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INLAND EMPIRE "A woman in trouble." This is David Lynch's magnum opus in my eyes, and possibly my favorite film from the 2000s. This film is a completely enveloping portal into a horrible fever dream. I have seen it upwards of four times and I still could not give you a straight plot synopsis.  Its use of standard definition digital video plays a tremendous part in the "feel" of the film. The immediacy and urgency of Lynch's ideas and passions come across in every frame. After INLAND EMPIRE, I can finally embrace digital video after years of being a film diehard. Laura Dern does an incredible job as Nikki, an actress who gets a starring role in a drama mystery film. The film allegedly turns out to be a remake of an old Polish film which was never completed due to the murder of both the lead actors. Meanwhile, Nikki begins to confuse the "reality" world with that of the film-within-a-film. Then, it starts to get really crazy. If you let the film wash over you and try not to approach it in terms of standard narrative arcs and storytelling techniques, it will hold you captive. Inland Empire requires you to directly acknowledge the unreality of art and cinema, and justly outs the questioning of "what is real in this fictional film?" as artificial and arbitrary.
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May 4, 2011 23:39
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 07:21 |
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Coming from a humongous fan of the Silent Hill game (and good horror movies), I pretty much loving loathed the movie...though, even I have to admit, it did get some things (mostly aesthetics) very right.
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Oct 20, 2011 19:11
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Craig Spradlin posted:I place as much blame on fans of the game series as I do the studio. If they'd just been allowed to tell a story about the town of Silent Hill without shoehorning in characters from the game or dealing with issues of continuity raised by a vocal fanbase, it could have been a really good American horror film. As it was, it was a missed opportunity. Sean Bean's character is not in any of the games though. In fact, they would not have had the "why are there no male characters in this?" if they kept the protagonist a male in the first place. I personally find it even more interesting for a father to display such a strong love for his daughter. You always see mother-daughter stuff in horror, and not nearly enough father-daughter arcs.
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Oct 20, 2011 20:25
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Yeah, that's what I mean. For me, it's especially touching to see a father figure go to unimaginable selfless depths for his daughter. Turning the character into a female really does change the dynamics of the relationship, and makes it a lot more typical and stock. When I saw the movie, I figured that Sean Bean was tacked on there to build up to a SH2 adaptation. The protagonist in SH2 is a man searching for his wife, so it would make sense. But nope, the new SH movie is actually an adaptation of the third game. So, really, none of it makes any sense to me. not to mention it's in 3D :/
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Oct 20, 2011 21:01
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For some reason I find Lost Highway to be way more impenetrable and cold than Inland Empire.
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Sep 1, 2012 21:26
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