"How Nikki and the other characters wind up in these rooms ‚Äî how, for instance, the pampered blonde ends up talking trash in a spooky, B-movie office ‚Äî is less important than what happens inside these spaces. In ‘Inland Empire,’ the classic hero’s journey has been supplanted by a series of jarringly discordant scenes, situations and setups that reflect one another much like the repeating images in the splintered hall of mirrors at the end of Orson Welles‚Äôs ‘Lady From Shanghai.’ The spaces in ‘Inland Empire’ function as way stations, holding pens, states of minds (Nikki’s, Susan’s, Mr. Lynch’s), sites of revelation and negotiation, of violence and intimacy. They are cinematic spaces in which images flower and fester, and stories are born.
Each new space also serves as a stage on which dramatic entrances and exits are continually being made. The theatricality of these entrances and exits underscores the mounting tension and frustrates any sense that the film is unfolding with the usual linear logic. Like characters rushing in and out of the same hallway doors in a slapstick comedy, Nikki/Susan keeps changing position, yet, for long stretches, doesn‚Äôt seem as if she were going anywhere new. For the most part, this strategy works (if nothing else, it’s truer to everyday life than most films), even if there are about 20 minutes in this admirably ambitious 179-minute film that feel superfluous. ‘Inland Empire’ has the power of nightmares and at times the more prosaic letdown of self-indulgence," – Manohla Dargis, on David Lynch’s new movie, New York Times. (Hat tip: JPod.)
The Dish 