David Lynch’s latest made the rounds as a “limited release” last year, which is when I first subjected myself to it. Around that time that is when I also got the inkling that “release” might be the perfect descriptor for the soul-skewering travesty of editing that is Inland Empire. I, Empire is indeed much more like something Naked Emperor Lynchie the First, might’ve let fly into the hair of the lady a couple rows in front of him while watching “Eraserhead” incognito at some Midnight Movie suck-up session than it is anything at all akin to a movie. In terms of accessibility and restraint, it is a step away from “Mulholland Drive” in the same way that a cockfight is a bit unlike church. But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. Coming off of the flu back then, I couldn’t maintain focus for the 8 weeks required to see it all. So I rented it again last night.

It is still on.

It will always BE on.

It’s like Seinfeld in syndication. There will never be a time when the god-awful thing won’t be playing. For Christ’s sake, Lynch, couldn’t you have made even the slightest nod toward a cohesive form of any kind? Or maybe cut the number of ad-libbed scenes that put to shame Brando reading “Three Blind Mice” to Marty Sheen in Cambodia to 60 or 80? And since we’re all here, let’s just come out and say it together- dramatic improvisation sucks. It never works. It’s always glaringly obvious when it is being employed. The effect of letting idiots “wing it” is essentially that of cutting to a cartoon flip-book during the night vision scene in “Silence of the Lambs”. I mean, haven’t we learned anything from “Eyes Wide Shut”? Why write a script at all if you’re just gonna let a bunch of pampered egomaniacs puke on it by giving their best impression of Judy Garland on meth talking to aborigine children about how dull Oz was? Damn it!

But enough about me; it’s time for America’s favorite game show! “What the Fuck was that Shit Even About?”

I am almost certainly wrong here, but “Inland Empire” appears to exist within a sit-com about giant, dressed-up, talking rabbits being watched in Hungary or Poland by a desperately terrified prostitute. The rabbits, or at least one of them, are supposed to be Lynch, and they are somehow psychically tormenting, inventing, and/or suffering from Laura Dern’s present existence in California. So am I. Nonetheless, she is in the midst of qualifying for the Excruciating Facial Expression Olympics team while a bunch of whores do the LocoMotion (really), and she is a shoo-in for captain. Not even Sloth from “Goonies” can compete. She looks like Gary Shandling dressed like Cybill Shepherd masturbating. And she acts about as well as the three of them. Which I suppose is why Lynch cast her as a Hollywood star; because portraying an actor requires no skill, only hubris and yes-men. In fact, I don’t even know why real people are ever hired for these roles when a desiccated corpse, sock puppet, or Burt Reynolds would do just as well… which brings me to back to improv. The shit-for-dialogue pandered in this flick reminds me of a John Coltrane album without a decent drummer. When he wasn’t reigned in by Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk, Coltrane was like an unmanned firehose. He channeled, erratically, a subconscious stream of only linearly-related notes which in sum sounded more like a bunch of Christian mental cases speaking in tongues than any kind of song. Which is to say that his art was just that- his. I can’t touch it because I can’t relate to it, and all the talent in the world can’t change that. Lynch himself suffers from a similar form of the illness, and the performances herein are the upshot. “Inland Empire” is self-involved, horrifically unrestrained, unstructured as recess, and therefore as ethereal and mysterious as a fart. It is unwatchable mainly because it takes no form. Michelangelo may have gotten away with paring his work down to a few, hackneyed chisel strokes toward the end of HIS life, but not you, Lynchie. When you carve a 700-foot chunk of marble into a naked Jew THEN we’ll talk. Meantime, let’s just stick to filming shit that is related to something, K?

K.

Where was I? Oh… So, Dern is working on a movie with the gay-sadist-looking director dude from “Mulholland Drive” while appearing, against her will and mine, in a subconscious life based on the cursed movie (did I mention that the script was cursed?) within the sit-com about human rabbits watched by the hooker who is crying while an ancient record plays… and a partridge in a pear tree. There is nothing else to tell. The details of “Inland Empire” are only incidental and therefore will only serve to send us astray from the single motivating factor behind the making of it. And that is one man’s desire to make an audience painfully aware that it is stuck inside his horribly self-consumed head. Well mission accomplished, douchebag. Now, if only Lynch could get us viewers to enjoy the stroking as much as he does.

--michael3b