Hi Bix. Thanks for your nice comment. Hope what follows is not too long.

First, I'd like to put my listing IE at #10 in context. With regards to the year it was released: "I watched very few fiction features in 2006 that reminded me why I fell in love with cinema in the first place. Basically, I think a lot of good films were released in 2006 but only four or five compare favorably with my Top 10 lists from previous years." With regards to the opinons of others. I certainly don't think IE is as great as these quotes indicate: "After fifteen years of disappointment with and doubt about DL, it is possible to love his work again."(Knipp), "David Lynch's first digital video is his best and most experimental feature since Eraserhead" (Rosenbaum) or several found in a slew of 4-star reviews the film received.

I'd have to disagree when you say that the sense of dread is completely lacking. It's there, in spurts, from the beginning, as when Nikki's neighbor played by Grace Zabriskie pays a visit to make some dire predictions. Her face twitches and the close-ups turn her into some sort of monster. There are moments like it throughout, often facilitated by the use of sound. But this dread notes are not sustained as in previous Lynch films. So, my disagreement on this regard is just a matter of degree. You do make a valid point.

The one thing that separates it from his recent features is that this time the demarcation lines between reality and fiction, conscious and subconscious, awake state and dream state are more nebulous and diffuse. That scene 85 minutes into Mulholland Drive, when Cowboy wakes up Diane, and separates her dream/drug-induced hallucination from "reality" doesn't have an equivalent in IE. My take on the film assumes that the character identified as "Lost Girl", who sits in her apartment watching TV as she waits for her (estranged) husband and son to turn up, is a likely protagonist_ obviously along with one of the Laura Dern's characters (actress Nikki Grace). Two scenes seem to me supremely important: the scene in which Lost Girl and Nikki kiss and the latter fades away, and the scene in which Lost Girl reunites with her husband and son.

IE can be enjoyed without attempting to piece together a narrative, devise a chronology of events, or organize the visual and aural information using a variety of systems. But for me, half the fun stems from trying to make sense of it, and attempt to wrestle meaning out of it. At times, IE indeed seem fractured beyond comprehension and a tad indulgent. However, Lynch's observations about the Hollywood system and how it affects people, the desintegration of self-identity, and the representations of reality via various media are resonant themes. He broaches them with evocative power. On IE, he seems to be riffing on the merging of an actor's true identity and the roles she's cast to play, as well as said roles as filtered and interpreted by the viewer (represented by Lost Girl, seen in the opening scene crying while watching something on her TV set). Lynch seems to me particularly compassionate towards women, especially young, vulnerable ones.

Formally, what caught my attention more than ever was the frequent use of extreme close-ups that distort facial features and create abstract images out of commonplace objects. Whereas most "portals" in MD were bottomless boxes, here Lynch resorts to the use of doors as thresholds between worlds and states of being. The audio dynamic range is extremely wide, with some of barely audible effects (the wind that opens the film) and some extremely loud, ear-piercing sounds.

Inland Empire, grand as it is, didn't have quite the emotional impact on me as Mulholland Drive. In the same manner that the sense of dread or impending danger comes and goes, the feeling of pathos is not sustained or conveyed satisfactorily.