| Overall Grade: |
A |
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| Story: |
B |
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| Acting: |
A |
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| Direction: |
A |
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| Visuals: |
A+ |
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Down The Rabbit Hole of INLAND EMPIRE
by Joseph (movies profile)
Mar 7, 2008
28
of
34 people found this review helpful
It's odd that so many educated viewers of this film don't think it makes much sense, if any; if anything is true of INLAND EMPIRE, it makes almost too much sense.
Lynch carefully supplies viewers with a loose structural framework to support the film's momentum: an actress, Nikki (Laura Dern), is beginning work on production of a film that is apparently 'cursed,' and which the lead actors in an earlier attempt to film the story in Poland were violently murdered.
Lynch also makes it abundantly clear that infidelity and violent spousal jealousy are also key factors in everything that the viewers will see.
To top off any 'explanation,' if one is needed, the mysterious Eastern European woman who appears at the beginning of the film tells Nikki a brief parable about a little boy who goes out to play: as he passes through the door, his reflection is caught in the glass of the door, and then follows him outside; and thus, says the mysterious woman, "evil was let loose in the world."
As an actress, Nikki's performance is comparable to the little boy's reflection: by assuming the role in a 'cursed film,' the woman is warning Nikki that she is 'releasing evil,' as in fact she does, at least upon herself.
Most adulterous situations involve 'romantic triangles' composed two spouses and one outside party; and the 'crime being committed' is infidelity, i.e,. sex.
During Nikki's hallucinatory experiences in INLAND EMPIRE, she repeatedly views a forlorn-appearing household in which three [3, as in a romantic triangle] fully clothed, human-sized brown rabbits talk, read the paper, and iron. Since rabbits are well-known around the world for mindless rutting, the domesticated rabbits make an apt symbol for infidelity within a married relationship.
Presumably as a result of the 'curse,' Nikki becomes not only leaves her human existence behind and becomes a character in the film she is making, but also experiences herself as a character in the earlier version filmed in Poland, a production which was shut down due to the murder of the two leads in a 'crime of passion.'
To complicate matters, Nikki also becomes--or begins to experience herself--as a fourth woman, who lives in Poland and is abused by her husband.
Alternate and parallel worlds abound, as does time travel of a sort; Nikki even discovers that she herself is the mysterious phantom who has been haunting the film set.
The good news about INLAND EMPIRE is that Lynch does not attempt to go thematically further than he did in the conclusion to Mulholland Drive, his horror masterpiece which concerned itself so pointedly and painfully with perdition, i.e., 'final spiritual ruin.'
Though Nikki undergoes many horrifying and traumatizing experiences, including her own death by murder, she apparently learns her lesson by the film's end, when she crawls back out of the 'rabbit hole' and finds herself back in the first scene, with her mysterious visitor still strangely poised and waiting, a conclusion which recalls 'Blue Velvet' in many ways. |
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