Getting Whacked on Inland Empire

You expect a David Lynch film to be strange and weird, this film gives you strange and weird in generous proportions. You won't really form an overwhelmingly strong love or hate emotion to the film. This is David Lynch's magnum opus, it really is. He channels motes from all of his established films here. From the electric weirdness of Eraserhead to the emotional intensity of Blue Velvet to disturbingly colorful characters from Wild at Heart to the red curtained dreamscapes in Twin Peaks (throwing in a lumberjack for good measures) to the depravity and sexual tension of Lost Highway and self awareness of Mullholland Drive.

To say the film is self referential is an understatement. The film in construct is obtuse, labyrinthine and given to way over the top narcissistic indulgence. The film no doubt is an ego trip for Lynch but then again he has earned it over the years. And yet there are just a couple of things that didn't work for me in the film. A subplot set in Poland and in Polish, (with Polish subtitles, so that doesn't help much), scenes that go on and on just for the sake of going on , meta over artistic high brow stuff sprinkled here and there, and elements taken from hardboiled soaps. so many irrelevancies that in my boredom I skipped them (yes I should have more patience) but it still works. This film has some of the most trippiest sequences I have ever seen and some of the most unsettling and scariest.

And boy is Laura Dern a fine actor. The performance itself blows you away and this isn't a tagline from any other Tom Dick Harry film review. As an added treat David Lynch gives two of his own songs in the soundtrack. And if you have read about the film already there is the rabbit sitcom connection in the film which starts off as an uneasy surreal distraction but builds up to something else yet remaining a distraction.

I was getting bored of Lynch and didn't quiet as much revel in Lost Highway and Mullholland Drive as I should have had but dang he's a fine filmmaker. You owe yourself to see this film and yeah guess who else is on the soundtrack...Beck?! (maybe you saw it coming from Odelay).