inland empire + nightmares

Woah, just been to see Inland Empire yesterday and this is something you must experience, preferably in a cinema. There are no easy interpretations but there'll be an attempt at a review in the next couple of weeks. Some sketchy notes have already been written, and just to give you an idea of what you might expect here are some of the themes they touch on:

FILMMAKING - not so much an undifferentiated whole as the various aspects that go into making a film: acting, light/lighting, camera/film, effects, editing (creating narrative through sequence/similarity, music and sound), genre.

RELATIONSHIPS - solidarity/division (expressed primarily through female relationships), gender relations - also linked to following...

VIOLENCE - violence, sexual violence, men as a threat - also exploitation of women.

SPACE - interiors, division of space, relation of people to space/space to people, scale (see also Eraserhead, and for the following...)

WEIRDNESS OF MAINSTREAM CULTURE - how odd and arbitrary some things are that we accept as perfectly normal - not the candy coated suburban 'kookiness' of Tim Burton either, something much more unhealthy than that, everyday objects made sinister.

None of which gives you any sense of what the film's like, you really have to experience it for yourself. There was a lot of nervous laughter in the cinema, which pretty rapidly died away. Afterwards it was possible to overhear a lot of conversations about how disturbing it was. So far as you could tell though everyone stayed for the three hours, which really didn't feel that long, and was held pretty much silent. At times really quite close to some of santiago's nightmares inasmuchas it was more mood and anticipation than anything else causing the unease and fear. I must remember to put together something for the blog on nightmares. The last two nights for instance woke up too scared to get out of bed even though there was nothing obvious in the dream to be scared of (one of santiago's most terrifying nightmares consisted of a large opulent room with a woman standing behind a curtain holding a pair of red slippers - woke up screaming from that one).