Liking David Lynch is kind of embarrassing. Last night, I attended the Chicago premiere of Inland Empire with Lynch himself live and in person at a cuter reincarnation of the Club Silencio, the vintage Music Box Theatre. Several hours beforehand, there were already a dozen or so people in line?film fanatics in dark blue peacoats, smoking and sneering a little at the Wrigleyville Trixies prancing past them in late-January bar clothes. By the time Brian and I joined the line, it was 2 city blocks long, yet its demeanor was still maddeningly blase. I, for one, will admit I was apple-cheeked not only from the cold. INLAND EMPIRE/DAVID LYNCH/IN PERSON, giggled the marquee. Embarrassing to be thrilled with only about half of the Lynchian c.v. under my belt. Embarrassing because I am surrounded by the hipster elite who were tittering all the way through the Rabbit scenes with the commercial laugh-track just because the ?irony? was so electrifying. But it?s not so. It?s a sad thing, and like with any sadness, it?s something I?ll come back to shortly.
So liking David Lynch has a lot of social baggage, but the man himself is wholesome and folksy. He says he doesn?t know what the blue box and key meant. He says he was inspired to finish Eraserhead by a single sentence in the Bible, but would rather not say which one. The Q&A session following the screening only confirmed what I perceive as a huge problem?people don?t listen to the man when he refuses to reveal his intentions, his symbols, his ?plots.? (?I heard that Mulholland Drive has a Bible verse associated with it?? ?No, no, no,? interrupts the otherwise patient Lynch. ?That was Eraserhead!? Next question?) The refusal to explain is not pretentious, it?s appropriate. The absurdity of Inland Empire and to a slightly lesser extent, every Lynch film that came before, is not just art for the sake of art, but something incredibly real and pertinent to your boring life and mine. Absurdity is not a concept; it?s a real emotion. Surrealism is the other side of the coin?the thing we flip every day, the thing jangling in our pockets. There?s nothing weird about weirdness. It just happens. There?s nothing that can really explain it, either. All we can do to judge it is to recognize when it hits the spot. And with Lynch, it certainly does (as far as his new line of coffee goes, I?m afraid I can?t vouch. As I said, the lines were daunting and by the time I snagged a good seat in the theater, it was impossible to get up?even for a kitschy, complimentary cup that would sustain a soul for 2 hours and 57 minutes).
The movie begins with a blurry prostitution scene. Clearly, the girl is a novice?there?s something awkward about her lines, and her customer curtails her sense of ceremony: ?Just take your clothes off.? Then she?s left to her tears and late-night television in a strange place. Enter the rabbits, characters on a one-set sitcom. They pose in a scene of normalcy, though nothing quite clicks. ?Mother? rabbit irons and irons, while father and son sit stolidly on the sofa, ignoring a ringing phone. Their dialogue is awkward and dissonant, Mother?s anxiety rising and rising, much like the ring of the phone across the room that only grudgingly gets answered by the patriarch rabbit in the pink tie. The laugh track stays on the entire time. It?s like watching Married with Children in the dorm lounge at 3am the night that nobody who was supposed to called. It?s like watching six different seasons of The Cosby Show while unemployed. It?s nothing new and it?s not a commentary on that kind of thing. The rabbits, in their austereness, in their post-modern haze, just prove the impossibility of the connection we keep coming back, in the midst of our sorrows, to bridge with the Idiot Box.
The more I consider it, the more I think the mutability of ?normalness??especially in the domestic sense?is really what drives Inland Empire (for me, anyway). The ?second? opening scene?with the ominous Polish gypsy/neighbor-lady inviting herself over to Nikki Grace?s (Laura Dern) mansion for a tete-a-tete. ?I hear you have a new role,? the woman gushes. Nikki sits pleasantly across the table from the gypsy, happy for the visit which is so ?out of the ordinary? in these days, happy to offer her coffee, wavering ever so slowly as the woman forecasts murder and severe penalty on her character. At that point, because of the ?things she?s saying,? because of the decorum she?s breaking, Nikki finally lets her brow furrow to the point of severe disapproval and decides she would like her to leave. It?s a rejection of absurdity that shapes this scene, not a horror of the prophecy presented. Brilliantly, the ravings do come true in a jumble of cinema, adultery, and monologue that stream together as life tends to do, so that we don?t know if it?s ?yesterday or two days from now and it?s a real mind fuck.?
(The next paragraph contains spoilers -Brian)
As with Mulholland Drive, Lynch signals the flipping of the surrealistic coin as the main character crosses over from reality into fantasy as she delivers a phenomenal cold reading of a run-of-the-mill script. Just as Nikki Grace delivers her first great performance, a noise is discovered on what turns out to be a haunted set. The verdict, although quite comically shrugged away by the characters, is that someone is hiding in there. While that person is never caught and apprehended in the traditional sense of the phrase, we spend the rest of the movie chasing her?catching her at every corner?criminalizing her. Nikki Grace cheats, she loves, she cries in the faces of whores, she stabs herself and delivers the performance of her life, dying among the transients on Hollywood & Vine. Every transformation is an adrenaline rush for the viewer, a high and a low, a scene and a cut-scene. As she bounces back, she demands, ?Look at me, and tell me if you?ve known me before,? like a beautiful actress critically acclaimed for playing a down-and-out. Can you believe it? What risk, what range. Yet, as much as this roller coaster ride climaxes?there are a couple scenes where Dern?s character charges the camera in such an unexpected fashion that I nearly cried out?the slowing-down and the melting of this mania is what is so beautiful, and what I really pinpoint as Lynch?s mastery.
The closing credits which necessarily occur after everything so terrible has happened?after Nikki accepts herself, a star or not, as a goddamn whore?find her character so dumbfounded, so serene. Brazen hoochies dance around her in a hotel room where even a filthy little monkey is present and still Nikki smiles and nods, a little reservedly, crossing her legs as others promenade to the music. It?s a balancing-out, a conclusion: a heart beating normally to wildness. Our eye rests as relentlessly upon the scene as the prostitute?s did on Rabbits With Children. It?s weird, for sure, but I?d be lying if I insisted to myself or anyone else that it didn?t make sense or that it needed a story any bigger to draw from.
The Science of Apathy
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Originally posted at http://www.scienceofapathy.com
