AMERICAN ICONS
I believe that films should have the power of good
and the power of darkness. If you back down from that
stuff, you’re shooting lukewarm junk. –
DAVID LYNCH
For over thirty years, Montana-born filmmaker David
Lynch has mesmerized and mystified audiences with dazzling
films that take us on a disorienting journey that can
turn on a dime from darkly disturbing to gentle sweetness,
and then to hilariously quirky comedy. Perhaps no other
filmmaker has created such an instantly recognizable
cinematic universe. Whether he is working for a Hollywood
studio (The Elephant Man, The Straight Story), television
(Twin Peaks), or independently (Wild at Heart, Blue
Velvet, Lost Highway), Lynch’s work always carries
his powerfully personal imprint. Like his strongest
cinematic influence, Italian director Federico Fellini,
Lynch juxtaposes exaggerated, often grotesque, imagery
with authentic emotions to create vivid drama that reaches
far into our unconscious to probe our deepest hopes
and fears. Although he just turned 61-years-old in January,
Lynch shows no signs of slowing down. His latest film,
INLAND EMPIRE, is his most extreme and boldly adventurous
work since his 1977 breakthrough film, Eraserhead. This
year, he also published a book about his creative process,
Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and
Creativity; and he continues to promote Transcendental
Meditation through the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness-Based
Education and World Peace.
INLAND
EMPIRE
David Lynch’s ambitious new film, much like his
masterful Mulholland Drive five years ago, travels through
the dark terrain of nightmares and the seamy underside
of the American dream factory known as Hollywood . At
its core lies an aging starlet, Nikki Grace (Laura Dern),
who is making a comeback as the lead in a promising
new movie. As she plunges into the role of an adulterous
southern woman, Nikki’s world splinters as the
distinction between reality and fiction falls away.
With startling shifts in points-of-view and jumps to
other narratives — a surreal drama with giant
talking hares, a coven of prostitutes, a Polish crime
thriller — INLAND EMPIRE spirals into exhilarating,
mysterious territory. Any conventional sense of plot
vanishes as the powerful forces of fear, desire, hate,
and loss take the center, moving you with the logic
of dreams. As with other Lynch films, evil lurks, hidden
beneath the sunny exteriors of the everyday. Places
— from ornate mansion to low-rent ranch house,
sound stage to forlorn streets — are fraught with
the histories of the people who lived and died there.
Shot in digital video, INLAND EMPIRE’s visuals
may not have the velvety richness of earlier works,
but the grainy texture imparts an immediacy that accents
the terror. Dern (Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart) —
who amazingly shape-shifts between luminous beauty and
haggard wretch — bravely sets a course along the
lost highways of the Lynchian unconscious. —Tomoko
Kawamoto
USA, 2006, 172 min., color • Director/Writer:
David Lynch • Cast: Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons,
Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton
Blue
Velvet
Tuesday, February 13 at 7:30pm
Young Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returns from
college to visit his family but his accidental discovery
of a severed ear in the grass propels him into a disturbing
and irresistible world of eroticism and violence. The
beautiful Isabella Rossellini and Laura Dern supply
the eroticism, while truly demented Dennis Hopper provides
all the violence and mayhem anyone could ever want!
From the opening shot of glistening red tulips along
a white picket fence, accompanied by the oh-so-soothing
voice of Bobby Vinton singing the title tune, to the
terrifying finale, Lynch’s depiction of “
Lumberton , U.S.A. ” shows both its idyllic sweetness
and its dark underside in an all-encompassing vision
that stretches from heaven to hell. USA, 1986, 120 min.,
color, rated R
