Inland Empire

Not exactly sure what I just watched but I couldn’t turn it off. 8/10

Maybe this was a bad introduction to David Lynch, but this film had little to offer for me. It felt meaningless and incoherent for the majority of its lengthy runtime. It’s not meant to be understood, but rather experienced, of which I didn’t enjoy much.

5.5

I like to consider myself a guy with, at least, decent intelligence. But I have to say, just after the hour mark of this three hour movie went by - I had completely lost all sense of what was going on…

I’m not 100% sure there was even anything going on, at least not that was intentionally coherent. I really don’t think the “plot” was especially important to Lynch, rather him using the film as a statement on the creative process. In one sense through Dern’s character embodying her role, but also more literally with Lynch simply playing around with creative limitations of digital cameras - primarily the latter, or at least that’s what I’m going to tell myself…

Whilst taking not anything meaningful from the… “plot”? I am going to remember the immense sound design with some tremendous musical choices. The images captured too, with all their low quality imperfections too - somehow marinating a weird sense of beauty.

Laura Dern was really, really good here. She had this confused look slapped on her face which mirrored mine. Jeremy Irons too, although he’s never once disappointed me.

Despite slipping into a mind-numbing daze several times, I did enjoy my time with Inland Empire. It’s a creative adventure, not in storytelling but in trying to capture emotion through a variety of different images and sounds. Not what I was expecting, but I’ll take it anyway.

Maybe this was a bad introduction to David Lynch, but this film had little to offer for me. It felt meaningless and incoherent for the majority of its lengthy runtime. It’s not meant to be understood, but rather experienced, of which I didn’t enjoy much.

5.5

I like to consider myself a guy with, at least, decent intelligence. But I have to say, just after the hour mark of this three hour movie went by - I had completely lost all sense of what was going on…

I’m not 100% sure there was even anything going on, at least not that was intentionally coherent. I really don’t think the “plot” was especially important to Lynch, rather him using the film as a statement on the creative process. In one sense through Dern’s character embodying her role, but also more literally with Lynch simply playing around with creative limitations of digital cameras - primarily the latter, or at least that’s what I’m going to tell myself…

Whilst taking not anything meaningful from the… “plot”? I am going to remember the immense sound design with some tremendous musical choices. The images captured too, with all their low quality imperfections too - somehow marinating a weird sense of beauty.

Laura Dern was really, really good here. She had this confused look slapped on her face which mirrored mine. Jeremy Irons too, although he’s never once disappointed me.

Despite slipping into a mind-numbing daze several times, I did enjoy my time with Inland Empire. It’s a creative adventure, not in storytelling but in trying to capture emotion through a variety of different images and sounds. Not what I was expecting, but I’ll take it anyway.

You need to truly believe that there’s no such thing as reality, as you get lost in this vast empire and no limit to what a human mind can achieve.