
Review by Nick Reed
As an artist, Lynch has made a definitive name for himself within the midnight theaters and art-houses as being one of the top auteur filmmakers of our time. However, in the mainstream cinema, he's taken as more of a crazed scientist with wacky hair, wearing a lab coat and conducting bizarre experiments with film that rarely turn out to be successes.
What most refuse to see is that while they have been busy trying to decipher every surreal event and character, they've forgotten how great the overall ride has been. Most audiences have been so swept up with Hollywood blockbusters telling them what to think and how to feel that having a film that demands the viewer to experience these emotions on their own can be a hard pill to swallow.
Laura Dern (Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart), who provides one of the most astonishing performances I've ever seen, stars as Nikki Grace, a married actress who has just received a part in a film alongside Devon Berk, played by Justin Theroux (Mulholland Dr.). As the production starts, with Jeremy Irons as the optimistic director Kingsley, the line between what's real and what's the film begins to blur. Pretty soon, the actors are calling each other by their character names off camera, and as a secret affair begins between them, reality seems to disappear.
But it hasn't. In fact, this film does anything but stray from realism, as Lynch takes us through a journey from a film within a film, to reality within a film within his film. The theory of what he's done can almost be described as being fourth dimensional.
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