Inland Empire (film) it "A dazzling and exquisitely original riddle as told by an enigma" and Jim Emerson (editor of RogerEbert.com) gave it 4 stars and praised it: "When people say "Inland Empire" is Lynch's "Sunset Boulevard", Lynch's "Persona" or Lynch's "8½", they're quite right, but it also explicitly invokes connections to Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining", Jean-Luc Godard's "Pierrot le Fou", Buñuel and Dalí's "Un Chien Andalou", Maya Deren's LA-experimental "Meshes of the Afternoon" (a Lynch favorite) and others". However, Carina Chocano of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote that "the film, which begins promisingly, disappears down so many rabbit holes (one of them
Maya Deren influence because of the surreal nature of "Meshes of the Afternoon". Bunuel's "Un Chien Andalou" (1928) is on the premier examples of film representing the structure of the subconscious. Deren detested this comparison because of the surrealist movement's interest in the entertainment value of its subject more than its meaning. The form of "Meshes of the Afternoon" does not compare to Un Chien Andalou either. Psychoanalysis of "Meshes of the Afternoon" from a Freudian viewer or Jungian viewer attempted to decode the symbolism in the film to uncover what Deren was saying about identity and sexuality. Deren adamantly objected her