When I watch watch David Lynch movies, I dream more often.
There’s just something about the way his lens captures how he sees the world — an amalgamation of cinematic swooning and psychological still life that blends into a kind of mind-infecting phantasmagorical singularity. Whether he’s star trekking and wrangling sand worms or diving under the green grass of Sirkian suburbia to uncover a primordial, sexual underbelly, Lynch understands the power of a single image better than most filmmakers lucky enough to call themselves his peers. Hyper-saturated and ultraviolent, his style of satirical fantasy has become so synonymous with surreality that the phrase “Lynchian” has become an overused descriptor, mostly employed by those who have never taken the time to actually sit down and try to decipher just what makes his movies tick.
Should those same reductive pundits study the work they’ve marginalized into cliché, they’d find an attention to beauty and internal human rectitude that surpasses his knack for cheap shock tactics and often juvenile yuk-yuks. Whether through a dream of robins, two lovers embracing and exploring each others’ bodies for the first time or an FBI agent declaring his philosophical alignment with the actions of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Lynch conveyed a belief that darkness always has to co-exist with light. For human beings are just as complicated as the “ideas” the director often goes on about when trying to describe his equally idiosyncratic creative process; mere seeds that, when allotted time to grow and develop, can blossom into something that need to be dissected and picked apart and appreciated, layer by layer.
For the past two months, the Alamo Drafthouse (led by programmer Tommy Swenson, whose intros to these films became delightful bits of performance art at certain points) have shown the entirety of David Lynch’s filmography in 35mm (excluding Inland Empire, of course); a daunting cinematic gauntlet which begs the viewer to to engage with the director’s work in the arena in which they were originally meant to be enjoyed. What resulted through this labor of love was one of the greatest theatrical experiences of my life; a perfectly paced marathon that (when combined with the “influences” portion of the program) gave me a deeper appreciation for an artist I already considered one of America’s great cinematic maniacs. This piece is my attempt to parse through the series’ feature entries and apply my own semblance of sense to it all — a somewhat feeble attempt at both qualifying the Montana madman’s body of work while also interpreting just how they all fit together, unique pieces to one of the finest filmic enigmas ever assembled.
So now, presented for your approval, Dear Reader, is Lost in Darkness and Confusion: The Complete David Lynch…
#10. Lost Highway [1997] (w. Barry Gifford & David Lynch)
“I like to remember things my own way. How I remembered them. Not necessarily the way they happened.”
David Lynch took a vacation from feature filmmaking for five years following the critical and commercial disaster that was Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. When he returned, the rust was certainly evident, as Lost Highway plays like a collection of half-written songs that were just gathering dust on demo tapes. In essence, it’s a David Lynch B-Side; the now infamous surrealist director returning with scraps that he and Barry Gifford (whose novel Lynch had previously adapted into Wild at Heart) came up with while hating each others’ initial ideas (a fact Lynch admits to in interviews). Unlike almost all of his other work, you can feel the strain behind the creative process here, the fluidity of conceptual confluence completely absent. Instead, all that remains is a “noir horror” nightmare that is only occasionally horrific and, more often than not, a chore to sit through.
All that said, the moments that do manage to creep under the skin are some of the most vividly realized of Lynch’s career. With his final screen credit, Robert Blake creates what might be the most menacing figure to grace the whole of Lynch’s filmography — a hairless soothsayer who videotapes the atrocities both Fred Madison (Bill Pullman) and Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty) commit. While undoubtedly managing to make the maniacal Mystery Man unerving through sheer performance, watching Blake’s Lost Highway turn in 2014 is extra eerie when you take into account the former Little Rascal’s suspected murder of his late wife. Though inadvertent, a tiny bit of research into the movie’s main influences — namely the OJ Simpson trial — reveals that Lynch may have commited the ultimate celluloid statement on celebrity murder without even knowing it. Lost Highway was inspired by a former superstar killing his wife, and would feature an otherworldly piece of acting by another washed up icon of bygone era who would go on to kill his own bride after appearing in a movie about mental deterioration due to spousicide. Coincidences can be chilling, but letting this fact sink into one’s brain while Lynch’s male power fantasy unspools is enough to send a bolt of frost down one’s spine.
However, at two-and-a-half hours long, there’s just simply not enough meat on the bones of the film’s skeletal conceits to make for a full cinematic meal. What results is a waking night terror that, once you return from its fractured reality, can never truly convince you as to why the hell you were so scared in the first place. Yeah, there was this eyebrow-less freak with a movie camera, Richard Pryor was somehow your boss at a garage and, at one point, Robert Loggia beat the shit out of a dude for tailgating (all while Rammstein and This Mortal Coil played in the background). But the rest just disappears like the majority of dreams. Coupled with the fact that Lost Highway lacks the visual lushness of his best work (the commitment to darkness almost renders the movie flat-looking), it’s no wonder that the majority of this nightmare is lost to the ether seconds after you step out of the theater.
#9. Dune [1984] (w. David Lynch)
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when my fear is gone I will turn and face fear’s path, and only I will remain.”
Dune is a bad movie.
Now that we’ve gotten the bullshit qualititative analysis out of the way, it’s time to admit that, while Lynch’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel is an unmitigated disaster on nearly every storytelling level, it remains endlessly fascinating from first frame to finish. A series of insane creative choices, Lynch’s disowned big budget fantasy stepchild is a glimpse into a zany alternate cinematic timeline, in which one of our most idiosyncratic iconoclasts wielded enough power to be given the reigns to a potential franchise starter.
Unfortunately, Dune is no Return of the Jedi (a directing offer Lynch entertained from Lucas himself) — an entry into an established juggernaut that he could play with and integrate his own style into. Instead, the saga of Paul Atreides’ (a then-unknown Kyle MacLachlan) rise to jihad-leading sand worm rider still stands as one of the oddest misfires in the history of tent pole cinema. Hacked to pieces by the producers (a legend regarding a five-hour cut still persists to this day) and the only film Lynch considers an out-and-out failure himself (he refuses to talk about the “painful” production in detail or revisit the film for a Special Edition DVD/Blu release), Dune is a film so incoherent that “cheat sheets” had to be handed out to audiences upon original release, just so that they could keep track of the film’s interstellar characters and locations. Featuring an impressive cast (Jürgen Prochnow, Max von Sydow, Patrick Stewart) that’s peppered with weirdos (Brad Dourif, Sean Young, Sting in a codpiece!) and masterful design work by Anthony Masters (who seems to have retained certain sketches from H.R. Geiger’s pre-vis work with both potential directors Alejandro Jodoworsky and Ridley Scott), Lynch’s film should be brilliant, yet is nothing more than a mashed together whole of half-formed thoughts. Never less than visually stunning, the glaring flaws are readily apparent to even the most passive of viewers (Virginia Madsen narrates the film only to never speak another word onscreen).
Though certain cult film fans still cling to the picture as some kind of unsung masterpiece, the truth is that Lynch is 100% right in inventing the nom de plum of “Judas Booth” (a portmanteau of “Judas Iscariot” and “John Wilkes Booth”) to slap on the extended TV cut of the picture. Dune was a betrayal of the artist by money men, who ended up assassinating the multi-million dollar picture when they stopped trusting his original vision. That’s not to say Dune would’ve been any good had Lynch actually been granted “Final Cut” (marking the only time he had never been afforded this artistic “luxury” during his career), but at least he would’ve been allowed to fail completely on his own terms.
#8. Inland Empire [2006] (w. David Lynch)
“All I see from this is blue tomorrows.”
David Lynch is done with film as a medium for artistic expression. He’s moved on to greener pastures, no matter how pixelated they may look on a big screen.
Inland Empire isn’t so much an experiment as it is a manifesto for the future. Lynch recognizes the infinite potential in digital filmmaking. Endless takes that don’t require changing mags, causing a break in the “moment”. Naturalistic lighting that allows you to play with depth of field. DV murkiness of the consumer grade camera, which transforms shadowy hallways into serpentine labyrinths, no longer the same ones you navigate every day in order to complete the most mundane domestic tasks. This career capper finds Lynch returning to his roots as a painter, playing with a new set of brushes with which to splatter and streak the canvas. Without the weight of economic oversight (Lynch financed much of the movie from his own pocket), he’s again a student of film, able to explore these possibilities and satisfy his every creative whim, no matter how impenetrable they may seem to a viewing audience.
Unfortunately, this lack of enchainment also leads to Lynch seemingly sending off his feature length career with a film that collapses under its own reckless freedoms. Running three hours long and never quite congealing into a completely coherent narrative (though one could argue that the anti-story style is the utter point of the exercise), Inland Empire is a treasure trove of fascinations buried beneath a desert island of self-indulgence. Treading the same thematic territory as his 2001 masterwork, Mulholland Drive, Lynch not only begins to repeat himself, but does so in a fashion that is far uglier than anything he has done before, both in terms of aesthetics and basic iconography (“a woman in trouble” quickly becomes “a woman in suffering”). To wit, while it may be commendable that the aging avant garde auteur continued to push himself even in the twilight of his motion picture making days, he does so in service of topics he’d already covered previously, and much more coherently.
However troubling this pixelated hellscape may seem, there’s a diamond in the rough in the form of Laura Dern’s career defining performance. Truthfully, Dern is the entire reason Inland Empire exists (right down to the title, which her husband inspired in Lynch through a moment of idle chit chat). Dern has always been Lynch’s muse, and their final collaboration proves that both are able to push the other to dizzying heights. But in Inland Empire, the actress transcends even the most breathtaking work the two had created together before, as she becomes a bared soul, splintered into several pieces who each have their own distinct personalities. Lynch and Dern mine the long takes digital allows for tiny character bits that would otherwise be lost in a less permissive edit. It’s the brilliant byproduct of the radical nature of the piece, while the rest requires patience and a desire for completion.
#7. Eraserhead [1977] (w. David Lynch)
“In Heaven, everything is fine. In Heaven, everything is fine. You’ve got your good things. And I’ve got mine…”
David Lynch has often said that he’s never read a critical elucidation of Eraserhead that comes close to his own interpretation of the film. This might be seen by some as intimidating, their analytical capabilities impossible to grasp the true intent of the genius filmmaker. But another way to look at it is completely freeing; a kind of cinephile play on “there is no wrong answer”. Even with his first film, Lynch proved that he was working on an intellectual and visual level we’re still attempting (and failing miserably) to reach. So you might as well only focus on what this surrealist Kobayashi Maru means to you, instead of jumping into a sandbox in which you probably don’t belong.
Keeping this theory of “personal freedom” in mind — for me, Eraserhead has always been a terrifying meditation on the crushing weight of adult responsibilities. The old adage regarding men laying eyes on their newborn child for the first time states that their lives are forever changes. Only you can usually divide these new fathers into two different categories: those who fall totally in love and devote their souls to their children, and those who are utterly terrified by the prospect of parenthood, sending them either running for the hills or staying and experiencing a kind of mental collapse. Eraserhead is the story of the latter disintegration, as when we meet Henry Spencer (Jack Nance), he’s walking home on the first day of his “vacation” (read: firing) from his job at a grotesque, steam-billowing, poison-leaking factory. At dinner with his girlfriend’s parents that night, Henry is told that Mary (Charlotte Stewart) isn’t pregnant, but has already given birth “prematurely” to a slimy lizard beast of a baby. Shortly thereafter, Mary abandons Henry and the infant, leaving him to care for the steadily ailing creature by himself.
What follows is the depiction of Henry’s mental failure, as urban sirens across the hall tempt him with sex, a man pulls industrial levers inside of a cratered planet (or his brain), and his own subconscious sings to him from the radiator, telling him that death will be the only release from his child’s never-ending shrieks. All the while, Lynch layers the film with a rumbling sound design that places you, the viewer, in the same cognitive state as our doughy-faced protagonist. The industrial thunder threatens to drown out everything but the child’s cries, which will never stop until Henry finally shows mercy in the most gut-churning way possible. Essentially, what Lynch has crafted with Eraserhead is the portrait of a baby-killer; a glimpse inside the mind of men and women who abandon their newborn seed in prom dumpsters, their skulls crushed with rocks or temples pierced with crude kitchen utensils. For some, this world is too much to handle, their choice of pleasure bringing consequences the likes of which they’re not equipped to handle (there’s an almost puritanical aversion to sex contained in the text).
Even though Eraserhead is his first feature (made for a mere $20,000), Lynch shows a spookily unnatural talent for filmmaking, creating a visual and aural soundscape that many have attempted (and failed) to replicate. Like Alejandro Jodorowsky before him, Lynch crafts a unique, personal vision that was saved by the midnight movie crowd, full of symbolism and stark 16mm photography that thoroughly establishes a world with its own set of rules. In fact, the groundwork for the rest of the director’s distinct career was so firmly laid that it’s somewhat surprising his next film would be such a mainstream critical success. It’d be a decade before Lynch fully returned to the dark roots he planted, but even his big budget failures that followed carried the DNA of Henry Spencer and the oppressively bleak universe of his directorial debut.
#6. Wild at Heart [1990] (w. David Lynch)
“This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top.”
While performing a tech screening the night before its premiere at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival, David Lynch was confronted by organizers, all of whom were appalled at how intensely he had ratcheted the volume of the film. They told him that it was too loud; that audiences would never be able to stand such an abrasive decibel. David Lynch straightforwardly smiled at the quibblers, saying “that’s how it’s supposed to sound.”
Every aspect of Wild at Heart is cranked to eleven. The fire the main titles roll over is so hot you can feel the heat emanating from the screen. When the needle first drops on Powermad’s “Slaughter House”, the riffs are deafening. Because this is how young love feels and sounds. It’s uncontrollable and ear-splitting. It cannot be contained by the constraints of human authority. And with his first post-Twin Peaks feature film, Lynch wants to crush your consciousness with his channeling of that maddening feeling of unbridled abandon. Much like the trademark jacket of Sailor Ripley (Nicolas Cage), Wild at Heart is a symbol of David Lynch’s individuality and his belief in personal freedom.
Wild at Heart came during a time of great professional triumph for Lynch, who was in the middle of production on Twin Peaks when he left to finish the film. In many ways, you can feel the director riding high; a pure wave of rock and roll attitude acting as a kind of victory lap. His reunion with Laura Dern (who plays Lula — the Dorothy of this white trash Wizard of Oz) allows Lynch to again create with his greatest collaborator. Lynch has often described Wild at Heart as being a movie about “finding love in Hell”, as Lula gets swept up in the tornado of sweaty masculinity that is Sailor. Their descent into the sweltering heart of America finds the two napalm-crossed lovers running into an assortment of the country’s most violent and despicable sociopaths. Hitmen and feed store robbers (the latter of which is brought to despicable life by a rotten-toothed Willem Dafoe) become the obstacles placed in their path, while Lula’s Wicked Witch of a mother (a positively demented Diane Ladd) sends her numerous lovers in hot pursuit.
Performance, like it is with almost all of Lynch’s best work, is a centerpiece of what could possibly be considered the closest the director has come to helming a full-blown “musical”. Wild at Heart stops on a dime for the jams, to an even more extreme degree than Eraserhead (“In Heaven”) or Blue Velvet (“In Dreams”, the title song). This fascination with the expression of self through song would continue in Lost Highway (via Fred Madison’s saxophone) and Mulholland Drive (the entire “Club Silencio” sequence). Most exclusively, you could argue that the entirety of Inland Empire is a culmination of Lynch’s fascination with how the artist can lose themselves in a moment of pure performance.
When Sailor sings out his two Elvis songs, the music becomes an extension of his persona, transcending his feigned Memphis accent into something pure and undeniably his own. So much of Wild at Heart Lynch is working almost exclusively through iconography. These aren’t characters as much as they are universal symbols for love’s reckless lack of control. Cage is obviously our Elvis while Dern is our Monroe, all while doo wop meets metal on the motion picture soundtrack. Cage positively owns these show-stopping renditions, right down to recording his own singing on the soundtrack. In these moments, Wild at Heart becomes about how we identify and end up owning and expressing ourselves exclusively through the pop stylings that come to define us as human beings. Sailor may think that jacket represents individuality, but the fact is he can only tell Lula how much he loves her by utilizing someone else’s art. Lynch has often said that Wild at Heart came to him during a very violent time in history, and that he saw much of America in the original novel Barry Gifford wrote. Could it also be that this is how David Lynch views many Americans — miscreants who can only adopt the facility of others as a means to establish their own true identity?
Ultimately, hope destroys even the most cynical aspects of the film. In drafting the screenplay, Lynch was right in abandoning the original ending Barry Gifford wrote for his novel of the same name, as he knew Sailor and Lula needed to be together come the final frame of the film. This is a bond that has felt the fires of Hades itself, and therefore cannot be broken. While the darkness, lurid content and overall weirdness of the picture cannot be denied, what Wild at Heart ultimately states is a thesis of bold hope. As long as youth roams the planet, there will always be love, and not even Hell itself can destroy such an all-consuming force.
Stay Tuned later this week, when “Darkness and Confusion” will conclude by counting down the Top Five David Lynch Pictures…