Swart 1 Justin Swart CINE 380 Professor Wall December 18th, 2012 Inland Empire: Time as the Enemy

No, no, no, I always saythe film is the thing, the film is the thing. You work so hard, to get, you know, after the ideas come, to get this thing builtall the elements to feel correct, the whole to feel correct, in this beautiful language called cinema. And the second its finished, people want you to change it back into words and its very, very, saddening, its a torture. Its the film; the language is cinema. When things are concrete very few variations in interpretation, but the more abstract the thing gets, the more varied the interpretations. But people still know inside what it is for themThats the beauty of it, like life. You see sort of the same things but you come up with many, many different things as you come along as a detective. David Lynch, BAFTA Interview. David Lynchs Inland Empire (2006) began its life as a series of one-off shots of scenes that he began recording with his Sony P150 camcorder. He speaks in the interview with Jason Barlow of BAFTA of shooting first one scene, and then another, with no discernable meaning from the outset until for him they began to mean something. These smaller ideas he keep filming coalesced into a larger overarching idea that eventually became the feature film Inland Empire. To approach this film with the same perception as any other narrative film would leave the casual viewer of movies in a state unable to differentiate the filmic real from the filmic fantasy, and even to veterans of Lynch films, this offering of his is arguably more Lynchian than any other of his feature-length films. With no easily discernable foundation on which to anchor a sense of reality in the films structure, any attempt to understand the film becomes a choice for the viewer and actions, as two characters in the film, Visitors 1 and 2 tell the audience and Laura Derns characters, have consequences. To choose a foundation upon which to place meaning becomes the centerpiece of this three-hour long odyssey for the audience

Swart 2 and the characters within. Whether to believe that the Lost Girl is the reality, and the Sue Blue/Nikki Grace character is fantasy provides one understanding for the viewer, but one can just as easily determine that the Lost Girl is the fantasy, Sue Blue is the real character, and Nikki Grace is some sort of half-born, larval subject that acts as a medium between these two entities. But all of this exists in a film in which time has collapsed, all possible realities have converged upon each other, and all events begin to coexist alongside one another, with repetitions and iterations of characters appearing throughout the second half of the film. Coupled with the Buddhist concept of time as a barricade to Enlightenment, David Lynch explores the marriage of these two concepts in the world of Inland Empire. Justin Therouxs character, Devon Burke, speaks to his manager in the film about the stories that have been mentioned, the stories brought up by Freddie, Kingsleys assistant of the film they are working on, that deem this film cursed. His manager tells him: Now, you know some stories, but stories are stories. Hollywoods full of them. Thank God, in this case, the same thing - stories which grew out of imagination. And were surrounded by these screwball stories every day, and they shouldnt be taken as truth or given credence, and jeopardize Nikkis performance. Unless the stories are true, is Devons response to this. David Lynchs film plays out this idea of such stories actually being true, and the results of each choice are played out in the process of the film. Treating each possibility of the various twists and turns in the films script as it was being conceived by the Grand Architect of the (film) Universe (the Grand Architect being the idea of a deity posited by Freemasons, and in turn, a

Swart 3 director/writer being the same sort of Grand Architect in the creation of a film) takes a sort of multitude of realities that all have the possibility of existing and turning the possibilities into, at first, a variety of realities separated by actions dependent on the characters in the film, and as they converge upon one another, all of the possibilities existing at once. One possible reading of this film is the idea that the Lost Girl is trapped in a room, unable to leave until she has decided upon an action, and watching her fantasies play out by Nikki/Sue, she can perceive the results of the various actions she could choose. Lost Girl begins by staring at a television screen showing the meaningless gibberish of electric snow, a television tuned to a dead channel, to invoke the opening sentence of the cyberpunk novel Neuromancer. From this meaninglessness, she perceives the worlds worst sitcom, the uncanny Rabbits who inhabit a space or time unreachable to the characters in the film. Even when Laura Dern enters into their room, room 47 (also the name of the gypsy folk tale upon which On High in Blue Tomorrows was based), if they are there, they are not perceived by her nor the audience. The television set serves to capture Nikki/Sues performance as Lost Girl watches. The theme of recording devices as tools by which to capture moments in time, actions, events, and roles is used throughout Inland Empire. Lost Girl communicates to Nikki/Sue when she outlines how to see: by folding over the silk and burning a hole in it through which to look. This communication between the two of them is possible through the capturing process of recording, transcending the discontinuity portrayed by the film which itself has captured the tale of these two women. The idea is a process of redemption, a

Swart 4 redemption of Lost Girl as realized through her avatar of Nikki/Sue, with the Lost Girl serving as a kind of spirit guide for Nikki/Sues actions. Further supporting the idea of the redemption of the woman in trouble, such woman either possibly Nikki/Sue or the Lost Girl, (assuming they are separate entities), is the Buddhist idea of reincarnation, combined with a transcendence of time itself, that leads the two women (or two halves of the same woman) to Enlightenment. In fact, the concept of karma could be described in terms of actions having consequences, a sentence uttered twice in the film by assumedly psychic characters. Taken together with a concept of time as unreal, as a structure imposed upon the reality we all experience. But through our own perception of reality, the film presents a world in which time breaks down and its personification (The Phantom) is destroyed. The Phantom prevents Nikki/Sue from reaching the palace; his own existence bars her from this, but once he has been killed, once the puller of strings has been removed from the picture, Enlightenment is possible. In the scene when Nikki/Sue goes to Crimps yard and takes the screwdriver, Crimp/Phantom is seen with a light bulb in his mouth. Lynchs choice to have a light source captured in Crimps mouth, unable to lighten anything beyond his control provided it had a power source one supposes; his very existence prevents enlightenment literally. As Nikki/Sue plays out events, Lost Girl is able to realize the consequences of the various actions: becoming a prostitute and satisfying the carnal pleasures of men, or the glamorous movie star who uses her beauty and talent to satisfy a director or audience, or an outright reactionary to these dichotomous images of femininity in the form of a castrating female persona. None of these roles has an advantage over men in the long term, for each of them continue to resonate within a

Swart 5 patriarchal structure which is the real issue preventing women from some measure of self-actualization, and precludes any attempt to transcend such a structure. This film collapses the temporal understanding of the universe to a point in which everything occurs more or less at once. Nikki/Sue, as she is speaking to Mr. K in his office, talks of having the effect of a mindfuck and not knowing what came before or after and speaking of a girl who saw the end of the world, speaks to this breakdown of time. If some other girl were able to witness all the various realities, all the results of all the choices, then does it not make sense that one of these would be the end of time as humankind knows it? But through this breakdown of time, the path of reincarnation becomes no longer a cyclic event that responds to time and space, but instead an event that is always happening, occurring over the course of the film, and Nikki/Sue and the Lost Girl are able to view these events and, in a way, choose the reality that leads them away from the misogynistic power structure and towards enlightenment. Inland Empire is a story of a remake of a film that was never completed, and is itself a remake of sorts. The scene in which the Lost Girl re-enacts a scene from Queen Kelly adds another layer to the meta-narrative that Lynch employs. Cast out this wicked dream that has seized my heart, she says. Like the girl trapped in the room in Inland Empire, Queen Kelly as a film is considered lost. It was originally meant to be the magnum opus for the, at the time, fading actress Gloria Swanson, where she would play all possible roles an actress could perform, capture all the roles meant for a female actor, and in a sense, conquer through portrayal all archetypes of the female identity in a single film. Queen Kelly starred and was produced by Swanson and directed by Erich von Stroheim, a directorial auteur whose films never seemed to be fully realized, and often

Swart 6 succumbed to debilitating editing that left the finished product far removed from the original vision of Stroheim (ODonoghue). It is as much a comeback for Laura Dern, who may be considered a fading actress in the sense that she has not played a significant role in a film since her heyday of Blue Velvet (1986) or Wild at Heart (1990), or more popularly, Jurassic Park (1993), as well as the role she plays of Nikki Grace who is searching for her comeback project headed by Kingsley Stewart (Jeremy Irons). Inland Empire, a story about an actress who plays a role in a film within the film, was also produced by the star of the film, Laura Dern, and through the course of the movie portrays an incredible variety of female stereotypes and roles. In a way, Laura Derns incredible performance seems to be the fulfillment, the redemption, of Swansons goal to act out many of the stereotypical conceptions of female identity as portrayed in film: prostitute, glamorous movie star, unfaithful wife, a literally castrating female, and recipient of redemption by the films end. Through her performance as Nikki Grace/Sue Blue, Dern thus redeems the lost film Queen Kelly by accomplishing the goal Swanson set out to achieve, and ties the film Inland Empire in with the idea of all points in time existing at once. By positing that the events in the film all occur simultaneously, or as simultaneous as a film can suggest being that it is itself a continuous series of scenes and images, Lynch incorporates and pays homage to events outside the scope of the film, and this serves to also explain some of the Lynchian elements found throughout Inland Empire: the red drapes of the stage, the rabbits from his online show Rabbits, recurring actors from previous Lynch works, and so on. They too exist within this filmic world that incorporates all existence and all times that may have been imagined, but for which their reality exists solely on film reels.

Swart 7 The theme of discontinuous time is introduced by the credited role of Visitor #1, played by Grace Zabriskie. Her character possesses a prescient observation of what is to happen in this film, and all that it entails. She relates to Nikki an old tale as follows: A little boy went out to play. When he opened his door, he saw the world. As he passed through the doorway, a ghosta reflectionevilwas born. Evil was born and followed the boy . . . And, the variation. A little girl went out to play, lost in the marketplace as if half-born. Then, not through the marketplaceyou see that, don't you?but through the alley behind the marketplace. This is the way to the palace. But... it isn't something you remember. Her identity remains secret, and is beside the point. When Nikki asks which house she lives in, her reply is almost a nonchalant, dismissive answer of down the wayset back in the woodshard to see from the road that would cause anyone familiar with fairy tales to ascribe to her the role of a witch, perhaps in a Hansel and Gretel fashion, with powers above and beyond that which Nikki can comprehend, even though she is able to witness herself in a different place and time, a different dimension than she understands at the present moment in the film. This old tale may be the keystone of this film, and lends itself well to interpreting the events portrayed. The tale speaks of a boy who casts a reflection, who unknowingly creates evil in the world, and this evil is personified in the role of the Phantom - someone who, as a voice on a record player says, seems involved in the telling of time. This evokes the idea of time as a construct of humans; if time is illusory, as Buddhists believe, and to realize that time is simply a way of perceiving the world and a way to understand and organize events as they relate to each other is a matter of human interaction with the world, then to rise above this illusion to get to the alleyway behind the marketplace - is the way to some kind of Enlightenment. Tom Huston explains this concept as such:

Swart 8 The appearance of "time" is little more than a trick of memory, as the Avatamsaka Sutra (Flower Ornament Scripture) says. You can easily discern this for yourself: simply figure out what it is you consider "the past" and "the future." You will discover that it is nothing but thoughts--nothing but memories, nothing but expectations, nothing but mental commentary. It's "all in your head," so to speak. There's really no such thing as time. There is really only Now--an eternally present Present with no beginning and no ending. Everything is completely new, distinct, and original every instant, with no real "change" or "motion" at all. The mystic-philosopher Heraclitus, explaining this point, said, "A man cannot step in the same river twice." In this passage, he sums up the idea of time as a human construct as an idea imposed through which to understand the natural world, for a being to make chronological sense of events, but the fallacy lies in believing the construct of time as an immutable reality. In the film, the constructor of time is embodied in the figure of The Phantom, and with him, the power to create temporal continuity in the minds of females. In destroying this figure in the films climactic scene, she effectively breaks the mind control he has been exercising over the women in the film. Lost Girl has a relationship with him in the Polish scenes, the man with whom she is having an extra-marital affair, and Nikki/Sue spends the film following passages in houses and eventually runs into him and kills him. For Buddhists time is what prevents a being from reaching Enlightenment is time, as Huston relates: When you transcend your thinking mind in the realization of your own pure, timeless, ever-present Awareness, then the illusion of time completely collapses, and you become utterly Free of the samsaric cycle of time, change, impermanence, and suffering. This, my friend, is nothing at all to be "depressed" about! Rather, the fact that your own Buddha Mind exists beyond time, in THIS very moment, is itself the key to your permanent and eternal (timeless) Liberation. Once the Phantom of time is destroyed, the females who according to the old tale Visitor # 1 shared are only half-born and thus have not cast the reflection of evil that the little boy who went out into the marketplace had cast, are able to achieve Enlightenment.

Swart 9 In the closing sequence of the film, what the audience sees are all the females in the film enjoying themselves in a palace, lip-synching Nina Simones Sinnerman, having reached the palace by circumventing the route offered by the marketplace. The alleyway behind the marketplace also offers up some suggestions as to what David Lynch was envisioning as Inland Empire developed. If it is, as this paper has posited, that his goal was to create a filmic universe in which the idea of time has been removed, and past and future are simply creations by which humans understand their lives and the world around them, then the alleyways may represent a place for beingoutside-of-time. As Nikki/Sue engages in her odyssey through dark stairways, hallways, and unfamiliar yet familiar, she runs the gauntlet of experience as a female bound to various identities imposed by masculine figures and, by the films end, sheds all such identities and reaches the palatial heaven offered to her and the other females, but barred to males. In the course of the film, she takes a screwdriver Crimps yard, (Crimp played by the same actor, Krzysztof Majchrzak, who portrays the Phantom), and thus usurps a phallus for her own device. This screwdriver is later taken from her by Devon/Billys wife and used to stab her in her death scene that concludes On High in Blue Tomorrows. By taking an instrument from the males possession and not the only instrument, as the gun she uses to destroy the Phantom is also formerly possessed by an incarnation of her husband as Nikki Grace she transcends the traditional role of femininity forced upon her by male counterparts and is thus able to finally establish an identity outside the relegation by a male-dominated marketplace. In her article on Fantasmic Splittings, Schaffner outlines the film as primarily feminist in its goal, that Inland Empire condemns the marketplace (Hollywood) as a place where dreams are created and lived through,

Swart 10 but in order to reach true success or realize any sort of hopeful dream towards Enlightenment, the female actor has to avoid buying what the Hollywood studios are selling. Not to forget that the film was itself distributed by David Lynch and its own production circumvented the marketplace it condemns. But Lynch is also a director, and with his indictment of Hollywood, he cannot avoid indicting himself to a degree. Though he implicates himself on some level for his involvement with cinema and use of actors, perhaps it is an unavoidable involvement as long as he continues to work in the field of cinema. The song Sinnerman played out in the end scene may indicate Lynch acknowledging this guilt. Inland Empire is a film of redemption, a film that takes both its characters and audiences on an odyssey through the world of Hollywoods back alleyways, and through the dark passages of familiar, yet at the same time unfamiliar, milieus and brings us to a joyous event: Enlightenment. It does so in a way that twists the audiences sense of time and continuity and leads the audience to question the reality they experience themselves. By presenting the idea of karma in simple terms actions do have consequences Inland Empire asks us to question the actions we choose and the structural make-up of the world and time as we know it by imagining the resulting consequences before making a choice. These are important constructs to question thoroughly if we are to realize a better place; our own personal Enlightenment.

Swart 11 Works Cited Huston, Tom. . Buddha's Village, Online Posting to Buddhism and the Illusion of Time. Web. 20 Dec. 2012. <http://www.buddhasvillage.com/teachings/time.htm>. This discussion forum had a variety of people that knew their Buddhism well and provided concise definitions for concepts that I was searching for. Lynch, David. "A BAFTA Interview." British Academy of Film and Television Arts 2007 David Lean Lecture. British Academy of Film and Arts. Britain, London. 27 2007. Address. A question and answer lecture that was sadly funny to watch at times. This interviewer is terrible. How he got to interview David Lynch is anyones guess. However, David Lynch does not give in to his interviewers attempts to force interpretations of the movie. Lynch in his quote, summed up, quite provocatively, his idea of meaning and film. O'Donoghue, Darragh. "Paradise Regained: Queen Kelly and the Lure of the Lost Film | Senses of Cinema." Senses of Cinema. Senses of Cinema, 1999. Web. 20 Dec 2012. <http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/27/queen_kelly/>. ODonoghues article on the lure of lost film provided the context of the Queen Kelly film that David Lynch was referencing on several levels of mediation in Inland Empire. Schaffner, Anna Katharina. Fantasmatic Splittings and Destructive Desires: Lynch's Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire Forum Mod Lang Stud (2009) 45(3): 270-291 first published online June 6, 2009 doi:10.1093/fmls/cqp105. In this essay, Schaffner outlines how Laura Derns characters embody both dichotomous archetypal roles assigned to them by males that of a castrating force that underwrites male nightmare (Susan Blue) and one of idealized glamour and beauty in Nikki Grace and how she is successful in establishing an identity that does not fit into either fantasy. Films Blue Velvet. Dir. David Lynch. Perf. Kyle Maclachlan, Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper. Paramount Studios, 1986. DVD. Inland Empire. Dir. David Lynch. Perf. Laura Dern, Justin Theroux. Studio Canal, 2006. DVD. Jurassic Park. Dir. Spielberg Steven. Perf. Sam Neill, Laura Dern. Universal Pictures, 1993. DVD. Queen Kelly. Dir. Erich Von Stroheim. Perf. Gloria Swanson. An Eric Von Stroheim Production, 1928.