David Lynch's latest surreal work disturbs a dysfunctional thriller with erotic anarchy as he hurtles towards a shocking, confronting and utterly uncompromising close. Riveting, hypnotic, dreamlike.
David Lynch’s Inland Empire [is] as opaque a movie as I’ve ever seen, yet riveting or hypnotic in a way that makes you feel not that you’ve seen it, but that you’ve dreamt it
Screened as part of NZIFF 2007
Inland Empire 2006
There is no doubt that the films of David Lynch have become increasingly bewildering. Some seven years in the making, Inland Empire revives many of the dormant projects that thread through the director’s intricate career. In exploring a contaminated Hollywood, a physical Los Angeles and a metaphorical America, Lynch traverses the realm of the mind in a surreal work that is as beguiling as it is confounding. Lynch regular Laura Dern plays Nikki, an actress who’s signed to star alongside Devon (Justin Theroux) in a remake of a film based on a Polish folktale. Soon they discover that the reason the original was never completed was because the actors were brutally murdered. Lynch quickly disturbs this dysfunctional thriller with erotic anarchy as he hurtles toward a shocking, confronting and utterly uncompromising conclusion.
“David Lynch’s Inland Empire [is] as opaque a movie as I’ve ever seen, yet riveting or hypnotic in a way that makes you feel not that you’ve seen it, but that you’ve dreamt it.” — Phillip French, The Guardian