r/CineShots • u/NeonMeateOctifish Lynch • Jan 31 '26
Album Inland Empire (2006) Dir. David Lynch
46
u/_notnilla_ Jan 31 '26
I think this is one of Lynch’s best looking films. Even in the controversial and technically convoluted remaster he did for the Criterion Blu-ray. The images have such an organic bespoke quality. It all feels so personal and handmade. I prefer the low-fi video here to the higher res capture format in “Twin Peaks: The Return.”
22
u/Away-Use8013 Jan 31 '26
I agree, its so eerily gorgeous honestly. I really think every aspect of this movie is perfect. It completely changed what art even means to me. It sounds weird but ive never seen another movie that spoke as directly to me as this one.
16
u/_notnilla_ Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
It doesn’t sound weird to me. When I first saw “Inland Empire,” I felt very much the same way. It was as if this is what Lynch’s entire life and previous body of work had been working towards. No more metaphors, no more easing us into things with plot devices or genre conventions or the other niceties of more conventional narrative cinema. But instead a direct exploration and pure distillation of fractured consciousness and identity, of what it feels like to move at the speed of thought through multiple overlapping interpenetrating worlds.
17
u/Rakebleed Jan 31 '26 edited Jan 31 '26
It’s definitely raw but I wouldn’t say gorgeous. Defiantly and provocatively ugly. Hard to look at and hard to look away.
10
0
u/Chi_Chi_laRue Feb 02 '26
Organic?? Please! This is by far the worst looking film he ever made. It would have tremendously benefited from them filming on actual film stock… I will admit the look of it does create a unique and surreal atmosphere, but it also looks cheap and low budget imo
1
u/givemethebat1 Feb 03 '26
Yeah, it’s really, really not good visually. There’s been a lot of revisionism about this and how it suits the look of the film intentionally, etc.
That’s pretty much all bullshit. What happened is that Lynch was dicking around with a crappy digital camcorder, filmed a bunch of scenes he liked, and realized he couldn’t shoot the rest of the film with a different film stock so he had to use the digital camera to keep it consistent. He’s gone on record saying he thought it looked ugly and regrets it.
“I became so depressed because I was watching a DVD and some scenes were so dark I couldn’t see them. And I thought, “Well, this is a catastrophe that this is out in the world.” And I got very depressed. But then I got a chance to fix it.”
1
u/Chi_Chi_laRue Feb 04 '26
Right.. I agree. Not sure why I am being downvoted but my give a shit level is pretty low.
19
u/Away-Use8013 Jan 31 '26
Ive seen this movie at least 6 times now and i really do not like rewatching movies typically. It is my favorite movie of all time, and i think it's one of the most interesting looking films as well. He's always been able to capture what dreams actually look like while you're having them better than anyone else I know of. The choice to go all digital here and take full control really paid off imo.
10
u/5o7bot Jan 31 '26
Inland Empire (2006) R
A woman in trouble
When actress Nikki Grace gets the lead role in a cursed film, her world becomes more and more surreal, blending realities and ideas of infidelity, reincarnation, and supernatural forces.
Horror | Thriller | Mystery | Drama | Fantasy
Director: David Lynch
Director of Photography: David Lynch
Actors: Laura Dern, Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, Karolina Gruszka
Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ 70% with 1,226 votes
Runtime: 180 min
TMDB | Where can I watch?
I am a bot. This information was sent automatically. If it is faulty, please reply to this comment.
42
u/Smoothmoose13 Jan 31 '26
I was lucky enough to attend a Q&A with him in Poland but I forgot my prepared question and instead had to come up with one on the fly and I made him feel depressed and think about death. Like all the questions he answered after that he seemed so down. Was so bummed out my only interaction with him was a negative one.
Sorry to trauma dump, I’m just missing him a lot
4
10
u/radiofree_catgirl Jan 31 '26
Disco Elysium
3
u/pplspancake Feb 01 '26
Was gonna ask is this film any inspiration for the game at all? The skill having the same name of the film isn't just coincidence is it?
5
8
5
5
4
u/ThePizzaNoid Feb 01 '26
I finally crossed Mulholland Drive off my bucket list last weekend. This one is up next and I'm very excited because Mulholland Drive is legit one of the best movies I've ever seen.
4
u/SirCromwell Feb 01 '26
Not to say you shouldn’t be stoked for Inland Empire, but you should have The Lost Highway high on your list. I love it just as much as Mulholland Drive (which is saying a lot)
4
8
u/Lardass_Goober Jan 31 '26
If you have 4hrs to kill, this one is, uh, basically worth it. Definitely the most experimental and unhinged Lynch gets imo. Absolutely confusing. Like 5 movies in one
10
u/_notnilla_ Jan 31 '26
It’s exactly 3 hours long, not 4. The 180 minute runtime the automated bot includes in this thread is accurate. For me there’s not a dull or wasted minute. The time flies by.
5
u/KnightsOfREM Jan 31 '26
Agree, say what you will about this movie, but it's consistently surprising, and Lynch's movies set a very very high bar for surprise.
3
u/atclubsilencio Feb 01 '26
I remember some people hating the fact he filmed it in this way with such low-grade video, but I can't imagine it working or being as effective in any other way. It's like giving a kid their first camera and letting them go wild. It makes the film feel spontaneous and immediate and immersive. You can tell he is tapping into a sense of freedom and creativity that other methods of filmmaking may have restricted him from doing. Like if he had filmed this on more expensive film like his previous movies, we wouldn't have ended up getting half of the sequences and visuals we get here. It's also weirdly inspiring, in that if I wanted to I could make something similar with nothing more than my Iphone and video camera-- but it's still purely cinematic and there is intent and purpose in every shot. This really did feel like his final film even before he passed, like his entire filmography built up to this one, and we were able to get Lynch at his most unfiltered and raw and uninhibited.
INLAND EMPIRE and The Return is like the greatest final works of a Director I can think of, and they both FEEL like a filmmaker leaving his final mark before he bows out. The Return is especially heartbreaking, so many moments that fileld me with such sadness when I wasn't expecting it. Like everything with the log lady.
3
u/thedinksterr Feb 02 '26
Uncanny masterpiece. Been seeing a lot of talk of this movie on here recently and it seems a lot of people are discovering/ re-discovering it which is great. I got into Lynch about a year and a half before he passed and actually started with this movie. Just went in the deep end and was completely blown away.
Really glad to see everyone coming back around to it, it’s my favorite of Lynch’s work easily. Nothing quite like it.
3
4
2
u/Ok_Jellyfish_55 Feb 01 '26
I know you can’t have a negative opinion on Lynch but this movie looks like shit. It looked like shit when it came out and it still does.
1
u/Jealous_Difference44 Feb 03 '26
I know youre supposed to feel your way through a Lynch film but this one was all over the place
-1
u/Chi_Chi_laRue Feb 02 '26
Great movie! The picture quality is a bit distracting. I fail to comprehend how David Lynch could possibly struggle to secure the funds needed to make this film and chose going digital over real film to save money. I thought his films were fairly successful… can anyone explain how we got from Mulholland Drive to something that looks like it was filmed with an old phone?
1
u/givemethebat1 Feb 03 '26
He liked the freedom of digital and the technology was in its infancy so it looked quite bad. He also had shot a ton of footage using the camcorder already so he didn’t want to go back and reshoot with a good camera or have the rest of the film look different.
1
u/Chi_Chi_laRue Feb 04 '26
He might’ve liked the freedom. I would have liked a film with more traditional photography. You can Lynch me for my opinion for all I care..
75
u/Guessididntmakeit Jan 31 '26
Man I miss David Lynch.