was revealed, but somehow, given the more subtle and insidious evil of Lynch-world they end up seeming... strangely spot on. You know, as in: that weird lady's not kidding: If you value your soul, GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS FILM.
Yer know... I'm beginning to think that I just wasn't in the mood for a Lynch...
hmmm |
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