Written, Directed, Photographed & Edited by David Lynch

Starring: Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Peter J. Lucas & Jeremy Irons

Running Time: 180 min.

The best film of 2007 had its local premiere last week. The bad news, it was held in my living room.

Hot Rod played something like 25 screens across San Diego County. The new film by David Lynch, one of American cinema’s preeminent visionaries, opened strong in Estonia and Slovakia, but can’t get a week in the #5 Hillcrest. I’m all for Landmark’s “if it’s gay it plays” policy, but the unwatchable Cut-Sleeve Boys (one of the rare times that I didn’t make it through the first cue mark) gets a week while Inland Empire goes straight to home video!

I’d rather be Lynch-ed.

Not only did Inland Empire receive limited release in the States, poor Lynch couldn’t even convince a major video distributor to bite. Perversely, the film is being released by Rhino, a low-end nostalgia merchant responsible for DVD copies of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, They Saved Hitler’s Brain and Ed Wood’s Orgy of the Dead.

As the film progresses, it raises more questions than it could ever possibly answer. I’d wager that Lynch himself would be hard pressed to explain everything that takes place. Maybe under psychoanalysis, but even a hypno-therapist armed with a 2-liter bottle of sodium pentothal would find it difficult to dislodge much from Lynch’s inner-landscape.

If you are looking for solutions, you’ve come to the wrong place. Everything that follows is intended to enlighten or, even better, further confound.

Lynch never envisioned Inland Empire as a feature. Initially wanting nothing more than to tinker around with digital video, he picked up a low-end PD-150 camera at Best Buy and began shooting a series of unconnected stories. Working without a script, the director began to see interrelations between the individual scenes and forged ahead until nothing short of a three-hour running time could encompass his vision.

One of the film’s recurring images is that of a spinning 78 rpm record. Instead of your traditional diamond needle, the tightly-framed disc dances under the weight of what appears to be a hairy railroad tie stuck in one, long endless groove

Geographically, the title refers to that plot of earth just east of L.A. that houses Riverside and San Bernadino County. Metaphorically, it represents the ever-darkening inner landscape of its lead character played by Laura Dern.

During a conversation with the director, Ms. Dern mentioned that her husband hailed from the Inland Empire. Lynch was quite taken by the term and when asked why he chose it as a title he replied, “I like the word Inland. And I like the word Empire.”

Every David Lynch film has a story if for no other reason than he needs something to hang all the weirdness on. Here is a modern day Alice in Wonderland complete with a family of personified sitcom rabbits (accompanied by an uproarious laugh track) and, in place of a looking glass, a cigarette hole burned through a pair of silk undergarments for Nikki Grace (Laura Dern) to peer through.

A new neighbor (Grace Zabriskie) making the rounds pays a visit to Nikki’s palatial Hollywood home. The heavily accented, Maria Ouspenskia substitute foretells doom: she assures the successful actress that a “new role” in an upcoming blockbuster is a lock, but it comes with a curse attached.

Nikki’s director Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons) comes clean and confesses that On High Blue Tomorrows (how’s that for a marquee-filler?) is a remake of a Polish film that was never completed because both leads were murdered.

Lynch doesn’t even bother with melodramatic surprises; there is no doubt that Nikki and her leading man (Justin Theroux) are destined to hook up. Everyone who comes in contact with them, from Kingsley to the hostess of a daytime TV gabfest (played by Dern’s mom Diane Ladd) hammers home the fact that romance waits in the wings.

Nikki begins to see parallels between her life and that of the character she plays onscreen and it isn’t long before both dangerously overlap. Acknowledging the fact that you can’t get a film made in Hollywood without including a bevy of busty young starlets, Lynch gives Dern a third incarnation, that of a prostitute making the rounds of Hollywood Blvd.

The addition of hookers not only provides Lynch the opportunity to get out some genuinely funny tit-talk (that puts Tarantino to shame) in addition to a dynamite musical number that closes the show.

Dern is eventually stabbed with a screwdriver by fellow street walker (Julia Ormond) who earlier was stabbed with a screwdriver by a character from the original Polish version of On High Blue Tomorrows…I think. The film’s most enduring (and endearing) image is that of Dern on her knees hacking up a river of blood on Hollywood’s much-loved Walk of Fame.

While it’s clear that the bloody screwdriver lands squarely on Dorothy Malones’ star, home video makes it impossible to see which celebrity’s tributary Ms. Dern disgorges all over. It’s all in the details and this moment alone made the lack of a theatrical release all the more unbearable.

At their core, all great filmmakers continue to grow and expand through experimentation, each finding new ways to show and explore life through a camera. The same way Godard saw inbred continuity errors in 35mm filmmaking and transformed them into artful jump cuts, Lynch understands and transcends the imperfections of the digital universe.

Confidential magazine’s identity-concealing black bars have been replaced by the video thumbprint. Long a staple of “caught on video” TV specials, the “technique” blurs the perpetrator’s head while keeping the body in sharp focus. Notice the way Lynch incorporates this “imperfection” into an opening sequence, adding a video surveillance facelift to a period flashback.

Considering budget and technical imitations, I was amazed to see how visually extravagant the film looked, particularly the outrageous rabbit sitcom. Talk about giving your pause button a workout! Through lighting, set design and camera placement, you’d swear that these were upright bunnies dressed in human attire walking around a miniature set as opposed to full-grown humans in costume.

Inland Empire feels like a continuation of Lynch’s Mullholland Drive. Both films are set in Hollywood and both, to a certain degree focus on two female characters, one blonde, and the other brunette. Each film feels like the aftermath of a nightmare waiting to happen. The main difference is, this time the director is pissed.

This film is to David Lynch what Psycho was to Alfred Hitchcock: a big, fat “fuck you” aimed at naysayers and nonbelievers. Throughout the 50s, critics dogged Hitchcock over what they perceived as budgetary extravagance. In return, The Master hit back with a modest, black-and-white horror film made with second tier actors and a crew comprised of the same technicians who put together his weekly TV show.

Nowadays, critics (and viewers) who embrace Hollywood blockbusters are the first to accuse Lynch of being incoherent, yet these same rocket scientists claim to have no problem following the dumb-dumb plot machinations of the Lord of the Rings or the Bourne trilogy.

Inland Empire won’t be Lynch’s biggest moneymaker nor will it forever change the face of cinema as Psycho did. But, if nothing else, it made one critic’s year in the dark a whole lot brighter!

Rating: Four Stars