The rise and fall of the Lynchian "Empire"

Inland Empire (directed by David Lynch)


Off the heels of one of the best films of Lynch's career, 2001's masterful Mulholland Drive, Signor Lynch decided to make a 3-hour-long film-within-a-film-within-a rabbit-world-within-Poland, shot entirely in digital, about a woman in trouble. To talk about the plot of the movie is to explain what seems to be a series of dreams, or at least a series of realities. You're not quite sure what is real or what is a dream, and at about the 1 1/2 hour mark, you're not really starting to care, either. Part of the allure of Mulholland Drive was that it was an enigma wrapped in a mystery, wrapped in Billy Ray Cyrus' mullet. You cared about the characters and there was enough startling imagery to carry you along for the ride. In Inland Empire, the intrigue is about as fleeting as the career of Jonathan Brandis.

Laura Dern stars as Nikki Grace, the aforementioned woman in trouble, and things get off to a peculiar start when a strange neighbor (Grace Zabriskie) makes a house call. You see, there is supposedly a Polish gypsy curse attached to the movie that Dern and her co-star (Justin Theroux) have signed on to do, called On High In Blue Tomorrows, and the cast and crew of the film are not quite sure what they've got themselves into. We the audience don't either.

There is a certain allure to the first act, which mainly deals with Nikki's Polish husband making dark threats to Theroux's character and a suitably creepy mood is set. I was anxious to see where Lynch was going with the gypsy curse, but unfortunately the director gets sidetracked with other possibilities, such as a rabbit family doing household chores or grim scenes filmed in Poland that are apparently attached to the main story somehow.

David Lynch is an immensely talented filmmaker, his last three pictures being quite possibly the best work he's done. Therefore it's all the more depressing to see him resort to something like Inland Empire, which rests somewhere between Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as his least satisfying work. Nonetheless, there are definitely moments that make Empire worthwhile--I can't think of them right at this moment but I'll definitely get back to you. It seems like no matter how bad a Lynch movie is, there are still fans of his lesser work (there's apparently a cult of Dune-heads but I still haven't yet mustered the strength to check that one out). You know you're in trouble when you're watching a movie and suddenly you start thinking about how badly the kitty litter needs scooping. Let's just hope Lynch has more Mullholland Drive's than Inland Empire's left in him.