you made it through Lost Highway?

If the movie had been 90 minutes long, I would have agreed. But it was three hours, much of which has very little going on. Now, I love Lynch, and I dig long, experimental arty movies (I love the shit out of Solaris and Stalker), but three hours of this was just too much. And this was the edited version from what I understand.

Twin Peaks I grudgingly admit was good. Lost Highway has what I consider to be two of the absolute best scenes in all of cinema wedged into it's overly large carcass. Blue Velvet had it's moments as well, where I was intrigued.

Despite all these things being true, Inland Empire is pretty much everything I hate about David Lynch, distilled.

Surrealism when used to make a statement or entertain can be powerful and memorable. When used just for the sake of itself, like Lynch does, it's not a mind fuck. It's just a tangled mess.

Largely I suspect the majority of fans have a smug certainty they "get Lynch", though Lynch himself insists he has yet to hear anyone who has understood his vision in Eraserhead. And that somehow makes him proud? As a director, shouldn't it be considered a black mark when you can't get your message across?

Yeah, I dunno. I think Lynch is most effective when he laces a more conventional narrative with surreal elements.

Just out of curiosity, Lindner, what two scenes were you thinking of in Lost Highway?

I'm not a huge fan of Inland Empire myself. I understand the reasons he's using DV, but it removes any restraint he had when using film, not to mention costing him a great deal of style- bits of Inland Empire look like rejects from his website (not counting the Rabbits segments, which actually did get their start on his website, and which I think work). I agree that he needs a firmer narrative to hold up his films, and that's why I think Mulholland Drive is the best thing he's ever done- even if the story was crammed in at the last minute, it comes together brilliantly and all of the surreal bits work together to establish atmosphere and characters. Inland I can take or leave, I just wanted to post these two clips as the Lynch equivalent of slasher movie jump-scare scenes.