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"Australia...what fresh hell is this?"
Standing in the gruesome aftermath of a desperate and frantic gunfight that opens the film in media res, Captain Stanley (Ray Winstone) looks out at the sweltering, barren landscape of the Australian outback in near-desperation, and anachronistically quotes Dorothy Parker. Later in the film, bounty hunter Jellon Lamb (John Hurt) remarks how all the God has evaporated out of him in this "godforsaken land". The harsh Australian landscape, dusty, bleached, buzzing with flies, endless, mocks Captain Stanley and his repeated platitudes that he will "civilize this land". It mocks the little rose garden his wife (Emily Watson) tends in front of their house, demarcated by a ridiculously out-of-place white picket fence from the vast sea of sand and rock that surrounds it.
The traditional Western dichotomy between the wilderness and the encroaching garden of civilization is present and accounted for, but this is neither a throwback to the classic Western, glorifying the settlers and their work, nor is it a revisionist recasting of the settlers as corrupt spearheads of capitalism, destroying the natural landscape and all it stands for. Here, the wilderness is savage, empty, and so cosmically indifferent to the figures within it that any delusions of taming it are laughable.
1880s Australia in The Proposition is a vision of hell, a godless, amoral wasteland in which all attempts at civility and civilization seem woefully inadequate. This land - which director John Hillcoat rightly places in the foreground of the film, somehow making sweeping, empty landscapes seem stifling and claustrophobic - is a land of dust, flesh and blood, a place where a man can have little pretentions of being anything other than a beast, and where any sort of morality seems an exercise in futility. Watson's Martha Stanley,a gentle, composed, seemingly upper-class woman, seems, together with the class and domestic values she represents, utterly out of place here.
Here, justice becomes an elastic concept; the word is much bandied about but no-one seems to agree on what it means or how it should be enforced. Captain Stanley, who, despite a distinct roughness, at least possesses some degree of compassion, is the only person willing to look beyond an especially vicious eye-for-an-eye philosophy; but even this slight hint of morality seems like a hopeless match struck in an ocean of darkness.
Nick Cave's voice is clearly evident in the screenplay (he also contributes an unsurprisingly excellent but surprisingly understated score), in its blend of low, casual vulgarity and violence, and high seriousness. There is the distinct hint of Old Testament fire and brimstone coursing through every line of dialogue, resounding with an elaborate but unforced, dramatic theatricality that is entirely appropriate to this resolutely expressionist, despite its dusty grittiness, film. Hillcoat translates the copious acts of violence in the script primarily through effective suggestion and detail - blood being strained from a whip, and so on - though there is one glaring, and memorable, exception (you'll know it when you see it).
The hint of Abel and Cain haunts the central narrative, of Charles Burns (Guy Pearce), the middle brother of a three-sibling outlaw gang, forced to choose between hunting down his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston) or letting his younger brother Mike (Richard Wilson) be hanged. There are also echoes of Conrad's Heart of Darkness (and Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979)), with Arthur seeming to have become a kind of Kurtz figure, a near-godlike legend who has absorbed the spirit of the land.
This is a rich film unafraid to tackle the big themes - family, morality, justice, atonement. But, despite Hillcoat's and Cave's considerable talents, the film would not have worked as well as it does without the contributions of a truly remarkable cast. It is difficult to pick a standout, since all the principal players - Winstone, Pearce, Huston, Watson, Hurt - deliver perfectly-judged performances, from Hurt's histrionic grandstanding, to Watson's understated, restrained turn, to Pearce's ragged, conflicted introversion. Their performances prove crucial, for despite the loftiness of its themes, The Proposition's ideas are expressed through the conflicts and relationships that tie its characters together; the family bonds that link the Burns brothers, Captain Stanley's troubled but affectionate relationship with his wife, his subordinates' flagging trust in his authority, the pact, if there is one at all, between Captain Stanley and Charles Burns; and the crux of the film lies in the way all these relationships come under strain, often violently, as all the characters attempt to follow their own twisted moral compass in a godless, spiritually and materially arid land.
What to say about a film that so determinedly places itself in opposition to rationalization, to logical thought, to being pinned down or reduced into any logical schema? David Lynch's Inland Empire, even by Lynch's standards, is a film that absolutely cannot be reduced to its narrative elements or summed up in a plot outline.
It is, more than any film of his career, or, indeed, than any major film of the last few years, a film of pure images and atmosphere. The transition to DV has suited Lynch well; though the glossy, hyper-real saturation of Mulholland Drive (2001) is lost, the grimy, murky look we gain, all overexposed highlights and dark, grainy shadows, suits the film perfectly - it is difficult to imagine Inland Empire shot on traditional film. Lynch isn't the first major film-maker to switch to video, but none have made the switch so comprehensively, so acutely aware of the possibilities created by the change in medium.
So what is Inland Empire? At its core, it is a labyrinthine descent into an individual and a collective subconscious, a dense, interlocking web of images and stories, a claustrophobic and frequently outright terrifying inner journey into the darker corners of everyday domestic life and the psychic imprints they leave behind.
Having said all this, there is a sort of narrative sense, though the pieces can only begin to fit together once you accept that multiple levels of consciousness and reality are being intercut, and that not every image is to be taken literally, and that the connections are more often emotional, metaphorical or psychoanalytical than logical.
The most obvious story thread is that of actress Nikki Grace (played with terrifying intensity by Laura Dern), a has-been star who is given a role that could put her career back on track. There are complications - an affair with her co-star brings down the wrath of her jealous husband, mirroring the plot of the film under production; while the cast learn that the film is based on a Polish folk tale that is said to be cursed - an earlier attempt to film the story was abandoned when the leads were murdered.
(it is probably not a good idea to read the next couple of paragraphs if you haven't seen the film, especially if you feel it's important to reach your own interpretation first)
There is much more to it than this story, however. Besides Nikki's story, the film is also that of the unnamed woman we see at the start, crying as she watches television. Just like Nikki herself as well as her character in the film, she is trapped in the "old story", the record playing over and over, of desperate marital unhappiness, in whatever form - infidelity, jealousy, abuse, violence, abandonment. The myriad interlocking and overlapping stories that surface and disappear in the swirling mass of Inland Empire orbit this theme, with the endless, hypnotic repetition of images, lines of dialogue and characters all trapped in the same endless drama.
Seeking solace in the television, she finds it (among the pop-culture detritus TV images) in the film (or possibly more than one film) Nikki took part in. Nikki, in confronting and overcoming the demons in her own subconscious, her own "inland empire", while making the film, made it possible for other women, through the stories, to do the same, such that at the end of the film, the unnamed woman is able to welcome her husband back and find happiness. The film, then, is a journey simultaneously into the collective subconscious and into that of two particular women, the actress whose delving into her own subconscious allows for the creation of the stories that are released into the collective consciousness that helps the other woman, the viewer, to overcome her own demons. It is an expansive inner epic in which Lynch explores not only the theme of female oppression - as revealed by the film's subtitle, "A Woman in Trouble" - but also the power of stories and storytelling, and the relationship between the collective and the individual consciousness.
(end "spoilers")
What Inland Empire definitely is, is Lynch unleashed, Lynch redux, Lynch freed completely and totally from any commercial pressures and allowed to go as far down his own rabbit hole as he wishes. The math is simple - if you've enjoyed or appreciated Lynch's previous descents into the subconscious, particularly the fractured psychological dreamscapes of Lost Highway (1997) and Mulholland Drive (2001), then you will love this. If you didn't, then this might provide you with the most excruciating three hours you'll ever spend with a film. It isn't for everyone, and that isn't meant as a damning either of the film or of the people it isn't for. It is what it is.
In distilling his vision into its purest, most individual form, and painting it over his largest canvas yet, Lynch has created something that feels distinctly like his Big Statement. I am less eager to label it the apex of Lynch's career than some other critics have been, but that is a testament to the quality of his back catalogue, not in any way a denigration of this film. Inland Empire is another masterpiece, a staggering, frequently jaw-dropping work of pure cinema, an intense collection of gorgeous and terrifying images, a densely layered meditation on consciousness, gender, oppression and the relationship between the artist and their audience. It is a landmark film that offers further confirmation, if any were needed, that Lynch is a cinematic genius with very few equals.
I consider myself a big Tim Burton geek (and Lara is an even bigger fan), but even I have to admit that, despite how welcome The Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (both 2005) were after the disappointments of Planet of the Apes (2001) and Big Fish (2003), the last truly great Burton film was 1999's Sleepy Hollow. The question, of course, is where Sweeney Todd will fall - will it be another Planet of the Apes-style disaster, a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-style solid crowdpleaser, or the long-awaited next Burton masterpiece?
This trailer suggests he's got the visuals down - the film's highly stylized Victorian London looks stunning, but, then again, we don't expect anything less from a Burton film. The cast, featuring Alan Rickman, Sacha Baron Cohen and Timothy Spall alongside the inevitable Burton fixtures of Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, promises greatness, and, though the trailer only gives us a brief hint of song, Burton has demonstrated enough flair with darkly comic song-and-dance numbers in the past to earn my trust. Allow me to be cautiously optimistic, and to look forward to this immensely.
The phenomenon of films marketed as something they clearly aren't is not a new one, but Bug, a character-driven psychological drama advertised as a horror film, presents a particularly extreme example. The manifest result, as is often the case, was a large portion of its audience leaving the cinema disappointed, not having gotten what they were expecting - and, subsequently, an underwhelming critical and commercial performance. Which is a shame, as Bug, while far from a masterpiece, is an engaging oddity, an insidiously disturbing, frequently horrific depiction of a couple's rapid descent into paranoia.
Ashley Judd plays Agnes, a waitress living in a run-down motel apartment seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Terrorized by her abusive ex-husband, who has just been released from prison, Agnes starts a relationship with Peter (Michael Shannon), a mysterious but seemingly kind-hearted stranger she is introduced to by a friend.
Agnes and Peter are both profoundly lonely people, retreating into claustrophobically solitary inner lives to escape a world that has treated them particularly harshly, and that they fear. Both speak in introverted near-mumbles and are initially unwilling to open themselves up to others; yet it is this same desperate loneliness that ultimately draws them to each other. This proves to be disastrous - wrapped up in each other and the world they create, they retreat further and further from reality, the increasing trust they place in each other seemingly fueling a corresponding mistrust of anything and anyone outside their narrow sphere.
The film's unique power stems from its intermeshing of its main themes - loneliness, love and paranoia. The bleak vision it presents is one in which an individual is defined by their fears and the little mental and physical enclaves they create to hide from a terrifying and incomprehensible world; where love is a desperate clutching at straws and leads only to a sharing and subsequent amplification of neuroses; where everything, from the whirring of an electric fan to the arrival of a pizza delivery man, sparks off a burst of irrational terror.
William Friedkin's output has been decidedly mixed, but he is on top form here, decking out the simple, one-location set-up with swooping aerial shots, montage sequences, long dissolves and inventive sound design, emphasizing the claustrophobia while also hinting at the protagonists' fracturing mental states. Nonetheless, the story's theatrical origins shine through all too clearly in places. The problem isn't really the story's restricted canvas (five speaking roles and virtually only one location), which is thematically integral. The script itself, however, occasionally sounds stilted, unnatural and overplayed, the themes just slightly over-emphasized and the narrative's overall shape just slightly too schematic to be entirely convincing.
As the film approaches its climax, then, it occasionally alternates (or my perception of it varied) between a genuine, intense psychological horror and farcically self-conscious pretention. Perhaps I am overstating this - these doubts are never more than momentary, and for the most part the film succeeds resoundingly. If it is a little too narrow and blinkeredly bleak in its vision to ever qualify as a Great Film (like Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream (2000), but perhaps even more so, this is a world where nothing good or beautiful can exist except ephemerally), it certainly executes its vision with intensity and focus, resulting, for all its flaws, in a chilling and disquieting horror-drama that will not be easily forgotten.
It seems like we've been waiting forever to catch a glimpse of Richard Kelly's follow-up to one of the most astonishing of cinematic debuts, and, for my money, one of the films of the decade - Donnie Darko (2001). Reactions from last year's Cannes were spectacularly, overwhelmingly negative, but, in the full knowledge that I might be setting myself up for disappointment, I'll let my love for Donnie Darko fuel a cautious optimism about this.
The trailer certainly doesn't put me off - while I won't pretend to understand what the hell is going on, it sets up an intriguing, part-camp, part-serious tone and a joyful insanity. It reminds me somehow of the darkly comic, paranoid and surreal tone of the postmodern novels of Pynchon or Vonnegut; if Kelly has managed to capture that feeling, then Southland Tales might indeed prove to have been worth the wait. Only time will tell.
Normal service shall now resume.
London is a remarkable city, and to someone used to life somewhere like Malta, it feels like a different world. Its expansive, seemingly endless scale (I have visited three times and spent a total of over two months there, but still have not come close to taking in everything I want to see) is a big difference, of course, but it's not the only, or the biggest, factor. Its multiculturalism, the sense of the (mostly, but not always, harmonious)coexistence of countless lifestyles, is difficult to imagine coming from a society that is, at least on the surface, so uniformly homogenous. And this in a city where astonishing monuments such as Westminster Abbey and the National Gallery (whose collection we explored for almost two full days, without managing to see everything) stand to the monolithic Western Culture (the C most emphatically capitalized), with its unshaken values of tradition, aristocracy, hierarchy and nationalism, where Art stands in the service of God and country, and the latter two are almost interchangeable. The dichotomy between the almost incomprehensible, transcendental beauty of something like Westminster Abbey and the indefensible values it glorifies - monuments to kings, aristocrats, scientists and artists subsumed and incorporated into a great monument to the nation - represents, of course, one of the most troubling questions on the relation of art to society. Is the aesthetic worth of a work of art enough for it to transcend the material interests it is often designed to serve?
Back on topic - apart from sightseeing and museum touring, my visit also included two brilliant gigs (A Hawk and a Hacksaw, and Danielson, both of which Lara and I enjoyed immensely), a lot of book and record shopping, the sampling of several excellent beers which will make the local selections seem even more depressing, meeting a couple of expatriate friends, and other typical holiday pursuits.
On a more on-topic, cinema-related note, I also managed to catch a special exhibition at the Tate Modern about Salvador Dali's work for the cinema. The clear highlight, for me, was Destino, the six-minute animated film Dali had commenced work on with Walt Disney in 1946, but that had been left unfinished, until it was recently completed, following the original plans, by a team headed by executive producer Roy E. Disney and director Dominique Monfery.
The seams of this troubled history are evident; some sequences look very clearly CG-ed, while the look of the two protagonists seems very similar to Disney's more recent, modern style. As such, how close this project is to Dali and Disney's original intentions must remain in question; nonetheless, it remains a remarkable achievement.
I am not enough of an expert on art in general, or Dali in particualr, to be able to offer an in-depth critique of Destino. The power of its imagery, however, requires no interpretation. At its heart it is no more than the simple, eternal story of boy-meets-girl, but the story is told visually (there is no dialogue), and constructed out of the same symbolic, multi-layered surrealism as Dali's paintings. The film's images go beyond the breathless visual wit and invention they clearly display, attempting, as is the case with all of Dali's art, to capture and crystallize the hidden emotions and anxieties of the subconscious. The story becomes a beautifully eternal, almost epic one, while feeling intensely personal and real.
I cannot explain why the images have the impact they have - they work on an irrational, emotional level. But their impact is clearly felt, unlike in Dali's much-celebrated collaborations with Luis Bunuel, Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L'Age d'Or (1930). I understand I am slaughtering some kind of sacred cow here, but I feel that these two films, the latter in particular, degenerate into a tedious and incoherent visual babble of meaningless, affectless images, nonsense cinema in the most literal sense. While both, the former especially, contain moments of sheer brilliance (Un Chien Andalou's opening moon/eye montage is unforgettable, as is L'Age d'Or's closing sequence), they are few and far between, surrounded by long stretches of nothing. Their historical importance is undeniable, but I feel (and I may be missing something here) that, as experiences, they have aged terribly.
Due to a long-planned trip to grand olde London, I will not have regular net access for a couple of weeks. This means there will be a short break in updates, but check back regularly for the blog will come back to life as soon as I return.
