Masterworks of Cinema #7 - 'Inland Empire'

It’s about “a woman in trouble”, was all the enigmatic auteur David Lynch was prepared to elucidate regarding, to date, his last feature film; and in a sense that is about the sum total of what you should, and possibly can, hope to understand about ‘Inland Empire’.

In a sense nothing happens in ‘Inland Empire’ and yet at the same time in its 3-hour stretch it seems to encompass almost everything.  The whole film is a colossal illusion, a pregnant womb of confusion and wonder in which one simply has to bask in the amniotic fluid of Lynch’s warped reality.

My first viewing of the film was through a notable haze of intoxication that accentuated my conviction of its genius to such an assured level that a month or so later I had to return to it sober, and was relieved to come away still deeming it to be one of the finest films I have ever seen.

To try and summarise the plot with any kind of lucidity would be foolish, and yet I feel it necessary to make an attempt all the same.  Laura Dern plays Nikki Grace, a film actress who wins the role of Susan in a film called ‘On High in Blue Tomorrows’ alongside the handsome Devon as Billy (played by Justin Theroux).  The film’s director (Jeremy Irons) reveals to them both that it is actually a remake of a Polish film called ‘47’ which was abandoned when its two lead actors were murdered, with those involved believing it to have been cursed by folklore.

As they begin shooting, the illicit affair embarked upon by Susan and Billy appears to permeate into reality, at which point Nikki’s train of consciousness starts to become severely derailed; as she appears to relive aspects of the original Polish production and her troubled past, culminating in a fatal encounter on Hollywood Boulevard and the ambiguous aftermath.

At a reductive level, ‘Inland Empire’ can be said to be a film about the illusions inspired by Hollywood – ‘a place where dreams make stars and stars make dreams’ – that fracture into paranoia and madness.  This is surreal ‘Sunset Boulevard’-esque terra firma for Lynch given his 2001 film ‘Mulholland Drive’, but whereas that film relies upon the clever ‘Mobius strip’ conceit, ‘Inland Empire’ seems of an almost bipartite structure; the culmination of a lifetime’s imaginative endeavour, an aesthetic and narrative form in which nothing makes sense and possible interpretations are myriad, like staring at an endless series of mirrored reflections. 

Whilst promoting the film, Lynch would quote from the Hindu teachings ‘The Upanishads’ – ‘we are like the spider.  We weave our life and then move along it.  We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream.  This is true for the entire universe.’ 

Hollywood being the epitome of dreams, the place where dreams are made real, it is the perfect mise en scene in which Lynch can weave his web of illusions.  It is my interpretation that the character of Nikki Grace is a cipher for a host of other lives and situations, spun together by the spindly thread of spirituality, perhaps even by the transmigration of souls across time and space.

An opening scene in which Nikki is paid a ‘neighbourly’ visit by a disturbing Polish woman is highly significant.  She tells of two folk tales; the boy who, after passing through a doorway, “caused evil to be born”, and a girl who, wandering lost through the marketplace “discovers a palace”. 

If the glamour of the palace can be read as the glittering success of movie stardom, then Lynch seeks to penetrate through that illusion with notions of the ‘troubled woman struggling in the marketplace’.  This could be interpreted through the whores plying their trade on Hollywood Boulevard; the young Polish woman demonized by the lecherous older man (the ‘Phantom’), who himself doubles as the shadowy and possessive husband of Nikki Grace; not to mention the allusions to childhood sexual abuse that Nikki makes in her ‘confessions’, where she tells of the various men she has known throughout her life.

There are recurrent thematic phrases that ripple throughout the film; from repeatedly imploring strangers to “tell me if you’ve known me before”, to referring to “an unpaid bill that needs paying”, certain people having “always been good with animals”, and “actions having consequences”.  Not to mention the stylistic tropes that Lynch relies on to striking effect – the pulsating red lampshades, the malevolent backlots of film studios, the foreboding corridors and dark doorways.

The joy of ‘Inland Empire’ is the sheer unease and intrigue it inspires and manages to sustain without dissolving into portentous disarray as it most likely would through the lens of a director less well-versed in the language of surrealism.  Of course, to less discerning viewers, it would be very easy to quickly get caught in the frustrating quagmire of Lynch’s vision.  What, for instance, is the significance of Nikki being stabbed on Dorothy Lamour’s sidewalk star?  What of the peering through the veil into some alternate realm of reality?  And what the hell to make of the anthropomorphic rabbit stageplay that recurs throughout, constantly watched on screen by a crying girl (the overarching ‘troubled woman’ perhaps?)  

I can only ruminate on the notion that the rabbits represent a sublimated and incomprehensible level of the subconscious mind in which the most bizarre manifestations of reality seem to make some kind of sense.

Perusing the vast swathes of online interpretation, several bring to bear the influence of Ambrose Bierce’s classic short story ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’, in which the exact moment before a man is hung becomes exploded into an elaborate alternate realm in which he manages to escape his fate.  (Along similar lines of temporal experimentation I would reference Chris Marker’s short film ‘La Jetee’ as a possible influence.)

It is possible that Nikki Grace as an entity is nothing more than a last eruption of imaginative thought sparked by the benile conversation of the people around her as she lies dying, with connotations of Icarus, in the gutter of Hollywood Boulevard.

Throughout the maze of ‘Inland Empire’ there are, round numerous corners, scenes of real invention that appear to be either dead ends or to lead into yet more mazes of possible interpretation.  Chief among them is after the consummation (real or otherwise) of Nikki and Devon’s affair, and her confrontation with a red neon roomful of Devon’s past lovers, displaying their perfect breasts and discussing his sexual prowess; an inspired visualisation of the paranoid ‘internal voices’ that can threaten to overflow and drown out rationality.

Of course, the climactic scene on the intersection of Hollywood & Vine, scored to Penderecki’s ‘The Awakening of Jacob’, is wonderfully unsettling, yet it is the final section that has inspired the deepest thought for me personally.

Instead of the ‘big reveal’ of the studio set after Nikki’s death calling into question the actuality of her fate, it is my interpretation that actually it serves to confirm all that went before in terms of the Hollywood film production being little more than a glamorised illusion.  After all, if (as the cliché goes) all the world really is a stage, then we all hope to leave to the applause of our peers and the reassurance “you were wonderful”, as Nikki does before entering a transient state ‘passing through’ the empty auditorium.

From there she descends into a hellish realm (Room 47) where she must confront her personal demon in the lecherous ‘Phantom’ before ascending, newly unburdened by fear, to the halcyon room in which her metaphysical self is migrated into the body of the crying woman, presumably releasing her from her tormented ‘limbo’ state.  Only once this final state of ataraxy is attained can Nikki truly be her ‘perfect self’, as in the final shot we see she has now become.

This is only my interpretation, and very possibly I have followed an erroneous scent down a Lynchian rabbit hole.  It is clear though that Lynch is something of an animist, and with this in mind I believe ‘Inland Empire’ represents the transient and web-like structure of dreams and spirituality that, from an animist’s viewpoint, exist just through the veil from, and beyond comprehension of, our illusion of linear reality.