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Inland Empire
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In-Viewing Notes from the 1st Day of the 1st Month of the 11th Year
In the free-floating fictional universe of Inland Empire, interdictions (such as “don’t fuck my/his wife”) have a determining
role in injecting a strange kind of attenuated intrigue.
A story of adultery is projected onto Nikki (Laura
Dern) and Devon (Justin Theroux) – or Sue/Billy in the film-within – from all
sides, amidst many other projected stories. All narrative is a curse wished
upon the subject, a rumour that sticks, a prefigured destiny that one comes to
fulfil despite oneself.
All behaviour is in excess, slipping out of bodies and
roles. Thus the quiet hysteria of the Self. Laughter is always mad and sinister
in Lynch.
And always this laboratory of the self (actresses
playing roles, etc.) – and the dispositif of a making-of, with its usual ambiguities of reality-status – plus
in-between stages like script readings (cf. Marguerite Duras’ Le Camion, 1977).
All moods/ambiences are in a state of being acted out, projected. Deixis gone crazy.
TV’s role in the film is to be the embodiment of this
deixis: the weird rabbits sitcom with its inappropriate laugh track; the entertainment show host, with her cryptic innuendos (the mode
of much of the dialogue here).
As always in Lynch, it’s a case of Gothic sexual
communion. And this is totally where the Self comes apart in madness. In its
longed-for moment of fusion. In the place of fusion, there is only ever violation,
loss of control, rape, prostitution. Sad Laura Palmer (Twin Peaks),
Eternal Lost Girl.
How Lynch loves the Gothic generators: fear, paranoia,
sex-terror, the dark spaces … and always the figure of the woman (actress)
coming unglued in her identity. The scary horror-moment of strangers revealed
as present in the room.
Locus of the Gothic in particular places or sites: the
room, the stage, the corner, the spot where something has happened/will
happen/is forever happening: these three temporalities of narrative. Memories
of finding oneself on a stage, but without knowing the lines, in Luis Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972).
The digital format (like TV in Twin Peaks) comes to enhance these spaces that are just there for
real, into which the fiction, the characters, are seemingly dropped. “This is
the street”.
In Lynchian découpage,
a fascinating play on off-spaces, camera placements and shifted POVs (including
the camera’s POV), quite rigorous and logical, without seeming mechanical or
too systematic. See the early scene with the mysterious neighbour indicating
“Where she’ll be tomorrow”, cueing a transition – always beckoning to another
space, “in the other room”, on micro and macro levels.
Weird audio “sum-up” drop-ins … that don’t, of course,
effectively sum up anything.
Complications start around the 50-minute mark: the
moment where Nikki’s double walks in on her own rehearsal scene. Mind-game
loops, splits.
Lots of stuff happening that one can not easily fit into any unfolding plot-universe. At least not without many, many close-analytical viewings. (See Life’s Work of Cristina Álvarez López.)
A friend has previously asked me, sotto voce, the grand, quizzical question: “It’s all a put-on by
Lynch, don’t you think?”
From the Moviefone website: “Themes – Americans Abroad, Woman In Jeopardy, Dangerous Attraction, Filmmaking”. Inevitable
reductive synopsis: “An actress gets deeper into her role”. Blablabla.
Curious role of lighting: there is seemingly both no
light and nothing but light! A very Philippe Grandrieux opening section.
Quite great soundtrack of drones, thrumming, etc. –
the static crackling, like the needle in a groove (like an old film print, too).
Turn that noise up to 11!
The film’s overall style is a dialectic between
distorted close-ups and static inscriptions of place.
At least in a large-scale Lynchian dispositif like this one, every embedded
piece is conceived and delivered with total conviction (eg., the scenes from the
film-within). There are no mere place-filler scenes or levels, as in so much convoluted meta-narrative or hypertextual digital
art (one bit standing for “documentary”, another bit standing for “fiction”,
etc.) …
Keeps looping back to initial/primal Lost Girl
(Karolina Gruszka) watching snow-TV.
The nine-girl gaggle – allows the introduction of
various musical bits. Nine whores?
The title is
finally mentioned two hours in.
The screwdriver
self-murder: Black Swan (2010).
Mind-game
movies are so often about the revelation of either or both murder or suicide,
often in reversible/interchangeable relation (Inception [2010] does that too, but uses a final happy-family
revelation.) Remember Abel Ferrara’s The
Blackout (1997), which has both.
A strange
international co-production – which actually isn’t!
Filmed over 2
years or so (the Malick/Linklater/Kubrick/Khrzhanovsky/etc. dream: to film in
the rhythm of life, developmentally, eternally).
Wear the
watch: Bill & Ted!
Confession
soliloquy to ugly guy (cop?) – with her in Southern character?
Affinities
with 1970s Jacques Rivette: circulation and floating of narrative & meaning
…
Ringing phones:
the famous link between “communicating story vessels”. Sergio Leone, Raúl Ruiz.
Explores all
sorts of linkages between levels and events: montage, superimposition, various
sonic associations (those train sounds!).
The daylight of
the finale is pretty stunning.
David Lynch
and The (notion of the) Scene. Fundamental to his vision.
MORE Lynch: Mulholland Drive, Lumière and Company, The Straight Story, Lost Highway, Twin Peaks: The Return See also: Outside / Twin Peaks (2015) © Adrian Martin 1 January 2011 |
