[youtube: lost highway trailer]

yesterday, after a brief trip to the moma to see sleepwalkers on its closing night–an exhibit that would have surely been great had i the time and body heat to enjoy it fully–i took a rather impromptu trip to the ifc center to see david lynch’s latest, inland empire. i didn’t inject the noun “film” on purpose; it seems more like an…uh…well, it was inland empire. i dare say it may be his wackiest work yet. it has a lot of intrinsic value–i’m still thinking about it the next day and i want to see it again, so surely it was worth the eleven bucks–but i definitely prefer mulholland drive. this seems less focused, more in the old lynch vein, and i don’t really think any other style would have worked for the “plot.”

laura dern gives the performance of her career, which is great because she has said in interviews that she didn’t understand the film as she was doing it, and hoped that seeing the finished product would give her a little more clarity. she’s fantastic. fantastic!

seeing inland in the theatre is a mixed bag for me. it doesn’t have the lushness and big-screen beauty of mulholland. it’s filmed on digital video, which works for it, but makes it cold and dirty. i saw it in a room with what couldn’t have been more than 100 seats, and by the end of the third hour, i was caught in a limbo of being achy and not really wanting it to end. ever. i want to watch it on dvd and pick it apart. so can you wait? probably. if you have the time and money, though, i’m sure you’ll get a little more out of seeing it in the theatre.

bottom line: if you’re a lynch fan, you’ll love it. if not, you’ll hate it. does that really surprise anyone? as laura dern’s character(s?) say(s?) in the film, and as applies to most of lynch’s work, “i can’t tell if it’s yesterday or tomorrow, and it’s a real mind fuck.”