HALFBORN: An Inland Empire Analysis

[abelmont8]

Ha! I couldn't agree less with Ebert here. Have always loved lost highway and it really doesn't seem like it should take all that much intuition to realize that it's core narrative has a truth and logic to it. One could come up with countless stories of one's own involving some kind of similar disjointed causality, but it's so clear that Lynch brings a real spiritual depth and everything is backed up.

If you're able to find the piece of analysis that really struck you before, I'd love to read it!
But I know how hard it is to find stuff sometimes.
I met Matt Dillon a few years ago at an art opening of his in Berlin. He told me about a dinner he had with Lynch and some others, I think at Cannes, and Lynch told an obscure parable about two men, meeting on the road to Fez, Morocco. One of the men accuses the other of some kind of odd/banal lie, which doesn't turn out to be a lie? And the "punchline" had to do with "Why, when I see that you are going to Fez, did you lie and tell me that you were my friend?" It was of course extremely obtuse/ koan like.
I've found the parable written out before online, with no reference to Lynch, it is a real folk anecdote, but try as I might, I can't find it again now :/

In re familiarizing myself with Lost Highway now, I see that it focuses more heavily on desire and masculinity than Inland Empire. I think what blew me away most of all with Inland Empire, and that your writing helped bring into focus, is that Lynch has never relied less on what I would call "collective unconscious" ideas, or psychoanalysis maybe. Not that I don't love these elements in his films, but Inland Empire is shocking in how it seems to present such an immanent/real journey of one extremely personal, and relatable, soul, without much exploration of America, desire, mass culture, etc. In my opinion at least

[ono]

In Room to Dream, if I'm not mistaken, Lynch gave the actor that played the phantom of choice of three props to hold and one of them was a light bulb. So I'm not sure if you've seen that passage. And I'm not sure if I'm accurate. But have you taken that into consideration in your analysis? This means your interpretation may need to be tweaked.

[Jeremy Blackman]

In Room to Dream, if I'm not mistaken, Lynch gave the actor that played the phantom of choice of three props to hold and one of them was a light bulb. So I'm not sure if you've seen that passage. And I'm not sure if I'm accurate. But have you taken that into consideration in your analysis? This means your interpretation may need to be tweaked.

The light bulb is one thing I could never really make sense of, so... that definitely sheds some light on the matter, so to speak. Thanks.

A few years ago I wrote something much longer on Inland Empire but never quite finished. It's actually pretty close, but I would want to revisit the movie and scrutinize everything I wrote. As is, it's about 25k words long.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Here's a PDF of my chapter on TIME TRAVEL. (Again, unfinished, but pretty close.)

[ono]

I'm trying to go over the audiobook and find where it was mentioned. But now I can't find it. It's around chapter 29 that Inland Empire is talked about but I've scanned that chapter and the surrounding ones a couple times and I haven't found it. So maybe it's before or after it. It's weird that I can't remember what the two items were besides the light bulb. I wonder if I'm making it up. Chat GPT can't seem to find it either. Not that I would expect it to. It's a pretty obscure trivia tidbit.

[deaddilly]

Here's a PDF of my chapter on TIME TRAVEL. (Again, unfinished, but pretty close.)

Greetings,

Just wanted to extend gratitude for all of the illuminating discussion that went down in this thread, and your diligence + research in responding to everyone. Really enjoyed this chapter, and in general reading your HALFBORN analysis in book format is lovely. Does this suggest that you will be publishing the entire revised theory in this new format? I'd certainly be a patron.

[Jeremy Blackman]

Here's a PDF of my chapter on TIME TRAVEL. (Again, unfinished, but pretty close.)

Greetings,

Just wanted to extend gratitude for all of the illuminating discussion that went down in this thread, and your diligence + research in responding to everyone. Really enjoyed this chapter, and in general reading your HALFBORN analysis in book format is lovely. Does this suggest that you will be publishing the entire revised theory in this new format? I'd certainly be a patron.

Thank you!! And yes, I'll release my full "book" version at some point. I really feel like the web version is a tiny rough draft by comparison. Or maybe I've just bought into my own madness.