OK, I watched INLAND EMPIRE twice, and just as in most of David Lynch films, the movie is full of long pauses.

Normally, I like this.  In ERASERHEAD, the actors often just stand there and look around, as though they are thinking.  The pauses make for a mood that speaks volumes.  LOST HIGHWAY is also full of this, and it works for the depressive and empty life that Pullman's character is supposed to have.   HOWEVER, for the first time I realize that Lynch can go OVERKILL on these pauses.  INLAND EMPIRE is a good example.  By the 3rd HOUR, I felt that some of the pauses were just too much.  I loved the movie, but felt it should have been edited down just by half an hour or 40 minutes or something.

There is such a thing as using something that works too much.  For example......this latest film is filled with long shots of rooms, of characters thinking, walking around...doing nothing...ect...ect....and after 2 hours filled with it....I wanted something more to happen. 

That is why I am considering the possibility that Lynch works best when he has someone to encourage him to get to the point, and/or polish up his work.

That is why I think TWIN PEAKS worked so well.  Lynch had Mark Frost to help him contour the show.

NOW I KNOW SOME OF YOU WILL THINK WHAT I AM SAYING IS BLASPHEMY....but consider ERASERHEAD.  The original cut of Eraserhead was half and hour longer....but when he showed it to some of the cast, and production crew, they encouraged him to cut it down a bit.  Well....Lynch decided to go ahead and trim it....and look at how amazing ERASERHEAD is!  Well....I kinda wish the same thing would have happened with Inland Empire.

99 percent of the time, I love the long pauses in David Lynch films....because I feel they have meaning.  However, that remaining percent makes me wonder if other fans don't get what I mean about him milking it for all it is worth. 

does anybody know what I mean? 

I know what you're on about, Hyde. Ruthless editor. Your post could've been about a third shorter. At least...

I love the pauses in DL's films and it's not because they have meaning but because the combination of composition, stillness and sound design is absolutely beautiful. Even silence in DL films has a lush, hypnotic quality. I've got the world's shortest attention span and have spent the last fifteen years trying to work out how DL holds my attention even when nothing seems to be happening. The only way I can describe it is, it's like that feeling when you're half awake and half alseep and you're aware of how fantastic your bed feels so you know you're not asleep, but you haven't stopped dreaming yet and you can't decide if the things in your dream are real or not. 

I don't tend to look for meanings in the films. I'm curious and that's one of the reasons I watch them again and again, but I don't need to understand what they mean to appreciate them. I can spend twenty minutes staring at a painting and it doesn't move, or make a sound, but my mind's kept busy taking in the composition, the textures and my own reaction to it. I feel the same way about DL films.  

I don't think it's blasphemy to dislike the editing but it is a bit like saying you're a fan of The Matrix, except the bits that are science fiction...   

I think different viewers have different tolerances for the pace of a film. For a lot of people brought up on the slam-bang pace of commercial blockbusters Lynch movies probably seem verrrrry slow. However, I'm an art movie buff so Lynch's stuff actually seems quite zippy compared to, say, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky or Bela Tarr. And I agree that Lynch's "pauses" are not really there to convey meaning but to induce a mood.

"What credit card do you want to put that on?"
"Caash, prease."

I haven't understood. McG=McGyver?

McG is the name (or nickname) of the director of the two Charlie's Angels movies. Some of the action scenes in the second one use an extremely fast editing style, to the point where you can't really make sense of the action. He seems to believe shorter time between edits equals "excitement".

I wish McGyver had directed the Charlie's Angels movies. :) 

"What credit card do you want to put that on?"
"Caash, prease."

Please forgive the bad typing and misspelling here:

 I want to clarify thaty I am not guilty of loving the slam-bang pace of commercial blockbusters.  I am a lover of the more surreal and more abstract cinema.  While my friends wanted to watch blockbusters, I always wanted to watch Felini.  I agree that the pauses introduce a mood.....I am just saying there is such a thing as overkill.

 So, do you guys think there is no way to go too far with pauses...or are you just saying that you DONT think Lynch went too far in IE?

 I would never compare the two.  To do so would say that the pauses constitute the main substance of Lynch's movies.  I feel they definatly are a large part of the substance, but the other attributes are also equally important. 

Mulholland Drive is a great example.  It has its share of pauses, but it also has great moments of conversation, character development, and dialogue.  These elements are every bit as important as his pauses.

 That's a bit much.

I mean, David Lynch movies may have alot of pauses...but to say that the pauses define the work is an unbalanced comparison.  After all....much of David Lynch's work consists of great dialogue, scenery, music, visual style...ect...ect....

These elements define his work as much as pauses.

Look at WILD AT HEART.  A brilliant film.  Filled with comedy and drama, but with its fair share of pauses.

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To all......I want to make sure you guys realize that I am not saying IE is a bad movie.  It is actually quite brilliant.....I have only one complaint....I felt the pauses were too long. 

Not all of them, of course....

I feel there should DEFINATLY be SOME long pauses.  I like alot of them.......I just thought that SOME of them could have been trimmed down.

That god damn trailer's more popular than Uncle's Day in a whorehouse!

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I generally like the pauses too - could IE have cut down on them a little? Hard to say, I certainly didn't feel it needed hardly anything cutting out. The scene with Gordy, Janek and Piotrek in the woods is the only one which I think could be cut with no loss to the flick. But then if it had, I would have been deprived one of my greatest IE-related experiences.

After I took my girlfriend to see it, we went to the pub and had the most amazing 3-hour conversation about the movie, and came up with so many ideas and thoughts about it. Later that night, I woke up to get a drink, and when I came back, my gf was muttering to herself in her sleep. I distinctly heard her say "it's just a galvanized painting shack" - and I realised that she must have been dreaming about that very scene! Needless to say, I was very proud of her!

Anyway, I like the pauses, and I DO think they are pretty integral to DL's style. We all know the story of how he got into film (he saw a painting "move" and heard a wind, and had some kind of epiphany about moving images and sound) - and so those ultra-slow zooms are his was of showing the "moving painting" effect. The one which I get a little impatient about is the one near the start of The Straight Story - that one just seems to go on for too long, and ceases to be interesting as a result (for me, at least)

Speak for youself! I understood the "plot" pretty well, insofar as there was a plot. I'll do my best to answer any questions you might have, but my understanding of the movie may differ greatly from your own. Any attempt to tie IE down to a singular incontrovertible meaning/interpretation is doomed to fail

I think with IE it's more useful to talk about themes, ideas and feelings, than plot. I know what it meant to me, and in my reading, the scene in the woods added only one thing to the movie: the phrase "inland empire".

I would add, I can connect every other scene in the movie to a corresponding scene or line of dialogue - but the scene in the woods only seems to connect to the movie's title, if you ask me.

Have you posted your theory about the plot anywhere? I'd be interested to read it. But whereas there seems to be a general consensus on the plot of MULHOLLAND DRIVE and (to a slightly lesser degree) LOST HIGHWAY, I'm unaware of any consensus on how the plot of INLAND EMPIRE fits together. I love its style and mood, and normally I'm the first to defend "baffling" films but I can't help feeling a bit lost in this case. Has Lynch made any comment to suggest the plot fits together in his mind? I sometimes suspect it's more a loose stream of consciousness in which the scenes and characters shift and merge together and quote from each other but which has no overall logical self-consistent structure.