https://www.sabzian.be/index.php/text/passage-erika-balsom

Passage: Erika Balsom

Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006)

“Perhaps we can be swallowed whole (W-H-O-L-E) because we invest so much psychic, at times libidinal, energy in the people we see before us on the screen. ‘Cinema is public fantasy that engages spectators’ particular, private scripts of desire and identification,’ film scholar Patricia White writes in Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability. Sometimes these scripts are rewritten. Sometimes they are discarded entirely in favour of improvisation. To watch Dern play a woman (or women) in trouble is to be any combination of turned on, terrified, dumbfounded, stupefied.”1

When I read Melissa Anderson’s thin volume on Inland Empire late last year, I was overwhelmed. After inhaling its 104 pages, I felt immediately that I wanted to write about the book but equally knew that I could never review it, since it appears in a series – the Decadent Editions from Fireflies Press, ten books about ten films, one for each year of the 2000s – to which I’m also a contributor. Now I happily have my chance, freed from any pretense of objective assessment.

Anderson takes an “acteurist” approach to David Lynch’s 2006 film, focusing not on its revered director so much as on its formidable star, Laura Dern – her quivering chin, gaping mouth, and wounded strength. This is not the book’s only subversive move. Lynch is hardly someone associated with a queer, feminist cinephilia. Yet here he becomes a vehicle for the articulation of exactly that, as Anderson wanders through labyrinthine paths of inquiry with a quotation from the amazing Boyd McDonald never far out of mind: “Motion pictures are for people who like to watch women.” I like to watch women; motion pictures are for me; I get swallowed whole. Why deny it? In reading Inland Empire, I felt the ecstasy of being in the presence of a kindred spirit. 

McDonald’s remark, which Anderson cites early on, stakes out a counterposition to a certain strand of feminist film criticism, one for which the watching of women is precisely the problem: the “to-be-looked-at-ness” of the female star is an emblem of all the pernicious demands placed on women’s bodies in this world, while a director like Lynch is a potential textbook example of cinema’s indulgence in the punishment and violation of the same. Anderson does not shy away from this – indeed, the post-Weinstein reckoning looms large in the book – but she knows it’s only part of the story. Although she proclaims that “words are [her] enemy,” acknowledging the immense difficulty of wrangling a baffling work like Inland Empire onto the page, she beautifully wields these foes to convey how pleasure, discomfort, and fascination mingle in this movie, and at the movies more generally. This is a book about much more than a single actress or a single film: it is about the relationship between fantasy and reality, the ceaseless revisitation and reconstitution of the past in the present, the writing of criticism, and the need to honour ambivalence. At a time when some critics look to cinema for a clear political stance – for an exemplary morality cleansed of any bad feelings – Anderson has authored an implicit defense of a different approach, a different relation to the screen. In her lively prose, the irreducible complexity of how we can be at once “turned on, terrified, dumbfounded, stupefied” at the cinema comes through. It’s a feeling I’ve felt many times before. I hope to again soon.

  • 1Melissa Anderson, Inland Empire (Fireflies Press, 2021), 53.

Image from Inland Empire (David Lynch, 2006)

 

In its new section Passage, Sabzian invites film critics, authors, filmmakers and spectators to send a text or fragment on cinema that left a lasting impression.

PASSAGE
06.07.2022
NL FR EN
In Passage, Sabzian invites film critics, authors, filmmakers and spectators to send a text or fragment on cinema that left a lasting impression.
Pour Passage, Sabzian demande à des critiques de cinéma, auteurs, cinéastes et spectateurs un texte ou un fragment qui les a marqués.
In Passage vraagt Sabzian filmcritici, auteurs, filmmakers en toeschouwers naar een tekst of een fragment dat ooit een blijvende indruk op hen achterliet.
The Prisma section is a series of short reflections on cinema. A Prisma always has the same length – exactly 2000 characters – and is accompanied by one image. It is a short-distance exercise, a miniature text in which one detail or element is refracted into the spectrum of a larger idea or observation.
La rubrique Prisma est une série de courtes réflexions sur le cinéma. Tous les Prisma ont la même longueur – exactement 2000 caractères – et sont accompagnés d'une seule image. Exercices à courte distance, les Prisma consistent en un texte miniature dans lequel un détail ou élément se détache du spectre d'une penséée ou observation plus large.
De Prisma-rubriek is een reeks korte reflecties over cinema. Een Prisma heeft altijd dezelfde lengte – precies 2000 tekens – en wordt begeleid door één beeld. Een Prisma is een oefening op de korte afstand, een miniatuurtekst waarin één detail of element in het spectrum van een grotere gedachte of observatie breekt.
Jacques Tati once said, “I want the film to start the moment you leave the cinema.” A film fixes itself in your movements and your way of looking at things. After a Chaplin film, you catch yourself doing clumsy jumps, after a Rohmer it’s always summer, and the ghost of Akerman undeniably haunts the kitchen. In this feature, a Sabzian editor takes a film outside and discovers cross-connections between cinema and life.
Jacques Tati once said, “I want the film to start the moment you leave the cinema.” A film fixes itself in your movements and your way of looking at things. After a Chaplin film, you catch yourself doing clumsy jumps, after a Rohmer it’s always summer, and the ghost of Akerman undeniably haunts the kitchen. In this feature, a Sabzian editor takes a film outside and discovers cross-connections between cinema and life.
Jacques Tati zei ooit: “Ik wil dat de film begint op het moment dat je de cinemazaal verlaat.” Een film zet zich vast in je bewegingen en je manier van kijken. Na een film van Chaplin betrap je jezelf op klungelige sprongen, na een Rohmer is het altijd zomer en de geest van Chantal Akerman waart onomstotelijk rond in de keuken. In deze rubriek neemt een Sabzian-redactielid een film mee naar buiten en ontwaart kruisverbindingen tussen cinema en leven.

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