180 mins |
Rated
R (for language, some violence and sexuality/nudity.)
Directed by David Lynch
Starring Justin Theroux, Laura Dern, Harry Dean Stanton, Jan Hencz, Bellina Logan, Peter J. Lucas, Jeremy Irons
Inland Empire (2006)
(David Lynch, 2006, 180min)
Thursday, 4/24 @ 7pm
Wednesday, 4/30 @ 7pm
As actress Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) begins to adopt the persona of her character, Sue, while shooting a film, her world becomes nightmarish and surreal. In David Lynch's postmodern style, meaning and narrative are obscured and twisted in a labyrinthine spiral of psychosis and composite layers of reality and perception, lost in a blur of mise en abyme, a French term, which translates literally to "placed in abyss". Emphasis on "abyss".
Mise en abyme refers to recursive structures in art. The dream within a dream, the film within the film, and in the case of Inland Empire, reality within reality, all layered on top of one another. The film has been described as "a pure jolt of cinema" and as something better experienced than understood. As a capstone on Lynch's feature length projects (not forgetting Lynch's final foray into the world of Twin Peaks in The Return), Inland Empire can possibly be seen as the closest the artist ever got to fusing pure art and pure life outside of his dedication to living the Art Life, and being a work of art himself.
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Inland Empire (2006)
(David Lynch, 2006, 180min)
Thursday, 4/24 @ 7pm
Wednesday, 4/30 @ 7pm
As actress Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) begins to adopt the persona of her character, Sue, while shooting a film, her world becomes nightmarish and surreal. In David Lynch's postmodern style, meaning and narrative are obscured and twisted in a labyrinthine spiral of psychosis and composite layers of reality and perception, lost in a blur of mise en abyme, a French term, which translates literally to "placed in abyss". Emphasis on "abyss".
Mise en abyme refers to recursive structures in art. The dream within a dream, the film within the film, and in the case of Inland Empire, reality within reality, all layered on top of one another. The film has been described as "a pure jolt of cinema" and as something better experienced than understood. As a capstone on Lynch's feature length projects (not forgetting Lynch's final foray into the world of Twin Peaks in The Return), Inland Empire can possibly be seen as the closest the artist ever got to fusing pure art and pure life outside of his dedication to living the Art Life, and being a work of art himself.
