Inland Empire (film)

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INLAND EMPIRE
Directed by David Lynch
Produced by David Lynch
Mary Sweeney
Jeremy Alter
Laura Dern
Marek Zydowicz
Written by David Lynch
Starring Laura Dern
Jeremy Irons
Justin Theroux
Harry Dean Stanton
Scott Coffey
Jordan Ladd
Music by David Lynch, Krzysztof Penderecki
Cinematography David Lynch
Editing by David Lynch
Distributed by StudioCanal
518 Media and Absurda (US theatrical)
Optimum Releasing (UK theatrical)
Rhino Entertainment (Region 1 DVD)
Release date(s) September 6, 2006 (premiere at VFF)
6 December 2006 (USA, limited)
August 14, 2007 (Region 1 DVD)
November 15, 2007 (Australia)
Running time 179 min (DVD Premiere)
Country USA / Poland
Language English / Polish
Official website
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Inland Empire (billed INLAND EMPIRE, in uppercase[1]) is a 2006 feature film, written and directed by David Lynch. It is his first feature-length film since 2001's Mulholland Drive, and shares many similarities with that film. It premiered in Italy at the Venice Film Festival on September 6, 2006. [1] The feature took two and a half years to complete, and was shot entirely in digital video.[2] The cast includes Lynch regulars such as Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, Grace Zabriskie, as well as Jeremy Irons, Diane Ladd, and special appearances by Nastassja Kinski, William H. Macy, Laura Harring, Jordan Ladd and Ben Harper, as well as the voices of Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Scott Coffey, from their performances in Lynch's Rabbits project.

Contents

When asked about Inland Empire, Lynch responded that it is "about a woman in trouble, and it's a mystery, and that's all I want to say about it."[3]

When presenting screenings of the digital work, Lynch sometimes offers a clue in the form of a quote from a translation of the Aitareya Upanishad: "We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe."[4]

Richard Peña, an official at the New York Film Festival and one of the first people to see Inland Empire, has summarized the film as "a plotless collection of snippets that explore themes Lynch has been working on for years," including "a Hollywood story about a young actress who gets a part in a film that might be cursed; a story about the smuggling of women from Eastern Europe; and an abstract story about a family of people with rabbit heads sitting around in a living room,"[3] which is taken straight from Lynch's web-only video series, Rabbits. Peña's perception of a plot involving "the smuggling of women from Eastern Europe" is his own, as the film does not describe such a situation.

The film opens with light bursting out of the darkness, apparently from a film projector. The light illuminates the words "Inland Empire" on the screen. We then cut to a gramophone record playing a voice announcement that introduces AXXoN N., "the longest radio play in history, continuing in the Baltic Region, a gray winter day in an old hotel..." (Axxon N. is the name of a projected 9 episode mystery-drama series that Lynch planned to release online in 2002.) A prostitute and her customer converse in a hallway and a hotel room in Poland, but we cannot see their faces. Years later, in the same hotel room, a crying woman (Karolina Gruszka, credited as the "Lost Girl") watches a sitcom about three rabbit-people (the sitcom is Lynch's own film Rabbits, which he had released on his website in 2002). The male rabbit moves into an exquisitely decorated drawing room, where he fades in a dissolve. A bald man tells another man (Krzysztof Majchrzak, whom we later learn is "the Phantom") that he understands he seeks an "opening". The Phantom becomes very agitated. "Good! Good that you understand!"

In Los Angeles, a female visitor (Grace Zabriskie) calls on the home of Nikki Grace (Laura Dern),. The woman claims to be her neighbor, and speaks in an indeterminate Eastern European accent. She relates two "old tales", one about a boy who caused evil to be born when he passed through a door, and a variation about a girl who got lost in an alley behind the marketplace. She knows several things about an upcoming role that Nikki does not: firstly, that Nikki definitely has the role, secondly that it is about marriage and murder, and thirdly that her husband (played by Peter J. Lucas) is somehow involved. She speaks of time's indeterminacy - "If it was 9:45, I'd think it was after midnight!" - and points to a couch across the room and says, "If today was tomorrow, you would be sitting there." When Nikki turns to look, we see Nikki sitting on the couch with two friends. The phone rings, her butler hands her the phone, and Nikki begins jumping up and down with excitement as she is told she has the role. Nikki's husband watches intensely from the staircase.

Nikki and the movie's male lead, Devon Berk (Justin Theroux) appear on The Marilyn Levins Show, a weekly gossip talk show. Devon has a reputation as a lothario, and both he and Nikki assure Marilyn (Diane Ladd, Laura Dern's real-life mother) and the audience that there will be no gossip arising from the film. Later, Devon's associates warn him off seducing Nikki, because her husband is "the most powerful man". The film is entitled ON HIGH IN BLUE TOMORROWS. The director, Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons), and his assistant Freddy (Harry Dean Stanton) read through a scene in the script; Nikki's character is called Sue Blue; Devon's, Billy Side. The rehearsal is interrupted when Freddy spots someone poking around in the soundstage. Devon goes to investigate, footsteps are heard running away, and he returns to say, "They disappeared where it's real hard to disappear." This incident spooks Kingsley into revealing a secret about their film: it is actually a remake of a German film based on a Polish folk tale entitled 47 that was never finished because the leads were murdered. Apparently, the folk tale that the screenplay was based on had a Gypsy curse on it, because of something "inside the story". Meanwhile, in a police station, a woman (Julia Ormond) says she was hypnotized into wanting to kill someone with a screwdriver. She then lifts her shirt to reveal a screwdriver protruding from her side.

During the course of making the film, Nikki sinks into her role so deeply that she begins to lose her identity and actually becomes Sue. At first Nikki is the one who is confused, forgetting that she is really speaking lines from her script (to the dismay of Kingsley), but in a love scene with Billy in "Smithy's house" she confuses Billy by telling him she's really Nikki, while her husband (Smithy) listens from a darkened nearby hallway. She also tells Billy of her inability to tell the future from the past, and describes the scene that follows in the film. The next day she is in an alley behind a store, and she sees "AXXoN N." written on a wall, with an arrow pointing to a door. When she enters the door, she is on the set where she and Devon were rehearsing previously, and she sees herself there: she herself is the soundstage intruder. When Devon comes looking for her she flees into the set for Smithy's house. All Devon can see is a blank wall, and he leaves. Standing in the set for Smithy's house, Nikki finds to her astonishment that the view out of the window is not the studio backlot, but a real garden.

At this point, for the whole middle third of the film, Inland Empire becomes a disjointed series of dreamlike scenes, intercutting between California and Poland. Nine young prostitutes lounge around in Smithy's house, and sometimes teleport Sue to Poland (possibly via the flickering of a red lamp). A plotline of murder in Poland in winter develops, involving the "Lost Girl" from the hotel room and her tyrannical husband (Krzysztof Majchrzak). Sometimes we are back in the Rabbit Room, or in an office at the top of a flight of stairs in an old theater, where Sue pours out her violent life story to a man with crooked glasses (Erik Crary, credited as "Mr. K"). This monologue includes a discussion of the Phantom, a man with powers of hypnosis. The nine women in Smithy's house break out into a choreographed dance to the music of The Loco-Motion, and then disappear. Sue tells Smithy she is pregnant. She tries to call Billy but only reaches the rabbits. In their backyard Smithy makes a barbecue for some local carnival people - with whom he is on the verge of departing for Eastern Europe - but gets ketchup all over the front of his shirt, a stain that looks like blood. When Sue looks into the ketchup, a veiled Julia Ormond is seen praying, "Cast out this wicked dream..." (a homage to Lynch's favorite film Sunset Boulevard, which he would show as a double feature with his first full-length film Eraserhead).[citation needed]

The plot becomes more linear during a scene in which Sue goes to Billy's house, and repeatedly tells him she loves him, causing his wife (Julia Ormond) to slap her. A second visitor (Mary Steenburgen) comes to tell Sue that Sue "owes on an unpaid debt that needs payin'." In a nearby backyard, Sue spots the Phantom (who is carrying an orange light bulb in his mouth) and defensively grabs a screwdriver. The Bald Man takes Smithy to a seance with three men who can see the crying girl from the hotel, while Smithy can only hear her. The men give Smithy a pistol which is capable of killing the Phantom. After he leaves, they turn into the Rabbits.

On a street in Hollywood, Sue is suddenly a prostitute; she mockingly imitates the "Lost Girl" from the hotel room. She sees Billy's wife and escapes to a club with a stairwell. She climbs the stairs and launches into her autobiographical monologue once again. The phone rings, and the man with the glasses informs the caller, "Yeah, she's still here...the horse has gone to the well." Sue grabs a screwdriver and goes back out to the street, where she emphatically snaps her fingers: "Hey - watch this move." Billy's wife appears, grabs the screwdriver from her, and stabs her with it. Sue crosses the corner of Hollywood and Vine, collapsing on a sidewalk to die alongside some homeless people. The homeless people largely ignore her, and one of them, a Japanese girl, begins a long monologue about her friend Niko from Pomona, who wears a blonde wig and owns a pet monkey, but who "is on hard drugs and turning tricks now." Sue abruptly rolls over, vomits blood on the sidewalk, and collapses again. One of the homeless women lights her passage with a cigarette lighter, and says, "I'll show you light now. It burns bright forever. No more blue tomorrows. You on high now, love." Sue dies. At this point, it is revealed that we are on a film set; Kingsley yells, "Cut!" and a camera retracts. The "homeless" people are revealed to be actors, who get up and depart. Kingsley hugs Nikki, tells her she was wonderful, but Nikki pushes him away and walks off the set in a daze.

Nikki wanders into a movie theater, and on the screen sees the "Lost Girl" for the first time, who also sees Nikki on her television in the hotel room. Nikki sees herself as Sue on the big screen, recounting her monologue, and another scene of the future shows her where the gun is located in the set for Smithy's house. Nikki goes through the "AXXon N." door again, and wanders around in the set until she finds the pistol. She sees the Rabbit Room door with the numbers 47 on them in gold letters. Then she sees the Phantom himself and shoots him four times. On the third shot her own anguished face is superimposed on his. After the fourth shot the Phantom's face is distorted beyond recognition, into the semblance of a fetus. Nikki enters the Rabbit Room, finds the "Lost Girl", kisses her, and disappears. The "Lost Girl" is free to leave her prison; in Smithy's house, she is happily reunited with her husband (Smithy) and her son. Nikki is met by bright light and applause, Nikki's first visitor smiles and disappears, and we see Nikki sitting on the couch in her Hollywood home, smiling calmly (and wearing the same dress that she wore during her first scene in Blue Velvet).

The concluding scene of the film takes place in Nikki's house, where she sits with many other people, among them Laura Elena Harring, Nastassja Kinski and Ben Harper. A one-legged woman who was mentioned in Sue's monologue looks around and says, "Sweet!". Niko, the Japanese girl with a blonde wig and a monkey, is also present. The end credits roll over a group of women dancing and lip-synching to Nina Simone's Sinnerman while a lumberjack saws a log to the beat.

Lynch shot the film without a complete screenplay. Instead, he handed each actor several pages of freshly-written dialogue each day.[2] In a 2005 interview, he described his feelings about the shooting process:

"I’ve never worked on a project in this way before. I don’t know exactly how this thing will finally unfold... This film is very different because I don’t have a script. I write the thing scene by scene and much of it is shot and I don’t have much of a clue where it will end. It’s a risk, but I have this feeling that because all things are unified, this idea over here in that room will somehow relate to that idea over there in the pink room."[5]

Interviewed at the Venice Film Festival, Laura Dern admitted that she didn't know what Inland Empire was about or the role she was playing, but hoped that seeing the film's premiere at the festival would help her "learn more."[2] Justin Theroux has also stated that he "couldn't possibly tell you what the film's about, and at this point I don't know that David Lynch could. It's become sort of a pastime - Laura [Dern] and I sit around on set trying to figure out what's going on."[3]

The Rabbit-people sitcom played on a TV in Inland Empire (originally shot for the short film Rabbits)
The Rabbit-people sitcom played on a TV in Inland Empire (originally shot for the short film Rabbits)

Much of the project was shot in Łódź, Poland, with local actors, such as Karolina Gruszka, Krzysztof Majchrzak, Leon Niemczyk, Piotr Andrzejewski and artists of the local circus Cyrk Zalewski. Some videography was also done in Los Angeles, and in 2006 Lynch returned from Poland to complete filming.

Inland Empire is the first Lynch feature to be completely shot in digital video; it was shot with a Sony DSR-PD150. Lynch has stated that he will no longer use film to make motion pictures.[1]

In an NPR "Weekend Edition" interview,[citation needed] Laura Dern recounted a conversation she had with one of the movie's new producers. He asked if Lynch was joking when he requested a one-legged woman, a monkey and a lumberjack by 3:15. "Yeah, you're on a David Lynch movie, dude," Dern replied. "Sit back and enjoy the ride." Dern reported that by 4 p.m. they were shooting with the requested individuals.

Film critic Roger Moore has noted that Inland Empire follows Mulholland Dr. and Twin Peaks in being inspired by the names of cities or the places in which they're set, "But often they don't have anything to do with the location at all," he adds. Lynch "doesn't let the actual geography of the place interfere with his vision."[3]

Lynch financed much of the production from his own resources, with longtime artistic collaborator and ex-wife Mary Sweeney producing. The film was also partially financed by the French production company Studio Canal, which had provided funding for three previous Lynch films.

StudioCanal wanted to enter the film in the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, but it was not ready in time.[citation needed] Instead, it premiered at Italy's Venice Film Festival on September 6, 2006, where David Lynch also received the Golden Lion lifetime achievement award for his "contributions to the art of cinema." The film premiered in the United States on October 8, 2006 at the New York Film Festival, selling out both showings.[citation needed]

The film has not been widely distributed to theaters. It received a limited release in the US beginning on December 15 of 2006; distribution was handled by the specialist company 518 Media. [2]

Lynch hoped to distribute the film independently, saying that with the entire industry changing, he thought he would attempt a new form of distribution as well.[3] He acquired the rights to the DVD and worked out a deal with Studio Canal in an arrangement that allows him to distribute the film himself, through both digital and traditional means. [4] A North American DVD release occurred on August 14, 2007.

Critics have been divided on the merits of the film. The New York Times classified Inland Empire as "fitfully brilliant" after the Venice Film Festival screening. Peter Travers, the film critic for Rolling Stone magazine wrote, "My advice, in the face of such hallucinatory brilliance, is that you hang on."[6] Jonathan Ross, presenter of the BBC programme Film 2007, described it as "a work of genius... I think."[7] However, Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times wrote that "the film, which begins promisingly, disappears down so many rabbit holes (one of them involving actual rabbits) that eventually it just disappears for good."[8]

Despite the mixed reviews, Laura Dern received almost-universal acclaim for her performance, with many reviews describing it as her finest to date.[citation needed] Lynch attempted to promote Dern's chances of an Academy Award for Best Actress nomination at the 2007 Academy Awards by campaigning with a live cow.[9] Ultimately, she was not nominated for the award.

DVD Cover.
DVD Cover.

  1. ^ a b Variety.com article: "Lynch invades an 'Empire'"
  2. ^ a b c BBC News: David Lynch given lifetime award
  3. ^ a b c d WFAA.com article: "David Lynch turns his eye to Inland Empire"
  4. ^ http://www.twitchfilm.net/archives/008819.html
  5. ^ Chris Attwood and Robert Roth, 'A Dog’s Trip to the Chocolate Shop - David Lynch', Healthy Weathly N' Wise, September 2005.
  6. ^ Peter Travers' Rolling Stone Review
  7. ^ Film 2007, 5 March 2007
  8. ^ Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: "Inland Empire",15 December 2006
  9. ^ Variety.com article: "Lynch, cow campaign for Oscar"
  10. ^ details of USA DVD release
  11. ^ Play.com details of UK DVD release
  12. ^ details of BE & NL DVD release


v • d • e
The works of David Lynch
Feature films Eraserhead (1977) • The Elephant Man (1980) • Dune (1984) • Blue Velvet (1986) • Wild at Heart (1990) • Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992) • Lost Highway (1997) • The Straight Story (1999) • Mulholland Dr. (2001) • Inland Empire (2006)
Short films The Short Films of David Lynch • Darkened Room (2002) • Boat (2007)
Television Twin Peaks • American Chronicles • On the Air • Hotel Room
Other work Industrial Symphony No. 1 • Rabbits • Images •Dumbland • The Angriest Dog in the World • Frequent David Lynch collaborators • BlueBob • The Air Is On Fire •
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inland_Empire_%28film%29"
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