Inland Empire (El Imperio) [NTSC/REGION 1 & 4 DVD. Import-Latin America] | ![Inland Empire (El Imperio) [NTSC/REGION 1 & 4 DVD. Import-Latin America]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/21ASyVRWxFL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: David Lynch
Category: DVD
Buy New: $32.99
(as of 7/30/10 09:26 PDT - Details)
New (3) Used (1) from $32.98
Rating:  165 reviews
Sales Rank: 214683
Format: NTSC, Import, Widescreen, Dolby, Subtitled, Dubbed
Languages: Spanish (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), English (Unknown), Polish (Unknown), Spanish (Unknown)
Region: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 7502007499304
ASIN: B00156VEOE
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An actress's perception of reality becomes increasingly distorted as she finds herself falling for her co-star in a remake of an unfinished Polish production that was supposedly cursed.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 165
 Mansion Full of Mirrors May 26, 2007
Rocky Raccoon (Boise, ID)
90 out of 110 found this review helpful
`Inland Empire' is full of surprises. Convoluted and suspenseful we follow the story lines of successful actress Nikki (Laura Dern) who is waiting for the results of a tryout for a new Hollywood movie, `On High in Blue Tomorrows`. Soon she is visited by her new Polish immigrant neighbor. In her nosey way she pries information, but also intensely warns her of bad omens. She foretells that Nikki will obtain the part she has tried out for, but the story, is a remake and a murder will take place. She intensely relates folk tales, including one about a girl at the marketplace in an alley behind the palace who loses her memory. "Forgetfulness happens to us all," she relates. She also incessantly speaks of "unpaid bills" in a scathing fashion. Rebuffing the neighbor's pointed comments, the actress asks the suspicious elderly woman to leave.
The movie fast-forwards to the next day as the woman foretells in the narration. The gypsy fades out with a vengeance. Nikki gets the part, and on the set we meet Devon (Justin Theroux), her dashing, handsome co-star. The director (Jeremy Irons) facilitates a script reading where he relates that the film is indeed a remake; one where a murder took place and was allegedly cursed from the start.
From here the movie weaves its way through many scenes. Nikki's husband warns the young co-star of the consequences of sneaking out with his actress wife. Some feature Southern characters Billy and Sue in the movie, but they are so closely connected to their actual lives that we begin to lose our own grip on reality. Eerily suspenseful scenes show (Nikki or Sue) walking through a house in bewildered trepidation. Then, we are transported to the lives of the screen couple in the backyard. Next, we find them in Poland during the dead of winter. In one scene the actors are having an affair; in another the characters are. To spice things up, we get a play with actors in rabbit costumes performing an absurdist comedy. At certain points, just when we feel grounded, a woman is watching all the drama on television in her dark apartment.
The developments of `Inland Empire' are intriguing. Like `French Lieutenant's Woman' (significantly also with Jeremy Irons) there's a movie story mixed within a real story. Unlike `FLW' it isn't easy to tell where one story ends and the other begins. In ways like Altman's `The Player,' we have to decide what components are real and which are not. One finds oneself asking many questions while watching the movie. Which parts are from the movie? Which parts are real life? Are the scenes in Poland real or are they components of the original film? Is this all seen through a viewer's eyes or is it all part of the movie? Is she crazy or is her character crazy? Surely, the theme of misogyny is at the forefront as we come across prostitutes and male abuse. Not to mention the claustrophobic fishbowl existence of celebrity life. One thing is for certain, the movie is assembled expertly. It comes across like a mansion full of mirrors--like a fun/haunted house. Not everyone will like the exit strategy (Afterall, who likes hitting the pavement after a funhouse?) but it certainly provides a strange and intense experience.
It does have a plot dangit May 31, 2007
Hayley Love
30 out of 35 found this review helpful
I strongly disagree with the person who says this movie has no plot. I just think it takes mental effort to stay focused and understand it. I have only seen it once so far, and quite frankly I was fading out during the last hour, so I def. need to watch it again, but it did make a lot of sense to me. I'm sure it will make sense in a different way to someone else.
The movie is pretty staightforward until the scene where Laura is having a romantic moment with her movie costar. She tells him "This is just like a scene from the movie." and then realizes that the cameras are rolling, and gets disoriented. At this point the move really breaks from the reality thus far, which I appreciated since that moment was so awkward and tense.
The rest is very dreamlike. I have always thought that Eraserhead is the closest representation to my dreams than anything else in real life, and this picks up on that a bit. We see some of Nikki's dreams, where I believe she is dreaming about her lover's old flings all in one room. Her story runs parallel to the actors who tried to film this movie in Poland and died during filming, and their story is shown a bit. The male actor dies later on, which I had been anticipating. We also see the story that the woman told in the beginning panning out.
It is confusing and I need to watch it again. I highly recommend watching it in the theatre first since Mr. Lynch is aware of his theatre audience and plays of off this. There are points of it that may never make sense to me, and some storylines that I don't quite see how they fit in. But I figure if I can anticipate events before they occur then it can't make no sense. This is a movie I feel I could talk about for hours, if only someone was willing to talk about it with me. It is quite an experience, I love the cinematography, the intense close-ups, the dark colors, the actors. I enjoy taking something to think about away from it.
A great movie.
Delicious June 23, 2008
J from NY (New York)
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
The thing I don't understand about most people is that they say the films of David Lynch are impossible to understand. If you watch and pay attention, not everything is going to necessarily make perfect sense, but you're going to get the jist of what he's trying to do.
In this brilliant new film (certainly as good as, if not better, than "Mulholland Drive" in many ways), Laura Dern gives on the most terrifying performances I have ever seen as promising, beautiful actress Nikki Grace/ a low income, degraded, hideous woman who has nowhere to go.
If you want an idea of the kind of non-linear, angst-ridden surreality you're in for, here's an example:
about a half an hour of the film is devoted to Susan, not Nikki's, plight with a group of prostitutes, some looking like Hollywood stars and others
like crack addicts. She is stabbed by her Polish husband in the cursed film. Bleeding to death on the Hollywood strip all over the "stars", a homeless black woman says: "You're dyin', lady". Then a Japanese girl speaks in her native language--while Dern's schizoid character is dying--about a bus going to somewhere else in Hollywood. This takes about five minutes. Then the black woman holds up a lighter and says to Dern: "Sometimes we die, is all. Here. You see this light? You won't see no blue when you wake up." Then Jeremy Irons bursts in with his megaphone screaming "Bravo! Smashing cut!"
Either Nikki was never Nikki or she was Nikki and became Susan once she prostituted herself for Devon. Or Susan fantasized about being Nikki. In any case, this is schizoid identity crisis in the extreme, but more than that a very nicely placed punch on the nose of Hollywood itself: as in "MH", he portrays most actors and actresses as elitist snobs who are amazingly empty and superficial apart from their roles, wrought with hanger ons and arrogant directors. I don't know if this is Lynch's conspiratorial, paranoid fantasy about Hollywood or how it actually is. This movie is brilliant, exciting, terrifying, and simply enjoyable all the way around. Art. Lynch continues to transcend himself.
Watch out for the Polish lady!
Fantastic August 20, 2007
R. Janis (Chicago, IL United States)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
I managed to catch this film just before it finished its brief run at a local theater here in Chicago, and I'm so glad I made the trip. I can't say that I know what the movie is about, and I have to be honest: I don't care (though I enjoy reading the different perspectives among filmgoers who DO have their ideas on what it's really about). If the purpose of a good film or piece of music is to provoke an emotional response out of the viewer/listener, then "Inland Empire" achieved this in spades, and this makes it a terrific film in my view. I was fully riveted for all three hours and was not bored for one single minute. And it's unlike any film I've ever seen before.
I'll concede right away it's not for everyone - but I truly believe it to be something special and really love it. Laura Dern's performance is something else, and I can't think of another well-known American actress who would be bold enough to approach a role like this (though Julianne Moore comes to mind), much less put their trust in Lynch as Dern does here, and has done so before.
And though this is in digital video, I still found it to be filmed in a rich kind of way. Not sumptuous like "Mulholland Drive" (probably my favorite Lynch film of all), but still with the same care I believe Lynch puts into any of his films. The use of sound is great too. Also, though I read in a local film review about one scene where "you'll want to scream...you probably will", I was still not prepared for the impact. I actually thought I'd already seen the moment in question, but was I ever wrong! When it did happen, I was frozen in my seat - a really frightening combination of sound and image that's hard to get out of your head.
I still think about this movie every day or so - it really stays with you. Again, not for everybody, not by a longshot. But so glad I saw it and look forward to viewing it again at home.
Close to his best--also very flawed October 19, 2007
Jon (UK)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
Plot: This is the wrong idea to start from as it's possible to write a thesis on the various interpretations of the film. Anyway here's my take on it.
Like Mulholland Drive this is a dreamscape told symbolically via Hollywood, with all of the attendant illusion and memory. A projector leads us to the inland empire (the internal world of the mind--here a sleeping mind very much as in Finnegans Wake) to replay incidents from the life and violently derailed marriage of a woman seen from different angles as she sleeps. She's a whore, a killer, a betrayer, a wreck, a liar, and an `actress' both haunting and berating herself. On the way Lynch plays with coded themes--the Axxon N references (axons in the brain with the added X and N mathematical symbols for multiplication and factoring, i.e., the endlessly complex mind dividing ceaselessly back into itself), the carefully buried yet clearly evident sexuality of the human-form rabbits (as in "breeding like rabbits") in their weird stilted sit-com with their secrets and problems of identity, the stories within stories that smack of the imagination, the dislocations of time and space which do the same, the artifice/uncertainty of the settings, the need to defeat an illusive `phantom' and the probing camera (the restless eye more as an I) which is always there just behind the scenes. Finally there is the symbolic death and self-reconciliation which seem to have become key Lynchian themes, plus the big clunking subconscious-heavy reference (sawing wood as the cliché for snoring/dreaming) as a tip-off in case you didn't get it.
On a second viewing I felt like setting-up a help group for the people who were probably wrong about Lynch's artistic motivations for creating this movie--before promptly signing myself into it. In any case, noting that the relatively straightforward Mulholland Drive had puzzled much of its audience, I think any group of that kind would oversubscribe in seconds.
Inland Empire is deliberately irrational and determinedly non-linear so if you're not prepared to give it enough time, and spend some effort spinning theories, then just don't bother. You'll probably hate it with a passion.
Cast: A welcome return for some of Lynch's regulars and semi-regulars, along with brilliant character portraits from first timers. There is no doubt this is Laura Dern's best performance and the film would be a complete mess without her.
Imagery: The most striking in all of his work. Although the lack of polished 35mm sometimes counts against him, Lynch has turned the digital process into something uniquely beautiful and/or terrifying. The scenes in which people fade-in or suddenly disappear, as if in a dream, are magnificent. The sudden bursts of colour are equally dazzling and some of the computer manipulations are 18-cert disturbing.
Lynchisms: The entire film is one long Lynchian carnival. If you know his cinema then you'll be busy spotting references to Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, Mulholland Drive, Wild At Heart, Eraserhead, The Straight Story and (sadly) Lost Highway. For real Lynch aficionados there are also the above mentioned inclusions of Rabbits and references to Axxon N, which were previously limited to online subscription. Likewise the dialogue is Pinter via Days Of Our Lives and the shifting timeframe is pure 2001--there's even the same kind of Louis XVI furniture and bits of a very popular Kubrick horror score.
Rating: Inland Empire is not Lynch's best film. It suffers from a lack of editorial control and is at times sloppy and self-indulgent. In a similarly negative vein, the entire project wobbles dangerously close to being weird and difficult just for the sake of it. As Lynch had already done this with his clunker Lost Highway, the hope was that he'd learned his lesson. IMO at least the Straight Story and Mulholland Drive seemed to show that he'd regained the disciplined mind of an artist and not that of an over coddled ego let loose to create a mess. Plus there is quite a bit of Transcendental Meditation in here, and despite what Lynch says he is fronting for a cult.
The plus sides, however, are thoroughly rewarding and Inland Empire should not be missed. For three solid hours it plays as one of the most disorientating, hallucinogenic experiences that you'll ever see. It's so honestly mentally invasive that you'll end-up dreaming sections of it...I just hope they're the pleasant ones. I never want to relive that endless house again. Nor do I want to cross the backdrop of an empty soundstage while ripping the sheets off my bed looking for an exit.
In summary: If Lynch has decided to go hell-for-leather after his own brand of weird visions then good for him--even if it turns out to be a mistake and his career closes with Lost Highway 10. If that's what he finally shuffles away with then I'll still respect the man as he's earned my loyalty.
My only concern is the inclusion of increasing references to TM in Lynch's work, as it has the kind of dark reputation which befits its brand of pseudo-scientific nonsense. My advice is to take a meme inoculation before accepting Lynch's PR role and look instead to his artistic foundations. You probably came for those anyway, and not for some deluded sales pitch on behalf of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 165
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