Inland Empire (film)
The cast includes such Lynch regulars as Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, and Grace Zabriskie, as well as Jeremy Irons, Karolina Gruszka, Peter J. Lucas, Krzysztof Majchrzak, and Julia Ormond.There are also brief appearances by a host of additional actors, including Nastassja Kinski, Laura Harring, Terry Crews, Mary Steenburgen, and William H. Macy.[14][15] In a hotel room, the Lost Girl—a young prostitute—cries following an unpleasant encounter with a client while watching a television show about a family of surrealistic anthropomorphic rabbits who speak in cryptic statements and questions.In her mansion, she is visited by a neighbor who asks about the film and then tells "an old tale": a boy passed through the doorway into the world, causing a reflection that gave birth to an evil that followed him.Shaken by the event, director Kingsley Stewart confesses that they are shooting a remake of an unfinished German film entitled 47, based on a supposedly cursed Polish folktale.Entering a door marked "Axxon N." in an alley, she finds herself walking onto the set and causing the disturbance during the first rehearsal weeks earlier.One of the homeless women tells all kinds of strange stories about her friend Niko, while the other holds a lighter in front of Sue's face until she dies.Its structure is more akin to a web where individual moments hyperlink to each other and other Lynch films—hence the musical number that closes the film which contains obvious allusions to everything from Blue Velvet to Twin Peaks.[18][19]Lynch's Darkened Room has been analyzed by Kristina Šekrst as a precursor to Inland Empire, creating the Lost Girl motif, along with sharing the same symbolism of the cigarette-burn hole in a silk slip and the watch."[17] The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw called the film "a meditation on the unacknowledged and unnoticed strangeness of Hollywood and movie-making in general", adding that Lynch "establishes a bizarre series of worm-holes between the worlds of myth, movies and reality.[22] He also commented that "to see Lynch's worlds captured on digital video makes for a bizarre short-circuiting: as if we are witnessing a direct feed from the unconscious".[22] Dennis Lim of Slate described the film as "a three-hour waking nightmare that derives both its form and its content from the splintering psyche of a troubled Hollywood actress", and commented on Lynch's use of digital video, describing it as "the medium of home movies, viral video, and pornography—the everyday media detritus we associate more with ... intimate or private viewing experiences than communal ones", adding that the film "progresses with the darting, associative logic of hyperlinks".[24] Jerslev further contends that the film features "formal similarities with a website's hyperlinked layering of screens/windows, constantly disclosing new worlds from new points of view", but according to theorist Steven Shaviro "it also builds on cinematic codes, even as it deconstructs them".[24] David Sweeney explores the theme of reincarnation in Inland Empire, where actress Nikki Grace relives past lives while working on a remake of a "cursed" film.Sweeney connects this theme to Lynch's interest in theosophy and draws parallels with James Joyce's Ulysses and the Netflix series The OA, highlighting shared motifs of reincarnation and alternate lives.[31] Instead, it premiered at Italy's Venice Film Festival on 6 September 2006, where David Lynch also received the Golden Lion lifetime achievement award for his "contributions to the art of cinema".Among other special features, the DVD included a 75-minute featurette, "More Things That Happened", which compiled footage elaborating on Sue's marriage to Smithy, her unpleasant life story, the Phantom's influence on women, and the lives of the prostitutes on Hollywood Boulevard.Lynch contributed a number of his own compositions to the film's soundtrack, marking a departure from his frequent collaborations with composer Angelo Badalamenti.The following month, he announced his intent to self-distribute the film theatrically via his company Absurda and 518 Media, stating, "A conventional distributor is a heartache, and I’m finished with that.Lynch embarked on a 10-city promotional tour in January 2007 with a cow, explaining "I ate a lot of cheese during the film, and it made me happy.The website's critical consensus reads, "Typical David Lynch fare: fans of the director will find Inland Empire seductive and deep.