MAJOR FUCKING SPOILERS, PEOPLE.
OR MAYBE NOT.
WHEN IT COMES TO SUCH A BIZARRE MOVIE AS INLAND EMPIRE, I ACTUALLY DON'T REALLY KNOW IF I UNDERSTAND IT PROPERLY.
I THINK I DO.
I'LL PROCEED WITH CONFIDENCE I DON'T ACTUALLY POSSESS.
THAT USUALLY WORKS.
You know what?
I blame the Phantom.
For everything.
It's his manipulations of people's minds that create all the chaos and displacement and contortions of space/time inside this cinematic nightmare. He's like the Robert Blake character from Lost Highway. The difference is that here, the Phantom seems to have less godlike control over people's fates, and ultimately he is vanquished. The guy even seems relieved when Laura Dern dumps a clip in him at the climax. The Phantom's death is presented as a relief. The gunfire manifests as flashes of liberating light. And then his face distorts and ruptures into a frightening underwater bloodmouthed clown. And all is right with the world. The women trapped in Hotel Purgatory run free. Even Laura Dern's psycho hubby gets to go back home to Poland and be the working class father he was meant to be, as opposed to the wealthy Hollywood power spouse. All ascend to Heaven-which is a ballroom filled with beautiful women dancing and lip-synching to Nina Simone's Sinnerman, by the way.
Why not?
The nightmare becomes a dream.
Laura Dern's Nikki Grace-somehow-manages to remember she's in a dream which seemingly gives her access to the symbolic power-represented in the handgun-to see through the Phantom's lies-which have even seemingly ensnared him-and blast her way out of the nightmare labyrinth. I like that the villain seems to have forgotten his own identity. In his death, he remembers himself, and awakes into his own crazy clown time hell.
This is all great.
My only criticism is that I would've liked Nikki to shoot the creepy rabbit-head people,too.
She opens the door into their TV show world.
Why not sort them out, too?
Wasn't one of the rabbits also the heartless auditor who an alternate version of Nikki endlessly confessed to throughout the movie?
Fuck those creeps.
Not bad.
It's a hella decent film.
After this movie, David Lynch didn't do much. He supervised the official releases of deleted footage from Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. I think he directed an expensive viral ad for some perfume company.
And then came 2017. And the third season of Twin Peaks. Also called Twin Peaks: The Return.
One more journey into the Black Lodge.
Another reboot, another excavation of pop culture past-you could almost call it a remake.
Just what we need, right?
It's probably gonna suck.
