David Lynch, 2006.
In my opinion Inland Empire is easily the best film of 2006. While I enjoyed the aesthetics of Mulholland Drive (7.2/10), and Lost Highway (7.0/10), I found that Lynch’s non linear structure made them difficult and somewhat frustrating to watch. With Inland Empire Lynch continues his signature style, but this time he makes it work really well. The same week that I watched Inland Empire, I listened to Lynch’s book (which he narrated himself), ‘Catching the Big Fish’. In the book Lynch talks about meditation, consciousness, creativity, film, and art. He explains that when he was casting for Blue Velvet (8.3/10***SUPER), Dennis Hopper immediately came to mind to play the role of Frank. Lynch’s Producer and Casting Director informed him that Dennis Hopper was really messed up on drugs, was unstable, and would ruin the film. Later on David received a phone call from Dennis proclaiming, “listen David, I need to play Frank, because I am Frank”. I thought that this was amazing.
2 comments:
I have felt lots about this film but have little to say. Lynch decided to shoot the entire film through digicam, which he claims will be his new standard. Maybe I just couldn't get used to it, but for me it wasn't the old Lynch. I find his work to be mainly picturesque and intuitive. I felt disconnected with him through the entirety of Inland Empire. There were moments of brilliance throughout however.
Classic lynch clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4wh_mc8hRE
The fact that lynch shot the entire film digitally is very interesting. From what I understand, Lynch is a real advocate of digital film and believes it to be the future of cinema. Filming digitally is much cheaper, 8mm film is very expensive and redundant because in the end you have to transfer it to digital for editing, post production etc. Directors like Lynch and Kiarostami see that future is digital and are embracing it one hundred percent. Granted purists will argue that celluloid is still superior to digital, much like arguing that vinyl records sound better then compact discs. I will admit that digital is not yet at the same quality of film. Throughout Inland Empire, I found that where numerous shots that where very ‘grainy’ and looked like shit, but still found the overall quality of the picture to be very good.
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