The movie reception that David Lynch was “hurt” by
In 2001, David Lynch released his beautifully mind-bending movie Mulholland Drive, which was a massive hit and is often regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made. However, five years later, he returned with something considerably more challenging and perplexing – Inland Empire.
A master of the surreal, David Lynch began making films in the 1960s, although his first feature, Eraserhead, wasn’t released until 1977. The black-and-white movie gained popularity in underground cinemas, although critics were divided. Lynch’s take on fatherhood and urban alienation was bizarre – featuring a grotesque alien-like creature as the protagonist’s baby and an unnerving musical number from ‘The Lady in the Radiator’. Yet, in all of its innate weirdness, Lynch did a beautiful job of exploring these themes, using meticulous sound design and shadowy cinematography to fully immerse the audience.
Since then, Lynch has polarised cinema-goers, with some becoming dedicated followers of the filmmaker’s every move and others finding him an incomprehensible enigma. While some of his work is more accessible and easy to understand than others, such as Wild At Heart, Lynch’s oeuvre has always featured unusual characters and strange musical numbers, often using campy dialogue to create even more of a peculiar atmosphere.
After establishing himself as one of the most well-respected voices in modern cinema during the ‘80s and ‘90s, Lynch found himself in a position where he could create practically anything he wanted. In 2002, he made some web shorts, including DumbLand and Rabbits, using several clips from the latter in Inland Empire.
If you thought Rabbits was strange enough – several humanoid rabbits converse in non-sequiturs – then in the context of Inland Empire, it becomes even more confusing. For many viewers, Inland Empire makes little sense, with its three-hour runtime leaving more questions than answers. Yet, for this same reason, many Lynch fans consider it one of his best films. It is a fascinating movie to dissect, one that features strange dance routines (such as ‘The Locomotion’) and Laura Dern running wild on the streets of Hollywood, with Lynch sometimes using a cheap camcorder to film scenes.
The movie slots into Lynch’s unofficial series of work that explores troubled women. From Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks to Betty/Diane in Mulholland Drive, Lynch’s women often find themselves at odds with their surroundings and peers, resulting in mental breakdowns. Dern’s character is no exception, and we see her face maniacally distort in one scene – a still that is burned into the brains of everyone who has seen the movie.
Inland Empire was made without a finished screenplay, with Lynch allowing his strangest ideas to take hold instead. Naturally, the film was received rather divisively, something that “hurt” Lynch. He told Bomb Magazine, “I always say that if you love the work, you cannot get hurt.” However, he couldn’t help but feel disappointed after releasing Inland Empire because “It was the first film I did I think where distributors lost some money.”
Lynch took it upon himself to distribute the experimental film, using his companies Absurdia and 518 Media. Using the latter, he allowed two theatres to show the movie on its opening weekend, resulting in a box-office gross of just $27,508. In the end, the movie made a worldwide gross of $4,037,577 – less than a quarter of the earnings Mulholland Drive made.
Still, Lynch hopes that viewers will come back to Inland Empire in the future and his efforts won’t have been entirely in vain. “I like to think over time, people will discover Inland Empire and I like to think the distributors will get their money back one day.”
Watch a clip of Inland Empire below.
