Enter Thy Neighbour

An Inland Empire Mise-en-scène Metonymy

Résumé

Inspired by teaching films that challenge narrative conventions and comprehension, this featurette demonstrates the power of sustained mise-en-scène analysis as a tool for interpreting challenging texts like Inland Empire. The featurette brings granular attention to various formal elements at work in a vital scene early in the film when a neighbour arrives for an unannounced visit that unsettles the protagonist with a message that feels as urgent as it is cryptic. David Lynch uses camera angles and proximity to frame and shape spaces, faces, and objects in ways that align with the film's motifs and meanings. In this sequence, a mesh comes into view of wealth, light, passageways, hospitality, and marriage. Though the mesh retains gaps, it holds together as a unit that also works as a metonymy for connecting, though not containing, the disparate pieces of the film.