Our Lynchian world

A brief tribute to David Lynch (1946-2025)

Whatever you think of his films, David Lynch was no doubt an interesting character, as well as one of the last true artists of the modern age.

Now, having recently died, he is being widely celebrated, but it was not always so. For years many dismissed him as an eccentric creator of artsy fartsy nonsense, and he had trouble financing many of his projects.

His last two feature films had to be finished with European funding, as American studios cancelled them before completion, and in fact he did not make a feature film since 2006's Inland Empire, which was independently produced. (His last major work, however, Twin Peaks: The Return, from 2017, was financed by an American TV channel).

His work was not everyone's cup of tea. I personally find some of his work endlessly fascinating, while there are other things that I can't bring myself to like.

The first film of his I saw was probably Dune (1984). I watched in the cinemas when I was just 12 or 13 and had just read the book. I remember liking a lot of it, even if the whole felt a bit choppy and incoherent. I re-watched it recently, and, despite its defects, caused mostly by the producer's cuts, I still like it much better than the current version by Villeneuve, which I couldn't even finish.

I also like Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead. Those are probably his masterpieces, in particular the last two, one made at the beginning of his career and another towards the end.

I don't like so much Wild at Heart. In fact, I hated it the first time I saw it, but it takes courage to appreciate anything with Nicholas Cage.

Lost Highway and Fire Walk With Me are interesting, but a bit too dark for my taste. Not among my favourites, even though both have great moments and characters.

Twin Peaks, the original from the 1990s, is amazing and revolutionary until the forced revelation of the murder mystery, then it becomes increasingly silly. But, like in Dune, the producers are the ones to blame here, more than Lynch.

I am a bit more ambiguous about Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). It has some great things and some pretty bad things, an uneven pace and a few scenes that feel (to me) more like a caricature of Lynch than real Lynch, as if they were directed by an evil doppelganger of the director. Perhaps it would have been better if it had been kept to the original planned length of 9 episodes instead of 18. But there are many scenes and at least one full episode, “Got a light", which is pure Lynchian brilliancy.

Also, considering the Twin Peaks universe as a whole, which includes all three series plus Fire Walk With Me and perhaps a few other references in other movies, it is a certainly a tour de force that includes much of the director's best work.

It is a cliche that his films follow the logic of dreams more than coherent plots. This is true, but not in the way most people think.

Take Mulholland Drive, for instance. Many interpret the story to be a “dream” in the first two thirds, and “reality” in the last third.

But, in fact, the whole thing is a dream. It's just that the second part is a nightmare, but no more “real” than the first part. It's just two sides of the same coin.

By the way, for those who don't know, Mulholland Drive is a road full of curves that goes across the Hollywood hills, where many stars and former stars' houses are located, and from which at its highest point you can see a wonderful view of the city. It can also be a bit scary: at night it is usually empty and silent, but it is also pretty narrow and curvy and dark, and you never know if a car might be coming at you at full speed on the next curve. When I lived in Los Angeles, in the early 2010s, I enjoyed driving at night along Mulholland Drive and pretending I was in a David Lynch movie. (And who's to say I wasn't?).

Lynch's main theme, repeated in several films, can probably be summarized as this: nothing in the world is really what it seems. There is something beyond the purely material universe. There are many supernatural entities — call them demons, ghost, angels or fairies — who interfere in our Earthly reality, and there is a constant cosmic battle between Good and Evil.

Years ago, such view might have been dismissed as a fairy tale.

But just watch the news, look at what's happening out there. Look at what they are selling to you as “reality” and at what they're labeling as “conspiracy” or “fantasy”. Look at the freaky, nightmarish creatures in the upper echelons of our society and political world. Look at what's behind the red curtain.

It is increasingly clear that Lynch's movies were more realistic than we gave him credit for. It’s a David Lynch world, we're just living in it.