I realize, starting this, that a lot of people might find Inland Empire a daunting prospect. It is three-hours long, for one. For two, you can't really expect to understand everything that happens in it. Laura Dern, Lynch's longtime muse, plays with at least three different types of characters, even if they are all (possibly) the same person: one is an actress who has just got a part in a big Hollywood film; one is a character played by the actress, identifiable by her southern drawl; and the third is a woman from the streets, who sleeps with men in exchange for drinks.
I think that maybe here in the United States, with our longstanding tradition of heavily plotted narrative film, we tend to enjoy what I've heard referred to (in Jonathan Rosenbaum's writing, and elsewhere, perhaps with origins in the writing of Chilean expat filmmaker Raul Ruiz) as the "cinema of prose"--the great character driven works of Ford, Kurosawa, and Bergman--over the "cinema of poetry"--the works of Godard, Bunuel, Kiarostami, and Resnais, among others. Where in the cinema of prose everything is beautifully extricable, in the cinema of poetry it is simply not. Now Inland Empire is certainly not Stan Brakhage or Maya Deren--non-narrative and even non-representational--but it definitely fits in the "cinema of poetry" camp, much like Lynch's Eraserhead, Lost Highway and, to some extent, Mulholland Drive. And I would argue that you can't watch a movie like this in the same way you would watch The Searchers or Yojimbo. I have a short list of suggestions that should probably work as well for Inland Empire as for Godard's Week End or Ruiz's Three Crowns of the Sailor:
1. Don't get hung up on the dialogue. This may be contradictory to the way people watch movies, but in a movie like this, there are so many non-sequiturs that trying to consciously comprehend everything that is said would make your head spin. Rather than clinging to every bit of dialogue, focus on what mood it evokes, what associations you make with it. The incredible richness of this type of film, as of poetry itself, is in moods and associations.
2. Pay attention to lighting and shot composition. My first Lynch movie was Lost Highway and the friend that I was watching it with started making comparisons between shots from The City of Lost Children and I started making associations with Tarkovsky, and we ended up really enjoying it from this standpoint alone. Contrary to expectation, you don't have to be a hardcore cinephile to enjoy a film from this angle either. There may be a lot of things in Inland Empire, which was shot in a very innovative way with digital video, that you find sheerly beautiful, reminiscent of an Impressionist painter's dreams or nightmares. Just go with it.
3. Know your own mood going into this. Ideally, you should be relaxed, even in daydreaming mode, and prepared to sit in front of the TV for awhile. If you can just sit still and watch even a little distractedly, letting the words and images flow over you, then you will have a better time than if you had a shitty day and desperately need something to watch to take your mind off it. It's likely, if you're in the latter state of mind, that you'll end up turning this off, annoyed, and be driven to drink and fascistic action movies.
I liked Inland Empire quite a bit, perhaps even better than Mulholland Drive. It taps into some dark places somewhere in me and hopefully in a lot of people, is filled with feelings of loss and dejection, and has some of the most gorgeous photography I've seen yet on digital. Give it a try.
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