Having expressed some qualms about Lennart Nordenfelt’s characterisation of everyday mutual understanding (it is too intellectual and too much akin to the world of a private detective) I was struck by an experience a day later which did seem to fit his description.I went to see the most recent David Lynch film: Inland Empire. More so that Mulholland Drive, it seems to resist narrative interpretation. Whilst (parts, perhaps, of) scenes ‘hang together’ as the simulacra of rationally structured actions, any momentary sense of knowing what is going on is swiftly fractured. Unlike meaningless activity, it seems to demand interpretation. It ‘sprongs’ the spider-senses, so to speak, but to no, immediate at least, avail. One is left both instinctively deploying one’s faculty for empathy and finding it frustrated.
That said, there is much to be enjoyed about the film, not least the surface structure and appearance.
