Inland Empire (2006)

Starring: Jeremy Irons, Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, Scott Coffey, Ian Abercrombie, Terry Crews, Grace Zabriskie, Julia Ormond, William H. Macy, Naomi Watts, Nastassja Kinski, Diane Ladd, Mary Steenburgen

This is another film Directed by David Lynch with even more confusion and abstract plots. This film was shot with a hand held camera the first time he has used this media. The starting plot is a blonde actress is preparing for her biggest role yet, but realizes she has fallen in love with her costar and her life becomes identical to the plot of the film. The film they are making is found out to be a remake of a Polish film said to be cursed and never completed. The film faded in and out of consciousness of being filmed and the real plot, the actress herself gets confused as to if she is in her own real life or in front of a camera. The plot is completely scrambled with flashing imagery of different situations locations countries animals and people. A sitcom featuring humans in bunny suits with a laughing backing track answers eery questions and tension built horror. Another story set in snowy polland, a house of dancing street walkers, screw drivers in stomachs, a film set that opens up to different hall ways and dark houses every time you open doors. The doorways and hallways seem to link story to story with the main character almost playing 4 different people/personas. There is tension and built up fear throughout the film with spouts of comedy although you are unsure whether to laugh as it could lead to an unspeakable tragedy. The film due to its digital camera and very close up shots, working with tripods, deep muddy shadows and shaky quality gives a dream like mechanism. Once we had watched the film it seemed to be a collage of experiences stitched in a bizarre way to evoke your senses.  There were areas of this film we liked that used the free hand shaky camera quality, it personalizes the vision based on cropping, extreme lighting and creating atmospheres. Sound and music plays a big part in the film also building further atmosphere and moods.

This is a montage of sequences in the film and is good at portraying how the film jumps from reality to parallel stories and different personas, extreme confusion comes to mind but underlying shadows and meanings play a vital role. This film is not necessarily melancholic enough for our style film but there are attributes we can use to film in a melancholic way.