Inland Empire

I'm in NRO this morning with a review of David Lynch's newest--and weirdest--movie, Inland Empire.

With no narrative, no stable characters, no sense of time or location, the movie is utterly resistant to simple summary or interpretation. It isn’t actually about anything, really, except maybe the total destruction of the sensation that anything either is or could ever be about anything. There’s no meaning, just the absence of it, and in its place, pure chaos. Whether you find it a surrealist masterpiece or pretentious dreck will depend on your tolerance for art that flaunts its effrontery. As something of a sucker for artsy-fartsy experimentation, I thought it was a demented hoot, but I’m still somewhat skeptical that it’s anything more than random imagery. No matter what, though, it’s a dizzy, mesmerizing mind trip.