Empire, Stage, Screen, and DVD

Live theatrical events in Grand Forks are having another spurt of activity. The national comedy troupe “The Capitol Steps” performs this Friday at 8 pm in the Empire Arts Center. Tickets are $60 for the benefit show, followed by a champagne reception that helps mark the 10th anniversary since the Empire re-opened as a performing arts center.

The week after next (April 15-19), the UND Theatre Department will present the classic romantic comedy-drama “Bus Stop,” and a Broadway touring company of the hit musical “Gypsy” will play at the Chester Fritz Auditorium (April 17).

High school musicals are also in season. A couple of weeks ago, Grand Forks Central put on “Guys and Dolls,” last weekend Sacred Heart did “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” and this weekend Red River High School is staging “The Mikado.” The beloved Gilbert and Sullivan comic operetta mixes broad parody of romantic melodrama with topical political satire. Showtimes for “The Mikado” are at 7:30 pm nightly through Saturday, plus a 2 pm matinee on Sunday.

Meanwhile, movie production students at UND try furiously to finish their projects by the end of this month for screening at the Empire Arts Center during finals week, now just one month away. UND will be offering another “Summer Movie Camp” for teens (age 12-18), during the middle two weeks of June, and due to numerous requests is adding one for adults (age 18 and over) that will run May 12-23. Both workshops will cover writing for the screen and using digital video equipment to shoot and edit a movie, and the completed class movies will then screen at the historic Empire Theatre. More details on these workshops and Empire screenings of independent movies will be announced soon.

“Inland Empire”

Independent movies shot on digital video are more likely to find audiences through DVD distribution than theatrical showings. “Inland Empire” is the latest feature-length movie by director David Lynch, a three-hour experimental artfilm that made the rounds of some festivals and had a limited (15-theatre) release last year. It is now available on DVD in a 2-disk special edition that helps give a bit more insight into its confusing, disjointed story. Avid Lynch fans will need to see it. The general viewing public will likely not be able to sit through it all.

Lynch is noted for his dark, moody, dreamlike, and often disturbing films that seem to defy the audience to figure out what they mean. Thirty years ago his enigmatic first feature, “Eraserhead,” set the pattern that he would modify and elaborate upon ever since. His films sometimes follow a more traditional plot structure, with brief insertions of subjective, metaphoric, and/or dream imagery. “Blue Velvet” (1986) shows him in peak form and is arguably his masterpiece, along with his television series “Twin Peaks” and its theatrical film sequel/conclusion, “Fire Walk With Me” (1992). Increasingly, however, with works like “Lost Highway” (1997) and “Mulholland Drive” (2001), his films have become more free-form in their overall organization, and increasingly difficult for audiences to follow.

“Inland Empire,” completed in 2006, might be described as full-blown David Lynch style and content without conventional form. While its subtitle is “A Woman in Trouble,” it might as aptly be called “A Movie Run Wild.” Because Lynch shot the picture on mini-DV (with a Sony PD-150), he had much more freedom to experiment and shoot more footage in less time for less money than possible with traditional film production, as well as to operate the camera and perform the editing himself. It also helped inspire him to create a story into which he could incorporate experimental test scenes he’d written on the spur of the moment and shot on video while visiting Poland.

Familiar Lynch themes and imagery, with lots of dualities, allusions, and self-referential elements, flow across the screen in succession like free association, stream of consciousness, or perhaps more likely stream of unconsciousness, for 179 minutes. Then, on the second DVD, there is another hour and forty minutes of “more things that happened.” This may be a clever way of labeling “deleted scenes,” but is essentially another full-length feature that could be viewed after “Inland Empire,” before it, or by itself. It adds substantially to understanding the movie, and includes several memorable scenes that probably should have replaced others in the “official” cut.

Like “Mulholland Drive,” “Inland Empire” deals with both the struggle to succeed in Hollywood and the struggle to maintain illicit personal relationships. “Mulholland Drive” presents its story largely through the perception of one character’s deranged mind, but becomes ultimately decipherable. “Inland Empire,” on the other hand, leaves open the question as to how much is real (past, present, and future), how much is part of the movie within the movie, and how much is in the mind of Laura Dern’s actress character (prompted by her immersing herself into the life of the character that her character is playing in the movie within the movie). And then there’s the mysteriously aborted Polish movie within the movie, which Dern’s character is remaking despite an apparent curse on the production.

As usual, Lynch resists including an audio commentary to explain what he’s trying to accomplish. However, the DVD includes a lengthy interview/monologue by Lynch discussing his experiences with the production and digital video, plus a generous selection of behind-the-scenes footage of Lynch making the movie. Another extra shows him cooking dinner and giving more anecdotes. These, along with the feature-length additional scenes, help make more sense of the main feature (if Lynch fans really need to make sense of his work).