I saw the film upon it's release with a Q&A with Justin after the film, prompting me to write this to a friend who had to leave early:
This is, credibly, the least conjuctive David Lynch film ever released. In the post-film Q&A, Justin revealed that while David often gave them character motivations and a general sense of direction, there appeared to be no narrative choreography (Oh my god. I haven't like "slept" in 3 days and it's murdering my spelling). The film was also shot over the course of 2 1/2-3 years and on DV to boot. Those 3 factors seem to add up to the common critical reaction that, yes, this is a David Lynch film, but that's not an excuse for pure opacity. A number of critics have also remarked that the film is deeply lexiconical; That is, there are numerous elements from other Lynch films in Inland Empire. The rabbits come from a series of web-only short films he shot a few years ago.
All of this is to say that I thing the traditional "treasure hunt" for meaning post-Lynch is, more or less, a Sisphyean task this time out. David Lynch may have made the first David Lynch film just for David Lynch. It's no small wonder that no studio would touch the film. That said, there are a few cohesive elements:
Nikki essentially departs into 2 characters: Nikki the actress and Nikki, the Southern belle-cum-trailer trash wanderer. I can't act like there's a disjunct between the fact that the Nikki of the latter half of the film happens to be as Southern as the character Nikki the actress was playing. That's not to say the film character is the same as the character we see in the interrogation room, but there's something to it.
Of importance is Nikki's husband, the opressive Pole whose nationality hearkens to the title of the film. Poland is often noted to be the "inland empire". Many of the scenes that take place in Poland often have Nikki, or a character in Nikki's position, being derided or mocked. In some ways, the inland empire itself must assume the character of Nikki's husband, perhaps? This much says nothing about the whores nor Justin Theroux's dashing Hollywood badboy, although the whores might eventually composite into the Nikki we see in the interrogation room.
It's not unfair, I don't think, to call the film masturbatory and mean it in a good way. Lynch is one of the few directors who can direct a film so boldly without purpose and get away with it. Still, it challanges the position of the viewer. What is it to appreciate something without a context? There's something more intellectually involving here than "Oh, pretty pictures", but it's ultimately a pointless exercise. It straddles a deeply disturbing line between the extremes of intellectual function: Discovery and beating a dead horse, to death, again and again and again. To clarify: It encourages thought by being obtuse and yet offers no recourse nor reward to the thinker. We're left to be embarassed, stranded in our own ocean. You could argue that, hey, it's a Lynch film and you got what you deserved, but for the first time I feel lured out here and abandoned by a director. It's that old frat game where they blindfold a guy and leave him naked in the woods.
