Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Inland Empire

(2006)

It is with great pleasure that I announce the bestowal of the coveted Gerry Award on David Lynch, the third honoree after Gus Van Sant (for the detestable Gerry) and Carlos Reygadas (for the insufferable Japón). The Gerry is given out weekly, monthly, or yearly, totally at the whim of the highly-respected Gerry Committee (me and Lee), to the most impenetrable, incomprehensible, stupid, boring, muddled, artsy-fartsy, and/or pretentious—and especially slow—movies ever made. Inland Empire is all of these things, plus it gets extra points for being very, very long, almost three hours of unadulterated bullshit. David Lynch can make weirdness a virtue, as he’s proven in many films, but it doesn’t work here. I knew I was in trouble when the scene with the people with giant rabbit heads played out, and by the time Jeremy Irons spent almost ten minutes of screen time instructing an unseen stagehand on the placement of a light on a movie set, we decided to pack it in, at about one hour. The Gerry, by the way, if we ever get around to making one, will be a carving of a human hand holding a DVD remote, with the thumb pressing the 60X FF button. If the movie still seems slow at 60X, it is Gerry material.