Inland Empire

Plot synopsis:
The film opens to the sound of a gramophone playing Axxon N, "the longest-running radio play in history". Meanwhile, a young prostitute, identified in the credits as the "Lost Girl", cries while watching television in a hotel room, following an unpleasant encounter with her client. The Lost Girl’s television displays a family of surrealistic anthropomorphic rabbits who speak in cryptic statements and questions. Occasionally, there are laugh track responses within these Rabbit scenes. These three elements become recurring motifs throughout Inland Empire.
The main plot follows an actress named Nikki Grace (Dern), who has applied for a comeback role as Sue in a film entitled On High in Blue Tomorrows. The day before the audition, Nikki is visited by an enigmatic old woman (Zabriskie) who says she is her neighbor; she predicts that Nikki will get the role, and recounts two folk tales. One tells of a boy who, sparking a reflection after passing through a doorway, "caused evil to be born." The other tells of a girl who, wandering through an alleyway behind a marketplace, "discovers a palace." The old woman presses Nikki for details on her new film, asking whether the story is about marriage and involves murder. Nikki denies both, but her neighbor disagrees. Disregarding Nikki's offended response, the old woman comments on the confusion of time, claiming that were this tomorrow, Nikki would be sitting on a couch adjacent to them. The film then pans to where the neighbor is pointing, and we see Nikki and two girlfriends sitting on the couch. Her butler (Ian Abercrombie) walks into the living room with a phone call from her agent, announcing that she has won the role. Ecstatic, Nikki and her friends celebrate while her husband Piotrek (Peter J. Lucas) ominously surveys them from atop a nearby staircase.
Some time later, Nikki and her co-star Devon Berk (Theroux) receive an interview on a talk show. The host (Ladd) asks them both whether they are having an affair, to which each of them respond negatively. Devon is warned by his entourage that Nikki is out of bounds, due to her husband's power and influence. Later, on the set being built for the film, Nikki and Devon rehearse a scene with the director, Kingsley Stewart (Irons). They are interrupted by a disturbance, but upon investigation Devon finds nothing. Shaken by the event, Kingsley confesses that they are shooting a remake of a German feature entitled 47. Production was abandoned after both leads were murdered, creating rumors of the film being cursed.
Immersed in her character, while the film is being shot, "Sue" / Nikki appears to begin an affair with Devon / "Billy". A strange scene follows based on what the old woman had described: Nikki appears in a mysterious alley walking to her car, carrying a bag of groceries, but then she notices a door in the alley marked Axxon N, and enters. It leads her back to soundstage where the earlier rehearsal took place. She witnesses that rehearsal from across the room—she herself was what had interrupted it earlier. This time, when Devon seeks to discover who's observing them, she disappears from the rehearsal scene, and flees among the half-built backgrounds and into the house of a character named Smithy (possibly her husband in the film's story, but this is never made clear). Despite the set being merely a wooden facade, Nikki enters to find an illuminated suburban house inside. Devon looks through the windows, but sees only darkness, not hearing her frantic cries of his character's name, "Billy."
At this point, the film takes a drastic stylistic turn. Various plotlines and scenes begin to entwine and complement each other. The chronological order is often confused or nonexistent. Inside the house, Nikki sees her husband (whether it's "Smithy" or Piotrek is unclear) in bed. Hiding from him, she enters a different room and encounters a troupe of prostitutes. One of the women advises her to burn a hole through silk with a cigarette and look through the hole. Nikki complies and witnesses several strange happenings, many of which seem to revolve around her, or alternate versions of herself.
Prior to these scenes, the woman who plays Billy’s wife tells a policeman that she had been hypnotised to murder someone with a screwdriver, but finds the screwdriver embedded in her own side. A mysterious organization claims to have captives from Inland Empire. A parallel plotline involves Polish circus artists in the present day, as well as Polish prostitutes in Łódź during the 1930s, who are confronted by strange pimps while murder permeates their city. Nikki, having become one of the group of present-day prostitutes, wanders the streets while her companions ask, "Who is she?" Both Nikki and her prostitutes frequently ask people to look at them and "say whether you've known me before." In a parallel plotline, Sue climbs the dark staircase behind a nightclub to deliver long monologues to an unidentified man touching upon her childhood sexual abuse, disastrous relationships, and retaliations. Her husband Smithy seems to be connected with both the pimps and the organization, and then is hired by a circus from Poland because he is said to be "good with animals." There is much talk of the Phantom, an elusive hypnotist. Convinced she’s being stalked by a red-lipped man, Sue arms herself with a screwdriver.
Finally, Sue walks down Hollywood Boulevard, and is startled to see her doppelgänger across the street. Before Sue can investigate, Doris arrives and attempts to kill her, having been hypnotized by The Phantom. Sue is brutally stabbed in the stomach with her own screwdriver, causing her to stagger down the street and eventually collapse next to some homeless people on the corner of Hollywood and Vine. One woman remarks that Sue is dying, then proceeds to debate with another, younger homeless woman about taking a bus to Pomona. Her companion talks at length about a friend named Niko, a prostitute whose blond wig makes her look like a movie star, thus allowing her to walk through the rich district without drawing attention. The older woman comforts Sue by holding a lighter in front of her face until she finally dies, promising her "no more blue tomorrows." Off-camera, Kingsley yells "Cut!" and the camera pans back to show this has merely been a film scene.
As the actors and film crew wrap for the next scene, Sue slowly arises, Nikki once more. Kingsley announces that her scenes for the film are complete. In a daze, Nikki wanders off set and into a nearby cinema, where she sees not only On High in Blue Tomorrows—encompassing some of the subplots of the film—but events that are currently occurring. She wanders to the projection room, but finds an apartment building marked "Axxon N". Eventually, Nikki confronts the red-lipped man from earlier, now known to be the Phantom. She shoots him, which causes his face to morph first into a distorted copy of Nikki's own face, and then an even more distorted face bleeding from its mouth.
Nikki flees into a nearby room—Room 47, which houses the rabbits on television, though she fails to see them. Elsewhere in the building, Nikki finds the Lost Girl, who has been watching and crying all along. The two women kiss, before Nikki fades away into the light along with the rabbits. The Lost Girl runs out of the hotel and into Smithy's house, where she happily embraces a man and child.
Nikki is then seen back home, smiling at the old woman from the beginning of the film. The concluding scene takes place at her house, where she sits with many other people, among them Laura Harring, Nastassja Kinski, and Ben Harper. A one-legged woman who was mentioned in Sue's monologue looks around and says, "Sweet!" Niko, the girl with the blonde wig and monkey, can also be seen. The end credits roll over a group of women dancing to Nina Simone's "Sinner Man" while a lumberjack saws a log to the beat.

Tags: avant garde, boring, murder, cult, alternate reality, violence, atmospheric, flashback, insanity, psychedelic, romantic, storytelling

Review:
His concern for the well being of actors is strong but this time instead of a new comer (Naomi Watts) he deals with one older actresses come back role and like Mulholland Dr. their are the evil producers behind the scenes and even the added possibility of a cursed set.I am a huge Lynch fan.
A lot of lynch's trademarks return, the dual personalities, time folding in on itself, gratuitous nudity, and another tragic murder mystery.While this film does feel like a retread of Mulholland Dr. it also stands on its own especially since it contains a much more upbeat ending and perhaps four layers of storytelling,good luck figuring out which is which.
Lynch's new film, INLAND EMPIRE, is similar to his other work, but unlike anything he's ever done, or I've ever seen before.
You can see how Lynch understands this because he quotes "The Saragossa Manuscript," a Polish film about interweaving of kabbalistic worlds and the causal confusion that it brings.The second thing is how he exploits this merger of folded narrative -- where actors write new worlds; layered emanations where worlds spawn others -- not parallel but linked in generative fate; geometric cosmology in which each act creates symmetries we encounter elsewhere.He does all this by elaborating on the symmetries of cause.
Inland Empire is Lynch at his best - funny, thoughtful, eerie, beautiful, dark, deeply disturbing, and terrifying in a way that few horror films have ever affected me.
The film is a slow burn, taking its time (about 3 hours), leaping through realities and bizarre encounters, continually keeping the audience asking themselves what reality they are experiencing, and what that reality means.Laura Dern gives an outstanding performance as the tagline's "girl in trouble." She goes to places I don't ever remember seeing her go, from the naive to the terrifying, truly exposed.
Funny then to watch Inland Empire and think that in the future, if it continues this way, that we will look back on Lynch's earlier films as his pre-weird period, which is strange when you watch Wild at Heart, Blue Velvet etc.
The funny thing is that both camps are right in their comments on this film because it is at once brilliant and terrible  Jonathon Ross summed it up surprisingly well when he said it was a "work of genius  I think" because the impression left on me was just this.On one hand the film is almost impossible to follow and it is not just a glib remark to say that this does make Mullholland Drive feel like an episode of Eastenders in regards accessibility.
It is ironic to praise the film for its freewheeling experience but yet criticise it for being undisciplined but yet here we are because it does feel very much like a film where Lynch needed someone to say "look, you need to make it as tight as it is exhilarating".Nobody said this I think and as a result it outstays its welcome at times and the dips are just that much more pronounced.
If Mulholland Drive was 25% a dark and surreal suspense thriller ghost story and journey into the nether regions of the mind and 75% classical, yet not necessarily structural or connected narrative, Inland Empire is 10% straight narrative and 90% raw psychological horror ghost story.The journey is long and hard but at the end you will be rewarded with the kind of peace and serenity that can only come from a meditation this long, deep, and powerful.
Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks and Lost Highway all succeed very well in this but, with this film, the viewer is just left annoyed at having wasted three hours watching a film that went absolutely nowhere filmed painfully on a hand-held digital camera...Don't waste your time with this pointless film.
I've liked some of David Lynch's movies: Mulholland Drive was brilliant, Blue Velvet was good, Eraserhead was okay, and I've seen a couple of other of his movies that were not bad.
I was eager to see Inland Empire but by the time I saw it I was disappointed and quite frankly bored to tears.As I interpreted the story (if one wants to call it a story) it was about an attempted remake of an unfinished Polish film which allegedly was cursed, and the new leading lady now gets to the point where she can't discern the difference between her life and what is being filmed for the movie and what happened in the unfinished Polish film- and we, the viewers, are not intended to know the difference either.
I have followed David Lynch's work starting with Eraserhead and have kept watching because his films are strange and different.
Having covered this, I must say that this was one of the rare occasions where I was dying for the movie to (finally) end - I left the theater thinking "what the f***?" and quite honestly if I had to put a headline to the whole thing I would call it intellectual masturbation.Maybe Lynch is just having a laugh, viewing Inland Empire as an experiment to see how far he can go with audiences - or it is a revolutionary new concept in cinema where the director just supervises shooting and the audience explains what this is about in forums like this.One of my spontaneous thoughts after watching this was: had this been the debut film of a rookie director fresh out of film school, my guess would be that he/she would be continuing his/her career making movies at children's birthday parties or silver wedding anniversaries.Then on the other hand, maybe I belong to the minority of dim-wits who just don't get it - I can not rule this out.
However, looking at the majority of raving reviews here, there is one thing that I would really like to find out: how many of those reviews are based on a genuine appreciation of the movie, and how many were written because it's just so en vogue to celebrate Lynch films and you better not admit that you came out of the theater thinking "geez - I didn't get it ..." I would love to do an experiment: show 3 hours of CCTV or traffic cam material, taken randomly from a department store, office building or a traffic light on a deserted road, and add some opening titles stating "Directed by David Lynch" - my bet would be this film would earn an average vote of 7.8 here and lots of interpretations/explanations, all starting with the statement how great the lack of narrative helps the deeper meaning of the movie.But maybe this finally is the ultimate Alan Smithee film - and I must admit that it left a deep impression in urging me to write this long comment ;-).
Fact # 1: Lynch is a genius and one of the very few filmmakers who have reached the point of image-perfection (others include Terence Malick, Kim Ki-Duk, Herzog, but also Wong Kar- Wai and maybe Nic Roeg)Fact # 2: I found Mulholland Drive completely comprehensible; in fact it is my all time favourite film (together with Kim's Bin-Jip), with Blue Velvet close on its heels and Lost Highway a bit further down the top 30.
Emblematic to that problem is the fact that Rabbits-parts are included, which include Mulholland Dr actors, and which dates from 4 (four!) years earlier, filmed in his "moving painting" style.In short: I had the impression that Lynch has evolved, and that this would have been a great film if he'd been honest to himself and keep only the radically new bits, instead of keeping everything in, leading to an inconsistent hodgepodge.Maybe it's telling that in last year's DVD-issues of Lost Highway (or was it MDr?) he actually *explains* part of his storytelling technique.
Let me start by saying I've admired every single Lynch film to date, and I've seen all his feature filmsnot only all the original work, but also the non-auteur stuff (like "Elephant man," "Straight Story," and "Dune") as well.Moreover, "Mulholland Drive" is on my short list for best movie of all timea hands down perfect piece of art.
And I really liked "Lost Highway" and even found "Eraserhead" engaging.However, I must say the first 90 minutes of "Inland Empire" ranks as some of the most boring and pretentious film making in the short history of the art.
He seems to be utterly fascinated by all the new "gizmos" involved with digital film-making, and thus instead of a story we get a 3 hour film of Lynch having a good time with the new digital era.For a short while, INLAND EMPIRE almost ALMOST has a plot.
But, like a high school creative college student who claims his final project is great because everything stands for something else, Inland Empire offers us two choices: the first is to be accepted into the Cinema Illuminati and say you like the film and have seen it multiple times to appreciate its nuances.
Taking the murderous jealous husband theme of "Lost Highway" and melding it into the dreams of a tortured actress theme of "Mulholland Drive," David Lynch fluidly immerses his recurring dark fantasies into a story revolving around a Polish-Gypsy legend and a cursed movie production and delivers his most experimental film since "Eraserhead" with his epic three-hour "Inland Empire." The most experimental part of this is Lynch's use of a hand-held digital camera to shoot the entire film.
There are points, however, where Lynch so repeatedly shows Laura Dern walking down dark hallways and dimly lit staircases into moody savagely lit rooms decked out with weird lamps that I half expect the director's next project to be a home decor line for the film-noir enthusiast.There will be those who wish to discuss the plot of "Inland Empire" and insist on figuring it all out.
Lynch, however, gives many clues for those wanting to dissect the piece: 9:45, room number 47, a magic watch (similar to the ring from "Twin Peaks: FWWM "), the "LB" tattooed on Dern's hand, the letters "AXXONN" appearing repeatedly on walls and doorways, Grace Zabriskie's bizarre telling of an "old tale" when we first meet Laura Dern's character, and perhaps secrets hidden in the dialogue of the prostitutes, the rabbits, and Harry Dean Stanton.
The film is so long, and so jumbled, however, that I think it's better to digest it as is, unlike "Mulholland Drive" which was exhilarating to examine "between the scenes."Lynch, forever in love with Hollywood as a city of dreams, is again master of the disembodied scene.
Like Naomi Watt's mesmerizing audition scene in "Mulholland Drive" (which in no small non-ironic way launched Watt's career into the stratosphere) there's a killer line-reading about thirty minutes into the "Inland Empire" where you don't really care what Laura Dern is talking about or what film she is in, it's just you watching her playing an actress getting totally lost in her lines, and it's beautiful.
I mean he had already lost the plot to a certain extent in films like Lost Highway, maybe Mulholland Drive, definitely Twin Peaks, but at least there, there was something interesting going on in the background.Inland Empire, conversely, can only be described as, what one of my more eloquent companions said to me as he walked out after a whole gut-bleeding seventy minutes, 'utter w*nk'.
The digital camera-work (a significant way of cutting costs) is a disaster (too many close-ups) too much haziness, very unclear, jittery, unsteady, overly didactic (it is after all Lynch's first outing with the thing); the old repetitive accented 'room tone thing' and industrial drone in the background (c'mon David, we've been here before in practically every outing, let's shake it up a bit and move on shall we), the shifty pauses, the menacing eyes - the formula is done and dusted, and yet back he comes, derivative of himself (oh, what avant-garde wonders await us?) with what is arguably a cheaper nastier looking product of his previous (virtuous) Lost Highway, and at twice the length.
Insinuating his own shorts like 'Rabbits' into the flesh of the film for no obvious reason whatsoever is akin to admitting they were so utterly devoid of any cinematic quality in the first place that this was the only way he could have them published (apart of course from subscribing to his website where such wonders await in abundance).The problem with making plot less non-sense like this is that it fools or perhaps cheats the unknowing audience into thinking that it is they who are stupid, that it is they who 'don't get it', and yet somehow should, that in amongst it all there is an Ariadnic thread that if followed will lead to the exit and an understanding.
Instead, it should just be experienced - a jolt of pure cinema full of revelations about the power of film, but only because of what it is rather than what it says."Maybe this movie is delicacy for David Lynch lovers, but it will take some time for me to forgive myself for not giving up on it after first hour.
Some of them believe that their favorite director "lost it" and indulged himself in three hours of "Blatant narcissism", "Self-Indulgence or "Self Importance" while the others think his latest film is a unique amazing work of a master and transfixing movie watching experience.
David Lynch's mystery film, Inland Empire (2006), is like sitting through a chaotic nightmare that will never end.
Shot, in its entirety, with a simple digital video camera, Lynch's 'Inland Empire' isn't different from his other films but it is completely something else.
The lighting also works excellently, as it does in almost all Lynch films and 'Inland Empire' too is very colourful like 'Mulholland Drive' and 'Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me' but notice the different use in all three films.
Okay, so it's a true saying that you either love Lynch movies or hate them, but to make this easier on those of you out there still undecided on which camp you fall in, if "Mullholland Drive," was the kind of film you immediately wanted to see again and enjoyed thoroughly from beginning to end then Inland Empire might just be for you.It's good to see the wonderful Laura Dern back in a leading lady capacity even though her performance is a very twisted, dark and disturbing one it's still a pleasure to have her back in front of the camera.
A few sequences hit the jackpot, more notably the musical song and dance routine to the "Locomotion" of the prostitute elite, Dern running through her movie set into another time and place seemingly trapped inside her character, later on getting lost and going insane on the harsh streets of Hookersville, and a terrific dance number over the end credits to Nina Simone singing "Sinnerman." (the best part of the film is this time literally when the credits roll.) Okay, I can accept this art house drivel at just about two hours, but when this "Mullholland Drive" follow-up rambles on for an extra hour, rivalling "The Godfather Part II" in length, and lacking anything remotely resembling coherent substance to justify such a running time, I do weep quietly about the state of American 'artistic' cinema.
I saw Inland Empire in Seattle; David Lynch introduced the film (with a cellist playing an improvisation, followed by DL saying about 2 sentences) I knew only a few things about the film: it was shot all on digital video, and it was 3 hours long.
If you're able to watch Inland Empire in it's entirety it will be obvious that this is the movie David Lynch worked towards since Twin Peaks.
I just finished watching "Inland Empire", having long awaited a Lynch film since I was so completely awe-struck by "Mulholland Drive." Let's get one thing straight here.
For one, the shots and footage are so dark at times that the film feels like you're looking at a black box on the screen for a lot of the movie.
If you're not allergic to the experimental, the surreal and the avant-garde in cinema, you may well even think it's a masterpiece.Inland Empire is at once the most abstract of Lynch's films but also more accessible than Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway.
After the masterpiece that was Mullholland Drive, comes Inland Empire, David Lynch's worst film.
If you're familiar with Lynch's previous work, specifically his loose trilogy of psychological metamorphosis films - Fire Walk with Me (1992), Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001) - then you'll already have a vague understanding of what to expect from Inland Empire and how to best interpret its seemingly formless and meandering plot.
Some films are like that.In my own opinion, Inland Empire wasn't something that I enjoyed quite as much as say, Eraserhead or Mulholland Drive, with my natural aversion to incredibly long films kicking in during the half-way point (this is almost three hours in length, half of which is in Polish and I watched without subtitles due to a problem with me DVD player - D'OH!).
I liked "Twin Peaks", tolerated "Mulholland" and "Lost Highways" but this thing (INLAND EMPIRE) is a mess.I get the feeling that he makes movies like this just to mess with our minds.
So when i got to watch Inland Empire i thought: OK, this time I won't understand it either, so let's enjoy the wild ride into the dark worlds of Lynch.Sadly it wasn't that way.
For those who felt Lynch's last film, Mulholland Dr., was too easy, I present to you Inland Empire.
It is disappointing, especially as we've waited five years since Mulholland Dr., probably his best film, but there are a few of Lynch's movies that I like less than this..
There are some similarities to those previous films, but Inland Empire is a new departure, or maybe a culmination, for David Lynch.Anyone who thinks they can write a spoiler for this movie doesn't have a clue what they saw.