PolishBear
Joined Feb 2001
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Ratings21
PolishBear's rating
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PolishBear's rating
This film is "arty" in that it is about cursed artwork, framed against the background of the impossibly snobby and pretentious world of art dealing and art criticism in Miami. But it's not arty in a David Lynch or Darren Aronofsky sort of way. A lot of the dialogue was well-scripted, but overall it didn't live up to the hype. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as I had hoped to .... although Jake Gyllenhaal was pretty buff and easy on the eyes.
The first time I watched INLAND EMPIRE, there would be times during the nearly 3-hour running time that I would have to get up to go pee or grab a beer or something. So I would stop the film ... and find myself unwilling to move. Instead I would gaze up at the mysterious TV lamp casting its glow on the wall, the ominous folding doors concealing the den next to the living room ... and suddenly my comfortable home environment felt vaguely threatening.
Last night I began watching INLAND EMPIRE again, getting about halfway through the film before it was time to go to bed. Having plunged through it once already, I found myself free to simply watch rather than analyze, to simply listen to the exquisitely written dialogue rather than trying to puzzle out every nuance. And I found the film moving along a lot more quickly than the first time around.
And make no mistake: INLAND EMPIRE is a lot to digest. I'm still working on it. But after two days and some additional viewing, I find myself appreciating the film much, MUCH more. The first time I watched it, I thought to myself, "There is a story here, but it is told in extremely unconventional terms." And now I think there are several stories here that exist in a kind of orbital resonance and sharing themes of loss, guilt, and regret.
Oddly enough, spinning like a neutron star (or perhaps an old acetate record) at the core of this film is a Polish gypsy folk tale cum movie script so cursed that it has the ability to suck its actors and characters into other realities and identities, shuffling them around mercilessly, and in the process causing us, as members of the audience, to question our own grip on what is real and what is fiction.
There is the story of Nikki Grace, a veteran Hollywood actress with a chance to reclaim the limelight with the role of a lifetime. She ultimately falls victim to the aforementioned curse, losing both her identify and her marital fidelity. But how real is Nikki herself? She might in fact be nothing more than a DREAM of stardom, a fantasy concocted by a doomed Hollywood prostitute. In this regard INLAND EMPIRE shares some of the themes previously explored in David Lynch's previous film, "Mulholland Drive."
(Bill Macy, in a VERY brief appearance as a television announcer, utters what could possibly be the most telling line in the film, saying that Hollywood is "where DREAMS become STARS, and STARS become DREAMS!")
There are other stories at work here: The prostitution ring in Hollywood may parallel a similar racket in Poland. We are teased with scenes from a Polish film that ultimately went uncompleted, the same film being remade with Nikki Grace (played brilliantly by Laura Dern) and Devon Burke (Justin Theroux). There are cryptic references throughout the film to something called "axonn.n" ... which, according to the first spoken words in INLAND EMPIRE, is the longest radio play in history. And then there are the rabbits (Trapped? Caged?) used as the films most surreal device.
But to hell with all that. Ultimately what's really most important about INLAND EMPIRE is the art of filmmaking. Cinema is most often used to tell stories in the simplest, most conventional terms, just as oil paint on canvas is most often used to portray people, landscapes, and bowls of fruit. But both painting and cinema can be used in far more adventurous and experimental ways, even if such efforts are not commercially viable. I doubt that Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel made "Un Chien Andalou" in hopes that it would be a big box office smash; they were more interested in expanding the artistic potential of film, and if they challenged and confounded the viewer in the process, so much the better. And throughout the history of filmmaking there have been a great many other directors that have pushed the envelope of the medium in their own ways, whether through storytelling or visual imagery.
With INLAND EMPIRE, I think David Lynch has gone back to his roots, forsaking the interference of big studio executives and marketing his film on his terms. As everyone knows by know, he is notoriously reticent to discuss the film's "meaning." But if all he really wanted to do was blur the distinction between fantasy and reality, and in the process make his viewers become just a little unhinged ... well, I think he succeeded in spades. Few films that I can think of have crept into my mind so tenaciously. And when some reviewers dismiss INLAND EMPIRE as pretentious nonsense, all I can think of is the old curmudgeon who looks at a Jackson Pollock painting and sneers, "My four-year-old granddaughter could do better than that!"
Last night I began watching INLAND EMPIRE again, getting about halfway through the film before it was time to go to bed. Having plunged through it once already, I found myself free to simply watch rather than analyze, to simply listen to the exquisitely written dialogue rather than trying to puzzle out every nuance. And I found the film moving along a lot more quickly than the first time around.
And make no mistake: INLAND EMPIRE is a lot to digest. I'm still working on it. But after two days and some additional viewing, I find myself appreciating the film much, MUCH more. The first time I watched it, I thought to myself, "There is a story here, but it is told in extremely unconventional terms." And now I think there are several stories here that exist in a kind of orbital resonance and sharing themes of loss, guilt, and regret.
Oddly enough, spinning like a neutron star (or perhaps an old acetate record) at the core of this film is a Polish gypsy folk tale cum movie script so cursed that it has the ability to suck its actors and characters into other realities and identities, shuffling them around mercilessly, and in the process causing us, as members of the audience, to question our own grip on what is real and what is fiction.
There is the story of Nikki Grace, a veteran Hollywood actress with a chance to reclaim the limelight with the role of a lifetime. She ultimately falls victim to the aforementioned curse, losing both her identify and her marital fidelity. But how real is Nikki herself? She might in fact be nothing more than a DREAM of stardom, a fantasy concocted by a doomed Hollywood prostitute. In this regard INLAND EMPIRE shares some of the themes previously explored in David Lynch's previous film, "Mulholland Drive."
(Bill Macy, in a VERY brief appearance as a television announcer, utters what could possibly be the most telling line in the film, saying that Hollywood is "where DREAMS become STARS, and STARS become DREAMS!")
There are other stories at work here: The prostitution ring in Hollywood may parallel a similar racket in Poland. We are teased with scenes from a Polish film that ultimately went uncompleted, the same film being remade with Nikki Grace (played brilliantly by Laura Dern) and Devon Burke (Justin Theroux). There are cryptic references throughout the film to something called "axonn.n" ... which, according to the first spoken words in INLAND EMPIRE, is the longest radio play in history. And then there are the rabbits (Trapped? Caged?) used as the films most surreal device.
But to hell with all that. Ultimately what's really most important about INLAND EMPIRE is the art of filmmaking. Cinema is most often used to tell stories in the simplest, most conventional terms, just as oil paint on canvas is most often used to portray people, landscapes, and bowls of fruit. But both painting and cinema can be used in far more adventurous and experimental ways, even if such efforts are not commercially viable. I doubt that Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel made "Un Chien Andalou" in hopes that it would be a big box office smash; they were more interested in expanding the artistic potential of film, and if they challenged and confounded the viewer in the process, so much the better. And throughout the history of filmmaking there have been a great many other directors that have pushed the envelope of the medium in their own ways, whether through storytelling or visual imagery.
With INLAND EMPIRE, I think David Lynch has gone back to his roots, forsaking the interference of big studio executives and marketing his film on his terms. As everyone knows by know, he is notoriously reticent to discuss the film's "meaning." But if all he really wanted to do was blur the distinction between fantasy and reality, and in the process make his viewers become just a little unhinged ... well, I think he succeeded in spades. Few films that I can think of have crept into my mind so tenaciously. And when some reviewers dismiss INLAND EMPIRE as pretentious nonsense, all I can think of is the old curmudgeon who looks at a Jackson Pollock painting and sneers, "My four-year-old granddaughter could do better than that!"
I used to watch The Outer Limits with my dad when I was a small child back in the early 1960s. Most of the time it scared the hell out of me. And this particular episode, "Production and Decay of Strange Particles" was no exception. Two things about this episode always stood out for me: (1) The scientists in radiation suits who were suddenly taken over by glowing electric-arc beings, which I found extremely creepy, and (2) the nuclear explosion (and implosion) at the end.
In recent years I learned that this episode is considered by many Outer Limits aficionados to be one of the weakest in the series, if not the worst ... and I found this puzzling, since the episode stuck out so strongly in my memories of childhood. So when this particular episode was broadcast recently on our local "My-Z" channel, I decided to watch it with a more mature and critical eye.
First of all, some context: "Production and Decay of Strange Particles" was made at a time when physicists were really starting to peer beyond the Newtonian world and into the realm of subatomic particles and quantum theory. The episode makes mention of "quasi-stellar" objects, which had only been discovered a scant few years earlier. Scientists were beginning to confront the fact that the Universe was a far stranger place than hitherto imagined, that there might be other realities beyond our own ... so naturally the producers of The Outer Limits decided to speculate about what might happen if high-energy particle physicists cracked that doorway between such realities just a bit too wide.
Watching this episode reminded me of how people have raised nightmare scenarios about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and how it might create a miniature black hole that would suck up the Earth. I was also reminded of a fascinating hard sci-fi novel by John Cramer called "Einstein's Bridge" in which an experiment at such a facility allows a hive-like civilization from another Universe to invade our own world. These fears are, in a way, prefigured in this old episode of The Outer Limits, and it is the hard physics here that makes the episode a refreshing change from the usual weird creatures and spaceships.
Unfortunately, this episode is SEVERELY hampered by melodrama, enough nonsensical techno-jargon to choke a horse, a slender plot and script that have to be padded quite a lot to expand the episode to 50 minutes, and worst of all, some shameless scenery-chewing by George Macready as the tormented Dr. Marshall.
In recent years I learned that this episode is considered by many Outer Limits aficionados to be one of the weakest in the series, if not the worst ... and I found this puzzling, since the episode stuck out so strongly in my memories of childhood. So when this particular episode was broadcast recently on our local "My-Z" channel, I decided to watch it with a more mature and critical eye.
First of all, some context: "Production and Decay of Strange Particles" was made at a time when physicists were really starting to peer beyond the Newtonian world and into the realm of subatomic particles and quantum theory. The episode makes mention of "quasi-stellar" objects, which had only been discovered a scant few years earlier. Scientists were beginning to confront the fact that the Universe was a far stranger place than hitherto imagined, that there might be other realities beyond our own ... so naturally the producers of The Outer Limits decided to speculate about what might happen if high-energy particle physicists cracked that doorway between such realities just a bit too wide.
Watching this episode reminded me of how people have raised nightmare scenarios about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and how it might create a miniature black hole that would suck up the Earth. I was also reminded of a fascinating hard sci-fi novel by John Cramer called "Einstein's Bridge" in which an experiment at such a facility allows a hive-like civilization from another Universe to invade our own world. These fears are, in a way, prefigured in this old episode of The Outer Limits, and it is the hard physics here that makes the episode a refreshing change from the usual weird creatures and spaceships.
Unfortunately, this episode is SEVERELY hampered by melodrama, enough nonsensical techno-jargon to choke a horse, a slender plot and script that have to be padded quite a lot to expand the episode to 50 minutes, and worst of all, some shameless scenery-chewing by George Macready as the tormented Dr. Marshall.