Inland Empire is horrible. I re-watched it for the final time last week and realized it's just a big boring mess from a guy who just bought a DV camera and got his friends together. Lynch shot SIXTY HOURS for the film -- and those were the best 3? All his films from Blue Velvet to Mulholland Drive had been edited by Mary Sweeney -- if you ever wondered why an "editor" matters, look at Inland Empire. She MIGHT have been able to edit it down to a nice little 30 minute short or something; since Lynch edited it himself, it explains why it's such a mess. If some random director had released it, no one would've cared. It fails, but it fails brilliantly -- talentless individuals can't make movies that entertainingly shitty. I've watched it many many times now... but, in retrospect, it was only to try to figure out why it was so bad. All I can think of is: No script, no Badalamenti, an hour and a half of the movie is Laura Dern walking around an empty set (and all the sets are blank), shakey camera, almost every shot is an EXTREME CLOSE-UP of Dern's face, Lynch edited it himself, everyone looked bored and confused. I dunno why I watched it many times... I guess it was one of those things like... I usually dug Lynch's stuff alright (though he's not a very good director, he creates interesting atmospheres at least), so why wasn't I "liking" this? Until I did some research and realized that he didn't surround himself with talented people like he usually does, and the film is one overlong digital experiment by someone who just got a digital camera and had no idea what to do with it, and it's a self-indulgent overlong mess, no longer constricted by things like "take time" or "cost" (or, "self-editing"... or "story".... or "structure".... and I LOVE when directors experiment with film form -- but Lynch just flat-out is not good at it). It's Lynch and all his friends doing boring shit, basically. And that scene with the Beck song is just the worst thing ever filmed. I'm selling my copy of this movie soon, but I don't know anyone who wants it, since the 3 Lynch fans I know in real life couldn't even get through the whole thing. Lynch's best film is STRAIGHT STORY, which is one of the best films ever, and the only film of his I'd reccomend, mainly because he had no hand in writing it!... Has anyone seen his shorts around the time of and SINCE Inland Empire? Stuff like Boat, Ballerina, Darkened Room, etc.? Just AWFUL,
amateur DV experiments. I've seen everything Lynch has done, and Rabbits will go down as his final good project, I'm guessing, because the last, oh, 7 or 8 things he's done have been horrible! Oh, and Lynch is no genius at all, he's a guy who watched L'Age D'Or and Marienbad a couple of times and he works with talented people like Mary Sweeney and Mark Frost (the genius behind Twin Peaks). I'm not saying I hate Lynch (though I do find him massively overrated, especially when he's only really made 10 actual films in 42 years [42!!!!!!!!!!] and many of them feel extremely samey), but his best days are way behind him. I dunno. He's okay, there is
far better surreal/experimental/underground/arthouse/"avant garde" etc stuff coming out every day though. Hell, Reflections of Evil -- a similiarly messy dreamlike film -- was easily the best film of the decade (and, luckily for it, a recent reappraisal has taken place), but it only has like 200 ratings on imdb. Oh well. I am grateful for getting into Lynch, oh, 14 years ago but I don't think he's a particularly noteworthy director, from any angle, though his early shorts have some cool ideas (but none that weren't already explored by Toshio Matsumoto, Shuji Terayama, Nobuhioko Obayashi, and too many others to name).
Funny note: Inland Empire was shot on the same camera as all of Giuseppe Andrews' movies. Except every G.A. movie is great, save for one or two misfires. But he made, oh, roughly 30 great films in 10 years. Crazy!
Anyway...
moon in the gutter - 8/10
songs from the second floor - 10/10