Who else liked "Inland Empire"?

[Westegg]

I watched it on DVD a few days back. Have watched parts of it again since that first viewing. I don't get lots of it, but it's possibly the most haunting film I've seen and I mean that in a good way. David Lynch has the uncanny ability to get right inside my head with his dream-like scenarios (in this film and others). I have a feeling that, in this unique film portrait of a woman losing her sense of time, place and identity, Lynch comes close to capturing the terror that severe schizophrenics must often feel.

I'm not a schizophrenic, neither is Lynch, and that's not what the film is about. There are scenes in this film that, in my opinion, go to the core about the "terror that lurks just beneath the surface" of anyone's reality. His ability to capture this visually is uncanny. (Don't know if I mean that in the Freudian sense...been a long time since college and my reading of Freud.)

The final 15 minutes or so of this film, after Laura Dern stumbles across Hollywood Blvd. to collapse among the homeless, and what happens after, are truly stunning. Dern's performance is beyond amazing.

There is also a random scene where a tall blonde woman (Dern? I'm not sure) is walking fast in an arced path, in darkness but illuminated by a spotlight (it's filmed in slow-motion) that ends up taking her directly into the camera. What happens there literally makes the hairs stand up on my body. It's like Lynch plugged right in to my subconscious.

[MrCoffee]

1. you know, i'm glad to read this

i've picked up and put down Inland Empire about a dozen times in the video store since it came out. for some reason, i've been really indecisive about this one.

maybe i'll find the courage to check it out now.

[ghostsofgiants]

3. I's amazing.

I watched an Italian-dubbed version I downloaded five times for the visuals alone before I managed to score an English language version.

[Westegg]

9. I didn't see it on the big screen for the same reason...

...I'd read mixed reviews about the 3-hour film, and thus couldn't enthusiastically drag my wife or a friend along, even though it was playing a quarter mile from my house. Having seen it on DVD, I'll DEFINITELY check it out in a theater if I can some day.

Don't watch it if you're pressed for time. Then again, on DVD, I broke the viewing into two segments over two days.

[ghostsofgiants]

2. Liked? It's one of my favourite films.

[Fire Walk With Me]

4. Yeah, there are a couple of stunning moments that get right behind the defenses.

:thumbsup:

[Westegg]

7. Well said...

...I have trouble describing objective events (likes moments in movies)that seem to tap into my inner self. "Get right behind the defenses" is an excellent way of putting that. Lynch does this to me often. So I find myself wondering, "Is he as afraid of the dark as I am?" for instance (I'm thinking of the scene in "Lost Highway" when Fred disappears into the murk of anotherwise "normal" house at night), but then I figure, no, it's not that Lynch and I are the same-- it's that we're ALL the same, with very similar primal fears.

[Merrick]

5. Kinda

The film definitely creates a surrealistic, dark dream-like ambience that's haunting on a deeper level than most horror films, and personally, I think that was his objective since I can't fathom anyone even having the audacity to step forward and claim they've deciphered any sort of coherent narrative to the story (after the first hour anyway). I especially liked the weird bunny family towards the beginning, but at 3+ hours, the insanity dragged on a bit long for me. Gave it 3/5 on netflix.

[porphyrian]

6. Me me me!

Lynch is a master of recreating dream states on film. Part of it is the soundtrack (which many people don't consciously acknowledge, but would immediately notice if omitted), and part of it is the editing, but it's mostly just what he puts in frame and how. But, even more mostly, I love how he makes movies that mean completely different things to different people and that you can think and talk about long after the lights come back up in the theater, which is true of almost nothing coming out of Hollywood.

Edit: overuse of "mostly," fifteen yard penalty

[Westegg]

8. Yeah, the soundtracks are key...

...and yet designed to work (I think) almost subliminally in many scenesin this film and others, so they would often only be noted by their absence (which is a fine Lynchian concept in any case!)