Product Description

A magikael, fairy dusted ride through the darkest realms of our collective imaginations. Terrifying!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5331 in DVD
• Brand: Inland
• Released on: 2007-08-14
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English, Polish, French
• Number of discs: 2
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 179 minutes

Amazon.com
Though Inland Empire's three hours of befuddling abstraction could try the patience of the most devoted David Lynch fan, its aim to reinvigorate the Lynch-ian symbolic order is ambitious, not to mention visually arresting. The director's archetypes recognizable from previous movies once again construct the film's inherent logic, but with a new twist. Sets vibrate between the contemporary and a 1950s alternate universe crammed with dim lamps, long hallways, mysterious doors, sparsely furnished rooms and, this time, a vortex/apartment/sitcom set where rabbit-masked humans dwell, and a Polish town where women are abused and killed. Instead of speaking backwards, mystic soothsayers and criminals speak Polish. Filmed on video, the film's look has the sinister, frightening feel of a Mark Savage film or a bootlegged snuff movie. Constant close-ups, both in and out of focus, make Inland Empire feel as if a stalker covertly filmed it. A straightforward, hokey plot unravels during the first third of Inland Empire to ground the viewer before a dive off the deep end. Actor Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) is cast as Susan Blue, an adulterous white trash Southerner, in a film that mimics too closely her actual life with an overbearingly jealous and dangerous husband. When Nikki and co-star Devon (Justin Theroux) learn that the cursed film project was earlier abandoned when its stars were murdered, the pair lose their grasp of reality. Nikki suffers a schizophrenic identity switch to Sue that lasts until nearly the film's end. Suspense builds as Nikki's alter ego sleuths her way through surreal situations to discover her killer, culminating in Sue's gnarly death on set. Sue's actions drag on because any sign of a narrative thread disappears due to idiosyncratic editing. Nonsensical scenes still captivate, however, such as when Sue stumbles onto the soundstage where she finds Nikki (herself) rehearsing for Sue's part. In this meta-film about identity slippage, Dern's multiple characters remind one of how a victim can become the hunter in their fight for survival. Lynch's portrayal of Nikki/Sue's increasing paranoia is, in its own confusion, utterly realistic. Laura Dern has created her own Lady Macbeth, undone by her guilt over infidelity. Even though Inland Empire is too long and too random, Laura Dern's performance coupled with Lynch's video experiments make it magical. --Trinie Dalton

More Films from David Lynch

Wild At Heart

Mulholland Drive

Blue Velvet

Stills from Inland Empire (click for larger image)

Review
Wowie! --Florida New Hampshire

Review
Really Excellent! --Special Features

Customer Reviews

Mansion Full of Mirrors
`Inland Empire' is full of surprises. Convoluted and suspenseful we follow the story lines of successful actress Nikki (Laura Dern) who is waiting for the results of a tryout for a new Hollywood movie, `On High in Blue Tomorrows`. Soon she is visited by her new Polish immigrant neighbor. In her nosey way she pries information, but also intensely warns her of bad omens. She foretells that Nikki will obtain the part she has tried out for, but the story, is a remake and a murder will take place. She intensely relates folk tales, including one about a girl at the marketplace in an alley behind the palace who loses her memory. "Forgetfulness happens to us all," she relates. She also incessantly speaks of "unpaid bills" in a scathing fashion. Rebuffing the neighbor's pointed comments, the actress asks the suspicious elderly woman to leave.

The movie fast-forwards to the next day as the woman foretells in the narration. The gypsy fades out with a vengeance. Nikki gets the part, and on the set we meet Devon (Justin Theroux), her dashing, handsome co-star. The director (Jeremy Irons) facilitates a script reading where he relates that the film is indeed a remake; one where a murder took place and was allegedly cursed from the start.

From here the movie weaves its way through many scenes. Nikki's husband warns the young co-star of the consequences of sneaking out with his actress wife. Some feature Southern characters Billy and Sue in the movie, but they are so closely connected to their actual lives that we begin to lose our own grip on reality. Eerily suspenseful scenes show (Nikki or Sue) walking through a house in bewildered trepidation. Then, we are transported to the lives of the screen couple in the backyard. Next, we find them in Poland during the dead of winter. In one scene the actors are having an affair; in another the characters are. To spice things up, we get a play with actors in rabbit costumes performing an absurdist comedy. At certain points, just when we feel grounded, a woman is watching all the drama on television in her dark apartment.

The developments of `Inland Empire' are intriguing. Like `French Lieutenant's Woman' (significantly also with Jeremy Irons) there's a movie story mixed within a real story. Unlike `FLW' it isn't easy to tell where one story ends and the other begins. In ways like Altman's `The Player,' we have to decide what components are real and which are not. One finds oneself asking many questions while watching the movie. Which parts are from the movie? Which parts are real life? Are the scenes in Poland real or are they components of the original film? Is this all seen through a viewer's eyes or is it all part of the movie? Is she crazy or is her character crazy? Surely, the theme of misogyny is at the forefront as we come across prostitutes and male abuse. Not to mention the claustrophobic fishbowl existence of celebrity life. One thing is for certain, the movie is assembled expertly. It comes across like a mansion full of mirrors--like a fun/haunted house. Not everyone will like the exit strategy (Afterall, who likes hitting the pavement after a funhouse?) but it certainly provides a strange and intense experience.

It does have a plot dangit
I strongly disagree with the person who says this movie has no plot. I just think it takes mental effort to stay focused and understand it. I have only seen it once so far, and quite frankly I was fading out during the last hour, so I def. need to watch it again, but it did make a lot of sense to me. I'm sure it will make sense in a different way to someone else.

The movie is pretty staightforward until the scene where Laura is having a romantic moment with her movie costar. She tells him "This is just like a scene from the movie." and then realizes that the cameras are rolling, and gets disoriented. At this point the move really breaks from the reality thus far, which I appreciated since that moment was so awkward and tense.

The rest is very dreamlike. I have always thought that Eraserhead is the closest representation to my dreams than anything else in real life, and this picks up on that a bit. We see some of Nikki's dreams, where I believe she is dreaming about her lover's old flings all in one room. Her story runs parallel to the actors who tried to film this movie in Poland and died during filming, and their story is shown a bit. The male actor dies later on, which I had been anticipating. We also see the story that the woman told in the beginning panning out.

It is confusing and I need to watch it again. I highly recommend watching it in the theatre first since Mr. Lynch is aware of his theatre audience and plays of off this. There are points of it that may never make sense to me, and some storylines that I don't quite see how they fit in. But I figure if I can anticipate events before they occur then it can't make no sense. This is a movie I feel I could talk about for hours, if only someone was willing to talk about it with me. It is quite an experience, I love the cinematography, the intense close-ups, the dark colors, the actors. I enjoy taking something to think about away from it.

A great movie.

Lynch's alien planet... Hollywood.
With Inland Empire, (and I must add Mulholland Drive too), David Lynch, I suspect, has begun to turn inward, most likely mirroring the bizarre twisted view he has of Hollywood. He shows the Hollywood sign almost right away. I am sure to some extent he sees this word on a day to day basis, meeting big phony types, muscle with money, burnt out old stars, pretty boys, nymphs, foreigners, empty sound stages, lame lunch meetings, half baked projects, empty mansions with nothing going on, and all the horrid, strange people met and absorbed on that filthy rich littered landscape. Take all this, and twist it up, pull it, heat it, and mirror it upon itself, upside down and backwards through the Lynch mind and you have Inland Empire.

To say it was either good or bad would be doing the film an injustice. David Lynch's films have become so enigmatic, this one in particular, that to give a yay or nay nod to the film would be to feign some sort of rudimentary understanding of it. I suspect Lynch himself knows no more what he is doing than any of us do, say, when we are asleep, deep in dreams, floating in the abyss of our minds collective soup. This is not a bad thing it's just become surrealism, pure and simple. This is a surrealist film. It cannot be judged as most films are. It stands, pretty much, outside the scope of what I mostly see. I enjoy the change I assure you. Yet the film does not register with me as most films do. This film floats.

One part even seems culled from an old Abbot & Costello routine with Irons telling Bucky to move it down while Bucky comically moves it up.

Other parts, with actors from his other films seem almost as if they have spilled right out of those Lynch movies as real/imagined actors moving on to appear in Inland Empire, as fictional versions of themselves. The recognizable faces such as Dern & Irons only help to remind me I am watching a made up film. I found it hard to lose myself in this. This is often the case with recognizable talent where little or nothing is done to make their People Magazine, normal, every day faces look different. I suspect this was intentional. Still anyone's guess is as good as mine. Lynch has just become so esoteric that reviewing this film on acid would probably get one better results.

It's worth seeing, and more than once for sure. Is it worth loving? For me, the verdict is still out. Sometimes films need a few decades to cook in my mind before they gel into something my unconscious starts to desire all on its own.