Inland Empire Review

Review of Inland Empire (2006) by screenqueeen: 👍 5/5

hooptober 12 clock shot tally: 8

Lynch's masterpiece of pure emotional storytelling. getting the events straight stop mattering within the first hour and isn't being as deeply immersed as Nikki in real time the real experience? she navigates the conterminous mind-prisons those that create abuse and those that harbor it, always in neighboring membranes at constant threat of trespass and violation, a sinister visitation by a phantom of the actor's own design. there is no curse that mankind has not created, no reason to be cursed other than to suffer under it or break through to and shatter its malevolent hold on those innocent in its grasp.

those that are active in this spectral & quizzical world of hurt and decay are to be feared and admired but at extreme opposite ends of the spectrum of fear and admiration. the women in the house numbered 1358 provide a safety and love that burns bright against the dark and although they know what lurks outside their door their phantom doesn't dare pass their threshold. there is always a phantasmic force that drives desire in lynch's worlds and here there seems to be no safe middle ground, only an irresistible magnetic pull to one side or the other. but this is not a manifesto on good or evil, simply a mirror.

i don't doubt i'm alone in agreeing with Lynch that Laura Dern delivers the best performance of her career with her portrayal of Nikki and Sue, so devoted to her work that it becomes at first indistinguishable to real life. yet this loss of separation signals the same type of interpreted weakness picked up by the men that perpetually circle the entertainment industry's drain, using any vulnerability to their advantage to claim what they never could in confidence using the language of respect or consent to communicate their desire -- something they have read themselves as something to be ashamed of and yet must be enacted in the same swinging blow as violence and disrespect. if anything is telegraphed in INLAND EMPIRE, it's this, especially in its opening sequence shot in black and white with a man and a woman in a room, faces blurred and distorted. because this isn't really the experience of one person in history, is it?

is Nikki's unique in this way? who has not tried to eliminate keystones of oppression to have their own victimhood thrown back at them as if they were the perpetrator in the actor's most desperate and vulnerable moments? in times of mental crisis we forget the patterns of human behavior the most, ironic given that this is the time we are most beneficial to be able to spot it. here the membrane between pattern recognition and pure emotional governance grows thinnest, where we cannot rely on the operation of analysis and logic. which solidifies how brilliant this is as Lynch's masterpiece of pure emotional storytelling. getting the events straight stop mattering within the first hour and isn't being as deeply immersed as Nikki in real time the real experience? she navigates the conterminous mind-prisons those that create abuse and those that harbor it, always in neighboring membranes at constant threat of trespass and violation, a sinister visitation by a phantom of the actor's own design. there is no curse that mankind has not created, no reason to be cursed other than to suffer under it or break through to and shatter its malevolent hold on those innocent in its grasp.

the ultimate personal masterpiece.