inland empire: an audience in trouble

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0460829/

one of the classes i hated most way back when i was in high skool was english. not because i did not like reading (i thoroughly enjoy reading a good yarn) or could not figure out TEH GRAMAR (i was pretty decent at it,) but because so much of the required material involved pulling things out of your ass to explain why some terrible piece of writing was actually awesome. and so it is with david lynch's work.

the synopsis of a david lynch movie is as follows: weird shit happens, the end. the end of the movie, that is. *after* the film has ended, the english majors of the world, the ones who are still trying to figure out how to justify their choice of major instead of getting on with their lives, all engage in this big delusional effort where they pull things out of their asses, polish them to a high sheen, and then use them as "evidence" that the latest piece of lynch's tripe is a masterpiece.

we see this happen yet again with the recent film "inland empires." i sat through a bit over an hour of this three-hour excruciation, becoming less and less attached the entire time, before finally walking out. i was one of the lucky ones. i shudder to think that of the half-dozen or so people i left behind, some or all of them walked out thinking to themselves that they enjoyed the experience.

ostensibly, the overlying story is that an actress is playing the lead in a movie that is cursed or some shit like that. she has an attractive, womanizing lead playing opposite her and a jealous husband. it is a david lynch movie, so there are going to be some weird things where you go in a door and then go back out and you are somewhere else. also, something will happen in a dream that may or may not be real when you wake up, you will not be able to tell because the world is going to be just as insane as your dreams. there will also be some cutscenes that seem tangentially related to the rest of the story that are probably happening just inside one of the
characters' heads or something lame like that. omfg, perhaps your whole life is a dream. there will be some weird characters that know some things, but always speak in riddles. in this movie, they can tell the future, even. whee.

that pretty much covers it. anything else you hear is going to be mindless frippery added by someone who is trying to justify liking the film. the tragedy there is going to be that they did *not* like the film, they just cannot bear the thought that they blew three hours of their life on a piece of crap like this.

i have heard it said that laura dern gave an amazing performance in this film. i have no idea how you would be able to tell that. all she has to do is to say her lines without looking completely bewildered. presumably, the reason lynch was campaigning for her to get an award of some kind for the job is that he was happy that she put up with his crap. i say, nominate her for sainthood, but for chrissakes do not encourage her to support lynch.

someday, when humanity is dust and alien archaeologists are dusting off our remains to determine what kind of people we were, i just know they are going to come across a work like inland empires and say to themselves, "this represents the pinnacle of the slimy human race's work." that is the real tragedy.