David Lynch's Inland Empire: set contrast high, brightness low, adjust color hue.

This is the first of many (rather raggedy) pieces I will be posting, from my old website, American Vulture: By the time we meet Laura Dern, actress, we have already witnessed three free-floating, disconnected scenes: rabbits performing before a live studio audience, complete with laugh track and applause button; a subtitled scene involving two Polish criminal types; a fuzzy prostitute sitting and crying at the edge of her bed, after performing her first job, before becoming temporarily distracted by the appearance of the aforementioned Rabbit sitcom on TV. Back to Laura Dern, actress; We learn from the first script walk-through with the director, producer and co-star, that the film they are beginning is a re-make of a Polish film that may have been cursed; due to the fact that both leads were murdered in the original production. Laura Dern rehearses her lines with a Southern accent; soon her accent and her personality will bleed into her “real life”; Dern becomes trapped within her character and her character’s life; all encompassed in a great scene where Ms. Dern literally becomes trapped behind a glass window, unable to be heard or seen; for the window she looks out of is a production set, a façade. (One is reminded, while watching INLAND EMPIRE, of Spalding Gray's SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA; in particular, when Mr. Gray reflects back on several weeks of lounging in the lap of luxury, or as he called it, The Pleasure Prison; Mr. Gray bids farewell one by one to all the hedonistic pleasures he had enjoyed, and concludes, “…I suddenly thought I knew what it was that killed Marilyn Monroe.") (One further wonders if INLAND EMPIRE was inspired in some small way by the death of Jack Nance, Mr. Lynch’s friend and muse, who died under mysterious circumstances, outside a donut shop in 1996.) David lynch continues his mission to create an all-natural, chemical-free, completely organic drug; heightening the senses with audio/visual stimulation; the vulnerable recipient helplessly carried away, to an altered state, as the drug is mainlined directly into the eye sockets. To quote Patrick Bateman quoting Huey Lewis, “I want a new drug, One that won't spill, One that don't cost too much, Or come in a pill”. While partaking in the Drug Cinema is not harmful to your health, it remains clearly fatal to the manufacturers; those actors in particular who spend most of their waking life in costumes and make-up; playing on sets, in reconstructions of places real and imagined; often find themselves unable to make the transition back to the real world; leading to a need for something, to help cope with the unpredictable realities of life. And this may be the key to unlocking INLAND EMPIRE; for David Lynch has produced his first Naturalistic piece of work; INLAND EMPIRE is David Lynch’s HEART OF DARKNESS. I can see my lifetime pilin' up I can see it smashin' into yours It was not an accident at all Open your window up - I hear you laughin' -TALKING HEADS