“HOLLYWOOD, POLAND, AND RABBIT HOLES”

By Raymond Benson

Even diehard fans of filmmaker David Lynch were puzzled by his 2006 epic surrealist horror picture, INLAND EMPIRE. There are legions of fans and critics who love the movie, but there are likely more who find it impenetrable, way too long, self-indulgent, pretentious, and, as one critic called it, a film that might have been made by a “former genius who now has Alzheimer’s.”

INLAND EMPIRE is tough viewing. It deals with what could be called “multi-verses” before that term was trendy. Some consider it to be the third film in a loosely interconnected trilogy of movies Lynch made about “psychogenic fugues,” or dissociative disorders. Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001) both deal with similar themes in which protagonists become “somebody else” during the course of the stories.

One aspect of the film that everyone agrees on is the stellar, virtuoso performance by Laura Dern. Lynch famously sat on Hollywood Boulevard with a live cow in an attempt to campaign for Dern’s performance to be considered for an Academy Award (she wasn’t nominated). Ironically, even Dern has admitted she has no clue what is going on in INLAND EMPIRE.

The best this reviewer can make of the story is that Dern plays Hollywood actress Nikki Grace, who is married to a Polish man, Piotrek (Peter J. Lucas), who has something to hide. Nikki has just been cast in a movie called On High in Blue Tomorrows, to be directed by the great Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons) and co-starring heartthrob Devon Berk (Justin Theroux). We learn that the movie is based on an unfinished German movie from decades ago that was allegedly “cursed” because the lead actors were murdered. Nikki, who has begun an affair with Devon, sets out to investigate this history and literally falls through a series of rabbit holes (there are even sequences featuring the anthropomorphic rabbits from Lynch’s online shorts series, “Rabbits”) and becomes Sue Blue, who may or may not be a completely different character from Nikki or perhaps a separate personality. And then there’s the “Lost Girl” (Karolina Gruszka), a human-trafficked prostitute in Poland in another decade (the 1930s?) whose actions mirror what’s going on in Sue’s world.

Is it a story of reincarnation? Of death and what might be the afterlife? Or maybe there isn’t a story at all that can be followed linearly. Perhaps Lynch intended INLAND EMPIRE to be an experience of emotions, images, and surrealism in the vein of classic experimental filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Germaine Dulac, Man Ray, and the Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí collaborations. Maybe the movie is the attempt to film in dream logic—which often makes no sense but can be vividly visceral.

At any rate, INLAND EMPIRE is not for a mainstream audience. This is Lynch at his most Lynchian. Be forewarned. Interestingly, it is the last theatrical feature the filmmaker has made to date.

The Criterion Collection has issued a new HD digital master on Blu-ray, made from the 4K restoration supervised by Lynch, with both a 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio and uncompressed stereo soundtrack (also remastered by Lynch and original recording mixers Dean Hurley and Ron Eng). As is usually the case with Lynch’s films, the sound is always impressive, and INLAND EMPIRE doesn’t disappoint in that regard.

The package contains two disks—one with the feature film (it’s 180 minutes in length), and the other with hours of supplements. Some of the supplements are ported over from the original 2007 Rhino-Studio Canal DVD release: “More Things That Happened” (75 minutes of extra scenes); LYNCH (a 2007 nearly-90-minute behind-the-scenes documentary made by blackANDwhite); and “Ballerina,” a 2007 short film by Lynch. New to the Criterion release is an excellent half-hour conversation between Laura Dern and actor Kyle MacLachlan, who both discuss their respective work with Lynch and specifically Dern’s role in INLAND EMPIRE; LYNCH2, a shorter documentary made by blackANDwhite; an audio excerpt read by Lynch from his autobiography, Room to Dream (co-written with Kristine McKenna); and the theatrical trailer. The booklet contains an interview excerpt from Richard A. Barney’s book David Lynch: Interviews.

Love it or hate it, INLAND EMPIRE is without question one of the most challenging and provocative pieces of cinema released since the New Millennium.

Click here to pre-order from Amazon. (The Blu-ray will be released on March 21.)