Laura Dern in Inland Empire.
If you attended Sunday’s J. Hoberman: State of Cinema panel expecting some sort of eulogy for 35mm cinema in the face of the oncoming storm that is digital production/distribution, you received nothing of the sort. Instead, Hoberman (one of the finest film critics in American history, author of multiple books and formerly staffer at Village Voice) delivered an engaging lecture looking toward the future with optimism, saying “It’s hard to pessimistic at a film festival.” The lecture’s content covered a lot of ground more deeply addressed in his newest book Film After Film: Or, What Became of 21st Century Cinema?, but Hoberman deftly bounced between the ideas contained therein while displaying a knack for dazzling inferences. (I particularly enjoyed him connecting Warner Bros. becoming a solvent company due in no small part to the advent of synchronous sound with Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer as the harbinger to decades and decades later when Time Warner merged with AOL in one of the defining business moves of the new era.)
The thrust of his speech was that technology moves forward in a way that our popular culture can’t contain. Film will never again be the monoculture that it was decades ago, and just because it isn’t the predominant art form of our times doesn’t mean it can’t thrive. People seem to be lamenting the culture of cinephilia fading away (as a new essay provocatively suggests) more so than the degradation of moviemaking in general. Using examples as widespread as The Matrix, The Passion of the Christ, Waking Life, 24 Hour Psycho and The Artist, Hoberman argued that computer generated imagery (or CGI) has brought a “radical impurity” into the filmmaking system and has allowed the relationship the world shared with photography to become ruptured as a result. And how rare is the Q&A where the questions are equal to the content that came before it? Exploring the place of the film critic in this internet age, what the proliferation of superhero cinema means for this era of American filmmaking and how the rash of “found footage” genre films have forced us to rethink the documentary form, the audience asked fantastic questions and Hoberman responded in kind.
And what a treat as well to see Hoberman choose to showcase David Lynch’s “final” film Inland Empire (2006) after his discussion. A vivid depiction of many of the ideas discussed beforehand, Lynch’s film sits on the edge of digital filmmaking, showing the benefits and drawbacks all at once. Whereas his work in the past had a vivid, almost sensual dreamlike quality brought to them through the versatility of 35mm film, his muddy blurry digital camerawork in Inland Empire turns those dreams into a waking nightmare. It’s the most experimental work Lynch has ever unleashed on the public in my estimation, defying categorization and eschewing with a linear narrative almost immediately into the proceedings.
We follow Laura Dern’s Nikki Grace as she literally disappears into a film role that may prove to be haunted. The film then begins to circle in on itself (literally, the characters often walk down darkened hallways and through doorways into earlier scenes or sets) and reality erodes as the image erodes alongside it. Dern delivers a stunning performance, front and center throughout much of the film, grounding the film in an emotional reality that could otherwise get lost amongst the dream logic and surreal tangents (a prostitute music number set to “Locomotion,” a creepy sitcom set up featuring life-size rabbits delivering meaningless (or is it -ful?) non-sequiturs to canned cheers and laughter). And while visual quality had to be sacrificed to shoot on digital, it’s also well-apparent that no studio would’ve ever funded such a singular filmic event to be made any other way. So it stands as a perfect example of the peaks and valleys this digital era will come to offer us as film viewers. And much like Hoberman’s panel beforehand, it rewarded you with genuine insight if you were willing to take the journey.
