David Lynch’s final feature film was his most confounding.

After winning praise for delivering a conventional story in The Straight Story and earning the best reviews of his career with the sublime Mulholland Drive, he returned in 2006 with Inland Empire, a strange and unsettling experimental film.

This is a three-hour movie with no discernible plot. It was shot on standard definition video using a camera Lynch operated himself. He also handled editing duties and composed most of the music. It fulfilled his desire to strip filmmaking down to the basics and make a film in a way anybody with a camera and some willing actors could.

Because he’s David Lynch, his willing actors included a laundry list of stars including Jeremy Irons, Justin Theroux, Harry Dean Stanton, Julia Ormond, Diane Ladd, Mary Steenburgen, William H. Macy, Terry Crews, Naomi Watts, and Nastassja Kinski.

Many of those actors appear in bit parts, but the film’s star is Laura Dern, who appears in nearly every scene and is run through an emotional wringer. This is a confounding, sometimes annoying, film, but Dern’s work is raw and mesmerizing.

In the movie’s most comprehensible scenes, Dern plays an actress who lands a part in a romantic drama and has trouble distinguishing between the film and her real life. It spins off in a hundred directions from there, including one extended sequence of a family of humanoid rabbits gathering in a living room.

I didn’t like this movie much, but it does feature a few excellent moments that deftly blur the line between art and reality. At one point, Dern’s character enters a movie theater that is playing the very scene we’re watching.

Lynch never made another feature film after this wild return to his surrealist experimental roots. He delivered a highly-acclaimed third season of Twin Peaks, directed several short films, and accepted a number of acting roles. His final appearance was a brilliant one, playing John Ford in the climax of Steven Spielberg’s The Fabelmans.

Two years later, he revealed that his lifetime of smoking has resulted in emphysema and confined him to his house. He died earlier this year after the Los Angeles fires forced him to evacuate to his daughter’s home.

Whether you love or hate his films (I’ve done a bit of both), there’s no denying that Lynch was a singular artistic force. He put his unique stamp on modern cinema and inspired countless other filmmakers. Like his movies, I suspect he will be appreciated even more in hindsight.

Here’s my personal ranking of Lynch’s filmography:

10. Dune
9. Inland Empire
8. Eraserhead
7. Wild at Heart
6. The Elephant Man
5. Lost Highway
4. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me
3. Blue Velvet
2. The Straight Story
1. Mulholland Drive