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watched in a theater the other week. so dense. a fragmented psychiatric nightmare with themes that spin with the centrifugal force strong enough to pull your soul out of your body as you stand in the middle of it, inland empire is a very individual experience that you can tell lynch used as a collage to express ideas he’d been trying to hone in on for many years already. shot entirely on digital handicam, giving it the feeling of a dream transmission being broadcast directly into your head, highlighted by the handicam grain and the washed out colors from the ai upscale, the movie is woven together like a disjointed and disturbing web akin to both a wired cyberscape’s and an arachnid’s. lynch’s experimentation with form allows the film’s sequences to shine in tandem with one another through a disjointed structure and nonlinear narrative, with sequences cutting into each other like popup ads. through this structure it conveys a deep-seeded desire to express the convergence of life and technology in a way. accentuated by many themes we’ve encountered before in lynch’s work, such as exploring a strange and malicious side of hollywood akin to mulholland drive or the lost girl motif as in darkened room, it’s really the film’s tagline which succinctly encapsulates everything i gathered from my second watch: “a woman in trouble.” nikki grace, famed actress, is placed in the role of susan blue, and soon their lives and consciousnesses begin to converge as they uncover the paralleled life and death of a lost polish girl, a mysterious one that cursed the prospective screenplay.
circles/repetition symbolic for karmic rebirth. phones and electromagnetic references (axxon/axon) as indicators of human connection. industrial factories and trains as symbols of pregnancy alongside many euphemisms for back-alley abortions. the price of fame and fading into obscurity. lost in the wires of radio, tv, and film, inland empire is a symbolic labyrinth waiting to be uncovered, and a solid contender for the greatest film ever made.
look at me and tell me if you’ve known me before.
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weird movie
May 7, 2024
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Immediately after finishing this one I was even more confused than by Lost Highway, but after piecing together the story I think it’s very cool. It helps to look at the whole thing and then zoom in rather than look at one tiny thing and expect that to explain the entire movie. I see the similarities with Lost Highway a lot especially with the motif of doing something bad and having some kind of delusion to come to terms with that as well as Lynch criticizing Hollywood and the film industry. Good movie 👍👍👍
Jan 22, 2025
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Wild at Heart and Inland Empire I've been lucky to have my first watches on the big screen over the past years! With Lynch's passing and birthday, everyone is screening his movies again and I just booked Lost Highway, one of my final Lynch movies I have yet to watch. I'm playing the long game with David so that I can still experience him for the first time over and over again. ❤️
Feb 17, 2025
Top Recs from @goku
watched with my girlfriend this morning and Wow I cant believe love is real
Mar 28, 2025
Took girlfriend to see this in theater. Almost killed myself in that theater Tbh
Mar 28, 2025