DIRECTED BY: David Lynch

FEATURING: Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Justin Theroux

PLOT:  A woman (Harring) is involved in a nighttime accident on Mulholland Drive and flees into the city of Los Angeles with amnesia; she sneaks into an apartment soon to be occupied by naive young Betty (Watts), who has come to Hollywood hoping to find stardom.  Meanwhile, a film director (Theroux) finds himself pressured by mysterious mobsters to cast an unknown actress in his upcoming project.  Betty helps the amnesiac woman try to recover her identity, but the clues only lead to a strange avant-garde nightclub, a key, a box, and a sudden reality shift that throws everything that came before into confusion.

BACKGROUND:

• Lynch originally intended Mulholland Drive as a TV series in the mold of “Twin Peaks.”  When the networks passed on the pilot, the French producer Studio Canal stepped in with additional financing to turn the pilot into a feature film.  In between ABC’s proactive cancellation of the series and the creation of the film version, all of the sets and props were dismantled, forcing Lynch to come up with a different way to complete the story.
• Monty Montgomery, whose appearance as “The Cowboy” is an uncanny show-stopper, is a Hollywood movie producer (who produced Wild at Heart for Lynch).  Mulholland Drive is his only acting credit (he’s listed as “Lafayette Montgomery” in the credits).
• Lynch insisted no chapter stops be included on the DVD.
• The original DVD release included an insert from Lynch containing “10 Keys to Unlocking This Thriller.”
• Mulholland Drive received significant critical acclaim, nabbing Lynch a Best Director award at Cannes (shared with Joel Coen for The Man Who Wasn’t There) and a Best Director Oscar nomination.  It was voted best picture of the Year by the Boston Film Critics Society, the Chicago Film Critics Association, the new York Film Critics Circle, and the Online Film Critics Society (where it tied with Memento in the voting).  It was also voted best foreign picture by the Academy Award equivalents of Brazil, France, Spain, and Australia.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: The Silencio nightclub, decorated in Lynch’s trademark red velvet drapes and staffed by his trademark subconscious monsters.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: If the massive reality shifts and actresses unexpectedly playing

Original trailer for Mulholland Drive

multiple roles is not enough for you, then the monster behind the Winkie’s, a Spanish version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying” delivered by a woman who collapses onstage, and a mafia-style media syndicate run by a deformed dwarf who uses an eyebrowless cowboy as his right-hand man will convince you that we are deep in that subconscious pit of eroticism, kitsch and weirdness that can only go by the name Lynchland.

COMMENTS:  Oddly enough, what may be the most important scene in Mulholland Drive involves a marginal character, a thick-browed man whose name or profession we never learn.  After this scene we will see him again exactly one time. The man is eating breakfast at a Winkie’s (David Lynch’s mythical version of Denny’s) with a friend.  He’s recounting a dream that he had that occurred in the very diner they’re sitting in.  He goes out of his way to precisely outline the differences between the dream and the way things are now.  In the dream, his breakfast companion was standing in a different place, and he was frightened.  The light was different; it was neither day nor night, but a kind of twilight.  And, most importantly, in the dream there was a man behind the restaurant—”he’s the one that’s doing it”—and the dreamer could see him through the wall.  He’s come to Winkie’s that morning, together with his friend from the dream, to check behind the dumpsters in the light of day and convince himself there’s no one there, to rid himself of that awful fear.

But, this being a David Lynch movie, he doesn’t rid himself of that awful fear.  Quite the contrary.  And because of what happens, we’re left unsure whether this really is his description of the dream, related in the light of day, or is actually the nightmare itself.

Mulholland Drive is a dream of a movie, one with (at least) two sets of realities and characters, inhabited by one set of actors.  Each separate universe is a looking-glass version of the other, reflecting events as if in a funhouse mirror.  $50,000 in cold hard cash is a mystery in one world, and a sin in the other.  And, unlike some of David Lynch’s other movies, there is a solution (of sorts) to the mystery of Mulholland Drive, although it’s a solution that doesn’t betray the film’s mysteriousness.

In terms of penetrability, Mulholland Drive perches somewhere between the eerie off-ness of Blue Velvet and the relative inscrutability of Eraserhead.  This movie is clearly in the tradition of the psychological thriller (a genre that, somewhat surprisingly, Lynch had never tackled before, at least not head on).  And yet, there are plenty of mystical red herrings and pure dream interludes hanging in the heavy Los Angeles air that envelops Mulholland Drive.  Unlike in a typical mystery tale, with Lynch it’s the sumptuous surrealism, not the solution, that puts the thrill in the thriller.  It’s the red lampshade, the phone calls to nowhere, the dwarf in the wheelchair that drive Mulholland.

As always, Lynch releases beautiful, delicate narrative butterflies into the cinemas, but certain fans (you know who you are) insist on trying to catch them, pin them by their wings, and dissect them to death.  This time around, Lynch explicitly (and in my view, perversely) encourages the segment of his audience that prefers to treat his films as puzzles rather than as experiences to analyze the film to death by releasing a flyer called “Ten Clues to Unlocking This Thriller” (thereby negating his own advice, quoted above, to never “demystify” a movie.  No one ever accused David Lynch of a foolish consistency).

Other, more perceptive souls have pleaded with viewers not to try to understand too much of Mulholland Drive. Rather than delighting in Lynch’s clever construction of the puzzlebox, the always perceptive J. Hobermann writes instead that the movie is as “withholding in its narrative as anything in Buñuel” and, after considering that either half of the story might be an illusion, concludes—with a blithe indifference to the carefully constructed plot—”not that it matters.”  In a survey of film critic’s interpretations of the film, nearly everyone resisted the analytical mode.  Roger Ebert insisted, “There is no explanation. There may not even be a mystery”;  Jonathan Ross accepted the standard dream interpretation but demurred that it was “counterproductive to keep analysing it”; Tom Charity offered explanations but worried “I’m not sure if it helps to be so specific;” Neil Roberts was ” wary of over-analysing it,” warning that “[w]e should be careful not to let all this analysis detract from a fantastic film”; and Jane Douglas offered this advice: “in some ways it is better to just watch it without constantly trying to work out what it means.”  After working intimately on the script over a span of two years, Laura Harring concluded, “You want to get it, but I don’t think it’s a movie to be gotten.  It’s achieved its goal if it makes you ask questions.”  And co-star Justin Theroux reminds us “I think [Lynch is] genuinely happy for [Mulholland Drive] to mean anything you want.  He loves it when people come up with really bizarre interpretations.”

For the sake of those who have unwisely followed Lynch’s Ten Clues to their logical conclusion, traversing the entire length of Mulholland Drive, I offer, as a way to recapture the film’s mysterious magic, the following

TEN MYSTERIES THAT RE-LOCK THIS THRILLER

1. Why does David Lynch ask viewers, in his “10 keys to unlocking this thriller” to consider where Aunt Ruth is?  What difference would it make if Aunt Ruth were alive, dead, or never existed?
2. Who is the man who thinks a monster lurks behind Winkie’s?  If he is a dream, then why would Dianne have a dream from the point of view of a total stranger?  Other than its metatextual mood setting role,what reason is there for the man and his nightmare to exist?
3. Why does a second actress (Melissa George) play Camilla Rhodes in the first part of the film?
4. Why is the syndicate so insistent that Adam cast Camilla Rhodes?  The entire conspiracy plotline, which occupies a large part of the first ninety minutes of the movie, gets dropped.
5. Speaking of the syndicate, why don’t they “shut everything down” after Mr. Roque tells them to?  Is “shut everything down” Hollywood gangster talk for “turn up the heat by calling in the Cowboy”?
6. Does Adam ever see the Cowboy again?  (We do, and Diane does, but does he)?  Why draw so much attention to the number of times the Cowboy would appear—other than that, when he says something so strange with such an aura of threat, it’s terribly frightening?  Unless—Diane is really Adam??
7. Why is the director the only main character whose identity doesn’t change (though his circumstances do)?
8. Why do tiny old people come skittering out of a brown paper bag, laughing maniacally?
9. Why does Robert Forster get a special mention in the opening credits, yet appear in the film for less than a minute, doing nothing even mildly important?  Why did he even get a special bio segment on the DVD release?  Is his agent just that good?
10. Seriously, WTF is the deal with Silencio?  Why is there no band?  Why does Betty have a brief epileptic fit while watching the stage show?  And what about the key?  (Why does the hit man think its funny when Diane asks what it opens?)  And the blue box?
11. Are there actually more than ten unanswered questions about Mulholland Drive?

Getting lost in all this talk about the film’s meaning, or lack of same, are the film’s amazing cinematic qualities: the neon-noir cinematography; Angelo Badalamenti’s brooding ambient score, which fits the director’s vision like a well-worn glove and immediately drops the viewer into a Lynchian world; and Naomi Watts’ eye-opening performance, which moves from ingenue to conniving bitch with a seriously invigorating stopover as seductress of both sexes.  There are great individual scenes, including Watts and Harring’s two tender but scorching love scenes, a murder-for-hire that goes comically amiss with a series of human and non-human witnesses that have to be dispatched in turn, and a heartrending, and very weird, Spanish rendition of Roy Orbison’s “Crying” that inexplicably reduces Watts and Harring to tears.   Not only that, but as a bonus you get to see Billy Ray Cyrus cold-cocked onscreen, perhaps the ultimate wish-fulfillment fantasy for millions of Americans who suffered through the darkness of the “Achy Breaky Heart” weeks in 1992.

One of Lynch’s greatest gift is that he skirts the borderline between Surrealism and Symbolism; no one can quite nail him down.  In some movies (this one, for example) lists towards the psychological symbolism end of the spectrum, while in others (INLAND EMPIRE, which is essentially Mulholland Drive on acid) he strives for unadulterated bizarrity.  Most of the time, he mixes comprehensible, relatable psychological symbolism with a deeply irrational and fearful subconscious stream.  He’s pulled off the unique trick of rallying two philosophically opposed film factions: those who treasure the challenge of solving puzzle movies, and those who value the sense of “mysterious fullness” that satisfies precisely because it’s meaning can never be pinned down.  Though claimed by both, he can’t actually belong to both camps.

Can he?

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…the compelling but intentionally inscrutable return of the ‘weird’ David Lynch that will please his hardcore fans even if it has them scratching their heads as well… for the final 45 minutes, Lynch is in mind-twisting mode that presents a form of alternate reality with no apparent meaning or logical connection to what came before… the sudden switcheroo to head games is disappointing because, up to this point, Lynch had so wonderfully succeeded in creating genuine involvement.”–Todd McCarthy, Variety (contemporaneous)

“The movie is a surrealist dreamscape in the form of a Hollywood film noir, and the less sense it makes, the more we can’t stop watching it… The way you know the movie is over is that it ends. And then you tell a friend, ‘I saw the weirdest movie last night.’ Just like you tell them you had the weirdest dream.”–Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (contemporaneous)

“The worst movie I’ve seen this year… a load of moronic and incoherent garbage from David Lynch that… predictably ended up at the New York Film Festival, where pretentious poseurs sit with their eyes glued to any screen as long as the projector is still running. From this bizarro atrocity, they should get astigmatism.”–Rex Reed, The New York Observer (contemporaneous)

OFFICIAL SITE:  Mulholland Drive – some of the features on this ten year old site are broken (like a link to a chat transcript with Lynch), but Universal deserves credit for continuing to pay fifteen bucks per year to renew the domain name a decade after the film’s release—something studios rarely do

IMDB LINK:  Mulholland Dr. (2001)

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

Everything You Were Afraid to Ask About ‘Mulholland Drive’ – Bill Wyman, Max Garrone and Andy Klein outline the standard (and almost certainly correct) interpretation of Mulholland Drive.  Obviously, this essay contains major spoilers.

Lost on Mulholland Drive – Film fansite featuring guides, essays, a discussion forum for floating personal theories on the film, and even fan-made music videos

Understanding Mulholland Drive: Nice Film—If You Can Get It – Six film critics (Roger Ebert, Jonathan Ross, Neil Roberts, Tom Charity, Philip French, and Jane Douglas)  give their brief interpretations of Mulholland Drive

All You Have to Do Is Dream – Interpretation of Mulholland Drive by Frederick Lane, a Freudian dream analyst, courtesy of salon.com; a fascinating article, although you’ll learn more about dream states than you will about the film

The Naughts: The Romantic Pair of the ’00s – Charles Taylor of the Independent Film Channel selects Betty and Rita as the emblematic romantic couple of the first decade of the 21st century

Sinnerbrink on Lynch -Cinematic Ideas: David Lynch’s _Mulholland Drive_ – An academic treatment of Mulholland Drive from philosophy professor Robert Sinnerbrink, originally published in “Film-Philosophy,” Vol. 9 No. 34, June 2005; insightful but very technical

The Madman and his Muse – From Film Score Daily comes this interview with composer and frequent Lynch collaborator Angelo Badalamenti, focusing on his relationship with the director as well as the score for Mulholland Drive

DVD INFO: As David Lynch eschews both director’s commentaries and chapter stops, the Universal DVD (buy) contains no special features beyond the original theatrical trailer and cast bios (including, of course, one for Robert Forster).  The film is also available for download or rental via video-on-demand services.

(This movie was nominated for review by “MtnGoat,” whgo one year ago complained about a “striking lack of David Lynch” on the site. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

To avoid disappointment, be informed that Lynch held back a little on his eldritch style.  It has an otherworldly feel to it, but it’s weirdness pales in comparison to some of his more famous work.

FEATURING: Kyle MacLachlan, Kenneth McMillan, Patrick Stewart, Sean Young, Sting

PLOT: As simply as I can put it: set in the year 10,191, inhabitants of three planets attempt to gain control of the “spice” Melange.  The substance extends life and allows space travel.  Whoever controls the spice controls the universe.  The planet Caladan, home of the House Atreides, is the main threat to the current emperor of the universe.  Duke Atreides son, Paul, appears to be the “chosen one” due to his special gifts of prophetic visions and skillfulness as a soldier.  Paul foresees the emperor’s plan to destroy the Artreides clan and sets out to take control of the spice and defeat their enemies.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Dune is too confusing, an altogether jumbled mess, to give it any consideration for the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies ever made.  There are too many characters, words, names and ideas that occupy the screen.  Overt weirdness does flit about many times, but is marred by cheap-looking special effects and poor acting.  Disappointing, considering who was at the helm of the picture.

COMMENTS: First off, being a new contributor, I feel privileged to have been given the opportunity to cover three masters in the realm of weird cinema; Roeg, Cronenberg, and now David Lynch. Truth be told, Lynch is probably the greatest director in the pantheon of weird movies.  That said, this is the worst film David Lynch ever committed to celluloid.  I don’t think he would mind my saying so, as he too has publicly announced his hatred towards this film.  He refuses to talk about it in writings or interviews.  A production debacle, Lynch feuded bitterly with Dino de Laurentis to retain his artistic vision against the producer ‘s extravagance.  The film looks slapdash at times.  This problem likely stems from the complex source material: Frank Herbert’s 1965 cult sci-fi novel of the same name.  Lynch claimed  never to have read the book pre-production and to personally dislike the sci-fi genre.  For unclear reasons, he actually turned down the opportunity to direct Return of the Jedi to do this film.  I imagine Ewoks would have become much more menacing under the Lynchian lens.

Lynch came to direct only after several other directors bowed out due to differences and strife on the set.  One of the directors previously associated with the film was none other than Alejandro Jodorowsky, who planned on taking the film to new heights… a 14-hour epic!  Yeah, that didn’t fly.  What we are left with is a 137 minute hodgepodge of sci-fi jargon and mediocre direction.  Apparently different cuts exist; a 190 minute version has been aired in two parts for television.  The added material only caused more uproar with the legions of “Dune” fans, who thought the additional scenes and extended narration further stifled the already confusing flow of the theatrical cut.  Lynch has refused to release a director-approved cut, and demanded the pseudonym Jonas Booth replace his name on the extended television version.

There is way too much happening in this movie…all the time!  The multitude of characters, all with hard to pronounce names, come and go and never really make an impression.  The viewer is left wondering, “who is that?”, “are they important?,” and “what do they want?”  Ultimately, the answer to the last question is that they all want that damn spice.  Spice is cultivated on the planet Arrakis, or Dune, a desolate sand-covered planet; the only place where one can attain spice and thus total domination over the universe.  What protects the spice from any regular Joe-Schmoe getting at it?  Enormous man-eating worms, that’s what.  At least Lynch got to expand on his worm fixation.

I’ll refrain from putting in text the many characters that inhabit the different planets.  I will say the cast is fairly impressive and many went on to bigger and better roles.  The recognizable faces are: Patrick Stewart, Max von Sydow, Dean Stockwell, Sean Young, Virginia Madsen, and Eraserhead‘s own Henry, Jack Nance (almost unrecognizable without that pompadour).  The most impressive over-the-top performance comes from Kenneth McMillan as Baron Vladimir Harkkonen (see, I told you about the names).  He gets the chance to unspool some great weirdness in his role.  The disgusting pus-and-blood filled boils that crater his face; his ability to inflate his suit and hover around like a lumpy balloon; his crazed, madman line deliveries: he get props in the weird department.  He plays up his vileness quite nicely to cement his baddie status.

I don’t think Dune is complete garbage.  I’ve seen much worse.  The elaborate sets and ornate costumes are most impressive.  The Blu-ray picture quality is probably the best you’re ever going to get (is this the first Blu-ray film reviewed on this site?!?  Blu-ray is beautiful, and hopefully an expansion of weird titles is to come).  The colors are crisp and flaws are minimal.  Many of the set designs were created by the legendary H.R. Geiger of Alien fame (although he eventually dropped out of the production, many of his creations were still used).  Speaking of Alien, I saw many subtle similarities to other classic sci-fi films, with Star Wars leading the pack.  “May the force be with you” is changed to “may the hand of God be with you.”  Young Paul (MacLachlan) undergoes a training sequence very similar to the exercise blindfolded Luke Skywalker practiced on the Millennium Falcon; instead of a lightsaber, Paul uses some sort of laser gun to blast tips off harpoon spears that randomly thrust out of a fight simulator.

The action sequences and special effects are what bog this movie down to the depths of an over-blown ridiculous flop.  For as much money as this thing cost, it should have looked a whole lot better, even by 1984 standards.  The first action occurs when Paul trains in a battle simulation.  There’s a knife fight, but a force field shields the  combatants: it’s a box/cube that engulfs the person into something that looks straight out of Intellivision video games from three years earlier.  The final battle depicts heroic Paul in knife-combat with evil Harkkonen lackey Feyd, played by an insignificant Sting (looking like Sex Pistols-era John Lydon).  The fight is sloppily choreographed and lame.  Overall, a perfect descriptive term for this film… lame.

To get a final understanding of just how corny this movie can get, I’ll offer up three more tidbits in list form:

1. A dog (a pug) features in several scenes.  Paul lovingly strokes its fur aboard a spacecraft.  His father, the Duke, carries it around like an ornament.  Most hilarious, though, is the scene in which Patrick Stewart’s character charges and screams in full-blown battle mode while cradling the mongrel in his arms.  Where’s a wookie when you need one?
2. The guns that are controlled by screams and a certain pitch of voice.  A trigger needn’t be pulled.  Just yell.
3. The potential effectiveness of the giant worms is completely squelched when Paul and his comrades mount, harness, and ride them into battle like horses.

I’m sorry David, your film is lame.  You know it.  I know it.  Still, you managed to get some devout followers.  I just can’t figure out why.

The Blu-Ray additional features include very rough deleted scenes that add nothing of significance.  Special features document the making of Dune and its sometimes cringe-worthy special effects.  There are also segments on the various models, miniatures, and costume designs, which I find to be the only saving grace of the film.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a brilliant mistake, misguided from the start but still aesthetically satisfying… Those who give it a chance…  will be rewarded with something surreal and strangely evocative…”–Bill Gibron, PopMatters (Blu-ray)

David Lynch is a favorite of ours, and for a good reason. His forty-two second contribution is every bit as haunting as the rest of his work.

Floria Sigismondi, writer and director of The Runaways, has been getting a lot of attention recently, and after viewing her three-quarter of a minute segment, it’s easy to see why.

To see a few more shorts from this project (not all of them, unfortunately), visit the OneDreamRush YouTube page.

“My response to viewers who are puzzled by the plots is, I don’t think you’re so puzzled as you may think.  We all have a certain amount of intuition, and that is something that can be trusted and should be trusted… And so when you see something that’s abstract in a film, and you seem to be getting lost, the thing to do is to start talking to your friends, and they’ll say something and you’ll find yourself disagreeing with that, and realize that you really had formed opinions, and you had a scenario that made sense in your mind, and that’s valid.  We know more than we think.”—direct advice from David Lynch on understanding his films

DIRECTED BY: David Lynch

FEATURING: Laura Dern

PLOT: INLAND EMPIRE shifts around on a dozen tectonic plates of varying levels of surreality, but the unstable base layer involves Laura Dern as actress Nikki Grace cast in a melodrama based on an unproduced Polish screenplay which was abandoned as cursed after its two leads were murdered.  As she acts out the adulterous scenario, Grace becomes confused, coming to believe at times that she is the character in the screenplay.  After consummating a relationship with her handsome co-star, that reality slips away and Dern is seen playing several different characters, wandering around in a series of loosely interconnected sketches that involve (among other stories) an abused woman confessing her hatred of men to a psychiatrist, the lives of a gaggle of lip-syncing prostitutes, infidelity dramas, and a sobbing woman watching a room full of bunnies in an absurdist television sitcom.

BACKGROUND:

• The film began as a series of individual short films shot on digital video, as Lynch was exploring the new format.  After Laura Dern suggested working on a project with the director, Lynch later noticed recurring themes in the shorts he was shooting, and decided to put them together into a feature film.
• In his announcement for the movie and in interviews afterward, Lynch has said that he is done shooting on film and will work exclusively with digital video from now on, citing the greater freedom afforded by the format and going so far as to say that the idea of going back to film makes him feel “sick and weak.”
• Lynch reported that he wrote the film scene by scene, working without a finished script and trusting that connections would appear.
• The footage of the rabbits is recycled from a series of short films called “Rabbits” that was exclusively screened on davidlynch.com.
• Lynch has said he decided to title the movie INLAND EMPIRE after hearing Dern say that her husband hailed from that Southern California enclave, simply because he liked the sound of the words.
• Lynch invested his own money to get the film made.  He also distributed the film himself, thus facing no pressure to make cuts to the finished product.
• David Lynch himself sings on the soundtrack.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: The nattily-dressed, stiff and deliberately posed bunny-people from the series of short “Rabbit” films, who were so evocative that Lynch decided to give them a new home in INLAND EMPIRE.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD:  INLAND EMPIRE is David Lynch at his most deliberately

Trailer for INLAND EMPIRE

unhinged, experimenting with how far he can stray from linear narrative while still producing a work that feels thematically whole, searching for the minimum number of recurring images and themes needed to stitch a piece together so that it tantalizingly approaches coherence without ever actually resolving.

COMMENTS:  INLAND EMPIRE is a frustrating movie, or, more charitably put, a challenging one.  It is Lynch’s most doctrinally surreal movie; at three hours, it’s also his most bloated and self-indulgent picture.  Long stretches appear to be composed of unrelated scenes chopped up and inserted randomly, and yet, there is a sort of underlying plot.  There are also enough images echoing between the different storylines that our rational synapses start futilely firing, trying to make connections out of little hints that refuse to add up.  Parts are intriguing, parts are horrifically fascinating, parts are risible, and different viewers may not agree which parts fall into which categories.  At times it seems as if Lynch is playing a joke on those fans who insist on overanalyzing and constructing elaborate symbolic readings of his films by finally giving them something so self-contradictory and illogical that even the most pretentious cineaste throws up his hands in despair.  (If so, then that part of the experiment failed, as the briefest glance at the IMDB discussion boards for the film will prove).

After the critically successful Mulholland Drive (2001), Lynch had been spending most of his time directing shorts for his website.  The announcement of a new feature film from the legendary and eccentric director was a major event in hip Hollywood circles.   The announcement that he would be shooting the film entirely on digital video was a further novelty.  With so many roles to cast, distinguished actors were lining up to get a piece of INLAND EMPIRE. Many Lynch stalwarts show up in the film:  Grace Zabriske (Wild at Heart, “Twin Peaks”) has a crucial and campy role as the gypsy neighbor who delivers the bizarre and dire warning that sets the tone for the film.  Justin Theroux (Mulholland Drive) plays the suave leading man from the film-within-the-film.  Harry Dean Stanton (who has played five roles for Lynch, ranging from “The Cowboy and the Frenchman” to The Straight Story) steals a few scenes as a director’s assistant who’s hard up for cash.  Oscar-winner Jeremy Irons, who appeared in Wild at Heart, takes the film’s third meatiest role as the director of the cursed film script.  Diane Ladd (also in Wild at Heart) delivers a brief turn as a gossipy talk show host.  Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive) is also technically in the film, or at least her voice is.  Other major actors without Lynch connections agreed to appear in INLAND EMPIRE in roles beneath their stature. Julia Ormond accepts a very small but important role as Theroux’s fictional wife.  Oscar nominee William H. Macy reads a single meaningless line in his cameo as a television announcer, and Natassja Kinski and Mary Steenburgen have even tinier parts, essentially playing extras.

Despite this impressive lineup of thespians, the only actor who could be said to be featured in INLAND EMPIRE is Laura Dern; the film is virtually a one-woman show.  Dern plays at least three distinct roles in the film: actress Nikki Grace, the character Grace is portraying, Susan Blue, and an abused woman who delivers a long, chopped-up monologue.  She possibly plays as many as six or seven characters, depending on whether you chose to see the woman who fights with her husband when she announces she’s pregnant, the woman at the outdoor barbecue, or the woman who hangs out with the prostitutes as having a separate identity or not.  (Yes, it’s that kind of movie, where it’s impossible to count characters properly since some of them may actually be versions of existing personas seen at other times, or in alternate realities).  Dern’s face precisely reflects the experience of being trapped inside a David Lynch script; she goes through most of the movie wearing an expression of confusion and horror mixed together in varying ratios.  She shows great range, but more importantly she provides the film with an indispensable center.  In the hands of a lesser actress the movie could easily have fallen apart into complete fractured twaddle; Dern manages to hold it together.  Lynch pushed her for a “Best Actress” nomination, and were the Academy in the business of recognizing important artistic performances, she would have been nominated. No actress could have possibly meant as much to her film as Dern did to INLAND EMPIRE.

For a movie that is so baffling on its surface, and one that is composed partially out of recycled footage and scenes shot over a period of four years, there is a surprising amount of craft in the construction of the film.  The loose structure consists of two prologues, about an hours worth of only mildly odd development of the base plot involving Nikki Grace accepting a role in the film “On High in Blue Tomorrows,” followed by the nightmarish sequence of hallucinations that constitute the bulk of the movie, and ending with two epilogues.

The central parts of the movie are explained as well in the above synopsis as they will ever be, but I would like to highlight the existence of the two prologues and two epilogues, as they serve curious purposes.  Since INLAND EMPIRE is a non-linear movie, I’ll discuss the two epilogues first.  The first epilogue is notable because it ends the film on an unexpectedly happy note.  Despite the consistently hellish tone, Lynch ends on a weirdly hopeful note as a minor character appears to reunite with a family we don’t know and had no clue she was estranged from.  The second epilogue continues the uplift over the credits, bringing back long-suffering Laura Dern, now happy and blowing kisses, as dancers perform a routine and lip-sync to Nina Simone’s magnificent “Sinnerman.”  This closing credit sequence is surprising and almost shockingly cheerful.  It’s like a wrap party—although, since it’s a David Lynch film, the party includes a one-legged woman, a monkey, and a lumberjack.

The first prologue is a surreal montage of elements that will recur later in the movie: the black and white closeup of the phonograph needle, the tear-stained face of the “Lost Girl” as she watches the TV showing the Lynchian sitcom “Rabbits.”  The purpose of this lengthy introduction is to remind viewers they are watching a truly weird film, so they can’t argue later on that they were cheated when reality breaks down.  The second prologue is one of the more memorable sequences in the film: Grace Zabriske, playing a neighbor with ruddy apple cheeks and a voice like a female Bela Lugosi, wanders over to greet her new neighbor, the actress Nikki Grace.  In the course of the conversation, she tells Old World folktales about Evil and Lost Girls, reveals herself as a mystical and not necessarily friendly being who knows something of Nikki’s future, and in the end catapults Nikki one day into the future in one of the strangest flash forwards you will ever see on film.

That second prologue reveals one of the things that Lynch does so well, that separates him from less subtle surrealists who like to jar the audience with whiplash transitions.  Lynch builds individual scenes by starting with a completely ordinary event—a neighbor coming over to introduce herself—and allow circumstances to slowly grow weirder, evolving the audience’s anxiety through the growing uncanniness of the situation.  Zabriske’s speech to Dern grows slowly and subtly stranger by steps as their meeting progresses, and Dern’s expression moves from slightly quizzical to slightly fearful, until Zabriske explodes with menace and sends Dern hurtling into the next scene and the next day.  It’s a slow-burn transition from the everyday to the blisteringly weird that Lynch uses again and again in the dialogues and monologues here—never so effectively as when a homeless person begins by insisting that the bus to Pomona stops at the corner and ends on a revelation so strange and sickening that her companion upbraids her for it.

Some individual scenes move with a sort of extended, if impossible, logic.  It’s not that Lynch doesn’t abruptly jerk us from one layer of reality to another—we frequently observe a man clutching a lightbulb between his teeth, then suddenly find ourselves watching an out-of-context dramatic snippet enacted by Poles.  At other times, though, Lynch effects smoothly surrealistic transitions.  Sometimes the change is morphological: characters end a dramatic scene in a particular positions, and the next scene fades in with the bunny-people standing in exactly the same posture.  Other times, there is an impossible but logical flow between scenes.  One long sequence begins with a nasty flashback to a scene of marital strife; moves to a scene of what may be the same or a different character confessing to her psychiatrist; she leaves when the doctor gets a phone call and emerges onto Hollywood Boulevard as yet another character; she is stabbed, staggers over to where a trio of homeless people lie and falls down dying; when she expires, the shot pulls back to reveal the director filming the scene; Dern stands up and wanders into the next set piece…  There is an illogical but recognizable cause and effect sequence during this stretch, but Lynch doesn’t always adhere to his own rules.  It’s not that the director is thoroughly irrational and unpredictable throughout the film; it’s that he alternates herky-jerky changes with smooth ones, completely absurd scenes with completely naturalistic (although incongruous) ones.  The effect is a sort of semi-logic that keeps appearing and disappearing, and keeps us more off balance than if he had simply moved randomly from one story to the next.  That’s part of the power of INLAND EMPIRE: Lynch tantalizingly constructs a “sort-of” story rather than a non-story, and the way in which he teases our narrative expectations shows a mastery that lesser surrealists can’t muster.

Besides the way he handles transitions, Lynch uses one other trick to give INLAND EMPIRE a false coherence.  He sprinkles the script with little objects and concepts that recur in separate stories.  A partial list: the number 47, wondering what time it is, confusion between today and tomorrow, a ringing phone, affairs, murders, a screwdriver-inflicted wound, whores, scenes of a wife revealing she’s pregnant that are repeated with slight variations between different sets of characters, the line of dialogue “Look at me and tell me if you’ve known me before.”  (Devoted students of the movie could probably come up with a dozen more examples or repeated motifs).  You could build your own a backstory out these elements—an unrevealed tragedy of your imagination—but Lynch is interested in constructing not a puzzle, but the appearance of a puzzle.  These echos provide a semblance of continuity between the different stories, but the dots he provides are deliberately unconnectable.  To the extent this technique resonates with a viewer, it gives the movie a mysterious universality and timelessness.

Despite the care that went into constructing the scenario, critics of the movie do have a point.  There is a lot of recycling here, not just of footage from earlier Lynch projects, but of themes and repeated ideas.  The scene where the hookers break out into a tension-breaking rendition of “Locomotion” is a Lynchian cliché I could have done without.  At three hours, the film is bloated: there is simply too much material for it all to be top-notch Lynch.  A lot of surrealistic fat could have been cut; there is the nagging feeling that there might have been a two hour masterpiece hiding inside this three hour odyssey.  In interviews given after INLAND EMPIRE‘s premiere, Lynch cites one of the cardinal rules of filmmaking: “you never turn down a good idea, but you never take a bad idea.” Ironically, he broke his own rule, and thereby missed out on the opportunity to create a truly special film, instead producing the insistently noteworthy movie that is INLAND EMPIRE.  Lynch edited and distributed the film himself so that he could have complete control, but the movie was desperately in need of a no-man; someone to stand up to the auteur and explain that this part isn’t working, the film is meandering right now and in danger of losing it’s momentum, let’s tighten this up by including only your best ideas.

INLAND EMPIRE is a movie that could only come from David Lynch.  It’s not just that it could only come from the mind of David Lynch, though it is so shot through with his peculiar obsessions and fetishes that that statement is, of course, true.  But no other director could attract such top-flight talent to work on a plotless, scriptless, prospectless project.  INLAND EMPIRE is bloated, narcissistic and self-indulgent, but in this context, those are not necessarily bad things.  A bombastic Lynch is far preferable to a timid Lynch.  INLAND EMPIRE is far from David Lynch’s best picture, but it is his most Lynchian.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…this film-within-a-film casts an enveloping shadow over Nikki, leading her real and reel lives to blur.  The reeler it gets, the weirder it gets… Like the surrealist practice of automatic writing, the film feels as if it could have been made in a trance, dredged up from within.”–Manohla Dargis, The New York Times (contemporaneous)

“The resulting grab bag of Lynchian motifs and methods—grotesque character actors, saccharine pop music, grind-house camp, horror clichés, gratuitous gore, chipmunk voices, jejune sex play, theatrical tableaux, and mystical hokum—quickly devolves into self-parody.”–Richard Brody, The New Yorker (contemporaneous)

“The great eroto-surrealist David Lynch has gone truffling for another imaginary orifice of pleasure, with results that are fascinating, sometimes very unwholesome, and always enjoyable.”–Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian (contemporaneous)

OFFICIAL SITE: INLAND EMPIRE:: Bim Distribuzione – this offering from Inland Empire‘s Italian distributor seems to be the last official website left standing

IMDB LINK: Inland Empire (2006)

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

David Lynch (interview) – Post Inland Empire interview and Q&A with Lynch hosted by British film critic Mark Kermode; features both a transcript and video clips

Lynch invades an ‘Empire’ - one of the first media reports announcing Inland Empire‘s production; it raises a lot of questions as to what the film would be about, few of which were answered by the finished product

David Lynch’s Latest Endeavor Breaks New Ground – recording of the radio piece on the film from National Public Radio, incorporating interviews with Lynch and Dern

Inland Empire Page at The Auteurs – contains a five-minute film clip, and discussions about the movie

What is David Lynch’s Inland Empire About? – readers of The Guardian‘s film blog attempt to answer the title question

YouTube: Nate and Matt meet David Lynch (and a cow) –  two Los Angelinos chronicle their meeting with David Lynch on film as he campaigns for an Academy Award nomination for Laura Dern

Inland Empire Cinema – this blog styles itself the “official” website of the movie, but it appears to be a poorly updated fansite; perhaps it was once an official site whose domain name expired and was seized by a squatter.

DVD INFO: The Absurda/Rhino two-disc release (buy) features the three hour movie on disc 1, plus a second disc full of extra features which expand the world of INLAND EMPIRE for those who felt there were too few rooms in Lynch’s rambling mansion.  The key supplemental offering is “More Things That Happened,” a collection of about 70 minutes worth of deleted scenes (even though it’s a movie in itself, this featurette arguably should have been a lot longer).  Other bonuses are the short film “Ballerina”; “Lynch 2,” a behind-the-scenes reel; a 40-minute interview with Lynch; stills and trailers; and Lynch’s recipe for quinoa.

This movie was nominated for review by reader “Ayla.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.

DIRECTED BY: David Lynch

FEATURING: Harry Dean Stanton, Jack Nance, Catherine Coulson

PLOT: A series of six short films spanning director David Lynch’s career from the

1960s through the 1990s.  We track Lynch from his early years as a highly experimental student to a macabre master of the darkly surreal with these films that show a man who needed to grow and challenge himself as a creative force.

WHY IT’S ON THE BORDERLINE: As collections of short films go, this is one of the most mercurial and hard-to-peg I’ve ever seen.  There’s really no denying the odd nature of Lynch’s efforts.  The first film alone, a minute-long animated loop of six hideous plaster sculptures throwing up,  stands as a timeless testament to Lynch’s nightmarish creative vision.  And the gut-wrenching scope of his silent feature, entitled “The Grandmother”, is a window into the mind of a radically different artist than the one Lynch has become.  But, honestly, the quality and sheer atmosphere present in most of Lynch’s features feels absent here, and there’s not enough memorable material to consider this a momentous release.

COMMENTS:  Much like a renowned painter or an extremely colorful luchador, a filmmaker’s work becomes more lionized as his fame grows, even his mistakes.  David Lynch is a very famous filmmaker, so it’s only appropriate that this assortment of short subjects should come out to cement his status as an iconic artist and a true visionary in the world of the nightmarish and the utterly bizarre.  But those die-hard fans of the man who seek a diamond in the rough here, a Pollack behind the frame of this small cache of movies, will likely find themselves disappointed, or at the very least conflicted.

If short films represent the transformation of a filmmaker as as he/she goes from one project to another, this gathering of shorts spanning Lynch’s career is a shadowy, rocky road.  Half of these films don’t desire to be much more than insubstantial experiments, hokey dumping grounds for ideas that are really just there to try something out.  They merely exist in a tangible form for the consumer because of the marketable name of Lynch, not because they actually have some sort of deliciously demented merit and are worth seeing for any length of time.  And while the three that are good are indeed very good, it’s easy to put this one on the borderline with the vibes I get from the other three.

Let’s break it down by feature, shall we?

“Six Figures getting Sick (Six Times)” – A minute long film loop featuring a set of six hideous sculptures, their faces locked in esoteric agony, as vomit and nonsensical animated mess is drawn on top of them while a siren blares in the background.  It is, in essence, Lynch’s first piece of work, and honestly there’s not much to say.  It’s an experiment; a bold experiment, to be sure, that leaves you with a sense of unease, but it’s only worth watching to sate curiosity and say, “Hey, I just saw Lynch’s first movie EVER!”

“The Alphabet” – A superior take on Lynch’s conceptual animation, this one, at a mere 4 minutes, has more of the verve and deep-seated weirdness of his later works. Halved between real footage of a strange woman being tormented by unknown forces and an animated short with letters morphing and killing each other in a macabre, borderline hilarious fashion while creepy children recite the alphabet, “The Alphabet” is less of a throwaway project and more of a statement than its predecessor, and a good addition in this collection.  Keep an ear out for the Monty Python-esque noises emanating from some of the letters!

“The Grandmother” – This is easily the best one of the bunch.  Shot in 1970, this glorious 35mm beauty is Lynch’s first narrative.  It is a silent feature about a boy wanting someone’s care and attention.  His parents are mean and neglectful, so he makes the obvious decision to grow his own Grandmother by planting some seeds (OF COURSE!).  “The Grandmother” succeeds by keeping the narrative simple and the mood very surreal.  The odd, experimental music that moves the narrative along is wonderfully bizarre, and will haunt you long after you’ve turned off the film.  This is a stunning reminder that when Lynch cuts the melodrama and opts for something less pedestrian, he can make art that sings high from the rooftops into the twisted dreams of men.  After you’ve seen it, try getting the image of the young boy’s creepy grandmother cradling him in her arms out of your head; it’s not easy.

“The Amputee” - Lynch’s debut on video, “The Amputee” is another experiment we could have done without.  Literally, the only reason this thing was made was to test out different video stocks.  It is a single scene in which Catherine Coulson is an amputee sitting in a chair writing a very banal letter to someone while David Lynch himself changes her horribly bloody bandages.  That’s it.  Is it strange?  Yes.  But it’s incredibly pointless, and it has no artistic value to speak of.

“The Cowboy and the Frenchman” -  This is without a doubt the worst short here.  And it has the second longest run time, to boot!  I know there are people who will defend this short up and down, but this really is the antithesis of anything artistic, funny, or good.  I love Lynch, but I am ashamed to have seen this short.  Created for French television, this 1988 release is about a Frenchman wandering into a dude ranch run by Harry Dean Stanton, the cowboy.  There’s a big language barrier at first, but with the help of a very altruistic Indian and some mutual understanding, the cowboys and the French guy have a rip-roaring good time.  Whoo.  I’m sure Lynch intended this to be comedic, much as Jim Jarmusch likes to add “comedic” elements to his work that stick out as unnaturally as a stove pipe protruding from a tree, but this was awful, and my only bit of good news about this is that it steadily declines in awfulness as the short goes on.  The end is almost tolerable, but I posit that the first ten minutes hurt too much for that to make much difference.

“Lumiere: Premonitions Following An Evil Deed” - One of my personal favorites, this fifty second short was submitted as part of the Lumiere project in the mid 1990s, which called together all the great directors of the day and presented them with the challenge of making a short film with the very first motion picture camera, developed by the Lumiere brothers.  Having seen the entire Lumiere Project, with all the amazing directors they scrounged up, I must admit that Lynch’s was by far the best, beating out artists like Spike Lee, John Boorman, and Wim Wenders.  The Lumiere camera could only hold about 52 seconds of film, had no sound capabilities, and realistically only three takes could have been shot with it, so Lynch had to work within these constraints, but what comes out of it is sheer madness that really speaks to his talents as a director.  There isn’t a narrative to speak of, but all we know is that a murder has taken place, there is a nude Asian woman being held captive in a tank of water somewhere, and a family’s nervous quality time is interrupted by what looks to be a darkened, deformed man.  The music is eerie and intense, the bad film quality adds to the ambiance, and all together I think it is a definite artistic success.

So in the end, we see that Lynch is an artist who, above all things, wants to push the medium and the message of his work to a very unseen, intangible new realm.  In the evolution of his craft, we can see that quest made manifest through miniature triumphs and pitfalls.  As a collection, this is certainly a dream for devoted Lynch fans and anyone interested in how to make a short that’s far from normal.  But for those hungry for art or a deeper meaning, it’s rough traveling through the thoughts of such a scattered and incongruous soul, especially when his experiments and failures are piled onto his legacy, such as they are.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“These six unnervingly surreal slices may vary in their quality and impact, but they are well nigh unmissable for anyone devoted to Lynch’s special brand of cherry pie.”–Anton Bitel, Film 4

Art College in the early 1980’s was gloriously anti-academia.  It was the type of atmosphere where even a hint of succumbing to systematic, structured, aesthetic thinking could lead to excommunication.  You learned what you had to learn, or rather you learned what you were exposed to, and got the hell out to face the mercenary art scene while you worked random piss jobs.  This was the calling and nature of your priesthood.

Although nothing, no one, was sacred, we did have artists, those prophetic voices, we intensely identified with.  David Lynch was one of the new, exciting, unrelenting voices.  He was one of our two Davidic prophets, the other being David Byrne, who ignited our excitement when he appeared in oversized suit, singing to a swaying lamp in front of projected poetry in Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense.

When we saw Eraserhead (1977), we had braced ourselves beforehand.  Of course, we had heard the rumors even before someone obtained a print for screening at The John Herron School of Art.  Naturally, some of the VC (visual communications) students showed up, long enough to tear themselves away from their whipped cream dreams of illustrating X-Men comic books and listening to Duran Duran, to launch their all too predictable assaults.  It would have been disappointing if they hadn’t.  It only took a few moments for those monotonous, robotic voices belonging to the religious cult of linear thinking to spew their dull bitching.  As always, they did it obnoxiously loud when their fragile, conformability zone had been too easily threatened.  It was slightly disappointing that there were no punches thrown, but it came threateningly close to that.  One female voice whined out, “This is so unrealistic!” That was followed by several calls of “f*** you” and “shut the f*** up.”

Of course, there just had to be one feigning voice that uttered the predictable ‘”Man, I think I’d love this if I just had some acid.” That was followed by several more calls of “f*** you”, and “shut the f*** up, you idiot.”  Lynch had done it.  The only other screenings that had pulled that off were John Waters’ Pink Flamingos and Roman Polanksi’s Repulsion.  The showing of Eraserhead intensely surpassed both of those esteemed screenings.  The screening had been unpredictable, dangerous, something akin to a chest-shoving match.

After the conservative VC wimps had departed, we were bristling with conversation and excitement.  Sperm, Jack Nance’s hair, grime, industrial waste, animated roast chicken, sperm, seedy banality, smoke, wood, odorous sex, dark intestinal fluid, sperm, mutated fetus flesh, dirt, rusted metal, crackling Fats Waller songs, black humor, sperm, a Radiator Lady, rusted metal, alienation, feverish masturbatory dreams, more sperm, and Jack Nance’s eyebrows, were all sculpted in Lynch’s enigmatic, dangerously perverse, phantasmagoric nightmare.  Interpretations were fast and furious, nervously bandied back and forth.  Was it post-holocaust, surreal dehumanization?  Was it post-modern, second coming allegory?  You did not make the mistake of saying that you “got it,” which would have violated the art school biblical code of anti-elitism elitism.

Lynch had been a painter and he made film like a painter.  He spoke our language and was a bonafide, artfag antidote to status quo Reaganism.  We sought out Elephant Man (1980) and yes, he could make a straightforward narrative, this one being the needed “f*** you” to the VC crowd who whined out lame defenses for their inability to evolve past their comprehension levels; defenses like “You call that art? My grandmother could do that and she’s 83,” or, the even more predictably common defense, “pretentious bulls***.”

The underrated Dune (1984) came next and that was hotly debated.  The sci-fi geeks were amusingly offended.  Even Lynch himself felt it was a disaster, but the film is replete with flashes of undeniable and unforgettable brilliance.  It may yet garner its due recognition.

Blue Velvet (1986) turned Lynch into a semi-cult star and was a comeback of sorts for Dennis Hopper and Dean Stockwell.  Hopper’s “You’re so f***ing suave” was mimicked for days after.  Even some of the mainstream critics and VC students, now fearing to appear “unhip” (like we gave a goddamn anyway) got caught up in the film’s instant popular cult status, soliciting a well deserved “F*** you. Told you so,” when they belatedly, feebly attempted to acknowledge Lynch’s potential validity as a filmmaker.  Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, and Kyle MacLachlan were true blue, on the edge sex symbols (an extreme rarity).  On reflection, it was probably the film’s pronounced sadomasochism that made it an accidental hit in the first place.

The 1980s overstayed its welcome.  Divine and Edith Massey were dead, David Bowie was securely in a blonde pop phase, Pee Wee Herman was banished for something that surprised none of his long term fans, David Byrne was transforming into an egotistical monster, and, while he and John Waters were still clever, they were both losing that fun, obsessive art edge.  David Cronenberg and George Romero still counted, but would Lynch?

1990’s Wild at Heart was an indication that he would.  It was possibly his best film to date.  This 1960’s type sexually charged, surreal Oz road trip actually brought out good acting from Nicolas Cage and featured Laura Dern at her trashiest, sexy best.

Then came the mercifully brief, frenzied phenomenon of “Twin Peaks.”  It was hip, eventful, and jolted television audiences (who forever deserve to be jolted).  “Twin Peaks” was also quite good (well, it started out that way), but its faddish, mass popularity was far more unpredictable and more unsettling that the show itself.  Less surprising was its amazingly quick fall from grace, and there was probably a sigh of relief when it did crash.

While Lynch whittled away time desperately trying to salvage the train wreck of “Peaks,” the utterly bland 1990s was coming to a close.  Lynch broke his long silence with the uneven, compelling Lost Highway (1997), followed by the superbly narrative Straight Story (1999), but he no longer really mattered.

Lynch could and did still produce vital work, but he had settled into a quiet work habit.  He no longer, electrified, ignited or excited.  Lynch had, of course, developed a considerable fan base, which, in itself, was embarrassing.  For those of us that had followed his pre-”Twin Peaks” work, while it was new and fresh, the very idea of a Lynch fan base was an oxymoron.  Lynch seemed the type to defy ever inspiring a fan base or religious following.  With “Twin Peaks,” Lynch had simply become too symbolic a figure for the trendy “cutting edge.”  Most of those hard-line fans denied any flaws in his work, any missteps.  For them, “Twin Peaks” was Lynch’s misunderstood gospel, something akin to Palazzeschi’s accepted, then criminally rejected Man of Smoke.

But, Lynch had flirted with, and been ostracized by, television, of all things.  One could accept Spielberg working in television, but Lynch was slumming it, despite whatever intentions he may have had.  There could be no greater symbolism of mainstream acceptance than the unimaginative, assembly line production of television.  Never mind that, perhaps, Lynch’s goal was to bring to that aesthetically dead medium, an Ernie Kovacs-like spirit at the edge of the improvisational event.  Never mind that he failed.

The post-”Twin Peaks” Lynch fans were hollow and faddish, preeminently recognizing Lynch’s originality through his, ultimately weaker, work in television.  In the film school circuit it was no longer couth to “study Lynch.”  He lacked the feverish introverted obsession of Cronenberg, and was, unforgivably, a rich man’s Buñuel (Buñuel was acclaimed, but never lost touch with his underground, dirt status).  Lynch had promised and failed to deliver a new, messianic-like purity in the artistic medium of film (i.e., he wasn’t Tarkovsky).

2001′s Mulholland Drive, excellent as it was in its Kenneth Anger like sodomizing of a decadent Hollywood, insultingly garnered an Academy Award nomination (Hollywood loves to appear hip by nominating films critical of its industry), and this was a further source of embarrassment for and concerning Lynch.

One could feel Lynch’s pain at the nomination nod and empathize with the subsequent paths he has taken.  Lynch followed this with a few chamber-like collections of shorts, which his fans practically wet themselves over in expressing their “alternative” adulation.  In reality, the shorts appeared to be Lynch “reaching.”

It was a bit like David Bowie, trying to get back to his roots.  Thankfully, he escaped his larger appeal stage, but was unable to re-capture the influential glory of the “artist unplugged.”  In the meantime, other voices had emerged from the wilderness.  It was perhaps only fitting that Isabella Rossellini was now making the hailed surrealist artwork of the day with Guy Maddin rather than David Lynch.  Maddin and Lars Von Trier possess a true, indomitable, quirky auteur quality that could compete with, and eclipse the David Lynch of the 1980s.  They could, quite readily, be considered more potent, more vital forces in the art film medium of the near, foreseeable future.

For 2006’s Inland Empire, Lynch went one step further in proclaiming his “underground status” by shooting the film on video.  If he was reaching in the shorts, then he was grasping with Empire.

Empire divided even the most dedicated of Lynchians 50/50.  In one camp, there are those who consider it a pale, muddled, repetitive rehash of all the Lynch films that came before.  In the other camp, are those who feel Empire is the most crystallized, most evolved example of Lynch’s art.  I agree with the later, but regardless of stance, Laura Dern is amazing.  She gives the film its organic meat and heart with an indisputably humanist performance, not an easy task to maintain amidst abstract expressionist chaos.

Since 2006, David Lynch has seemed to be on yet another sabbatical and may jolt us again, but in art one must kill one’s father, as Picasso killed his many fathers and as De Kooning killed him.

Try as he might, Lynch is not the equivalent of a wild-eyed, aged Xenakis, or a 101-year-old Elliott Carter still inserting pins underneath our nails.  Von Trier and Maddin are among the new prophetic crop that has rendered Lynch’s a hopelessly quaint, comparatively impotent art.  The 21st century David Lynch might identify with the 21st century Simon Rattle.  Once, he could do no wrong.  Now, he can do no right, regardless.  David Lynch is dead now, and that might just free him.

DISCUSSED IN THIS ARTICLE:

1. Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle 3 (2002) . Only the third of Barney’s epic Cremaster Cycle, made over an eight year period, has made it’s way to any type of video release, which is criminally unfortunate. The Guggenheim Museum, who financed it, exhibits the Cycle and describes it as a  ”a self-enclosed aesthetic system consisting of five feature-length films that explore the processes of creation.”  Trailers are available on the Cremaster website; www.cremaster.net. The third movie is available via Amazon and other outlets, albeit at expensive prices [Ed. Note: the version of Cremaster 3 that's commercially available is not actually the full movie, but a 30 minute excerpt that's still highly collectible as the only Cremaster footage released].  The Cremaster Cycle is complex, challenging, provocative and not for the attention span-challenged.

2. Guy Maddin‘s Dracula-Pages from a Virgin’s Diary (2002). Guy’s Dracula ballet, choreographed to Mahler.  Just when you though nothing more could be done with this old, old story.  Of course, we are talking Mr. Maddin here.

3. Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf (1968). Bergman’s ode to German Expressionism has been labeled his sole horror film. Hour is a further continuation of frequent Bergman themes—the defeated artist, loss of God, nihilism—and stars Bergman regular Max Von Sydow.  Some find this dull and slow, others find it mesmerizing and nightmarish.

4. Roman Polanski‘s The Tenant (1976) returned this consummate craftsman back to the territory of Repulsion and remains one of his best films.  Polanski is now facing extradition charges for having sexual relations with a willing, underage girl thirty years ago, who he has paid millions to and already served jail time for.  Meanwhile, several followers of the man that butchered his wife and unborn child forty years ago walk free.  Now that’s true American Horror Hypocrisy for you.

5. Frank Perry’s The Swimmer (1968) almost feels like something from Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone. This sublime, allegorical, surreal work is almost too beautiful, too haunting, and too unique for words.  Burt Lancaster, as usual in his mid to late career, is superb as the suburban middle age swimmer who decides to go home on a bright sunny day by swimming through all the neighborhood pools.  The dreaded conclusion is as inevitable as it is draining.

6. David Lynch‘s Inland Empire (2006), shot on video, is a beautifully textured film.  It almost seems like Lynch is in a return to form that, perhaps, began with Mulholland Drive. Laura Dern plays numerous, angst-ridden characters in a  plot that might be described as dissonant film noir.

7. David Cronenberg‘s Crash (1996), based off the J.G. Ballard novel, aptly divided and provoked critics, as well as viewers. The film is as cold, metallic, and dissecting as it’s subject.

8.William Beaudine’s Sparrows (1926). Yes, Beaudine  could actually direct once, and this one is a “high melodrama” Mary Pickford silent that just happens to be her best film.  She is the charge of dastardly Simon Legree’s orphan slaves. There are  swamps, alligators, climatic chases, dead children, and a cameo by Jesus.  If it sounds like pure schlock, it is, but done right.

9. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932). The Vampire is dispatched by suffocating in flour.  The imagery is startling, and the whole film casts a hypnotic, becalmed milieu.  If you thought Tod Browning’s Dracula was static… Criterion finally released a worthwhile copy on dvd.

10. Damon Zex‘s Waking Nightmare. Former public access underground college cult hero Zex tackles the grand guignol, Zex style.  What’s that mean? Well, one could start with Zex Zombie performing cunnilingus on Tamara and eating her bloodied tampon right out of her. Move from that to Zex’s  Evil Tarot Torture.

11. Richard Elfman’s Forbidden Zone (1982). Even the midnight cult crowd can’t unanimously handle this one.  It was unavailable for half of forever, but there were some of us who waited with pins and needles for this mix of Oingo Boingo (recall when Elfman wasn’t repetitive?) , Minnie the Moocher, Herve Villechaize, and Satan himself in one glorious, inexplicable brew.

12. Mack V. Wright’s  Riders of the Whistling Skull (1937).  Energetic B-Western horror with standby cow dude Bob Livingston.  Bob finds  a curse in skull temple and ends up battling Satan-worshiping natives and mummies.  Pass the popcorn and loads of butter, please.

13. Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers (1967).  At one point Reeves seemed like the  horror genre’s new L’enfant terrible.  He made this and the superb Witchfinder General. Then, he was dead at 25 from a drug overdose.  Karloff is actually good again, possibly because he is somewhat cast against type, but Catherine Lacey is even better.  They are an elderly couple who have invented some kind of mumbo jumbo scientific device where they can experience youth again by inhabiting the body of a young man (60′s genre stud Ian Ogilvy)  who…  oh, the plot doesn’t really matter. This voyeuristic black comedy has got style aplenty.

DIRECTED BY:  David Lynch

FEATURING: Jack Nance

PLOT:  Henry is a factory worker living in a dingy apartment in a desolate urban nowhere.  His girlfriend Mary’s mother informs him the girl has given birth to his child–although Mary objects, “Mother, they’re still not sure it is a baby!”  Henry and Mary get married and care for the monstrous, reptilian, constantly crying infant until Mary can take no more and deserts the family, leaving Henry alone to care for the mutant and to dream of the oatmeal-faced woman who lives inside his radiator and sings to him about the delights of heaven.

BACKGROUND:

• Eraserhead was started with a $10,000 grant from the American Film Institute while Lynch was a student at their conservatory.  Initially, the 21 or 22 page script was intended to run about 40 minutes.  Lynch kept adding details, like the Lady in the Radiator (who was not in the original script), and the movie eventually took five years to complete.
• When Lynch ran out of money from the AFI, the actress Sissy Spacek and her husband, Hollywood production designer Jack Fisk, contributed money to help complete the film.  Fisk also played the role of the Man in the Planet.
• Lynch slept in the set used for Henry’s apartment for a year while making the film.
• After the initial screening, Lynch cut 20 minutes off of the film.  Little of the excised footage survives.
• Eraserhead was originally distributed by Ben Barenholtz’s Libra Films and was marketed as a “midnight movie” like their previous underground sensation, El Topo (1970).
• Based on the success of Eraserhead, Lynch was invited to create the mainstream drama The Elephant Man (1980)  for Paramount, a huge critical success for which he received the first of his three “Best Director” nominations at the Academy Awards.
• Jack Nance had at least a small role in four other Lynch movies, and played Pete Martell in Lynch’s television series, “Twin Peaks.”   His scenes in the movie adaptation Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1990) were deleted. Nance died in 1997 after being struck in the head in an altercation at a doughnut shop.
  
• Lynch has written that when he was having difficulty with the direction the production was heading, he read a Bible verse that tied the entire vision together for him, although he has refused to cite the verse and in a recent interview actually claims to have forgotten it.

INDELIBLE IMAGE:  The iconic image is Henry, wearing that expression permanently lodged between the quizzical and the horrified, with the peak of his absurd pompadour glowing in the light as suspended eraser shavings float and glitter behind him.  Of course, Eraserhead is nothing if not a series of indelible images, so others may find the scarred man who sits by the broken window, the mutant infant, or the girl in the radiator to be the vision that haunts their nightmares.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD:  Eraserhead is probably the greatest recreation of a nightmare ever

Original trailer for Eraserhead

filmed, a marvelous and ambiguous mix of private and cosmic secrets torn from the subconscious. Or, as Lynch puts it, it’s “a dream of dark and disturbing things.”

COMMENTS:  When you tell people you are interested in “weird” movies, I’d wager at least half the time they respond with, “You mean like Eraserhead?“

“Normal” folks despise this film.  The most common complaint is that the imagery is needlessly repulsive, followed by an objection that it’s incomprehensible and meaningless, followed by an accusation that it’s slow and boring.  Eraserhead is intense; it’s like being thrust into someone else’s expertly produced nightmare.  There are no comforting narrative guideposts, no way to predict what is coming next.  Eraserhead absorbs you into its own warped world, and the experience is simply too unpleasant for many.  No one can be convinced to admire it, but it’s one of the must-see features in the weird canon.  And, like it or hate it, with its unique textures and anxious rhythms Eraserhead expands the possibilities of what film can achieve, making it a landmark film for anyone interested in the art of cinema.

Eraserhead is totally original in every element: the look, the sound, and the feel.  Despite the tremendous waves the film made after release and its imposing underground reputation, it’s remarkable that so few filmmakers who followed have attempted to imitate Eraserhead’s overall style (Elevator Movie [2004] is one film that does mine similar territory, with limited success).  The style of later Lynch films has proven much easier for poseurs to copy, but as a whole Eraserhead remains inimitable, which is one suggestion of its greatness.

Lynch has said that the look of Eraserhead was inspired by Philadelphia (a point that the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce fails to mention in its brochures).  It just as easily could have been modeled after any decaying northeastern U.S. city.  Henry’s world is an expressionistic urban hellhole; rubble lines the empty streets, and industrial fixtures, smoke and steam are everywhere.  His squalid apartment has a window that doesn’t exactly look out on a brick wall; it appears that the bricks have been laid directly on top of the window pane.  The sparse and ruined look of Henry’s world has led many to assume that Eraserhead takes place in some post-apocalyptic future, although no other internal evidence justifies that leap.

The black and white cinematography is extraordinary; each frame is packed with visual textures, from the industrial to the organic.  Any still selected at random demonstrates extraordinary detail and composition.  In the prelude to the love scene between Henry and his neighbor across the hall, the most dimly lit sequence in the film, Lynch’s use of the inky end of the grayscale is incredible; the lovers faces blink out of existence in the darkness, then slowly fade back into frame as they move out of the shadows.  Ignoring the content of the movie and viewing it simply as a work of photography, Eraserhead is a masterpiece of craftsmanship.

Using low-budget ingenuity, the film creates several startling visual effects.  The baby itself is a masterpiece of instinctive horror, and Lynch was careful to never explain how it was made.  There is a (to my knowledge unsubstantiated) rumor that it was created from, or modeled after, a calf fetus; whatever the case, it’s an alien, reptilian thing.  Makeup is simple but effective; the radiator girl looks like Shirley Temple, but with grotesquely puffy cheeks.  Lynch even manages to create his own planet for the film.  Although none of the effects would be mistaken for CGI, the monochrome color scheme is forgiving, and the props and makeup do have the perfect qualities to convey a strange and alien visual message that reinforces the odd narrative.

The sound design, by future Academy Award winner Alan Splet, is crucial to Eraserhead’s power to draw us into its world.  There is hardly a moment of complete silence in the film; whatever we are seeing is always accompanied, at the very least, by a distant industrial hum.  Lynch and Splet seemed acutely aware of the omnipresence of machines in our world, and they draw attention to the ever present background buzz of electric filaments and the drone of distant machines working with mysterious purpose.  These mechanical noises, which vary in pitch and intensity, blend with the sound of a howling wind (a noise especially associated with the mysterious planet) in an ever shifting soundscape that mixes in off-key organ chords or bowed cellos and rises to an onerous howl during particularly intense sequences.  The ceaseless bleating of Henry’s baby–a sound which is fearful because it’s not quite human, but one that also engages our sympathy because it is so clearly a cry of distress–is haunting.

Lynch’s directorial style forces the visual and sonic elements to the forefront.  The film is deliciously slow-paced, like a silent film; it even plays for more than ten minutes before the first line of dialogue is spoken.  Lynch holds a single shot for far longer than another director would, allowing us time to soak up the detail in the frame.  In a faster-paced film we might miss the fact that Henry constantly wears a pocket protector to protect his suit from leaking pens, and oddly prophylactic character trait in a man who has supposedly fathered an illegitimate child.  At times, this slow pace is deliberately disturbing, as when the elevator door in Henry’s lobby takes what seems like forever to close; we are left with an uncomfortable feeling, although Henry stands there impassive and expressionless.  There is a constant social awkwardness throughout the film; characters pause and stare for just a bit too long before responding to simple questions, creating an isolated, alienated ambiance.

Thankfully, the film is more than just an unending, unbearable parade of drawn-out disturbances.  Lynch’s eye finds the beauty amidst squalor and despair as well as any filmmaker ever has.  There is enough humor in the film to lighten the way, although much of it is so subtle and absurd that it may take a second viewing to appreciate it.  The uneasy dinner with Mary’s family is a minor masterpiece of black comedy; Mary’s comatose grandmother helps toss the salad, despite being completely paralyzed, and the new manmade chickens Henry is asked to carve squirm their legs when poked with a fork.  Lynch also inserts a mild slapstick moment into one of Henry’s dreams in order to break the tension.

But even more than the occasional comedy, what elevates Eraserhead above a mere mood piece is the drama.  The world Henry inhabits may be almost unrecognizably unreal, but his predicament–a young father with a deformed child, deserted by his weak wife and forced to care full time for his ugly, sickly, needy offspring–is real, human, and tragicomic.  We can identify with besieged Henry, whose bandaged babe’s bleating rises to alarming levels when he so much as touches the doorknob to leave his apartment.  At the same time, we feel for the baby, who is innocent and vulnerable despite its loathsome appearance.  Henry cares for the unnamed baby with true tenderness at times, even as his frustration and loneliness grow.  Although they are united by blood, Henry and his child are at bottom antagonists, and our sympathies are torn as we are able to empathize with both sides.

Although it’s taboo to admit, new parents inevitably have moments when they resent the control their own offspring seizes over their lives.  Eraserhead mines these forbidden, repressed feelings and pushes them to an absurd, horrifying conclusion.  Henry’s trapped situation creates a unique and tense emotional texture that reflects a real human truth.  The strained relationship between father and child is the anchor which keeps the movie upright, even as waves of dream imagery threaten to capsize it.

Interpreting Eraserhead—in the sense of laying out a schemata that says “the Man in the Planet represents X, the baby represents Y” and wrenching out some sort of philosophical conclusion—is a popular but misguided parlor game.  Lynch himself has said that “no reviewer or critic or viewer has ever given an interpretation that is my interpretation, since the 25 or more years that it’s been out.”  That’s fine; after all, Lynch is only the co-author of the script.  The other half of it is composed by Lynch’s subconscious, working uncredited.  It’s worth noting that at approximately the time he conceived the script, Lynch was living in a cheap apartment in Philadelphia with his then pregnant wife.

Most perceptive critics have pointed out that the film centers around an impressionistic theme of horror at the idea of procreation, and have wisely left it at that.  Sexual imagery is pervasive, and it overwhelmingly operates at the biological, reproductive level, almost never at the erotic level.  Small monsters, a cross between a mutant spermatozoa and a fetus with the umbilical cord still attached, reappear throughout the film.  When smashed, they burst in thick, white, semenous splashes.  In the beginning of the film, one of these beings appears superimposed over Henry’s head; when the Man in the Planet pulls a lever, it shoots out and splashes into a pool of liquid.  Later, these same sperm-monsters creatures fall on the Lady in the Radiator from above, and she casually grinds them beneath the heel of her shoe with a smile.  Fertilizing sperm, which is after all the ultimate source of Henry’s suffering, appears as the enemy.  At one crucial point, the baby’s head grows out of Henry’s neck and displaces his head, which falls to the ground disregarded—as if his own offspring has replaced him and made Henry himself irrelevant.

Despite filmgoers vain desire to find concrete symbolism so as to “make sense” of the film in a conventional way, Eraserhead doesn’t have a rational “meaning.”  It’s effective precisely because it’s not pedantic, does not attempt to shove a point down the viewers throat, but instead forces you into an otherworldly space inside someone else’s head.  Any meaning that may be gleaned from it is a quintessentially weird one, an expression of an irrational, nightmarish feeling that can’t properly be described in literal terms.  It’s a touchstone film that provides an important link between the classical surrealists (Buñuel, Cocteau) and today’s neosurrealists.  Even more than that, Eraserhead is not so much a movie as it is an amazingly immersive experience, one that everyone who claims to be a fan of weird cinema needs to dip him or herself into at least once.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a sickening bad-taste exercise… little substance or subtlety.  The mind boggles to think that Lynch worked on this for five years.”–Variety (contemporaneous)

“…watching this daringly irrational movie, with its interest in dream logic, you almost feel that you’re seeing a European avant-garde gothic of the 20s or early 30s… The slow, strange rhythm is very unsettling and takes some getting used to, but it’s an altogether amazing, sensuous film; it even has an element of science fiction and some creepy musical numbers, and the sound track is as original and peculiar as the imagery.”–Pauline Kael

“The black-and-white world of ‘Eraserhead’ disturbs, seduces and even shocks with images that are alternately discomforting, even physically off-putting, and characterized by what André Breton called convulsive beauty. It also amuses, in its own weird way, with scenes of preposterous, macabre comedy…”–Manohla Dargis, New York Times (rerelease)

IMDB LINK:  Eraserhead (1977)

OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:

Radiator Heaven: Eraserhead – an excellent, well-written summary of the background of the movie

David Lynch Eraserhead – a German fan site that has not been updated in a while but contains behind-the-scenes stills and links to articles of interest (including many in languages other than English)

City of Absurdity: David Lynch’s Eraserhead – another unofficial fan site, with more archived articles

DVD INFO:  The 2000 single disc of Eraserhead (buy), the version reviewed here, has been impeccably remastered by Lynch.  (For a while, it was exclusively sold through his site, but can now be purchased from retailers).  The film looks and sounds absolutely pristine.  The primary extra is 90 minutes of wandering but fascinating reflections (titled “stories”) about the creation of Eraserhead by Lynch, who smokes throughout the interview and puts Catherine Coulson (assistant director and assistant camera) on speakerphone to add her remembrances.   The disc also includes the original trailer.  Of note is the fact that the menu sequence consists of a deleted scene, with Henry observing a scary looking dead cat (we discover the history of this cat in the” Stories” extra feature).  There is also a minor Easter egg you can locate by cycling through the chapters, although it doesn’t make much sense.

Because Lynch was so meticulous in his black and white cinematography (the film contains some lingering afterimages in certain fades that you may miss), the disc also includes a feature which allows you to calibrate the brightness and contrast on your television set.  Although it’s a nice idea, you may find it annoying if your DVD player insists on auto-playing this feature every time you place the disc inside it.  Like the feature presentation, the menu sequence also moves at its own slow pace, not allowing you to access the movie or the extras until it’s good and ready.  Also, Lynch doesn’t believe in chapter menus and hasn’t included any, which means you’ll have to use the fast-forward button to reach a particular scene.

The movie is also available in a limited edition two-disc gift set together with The Short Films of David Lynch (buy).  It comes in a special gift box with a twenty page booklet. Short Films consists of six short subjects, with introductions by Lynch, and includes all three of his pre-Eraserhead works.

(This movie was nominated for review by reader “Felipe A.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)