David Lynch: The "Inland Empire" & "Catching the Big Fish" Review

"The idea is the whole thing. If you stay true to the idea, it tells you everything you need to know, really"
-David Lynch

Film poet David Lynch frequently divides audience opinion with his insistence on creating art and his fearless use of abstraction in his films. His recent film, INLAND EMPIRE (the title was intended by Lynch to be capitalized), is a challenging, but ultimately rewarding work that requires the kind of free-form viewing that most American audiences refuse to engage in. Which is why you won't find INLAND EMPIRE on many of the year's best lists of films, although I consider it THE best film of 2006.

Our culture needs poetic filmmakers like Lynch. Cliche after cliche; sentiment after sentiment; stereotype after stereotype, film-goers are buried under a mount of banality that conditions us to reject the unusual and distrust the ambiguous. David Lynch asks us to "go for a little buggy ride with him" in his films. And he takes us to some pretty strange places because he uses his imagination freely without the constraints of genre or form. He collaborates with wonderful artists like Laura Dern, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nance, and they all say he is unique and "fun" to work with. This is because David Lynch wants to involve other people creatively with his work without "fear" (as he puts it). This combination of generosity with his collaborators and insistence on staying creative make him highly influential to those (like me) who are inspired by his work and want to learn from him.

Moviegoers have traditionally valued "narrative" cinema since the days of the classic Hollywood Studio when movies like "It Happened One Night" and "Grand Hotel" were churned out with regularity every week. The big studios understood that realistic, story-driven movies would please the widest range of audiences. A factory was created where skilled craftspeople would create variations of the same films over and over again.

INLAND EMPIRE is the anti-thesis of this kind of "Hollywood Film" because David Lynch, while deeply immersed in American culture, refuses to re-affirm the cliches and market-driven sentiment that dominate most American filmmaking. Instead, he focuses on finding the right idea that will point the way to creating a unique, poetic world. His creative method reminds me of how a great jazz musician might work. Imagine Miles Davis finding a good idea and then running with it while performing on stage and you have a good description of Lynch's working methods. Of course, this makes me wonder why movie audiences can't watch a David Lynch film in the same way they would listen to a Miles Davis album. I don't see that there is much difference

INLAND EMPIRE is Lynch's first film shot entirely on a commercial DV camera (Sony PD-150), a medium he discovered while working on his remarkable davidlynch.com website. The ease and fluidity of creating with DV made working on INLAND EMPIRE a revelation for David Lynch and he vows "never to return to film again". While some degree of visual quality is lost in DV, the ease and quickness of DV production more than makes up for it in Lynch's view. DV seems the perfect medium for the poetic world Lynch is trying to create. The ability to shoot for almost 40 minutes continually allowed Lynch to talk to his actors at times, crafting and shaping their performance until it was just right. Since the takes were viewable immediately, there was no waiting for the "rushes". Lynch also praised the lightness and ease of using a DV camera. You can see this in INLAND EMPIRE, where the camera prowls and stares at the actors almost like another character.

INLAND EMPIRE, as Lynch recounts in his new book "Catching the Big Fish" (his first since "Images", 1994), began with a chance meeting between him and Laura Dern on the street near his house. They were determined to work together again, so Lynch went home and wrote a long, 14-page monologue that they worked on using DV. Lynch was so impressed that this scene became the centerpiece of the film. Laura Dern's acting in the film is the best of her career. The monologue itself is a masterful display of her talent.

Over several years, Lynch and his cast constructed a jazz-like collage of images and stories moving from one narrative to the next (intensely realistic to expressionism), from one style to another (musical comedy to absurd theatre) each moving through the past, the present and the future in such a way that you are constantly wondering what will happen next. Even the identities of the characters are fluid. There is a penultimate moment in INLAND EMPIRE where two characters in different worlds finally meet and you are left with the notion that they may have been the same character.

Published at roughly the same time as the release of INLAND EMPIRE, "Catching the Big Fish" is a result of his continuing practice of transcendental meditation and it's effect on his creativity. While David discusses TM in the book, he doesn't hit you over the head with it, or pitch any kind of sales talk. Smartly, he states clearly that TM is not a "religion", but a method to achieve personal freedom (although a good deal of TM is derived from meditation practices of Hinduism). He states he has used TM continuously since the 70's and it has aided and, at times, guided his creativity. He feels much calmer and able to cope with the difficulties of life and of his job as a filmmaker. I have no reason to doubt his claims, however Lynch occasionally brings quantum science into his discussion as a way of validating TM. He's on shaky ground here since the "unified field theory" of consciousness is still more of an interpretation than real science. Still, his intent (and that of TM, I believe) is a good one.

"I love going into another world. I love mysteries"

"Catching the Big Fish" is the closest thing we have to an autobiography of David Lynch. The phrase refers to meditation (or daydreaming) as a way of "fishing" for ideas in the big stream of consciousness he believes exists in all of us (the "unified field" mentioned earlier). If you want to catch little ideas you fish in shallow waters, if you want big ideas you have to go deeper. While the analogy might seem simplistic, it is remarkably apt, especially when David begins to relate the many ways his "fishing" expeditions have helped him in creating his films or coping with depression or disaster (remember "Dune", anyone?). I don't doubt the efficacy of TM meditation, but it's disheartening to discover, as I did, that the cost of this enlightenment is $2500 at the local TM center here in Los Angeles. This program should be much cheaper.

Broken up into 82 short chapters, each with their own subject heading, "Catching the Big Fish" is very much in the style of the modern writers like Barthes ("A Lover's Discourse") or Walter Benjamin ("The Illuminations") who chose to write in a short, epigrammatic style. The chapter headings announce the topic and then David riffs on the theme for a while. Some entries are several pages long, others are simply a single sentence. The movement of the book is light and quick, which lends itself to enjoyable re-reading (much like his films). David's writing style is almost exactly like he speaks - short, compact sentences that illustrate his ideas perfectly. While reading the book you feel as if David Lynch is talking to you on the front porch in a large rocker with a robin singing in an oak tree nearby.

Some of the stories in the book are ones that David has told for the last decade (they are still interesting in spite of their familiarity), but most of the book is original and unique. He discusses the casting process, his working methods, the development of some of his most famous films. And he openly addresses issues like why he chooses not to record director's commentary for any of his films.

"...we've got to protect the film... Director's commentaries just open the door to changing people's take on the number one thing - the film"

There are no great personal revelations in "Catching the Big Fish". But through chapters titled "Light on Film", "Sleep", "Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit" and "Having a Set-up", you get the feeling David is trying to tell us some of what we want to know about him, but couching his answers using metaphors and epigrams. In other words, this is a poets combination of essay, autobiography and homile.

I highly recommend "Catching the Big Fish". The book itself is a beautiful square-shaped Navy blue hardback with the photo of a splash of water across the page (the simplicity in design matching the contents). Designed by Claire Vaccaro, it's as beautiful on the outside as it is on the inside. Fascinating if you don't know much about David Lynch; essential if you do. "Catching the Big Fish" is an inspiring, important book even for an aging cynic like me.

I can't wait to read it again.

PS There's an audio book version read by Lynch himself that sounds great. I've bought the CD, now I'll download it to my new Creative Zen V Plus player. Just think, I can have Lynch talking inside my head while I walk around looking for inspiration. I think David Lynch will make the perfect guide. But I won't be picking up any severed ears anytime soon.

Inland empire official movie site

Catching the Big Fish, available from Penguin Group (USA) and Amazon