To be honest, I was hoping for a big revelation on second viewing. I didn’t get one, but I did get to follow Lynch’s dizzying spiral into madness and redemption once again and was ever so slightly more relaxed about it. All in all, visionary interpretive eureka still pending, I’m glad this film doesn’t lend itself to the hermetic and rather party-pooping interpretations offered about Lynch’s last feature. Indeed, one might almost suspect that the director’s new film is as much a reaction to this rather deadening symbol-reading as it is an expression of economic and creative freedom in filmmaking. Inland Empire is first and foremost an exercise in movie viewing — the more active and acrobatic the better — which is one of the reasons why it’s been inspiring such fascinating (oh yes, and painfully lazy and moronic) film criticism, even the best of which will give you only an inkling of the film’s overwhelming, exhausting, and thrilling experience. This is why, when Hoberman says that “like Meshes [of the Afternoon], Inland Empire has no logic apart from its movie-ness,” he is offering the film the same rare compliment that one would extend to Bergman’s Persona as well as Deren’s work.
Rumsey’s thoughts | Jenny’s review | My review
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: 518 Media, Inc., 35mm print
11 Dec 2006 12:46 PM | Submit Comment
