It's a foregone conclusion that attempting to make sense of a David Lynch film doth not time well spent make. Lynch is one of modern cinema's great provocateurs, a love-him-or-hate-him cinematic savant who manages to achieve with film what most only dare to attempt with paint or poetry. With this in mind, it should come as no surprise to learn that Lynch's latest mind-bender, INLAND EMPIRE, is a frighteningly surreal descent into paranoid perplexity that exhilarates every bit as much as it bewilders.<br /><br />INLAND EMPIRE ostensibly concerns actress Nikki Grace's (the marvelous Laura Dern) involvement with a career-making new film project. But, Lynch being Lynch, this was never going to be that simple. We later learn the project is the remake of a cursed film that never wrapped production as its two stars were brutally murdered. And here's where narrative coherence takes a flying leap, and we should ready ourselves for what's to come.<br /><br />At first, Lynch's decision to shoot on cheap digital video seems to prove distracting, as if the comparative nastiness of the image quality will detract from our ability to invest in the story. But, as the film progresses, it settles into a look all its own, and the grainy, hand-held camera-work actually seems more real and immediate, drawing us ever-closer to the edges of our seats as the narrative twists and contorts.<br /><br />In INLAND EMPIRE, characters cross over the threshold defining the limits of reality and fiction, co-exist with their other-world counterparts in one fluctuating existential plane and change wholly and completely from one scene to another, Lynch all the while serving up the kind of hallucinatory hell that cinema-goers have come to demand of him. Just as you think you're figuring it out, Lynch throws in a dance sequence set to 'The Locomotion,' cuts to a sitcom comprised of giant rabbit-people, or offers a glimpse at what appears to be footage straight from the original doomed film.<br /><br />As time perpetually folds back in on itself and the film's visual motifs begin to pile up, it becomes clear that this is Lynch's most daring and bizarre film yet. This is video art as feature film, with a serpentine narrative that defies comprehension driving us onward to oblivion with Lynch at the wheel. Its most obvious points of comparison are Lynch's own Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive, but even they seem like child's play when compared to EMPIRE, which offers tantalising clues to unlocking its mysteries, with the audience forever ten strides behind.<br /><br />This is Lynch down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass, a psychotropic epic that remains fascinating throughout, despite its three hour duration and the intentionally confounding nature of its plot. If you appreciate Lynch's previous exercises in dream logic and nightmare vision, and can handle the extended running time, INLAND EMPIRE is essential viewing. It's a terrifying and uncompromised journey to the depths of the subconscious, and one of the boldest cinematic statements of the year.<br /><br />http://celluloidtongue.blogspot.com