Inland Empire (4 Stars)

"Inland Empire" is the final film made by David Lynch in 2006. Today is the fourth time I've watched it.

I wanted to watch it in the cinema in 2006, but it wasn't shown in any cinemas in Birmingham. That made me sad. I bought it from Amazon immediately after its release on DVD in October 2007. That was a rarity for me. I usually wait a few months until the price has dropped. It cost me £20.66, which was a horrendous sum for me at the time. Usually I paid no more than £5.

I watched the film as soon as the packet dropped through my letterbox. I enjoyed it, but I didn't understand it, so I watched it a second time, taking a break only to make a cup of coffee. That was a mammoth sitting, watching a three-hour film twice. The second time round I understood it even less, so I watched one of the German "Schoolgirl Report" films to get over it. I've forgotten which one it was, probably a later film in the series, but it was easy to understand: it was about schoolgirls having sex.

I didn't watch "Inland Empire" again until 2014, when it was released on Blu-ray. I've forgotten what my impression was, but based on my brief review I still didn't understand much.

And today I finally watched it again, almost eleven years later. I've reduced my initial rating to four stars. After watching it back to back with "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive" I can see that it's not on the same level.

Maybe the problem is that I'm looking for an explanation that isn't there. When David Lynch was asked to explain the film he only said that it was about a woman in trouble. Nothing else. The actress Nikki Grace plays the lead role in a remake of an unfinished Polish film called "47". The film was abandoned because the two leading actors, male and female, were murdered. Now there are rumours that the film's script is cursed.

As the filming progresses, Nikki finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish between her character in the film and her real life. She staggers around, meeting the cast of the original Polish film. Is she having a mental breakdown, or is she caught up in a supernatural curse? I don't think it really matters. There are multiple layers of the story: her real life in Hollywood, her role in the film and her life in Poland. When we think we're seeing one layer, we suddenly become aware that it's another.

I found the picture quality poor today, not up to Blu-ray standards. Parts of the film, especially in the early scenes, looked unpleasantly fuzzy. While reading about the film afterwards, I found out that David Lynch filmed parts of the film in SD. That's not good, but I assume it was a deliberate decision. Supposedly the film was upscaled to HD using an AI algorithm in 2022, supervised by Lynch himself. That's the version I want to see.

I'd be glad to discuss "Inland Empire" with any of my readers. Let's start in the comments box below.

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