Thursday, September 07, 2006

David Lynch's Inland Empire

Inland Empire: Set in the inland valley outside of Los Angeles, David Lynch's new film is a mystery about a woman in trouble.

Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Harry Dean Stanton, Justin Theroux, Julia Ormond...

"Laura Dern admitted that she was not sure what the film was about. 'My experience on this film was very unique to say the least, even after working with David for a long time,' she said.

'Each day was a different direction, each day was a different idea because we didn’t have a script we were following. The truth is, I didn’t know who I was playing — and I still don’t know. I’m looking forward to seeing the film to learn more.'”

"It appears that the film script has a Machiavellian life of its own. An increasingly hysterical Dern is pursued from one fraught scene to the next by a queue of assorted creeps."

"Lynch always resists attempts at interpretation; here, he defies any kind of narrative description as well. Two and a half years in the making, this is seat-of-the-pants filmmaking at its most baffling. There was never a complete script, so thesps turned up each day with a new set of lines and no idea where they were going, making Dern's central turn even more remarkable for its coherence."

"David Lynch's latest opus is a Russian doll of a film with stories inside stories inside stories. But coming in at three hours long, made in Poland and Hollywood, the digitally-shot film is inspired and incomprehensible by turns."

"It’s almost impossible to summarise the plot of a film that doesn’t really have one; by the end of the three hours, we have little to add to Lynch’s laconic press-book statement that INLAND EMPIRE is about 'a woman in love and in trouble.'"

"David Lynch took time out to defend his hallucinatory new picture at the Venice film festival yesterday, insisting that it makes 'perfect sense' - to him at least.

'It's supposed to make perfect sense,' he said. 'Every film is like going into a new world, going into the unknown. But you should be not afraid of using your intuition, and feel and think your way through.'"

A quick glimpse at his short flicks.

Hmmmmmm...