X
- 2006
- R
- 518 Media
- 3 h
- 2006
- R
- 518 Media
- 3 h
Summary The latest hallucinatory vision from the iconoclastic director of "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks," Inland Empire stars Laura Dern in a tour-de-force performance as, perhaps, an actress who lands a dream role that quickly devolves into nightmare. [IFC Center]
Directed By: David Lynch
Written By: David Lynch
- 2006
- R
- 518 Media
- 3 h
- 2006
- R
- 518 Media
- 3 h
Inland Empire
73
7.4
Summary The latest hallucinatory vision from the iconoclastic director of "Blue Velvet" and "Twin Peaks," Inland Empire stars Laura Dern in a tour-de-force performance as, perhaps, an actress who lands a dream role that quickly devolves into nightmare. [IFC Center]
Directed By: David Lynch
Written By: David Lynch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
73
68% Positive
17 Reviews
17 Reviews
32% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 25 Critic Reviews
73
68% Positive
17 Reviews
17 Reviews
32% Mixed
8 Reviews
8 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
A dazzling and exquisitely original riddle as told by an enigma, featuring a superb, multi-layered performance by Laura Dern.
In the end, it's best to make peace with the film's essential and deliberate inscrutability -- something Lynch fans have learned to do since Twin Peaks -- and to simply marvel at Dern's astonishing performance, which few actresses are likely to top anytime soon.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 83 User Ratings
7.4
69% Positive
57 Ratings
57 Ratings
20% Mixed
17 Ratings
17 Ratings
11% Negative
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 83 User Ratings
7.4
69% Positive
57 Ratings
57 Ratings
20% Mixed
17 Ratings
17 Ratings
11% Negative
9 Ratings
9 Ratings
A love letter to the movies, but written with an unbridled and even terrifying intelligence. How do we look for a way out of everyday life in the cinema, only to meet the earthly and psychological demands with which we must fulfill day by day. Terrifyingly charming.
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My advice, in the face of such hallucinatory brilliance, is that you hang on.
It may not look like anything he's done before, but Inland Empire joins "Mulholland" and the whatzit "Lost Highway" (1997) to form the strangest show-business triptych around. All three concern artists whose identities demand more than one body. The films give new meaning to the phrase "dual citizenship."
By the time Inland Empire, David Lynch's three-hour digital epic shot on a home video camera, takes you through its tour of the contents of the director's febrile imagination, it's probably the bunnies you'll most remember.
What is Inland Empire - which Lynch is understandably distributing himself - about? What is it trying to say? If you figure that out, let me know.
Over time, though, with films such as "Lost Highway" and, to a lesser extent, "Mulholland Drive," Lynch's movies became less personal and more private. Whatever he is working out in his new film, Inland Empire, it's beyond the reach of all but his idolators.
There is a very definite, specific entry point into this film. The bewildering, chaotic, inscrutable personality of this misunderstood film is only a facade - a false front - concealing a remarkably lucid narrative that absolutely is David's most potent, most intense, most **** creation. There are "clues" offered at the film's beginning as to just what is required of the viewer in order to "gain access." These clues are delivered via the curious words of the "Polish" characters who are expressing a desire, a need for us to disregard all our preconceptions of Lynch's previous work, and more importantly to adjust our awareness to a point where all the fractured, hysterical elements of the film somehow realign into a much much more coherent continuum.There's even a fairly explicit instruction on how to achieve this mental "adjustment" provided by the unusual foreign "neighbor." The "story" you then discover is astoundingly vivid and vibrant. It unfolds elegantly, magically within your mind in a most spectacularly visceral process, like the most intense 3D of the mind - ultra turbo psycho 3D. It's David's stunning singular achievement to have so thoroughly deconstructed the forms of cinema and TV and theater and web casts and static art in order to create an entirely new, original, vital art form. It's revolutionary and unequaled by any other living artist. James Joyce attempted something similar in literature, Picasso labored for something comparable in cubism, Gandhi suggested something related in politics, and Shaman for eons have operated through similar processes to affect the Consciousness. Subjective experience is a malleable, variable, fluid process that defies our attempts to contain it, to name it, to control it. So David has learned if you can't beat it, join it. And he has intimately joined with these vague and threatening forces that guide our psyches. And in order to join with, or grok, this film you must surrender to it's design. It will reward your time and efforts ten fold. It's a roller coaster ride through the vast caverns, meandering galleries, and cluttered cupboards of David's Provincial Gothic mind. It transports you to a destination that presents itself as a profoundly disturbing insight into the nature of our Western Culture, the implications and ramifications of which are staggering in their impact. David has expressed his experience of being alive through a virtual recreation of process by which he came to his insight. We are not just witnessing a description of his discovery, but seemingly actually accompanying him on his spiritual voyage. I could almost hear him whispering in my ear the entire time, "This is so intense, right?" There is a profoundly sublimely experience that awaits you, if you choose to pursue this unprecedented adventure. If you do, you will know the deepest mystery of cinema and the society that reveres it.
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an empire that builds itself up only to collapse..
Inland Empire
The depiction of the tale in here is more convoluted than the script, along with an eerie camera work which has always been the maker's window of luring the audience into its dark fictionalized world that actually resembles a lot to the practicality of it. It is rich on technical aspects like sound department, production design and its finely edited product that is perfectly cooked and served to the audience. The writer takes too much time to make its point in here which makes sense and feasible in here considering the outcome it provides the audience as they find themselves getting lost into the projected world very quickly. David Lynch is no short in execution as always and is supported well by an amazing cinematography that may be inedible for some viewers but surely is though-provoking and ground breaking. Laura Dern easily carries off the whole feature without breaking a sweat which proves her majestic acting skills and is supported decently by Jeremy Irons and Justin Theroux if not accurately apt for it. Inland Empire is an empire that builds itself up only to collapse on terms of its self-created restrained imaginative bubble that actually could have had wider range than was provided.
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I will put it as simply as it has to be: If you like David Lynch movies, you will like Inland Empire. If you don't like David Lynch movies, you will hate Inland Empire. It is not Lynch's best. It is not Lynch's worst. It is simply his "Lynchiest." If you want to know what the directorial style of David Lynch is, as well as the most extreme boundaries to what a film can really be, watch Inland Empire and it will answer all your questions.
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Worst movie ever. Not only because there is no plot, mainly because there is no real work behind. Mr Lynch think he is so brilliant that he doesn't need the give sens to his creativity.
On the other hand when I see so many of his fans loving blindly that movie, making them think, they are remarkably sensitive beings because they liked it, you can say that Mr Lynch is a genius.
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Production Company
StudioCanal,
Camerimage Festival,
Tumult Foundation,
Asymmetrical Productions,
Inland Empire Productions,
Absurda
Release Date Dec 6, 2006
Duration 3 h
Rating R
Tagline A Woman In Trouble
Awards
Chlotrudis Awards
• 5 Nominations
The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards
• 3 Nominations
Indiewire Critics' Poll
• 3 Nominations
