by Jason Shamai
Sitting in the theater the other night, it was with both great relief and great sadness that I realized I felt zero obligation to work out what was going on in David Lynch’s Inland Empire. The movie practically dares you to be stupid enough to try, so I didn’t. At first all I felt was the relief — what a pleasure to let the movie’s New Orleans funeral procession of words, sounds, images, and performances roll along without having to ask the left side of my brain to do anything. By the halfway point, though, I was starting to feel cheated, either by my lack of a certain kind of attention, or whatever was missing from the film that justified that lack, or both.
Hey Lynch — Shamai has you on notice.