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Brief email "conversation" from a short time ago:
from Edward Einhorn:
By the way, tell me if you're heading back to INLAND EMPIRE. I really want to see that before it leaves town. What did you think?
my response (rewritten and edited from the email):
I loved it, but I need to see it again.
It's something new, that's for sure. It's recognizably Lynch, but he's playing with structure and imagery in even more complex ways.
Berit and I agree with one reviewer who felt, to paraphrase, that he "got" Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, and understood everything in them (as Berit and I did and do, pretty much), and entered INLAND EMPIRE feeling cocky, having mastered the "algebra" of Lynch.
And this is calculus.
Now, I know you don't have to "get" Drive and Highway to like them, necessarily, but they are puzzles that can be worked out. Everything DOES make sense, or at least CAN. It annoys Berit and I when people take the attitude that there is no "sense" to these films, that they're just Lynch being "weird." I'll give you Wild at Heart as an example of that, but Highway and Drive make sense. Even if you don't want to work out what is "really" going on," the fact that you can makes the experience something more than just "weird."
I'm sure EMPIRE is a puzzle too, but with this one I'm REALLY not sure if it should be "figured out" at all. I know there's a logic underneath, but it is SO unimportant to the experience that it might actually hurt it (I don't feel that working out Drive or Highway hurts the experience of watching them at all).
It is more like a dream, REALLY, than any movie I've seen. Not like movie "dream sequences," it IS a dream, and unlike the other two films, there is really NO indication of even who the "real" dreamer is.
Anyway, I may try to even see if I can get Berit up to see it this afternoon. I'll let you know.
INLAND EMPIRE appears to close at the IFC Center on Tuesday (not Sunday, as I thought). Berit and I are seeing it again this afternoon at 5.20 pm, if anyone's around and wants to join us. You might want to order tickets in advance through www.ifccenter.com.
Another photo from Film Is Evil: Radio Is Good, really a staged publicity shot, as this doesn't happen in the show quite this way:
Ian Hill, The Last Filmmaker in the World (played by Peter Bean), sits under the looming projected head of Radio Richard (Ian W. Hill), guarded by the two fascist Zookeepers (Amy Caitlin Carr, Carrie Johnson).
from Edward Einhorn:
By the way, tell me if you're heading back to INLAND EMPIRE. I really want to see that before it leaves town. What did you think?
my response (rewritten and edited from the email):
I loved it, but I need to see it again.
It's something new, that's for sure. It's recognizably Lynch, but he's playing with structure and imagery in even more complex ways.
Berit and I agree with one reviewer who felt, to paraphrase, that he "got" Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, and understood everything in them (as Berit and I did and do, pretty much), and entered INLAND EMPIRE feeling cocky, having mastered the "algebra" of Lynch.
And this is calculus.
Now, I know you don't have to "get" Drive and Highway to like them, necessarily, but they are puzzles that can be worked out. Everything DOES make sense, or at least CAN. It annoys Berit and I when people take the attitude that there is no "sense" to these films, that they're just Lynch being "weird." I'll give you Wild at Heart as an example of that, but Highway and Drive make sense. Even if you don't want to work out what is "really" going on," the fact that you can makes the experience something more than just "weird."
I'm sure EMPIRE is a puzzle too, but with this one I'm REALLY not sure if it should be "figured out" at all. I know there's a logic underneath, but it is SO unimportant to the experience that it might actually hurt it (I don't feel that working out Drive or Highway hurts the experience of watching them at all).
It is more like a dream, REALLY, than any movie I've seen. Not like movie "dream sequences," it IS a dream, and unlike the other two films, there is really NO indication of even who the "real" dreamer is.
Anyway, I may try to even see if I can get Berit up to see it this afternoon. I'll let you know.
INLAND EMPIRE appears to close at the IFC Center on Tuesday (not Sunday, as I thought). Berit and I are seeing it again this afternoon at 5.20 pm, if anyone's around and wants to join us. You might want to order tickets in advance through www.ifccenter.com.
Another photo from Film Is Evil: Radio Is Good, really a staged publicity shot, as this doesn't happen in the show quite this way:
Ian Hill, The Last Filmmaker in the World (played by Peter Bean), sits under the looming projected head of Radio Richard (Ian W. Hill), guarded by the two fascist Zookeepers (Amy Caitlin Carr, Carrie Johnson).
