1175 Inland Empire

[Macintosh]

INLAND EMPIRE is not a puzzle film and yes, you missed the whole point of the film.

And please don't tell me that Vincent Gallo is not out to flatter the audience with his blowjob film and also that The Brown Bunny is not self-indulgent. Give me a break.

Um, yes it is a puzzle film (see how easy it was of me to do that?) and since when do films have "points" to them? Is there some tangible, black and white message that I'm missing here?

[Michael]

Um, yes it is a puzzle film (see how easy it was of me to do that?) and since when do films have "points" to them? Is there some tangible, black and white message that i'm missing here?

How about trying not to figure out what the puzzle is in IE next time you watch it (if you're willing to give it another chance)?

It seems to me that trying to locate or solve the puzzle of IE is trying to find the point of the film and that's why I said you missed the point of the film. There is no point. No puzzle.

Or how about if we call IE Lynch's Thriller? 3-hour music video. You okay with that?

[miless]

I would say that David Lynch's recent offerings may appear to be "puzzle films" but they transcend this classification. Lost Highway and Inland Empire especially could be described as puzzle films with a large number of the important pieces missing. True Mulholland Dr. does seem to have an "easy answer" upon its first viewing, but as I have seen the film many times I have noticed that the segue between the "pieces" don't overlap or fit quite as well as they seemed. This leads to an ultimate ambiguity that opens the doors to many interpretations based solely on a subjective viewing.
Inland Empire is the extreme of Lynch's narrative obscurity, but that makes it really fascinating.
That's not saying I love IE... I like it. But I do love Mulholland Dr. and Lost Highway.

and so what about the "falsity" of "puzzle films". Are MC Escher's designs and paintings (or even the works of Picasso or Braque) worthless because they are "puzzle art"?

[chime_on]

I spent a few hours last night reading Carney's website, and I disagree that he makes excellent points regarding Lynch.

His argument seems weak to me because I don't subscribe to his view that metaphors and symbols are inherently for children, and that true artists grow up and get over them. His whole criticism of Mulholland Drive is that people who enjoy it are stupid and childish for doing so because there are real artists like Cassavetes, who made films for adults.

I know Carney hates irony, but I have to admit I was a little amused to see him invoking the Bible to justify his "child/adult" view of art. No symbolism or metaphor in the Bible at all...

[Stagger Lee]

Even if there are no answers to Lynch's films, his symbolic rhyming and delivery directly to the subconscious make for fascinating films that touch very deeply.

[miless]

oh yeah... Ray Carney said that his favorite film so far this decade was The Puffy Chair... I cannot trust someone with that opinion.

[Barmy]

I was more of a Cassavetes fan before I read Ray Carney than after. What a pissy schoolmarm. He's dead to me.

Oh, and yes, IE is a puzzle film.

[Michael]

Ok, maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. What exactly is a puzzle film? Is it a mystery where a viewer acts as a sleuth - gathering and sewing all the pieces together to solve the puzzle.. is that what it is? If that's the case, then Memento fits that category. To me, IE is the opposite; it's one organic mass - no missing pieces. Surely, it's mysterious but it's not a mystery.

[Mr Sausage]

His argument seems weak to me because I don't subscribe to his view that metaphors and symbols are inherently for children, and that true artists grow up and get over them.

I would be more forceful about this rejection: it is a vast ignorance that only a deep and hopeless idiot could produce.

Metaphors and symbols and all tropes are a fundamental way to broach the gap between subject and object. And as their function is primarily that of asserting or questioning identity, I fail to see how they could be childish (although I certainly accept the idea that they can be childlike, since often children perceive similarities that rigorous lectures in logic later in life unfortunately destroy).

Such a daft opinion as Carney's consigns the entire tradition of imaginative literature in the west to the dustbin as mere childishness. Milton? Shakespeare? Shelley? Proust? Mere artistic children compared to, er, John Cassavetes.

[exte]

A "deep idiot"... now there's a slam!

[Magic Hate Ball]

Surely Lynch's movies operate like dreams or nightmares.

You know the anecdote about David Lynch talking to Laura Dern, and somewhere in their conversation she says "Inland Empire", and David Lynch tunes her out for the rest of the conversation and focuses on the words "Inland Empire" because they sound so cool? Well, I have no idea what the rest of your post is about because I'm fascinated by the idea of a dream machine.

[Macintosh]

You know the anecdote about David Lynch talking to Laura Dern, and somewhere in their conversation she says "Inland Empire", and David Lynch tunes her out for the rest of the conversation and focuses on the words "Inland Empire" because they sound so cool?

sounds like something someone tripping acid would do.

[colinr0380]

Milton? Shakespeare? Shelley? Proust? Mere artistic children compared to, er, John Cassavetes.

It does seem an attempt to denigrate a whole style of work to elevate those films he is interested in, which is a shame as cinema should be able to encompass and provide all sorts of experiences from intense realistic improvised dramas to the most fantastical creations a filmmaker can come up with, even to films designed as puzzles for the audience - the variety is what makes film such a fascinating medium.

I don't think of Lynch's films as puzzle films - they don't have a hidden answer to solve, but theorising about what you think about the film and your interpretations (as well as hearing other's thoughts) provides you with ways of accessing the ideas within it.

I think a more accurate term would be mystery films. After all, isn't that what life itself is - a mystery we have no hope of fully grasping but need to make some attempt at doing so to make our way through it? (And dreams are the brain's attempt at processing our waking lives into something coherent. All those characters in Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire creating different realities because the one they previously inhabited has almost literally gone to hell)

[dadaistnun]

The soundtrack is now available.

[Mr Sausage]

A "deep idiot"... now there's a slam!

Yes, as in the well of one's idiocy runs deep.

[Cronenfly]

Such a daft opinion as Carney's consigns the entire tradition of imaginative literature in the west to the dustbin as mere childishness. Milton? Shakespeare? Shelley? Proust? Mere artistic children compared to, er, John Cassavetes.

I am impressed, though, that Carney goes to such lengths to preserve his Cassavetes obsession: makes you wonder why he couldn't budge with regards to Gena Rowlands to get the content he has access to on the Criterion Cassavetes set and be useful for once. Oh, the irony...
EDIT- I followed the Criterion DVD situation a bit, but the Rowlands/Carney talk is purely speculative. Just for the record, anyone know with 100% certainty what happened?

[sevenarts]

I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon with everyone else here, and say that i found this to be one of the most self indulgent messes i've seen in a while. And this is coming from someone who considers The Brown Bunny a masterpiece. I should cite Ray Carney's writing about "puzzle films" as an example. Films like this and Memento seem like they are flattering the audience so they can pat themselves on the back when they come to their own conclusion about the film. I suggest some people on here read this. Not to come off as some Carney fanboy but he is a great writer and makes some excellent points.

This should be retitled "Ray Carney Fails to Understand a Number of Films and Forms a Theory Around the Misunderstanding." Catchy, no?

Seriously, where are all these excellent points you mention? Carney talks at length about how great works of art have shifting, "fuzzy" meanings which cannot be clarified -- how does this not describe the Lynch of recent years? Carney is simplifying Lynch's work to a decoder puzzle in which, once the viewer figures out what the story is, there is nothing left to be done. He misses a great deal by reaching this superficial conclusion so easily. Most obviously, there is the possibility that we are NOT meant to come to any definitive conclusions about the stories or ideas in Lynch's recent films. This is, I think, most assuredly true of Inland Empire and Lost Highway; Mulholland Drive lends itself better to plot explication, but it is also not without its own narrative ambiguities.

More importantly still, Carney seems totally unaware of anything else going on in these films besides a puzzle of trying to figure out the story. To me, this indicates a profound ignorance and literal-mindedness on his part, and says very little about the films themselves. If you come away from Mulholland Drive thinking just, "a lesbian aspiring actress murders her ex-lover and then herself in a fit of broken-heartedness," you have glossed only the very most superficial layer of the film's complex ideas, emotions, and aesthetics. This is the point at which Carney seems to stop. He does the very thing he accuses his students of doing: treating a film as if it consists of just a plot and characters, with no style, no ideas in the subtext. Do these films probe into the sexual politics of Hollywood film? Do they contain scenes of such stunning beauty that they would be striking even out of context? Do they have remarkable performances by their lead actresses? Do they delve into the emotional depths of their characters? Carney is utterly silent on any of these questions, and I think the answer to all of them is undeniably "yes." He seems content to look at such films as mere symbolic mazes, and this is the root of his misunderstanding.

For those who can approach Lynch's recent films without such a limiting, literalist mindframe, there are rich, complex emotional experiences to be found. I must have watched Mulholland Drive more than 10 times by now, but every time, by the time I get to the scene at Club Silencio, I still find myself overwhelmed and moved by its beauty and power. Yes, there are obvious symbolic meanings here -- for the relationship of cinema to fantasy and magic, and the emotional release to be found in such fantasies -- and they add to the scene's richness, but such symbols are not the whole of the experience, nor even the root of it. If Carney is blind to such a multifaceted and powerful scene, that's his own fault as a critic, not the film's.

[LeeB.Sims]

Rowlands/Carney talk is purely speculative. Just for the record, anyone know with 100% certainty what happened?

No one knows with 100% certainty other than Rowlands and Carney, but here is Carney's side of the story

And I would like to point out that I am in full agreement with Sevenarts on why Carney's argument against Lynch's work doesn't hold water. I know it's lazy to just second what he is saying, but it's pretty articulate. I honestly feel the same way about all of Carney's writing, that it is full of blatantly biased, superficial, snap judgments that barely scrape the surface of the art he is critiquing. Really I think he is not a good source for any information other than on the works of Cassavetes. Come to think of it I didn't even think Cassavetes on Cassavetes was that good, it was so redundant most of the time. But I do love me some Cassavetes so I had to keep reading...

[Cronenfly]

Rowlands/Carney talk is purely speculative. Just for the record, anyone know with 100% certainty what happened?

No one knows with 100% certainty other than Rowlands and Carney, but here is Carney's side of the story

My God, what a mess...I won't say any more about it in this thread, but it does seem that Carney's in the right here (though that may just be my wanting to see the otherwise unavailable content he has access to talking for me).
EDIT- Re-read the Cassavetes set thread, and now I really don't know what to think...what's done is done I guess, though I still reserve some hope that the alternate Shadows and the longer Faces will see the light of day sometime...

[colinr0380]

One of the strangest things about that Carney slam is that I'm starting to think Inland Empire and Opening Night have a lot in common - are we being told that we shouldn't try to understand the troubles and mental strain the actress is going through in that Cassavetes film either?

[Grand Illusion]

Recently saw this and attended a post-screening Q&A with David Lynch.

Disclaimer: I really love Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, and Blue Velvet.

Inland Empire, though, just seemed like a first-time filmmaker's attempt at remaking Mulholland Drive.

One thing MD had for it was the tone and mood. Take away the gorgeous, dark (not as in underexposed) cinematography and replace it with digitally grainy 24p footage, and the film loses a lot.

The whites and fades particularly had the worst artifacting. Perhaps Lynch was making an intellectual point with the Standard Def video, but the sacrifice in tone, mood, and image quality wasn't worth it.

Thematically, this seemed like old territory. Granted the film can be read many ways, but the film featured the mental breakdown of an unsuccessful actress, duality between a blond and a brunette, and, of course, a familiar Hollywood locale. Trading Mulholland Drive for Hollywood and Vine isn't much of a difference.

These issues plus an indulgent three hour running time made Inland Empire seem like a director's first film.

[Magic Hate Ball]

I get the feeling that INLAND EMPIRE is a film someone will either get or not get... those who don't get it will be frustrated by the people who do and those who do will be frustrated by the people who don't because it's so hard to describe what there is to get.

[Grand Illusion]

I dislike the connotations of one group of people "getting it" and the intellectual elitism that comes with that. Let's look at how Lynch expects to engage us with the film. With the carefully woven unreality and the essential lack of narrative, we can never truly know Dern's character. Nor do we understand Irons's character or anyone else's.

This is fine, but the film does not seek to engage us with narrative or the depths of character. Lynch is also treading on worn subject matter. Lynch is not making any grand efforts at intellectualizing here, and nobody would say that Lynch is on the plane of Bergman in that realm of filmmaking. So with no narrative, thin character, and no intellectual confrontation, the film needs something else. Where MD succeeds and IE fails is in the palpable sense of dread, awe, and eroticism.

Some of that is in the huge difference in cinematography. Some of that is in the images presented, of which MD makes more coherent, at least seemingly. Some of that is in the casting/performance. And a lot of that is in the indulgent 3 hour running time. I enjoyed the first hour or so, but after a while, the visual stimuli grew dull. The cinematography wore on me as the yellow glow of a window looks less like the work of a skilled artist and more like My First Avid Color Correction. Call it tone. Call it mood. But IE didn't have it.

[Magic Hate Ball]

I dislike the connotations of one group of people "getting it" and the intellectual elitism that comes with that. I enjoyed the first hour or so, but after a while, the visual stimuli grew dull.

And then there are countless other people to whom the visual stimuli and mise-en-scene never grew dull. Personally, while it dragged in the middle, I found it to be a perfect representation of day-to-day life; you don't remember everything, just some things, and INLAND EMPIRE is what Dern's character remembers over the course of however long it took to make the movie, along with other things in.

What I meant by "get" was not necessarily people who understand the movie, but that there's going to be a large group of people who like it, and a large group of people who don't. I have no idea if I'm right or not, I'm just speculating. There are people who thought it was fascinating and frightening, and people who thought it was dull and unoriginal.

I enjoyed it because I enjoyed being scared by the things that happened to the characters. I didn't necessarily empthasize or care about them, but obviously I cared enough to be scared and excited and interested. I suppose I'm the kind of person who's fascinated by those dreams that aren't so much nightmares as they are just terribly unhappy, and that's what INLAND EMPIRE was to me, a vividly unhappy and uncomfortable dream.

Edit: I feel that the basic defenition of "getting" a movie is when you enjoy it for the reasons the creator intended. Since we have no idea what David Lynch intended to do to the audience with INLAND EMPIRE (for all I know, he intended it to be a children's film), I doubt anyone could really "get" it, unless someone can direct me to a site where David Lynch explains exactly what he intended...what a treat that would be, right after he tells us what he made the foetus out of in Eraserhead...

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

For those interested, the entire Rabbits is availible for download.

It used to be a mini-series up on his site, but he took it down as soon as Inland Empire was annouced.