i waffled on writing anything about david lynch, despite loving his work a lot. i haven’t even seen all of it, and of those i’ve seen, most have been single viewings. fake fan! plus there’s something performative about coming out and being sad about the death of a beloved artist. but i figure this is my blog and i will just write what i think instead of thinking about writing.
i was lucky enough that my parents let me watch many of his works before i had gleaned even the first bit of knowledge about his work–the ideal way to view lynch movies. even knowing his name and reputation is too much in my opinion. i was truly lucky and it’s almost unfathomable that this situation would occur now. i saw twin peaks and was blown away. then i saw blue velvet and was blown away all over again. lost highway. mulholland drive. dune!! i couldn’t believe these movies were real, they were so special and so different from anything i’ve ever seen before (or really since, despite his outsize influence on cinema and art as a whole, probably partially because nobody would fund something like that unless it came from david lynch but that’s another story).
something that really struck me when i watched a bunch of his movies is that he has an approach that feels almost musical. i don’t mean like a musical, or that he uses music (though he does use music in a fabulous way, including angelo badalamenti’s transcending and iconic music). i mean that at its best, music is an artform built entirely on emotion, it’s such an abstract thing, and my favorite of his movies capture this same feeling very strongly (lost highway and mulholland drive especially, but really all of them do to some degree). it’s so highly unusual to see a movie, such a highly verbal medium approached this way. even other artists i regard highly, who have drawn from david lynch’s work (like satoshi kon) don’t often capture this.
i often tell people that i’m not the best with words and that’s why i’m a composer: i use music to express emotions that get mangled up and deformed when i try to speak them. in david lynch’s movies i saw a very rare glimpse at another artist (who isn’t a composer) doing a similar thing.
to be clear i don’t actually know if that’s how he approached things, of course. he famously never explained his work. but i do remember seeing a behind the scenes clip where he was frustrated because the location they were shooting at was very time limited (or something, this was a long time ago on a DVD bonus feature far far away), and he was saying things like “it’s just go go go and they never give us any time to dream!” or something like that. i wish i could find that clip back… (EDIT: here it is! h/t telebasher)
anyway, rip to one of the true great artists, i don’t think i’ll ever see another one like that in my lifetime. tragic that i will now run out of movies and tv shows by him to watch. bonus that by all accounts he seems to have been a truly kind and benevolent person.
but… i have never watched inland empire, maybe now is the time…
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