Watching a David Lynch film is like visiting an old friend, an eccentric gallivanting friend with consistent hang-ups and inconsistent grasp on reality. And if you have met my friend David, and you found him entertaining, then you will love paying a visit to Inland Empire. But if you’ve never met him, I wouldn’t suggest trying to introduce yourself with this three-hour epic of surreal, non-linear intangible brilliance.
To save us all a bit of trauma, I won’t go into the plot, which was semi-understandable for the first hour but then unravels into a patchwork of nightmarish confusion and stays there. Maybe a second and third viewing will help glean more sense of the narrative, but it may be futile. And that’s fine. I stopped puzzling out what was going on and let the lush jarring Lynchian madness cascade over me.
Secrets. Flash backs. Flash forwards. Talking rabbits on a sitcom set. Movies within movies. Whores doing the Loco-Motion. Gypsy curses. Laura Dern brilliantly holding it all together, except when she suddenly starts being another character. I think it can all be summed up by the end credits, in which a troupe of young black dancers joyously lip-synch to Nina Simone’s “Sinner Man.” It’s a celebration of life, and there just happens to be a monkey there, too.
