David Lynch on INLAND EMPIRE

Just what was that woman doing singing inside a radiator in Eraserhead? And why did the dwarf talk backwards in 'Twin Peaks'? Exactly what happened at the end of Lost Highway? And what about the end of Mulholland Drive? You know when you go into a Lynch film that you will emerge with questions. Yet even this cannot prepare one for the mind-bending puzzle that is INLAND EMPIRE.

Three hours long and shot on digital video, the film is like Lynch's career on shuffle mode, by turns familiar and fresh, compelling and alienating, accessible and esoteric. The glue holding it all together - sort of - is Laura Dern's raw performance as multiple characters who may, or may not, be different facets of the same woman. Even Dern has said she did not know who she was playing.

When it comes to explaining INLAND EMPIRE, Lynch's lips remain as tightly buttoned up as his shirt collar. But then Lynch has never liked discussing his films in specific terms. "I like stories that hold abstractions because when things get abstract, you get many interpretations." People should discover a meaning for themselves, in other words, not be told what to think.

What he will say is that he had no idea where he was going when he started the film, a disclosure which seems all too obvious. Instead of putting his ideas into a screenplay, he scripted and shot them as they came to him. "You get an idea and that, I say, is like catching a fish. You catch an idea and there it is. Bingo! Maybe you get a bunch of ideas, they start forming a story, and then you wonder, 'What does this mean?' I worry. Then more comes and it starts to reveal itself and I find the meaning for myself."

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