Inland Empire - 2006

One issue, it seems, people have with Lynch movies is their multiple interpretations. Since they are, at heart, cinema based completely on images, it becomes more difficult(apparently) for people to have smaller interpretations. Things can 'mean' any number of things. The Rabbits, in this movie, really are in purgatory instead of being actors swallowed up by Hollywood. It becomes difficult to dislodge differing views because the movie is so obtuse. Lynch is not interested in solving his own puzzles, and certainly he likes hearing people feeling his movies in different ways. This is quite admirable. Due to the obvious craft of his movies, there does not seem anything wrong with his style of film-making(there would, I think, be something wrong if a hack hid behind the same things--somehow I would feel cheated). This is not to say that one cannot(or should not) interpret the movies; rather, I am simply conceding that different images and characters, due to the nature of the movie, are going to be not in unison. To each their own, I guess, so long as it is based on textual evidence.

This movie seems, at heart, a discussion of the role of artist to art and art-fan to art. Art transcends time and moves at its own pace into someones life. It cannot help but affect people on some level(whether impersonal or profound) and can even change the world around it. Art existing as its own--away from the world and existing for 'Arts sake'--does not, shall I say, accomplish much. One, perhaps, can experience it, but there is not necessarily any reason for doing so(major assumptions lie there, but what are you going to do). This current runs through Inland Empire(the nature of the director, for instance, implies aloofness from reality while he is engrossed within art; consider, too, how the actress gets lost from reality due to her being absorbed into art--something that does happen) and makes itself manifest in the end of the movie.

In the end, Laura Dern(the main character) saves the lost girl from the evils of 'The Phantom'. I like to think that Lynch is saying something like this: Art is all well and good, but it needs to somehow help people. It is not enough for Art to exist in a vacuum, but it needs somehow to reach the audience in some real capacity(unlike, say, the Rabbits and their terrible show--note to film pedants: the laugh track with the Rabbits is strikingly akin to how Hitchcock used it in Saboteur and other movies; their is some contempt for stupid audiences in both directors). The actress, a profession based on lies, when and did something true by helping the lost girl reunite with her family. In so doing, she has fulfilled the true role of Art--to change the lives, for the better, of those that experience it.

The above might seem unspecific at times; this is a problem with Lynch movies. Next time, I promise anyways, I will have a pen and paper ready. Certain scenes(and scant dialogue) is important, and I should be more vigorous in keeping track of them.