Inland empire

Inland Empire
Dir: David Lynch
Starring: Laura Dern, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Staunton, Jeremy Irons
180 mins (English/Polish)
*****

David Lynch’s new film, the three-hour Inland Empire, is either a work of extraordinary depth and all-round brilliance or a confusing mass of interweaved art installations and pretentiously unwatchable scenes.
Many will think the latter, and in their defence, not without reason. From the outset, the epic production is uneasy viewing, and at times positively painful to digest. Following the plot is verging on futile and viewers will leave as baffled as they are shell-shocked.
The spellbinding Dern plays Nikki, a Hollywood actress offered a potentially career-reviving role in a new movie On High In Blue Tomorrows. When the film’s director (Irons) reveals to Nikki and her co-star (Theroux) that the film is in fact a remake of a doomed Polish production, the nightmare begins.
Boundaries between the events on the set, in real life and in the queasy Polish parallel existence are all blurred as Nikki is plunged into a Lynchian Alice in Terrorland.
Although not a horror film per se, Inland Empire is perhaps the most terrifying piece of cinema in recent history. There is a constant sense of foreboding played out vividly to a dark score peppered with uncomfortable sounds, frightful imagery and the fantastical leitmotif provided by the film’s ever-present talismanic screwdriver.
Some scenes will have you pleading ‘Oh God’ and grasping for the metaphorical pillow. This is one of those rare movies so scary that it actually induces shivers and goose pimples, making you plead for release.
Add, to name but a few, awkward scenes featuring choreographed gaggles of prostitutes, life-sized rabbits acting out a sitcom, and, on one traumatic occasion, a fruity man appearing from behind a tree with a light bulb in his mouth, and you begin to get the picture.
But the more the film draws you in – and that it does – the more apparent its magnificence becomes. For its power to elicit emotion and to leave an indelible print on your mind, Inland Empire is nothing short of a masterpiece.

Felix Lowe

Felix at the Flicks

Days of Glory (Indigines)
Dir: Rachid Bouchareb
Starring: Jamel Debbouze, Sami Naceri, Sami Boujila
128 mins (French/Arabic)
****
The day this film was released, French president Jacques Chirac said announced a new pension plan for Second World War veterans from France's former colonies. This, of course, tells you just as much about the injustice and discrimination suffered by these forgotten war heroes as it does about the power of this excellent, and important, film.
The Oscar-nominated Days of Glory follows the lives of a troop of North African soldiers who enlisted during WWII to liberate from Nazi Oppression France, a motherland they had never seen. And yet it is the oppression of their white French superiors which casts a shadow over their seemingly incongruous patriotic actions.
Singing La Marseillaise and fighting for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, these outsiders are thrown into the front line and blown to bits in the last enclaves of Nazi resistance in Italy and France – all while being denied equal rations, letters from loved-ones, leave or a strong pair of boots.
When the first villages of Alsace are finally liberated by France in January 1945, it is not by French soldiers, but by these shivering North Africans. There faces, however, will not feature in the celebratory film reels and, sixty years later, the survivors will live in tiny bedsits in run-down suburbs without the state pension offered to those French soldiers of whiter hue.
Compelling performances from the main quartet of actors, and in particular comedian Jamel Debbouze, who is finally winning plaudits for his serious roles, makes Days of Glory a poignant and watchable story.
Director Rachid Bouchareb triumphantly avoids Hollywoodisation, and as a result many of the key moments, such as deaths scenes, are not overly sentimentalised. The film is not perfect – too many issues are tackled, dialogue is often too sparse, there is a surfeit of long, silent scenes, while the flash-forward finish is a trifle hackneyed – but it is wholly admirable in delivery and intent.
Days of Glory may not make you cry like other war films, but it will teach you a lesson and for that it is not to be missed. Released nationwide on 30 March.