Like licorice or macramé, David Lynch’s movies are a rarified taste. You either get it in toto, or not at all. Lynch is a known Civil War buff, and if his movies have drawn their own Mason-Dixon line, then the chill between North and South was palpable at the two press screenings of Inland Empire I attended last week at the New York Film Festival. The Get-Its buckled during every funny moment, while everyone else—the Don't-Get-Its—intermittently exhaled loudly enough for the Get-Its to hear them.

Just before the closing scene of the movie—which runs exactly one minute shy of three hours—the screen goes dark and stays that way for several seconds, reasonably giving the impression that the picture is over and the credits are about to roll. But then the screen lights up again for a totally unexpected coda. At the first screening I attended, when the movie started again for that one last gasp, the Don't-Get-Its all groaned.