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There's no easy way to describe David Lynch's latest film, though on first viewing it strikes me as the natural culmination of the themes and visual approaches he's been refining from Twin Peaks on through Mulholland Dr.. It completely breaks from conventional notions of narrative structure, but at the same time is hardly unfocused or unstructured; instead, it conveys its story and its ideas through tonal variations, repetitions of images or phrases in differing contexts, and jarring juxtapositions of humor and horror. Identities shift and merge, characters move between vastly different physical and psychological spaces, and by the end there were still a few elements that weren't clear to me, though the underlying shape of the film isn't that hard to grasp (my mother, hardly a Lynch expert, had no difficulty understanding it).

Of course, Lynch throws us off the track by implying a conventional narrative at the start. This initial story follows Nikki (Laura Dern), an actress who secures a starring role in a film that turns out to be a remake of an uncompleted Polish project. Apparently, the leads in the original production were murdered and the film was considered cursed. In any other hands, this would be the setup for a really lousy horror film; but Lynch is more interested in the response the story of the curse provokes in Nikki's mind. As she embarks on an ill-advised affair with her co-star (Justin Theroux), she becomes less and less certain of her own identity, and her world begins to merge with that of her character, and eventually begins to take on elements of the story of the Polish actress who originally played the role. The chronological sequence of events becomes jumbled, mysterious figures appear in the shadows, and the story is periodically invaded by a sitcom starring three people in rabbit suits.

The rabbit scenes are part of one of multiple layers in Inland Empire: it is, in part, a commentary on the crassness of the entertainment industry, especially in those moments when the rabbits' entirely serious dialogue is greeted with howls of inappropriate laughter. But the film is ultimately more concerned with the deterioration of Nikki's psyche, and Dern does a phenomenal job in the role. In some respects, she's playing three different roles-- the increasingly confused and disoriented Nikki, the character Nikki plays in the movie she's shooting, and a third persona that may or may not be a combination of those two. In this last guise, she delivers a hair-raising monologue about gouging out a rapist's eye, and it's one of the most unnerving sequences in the film. (The theme of male aggression and brutality, and its debilitating effects on women, recurs throughout the film; perhaps this could be considered Lynch's response to all those accusations of misogyny that were leveled against Blue Velvet.)

Much has been made of Lynch's decision to use digital cameras for shooting Inland Empire, but in practical terms it doesn't alter his visual approach in any drastic fashion. The film still contains deep, dark shadows and unnerving lighting schemes, and while there might be a shade more brightness to the harsher lights, most of the time it very much resembles his past work. The most drastic difference here is Lynch's almost continual use of extreme close-ups, not just for Dern but for the other major characters as well. Sometimes this increases the creepiness, as with the fishbowl effect used for Grace Zabriskie as an unnerving neighbor; elsewhere, especially in Dern's scenes, it emphasizes the emotional turmoil by placing us uncomfortably close to the characters. (It also serves to emphasize that this is as much Dern's film as it is Lynch's; her performance really does hold the piece together.)

I'm not sure if Inland Empire is Lynch's best film, but it's certainly just as good as its immediate predecessors; and while its basic themes and many of its visual elements are familiar, its approach to those ideas still feels fresh. At three hours, it isn't anywhere near long enough, and I can't wait to see it again.

Rating- 10/10