Why Are David Lynch Movies So Weird?
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- čas přidán 12. 07. 2021
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Sources:
Catching The Big Fish by David Lynch: amzn.to/3AQvJue
Eraserhead: amzn.to/3AQvJue
What is David Working on Today: • What Is David Working ...
Twin Peaks Season 1
Lost Highway: amzn.to/3xBHZN3
David Lynch: The Art Life: amzn.to/3AKkWl8
Lynch's Nightclub: www.anothermag.com/art-photog...
The Angriest Dog in The World: www.lynchnet.com/angrydog/
Dune (1984): amzn.to/3k3KILm
Mulholland Dr: amzn.to/2Vr7JgR
Blue Velvet: amzn.to/3yPhP9E
Inland Empire: amzn.to/3xypjh7
Wild at Heart: amzn.to/3yNGfRa
The Straight Story (Disney+)
Twin Peaks Season 3 (Showtime)
David Lynch on Cooking Quinoa: • David Lynch on Cooking...
Elephant Man: amzn.to/3wxSJee
Lynch at Venice Film festival: • Video
David Lynch in Conversation: • David Lynch In Convers...
1997 Charlie Rose Interview: • David Lynch 1997 Inter...
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me: amzn.to/3i4OsK6
David Lean Lecture: • David Lynch: David Lea...
David Lynch: The Man From Another Place: amzn.to/2UyRXjH
The Story of a Small Bug: • THE STORY OF A SMALL BUG
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace: amzn.to/3ARUmqo
David Lynch T-Shirt I'm Wearing in the Video:
amzn.to/2U8XBck
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My god Thomas! I just wrote a comment on your recent video if you could do David Lynch... Did you do it because of me or you were planning this for a long time? Thanks OMG.
@@Dale_Blackburn Been planning this for quite a while but I think I saw that comment. :) Lucky for you!
@@ThomasFlight your video has some funny thing's that I watched a few time's the part where you say a brief encounter or a deep dive is hilarious to me 🤣✨🌷1:28 & 1:46✨ a dubious process 😃 it's tough to leave a video that is so funny!1️⃣0️⃣:2️⃣3️⃣😉
@@ThomasFlight "Do humans know where they inherited their evil nature from ?"
If I tell you to much, you won't believe me. If I tell you to little, you won't understand.
Can you edit out the word weirdo?
"I don't know why people think a film should make sense when they don't accept the fact that life doesn't make sense." - David Lynch
I have a great imagination. Its wonderful and weird. I don't really need to see David Lynch films for that. I don't need David Lynch to add more nonsense to my life lol.
I'm not a fan. I do prefer stories that more coherent and deliberate even if open ended or still open to some amount of interpretation.
Not to say I didn't enjoy Twin Peaks and Wild At Heart.
@@quirkypurple Frankly, the point of storytelling is to TELL a story. A film that deliberately avoids this might be academically interesting (I guess?), but in practice it's just infuriating to watch a filmmaker waste your time.
@@TMWriting Much better than I could have put it.
@@TMWriting If you say that movies should only be about storytelling then you are dramatically limiting the potential of the medium. Humans can never understand objective reality, we only abstract meaning from what we perceive, so whenever we get confident in the idea that we understand something, its most likely a self induced lie.
@Tom Morgan You're describing the point of storytelling, but who says cinema should strictly be used for storytelling?
I feel like David has always been 60 years old some how
It's the hair, there are a couple of pics of him with darker hair, but since his directorial debut, Eraserhead, was made when he was 30, we mostly know him as a mature man.
The pics of young David lynch make me uncomfortable
@@Pataganja I hope someone was there to help you 💝 be comfortable that is"✨🧸
@@derekmoran8385 wtf bruh
Is there a highway called eraserhead way or anything around the eraserhead hood, is there :)
12:34 My guess is David Lynch had an absolutely normal childhood during which he was loved and supported appropriately. He's just a smart guy who doesn't self censor too much, he asks himself questions most people never imagine and he explores his ideas in a childlike way without cynicism.
or some shit like that.
I think you may be right he’s just a brilliant artist with his own perspective but I really do love his art
I think he had a very good childhood, but was immediately traumatized by his time spent in Philadelphia. He always had the worst things to say about the city. Then I think in the following decades he probably realized that it's not just Philly, but most other places as well, only that he had been sheltered from it his whole life.
He once mentioned that, as a kid, he saw a naked woman come out from the woods and sit down on the sidewalk, then proceed to cry.
I think that kind of explains a lot.
The man's business card says nothing but "David Lynch, Eagle Scout" which is pretty damn great
Indeed, you dont have to be a tortured artist to be a truly phenomenal and innovating artist.
When your movies are as weird as David Lynch, making a normal Disney movie is the most experimental thing he could ever do.
Lol I was thinking this
Doing ecstasy or shrooms while watching a david lynch movie would be redundant. Everything he did was impressionistic imagery combined with a type of innocent gloss on the world, which can only be described as seeing dramatic adulthood through the eyes of a child.
@@swiftbeatrice776 As someone who first saw Mulholland Drive while on shrooms, no lol. Psychedelics immerse you in the Lynchian goo even far more, and it's frightening, disturbing, beautiful, and hilarious.
I can here to comment this. Cheers to you sir.
YES! Lynch isn’t just “oh the surface seems wholesome, well let me spoil that with the horror underneath” it’s “wow! pure joyous wholesomeness truly exists *alongside* and *intermingled* with disturbing horror of wondrous proportions! Quinoa!”
This comment is 100% right on-Lynch's work is truly wholesome. He does the best job at real life comedy & putting us through experiences that transcend as well as fire & brimstone
My favorite example of this is the opening of Blue Velvet. The picturesque town of Lumberton is shown, followed by Jeffrey's father's stroke and the worms and bugs beneath his perfectly manicured lawn. There's a seedy underbelly in Lynch's work. He is the master of manipulation.
Great comment👍
because that is reality
how many times have you heard from neighbors of some maniac "but he was a really quiet guy who kept to himself"?
@@ceejundersiege my fav is the coffee and cherry pie. you have to have the bitter with the sweet.
Lynch's films are the closest thing I've seen in the waking world to dreams. They don't have traditional linear narratives, and at first they seem to make no sense. But they have a strange and compelling kind of dream logic about them, and I just feel on a visceral level that they make perfect sense. It's that same feeling you get when you are dreaming. When you wake up and try to remember, the sequence of events makes no sense, but in the dream it does. Lynch has done the near impossible and captured that in his films. The plots are almost impossible to explain, but when you watch them, everything fits together.
Wow, this is probably the best description of his films I've read
Perfectly said!!!
I am happy you enjoy his work but I see his movies as what happens when you give an active psychotic a pen and paper with enough money to turn the creation to a movie. He lacks cogent treatment and ability to find any by the end.
@@coled2048you’re using the film equivalent of “metal singers just scream into the mic with no talent”. Don’t discredit artists like that
Very cool observation.
😎✨
Ages ago, I knew a guy who worked a little on Twin Peaks. He mentioned a time where a crew member accidentally walked into the shot. Instead of reshooting the scene, Lynch kept it. I was reminded of this anecdote when you mentioned the point being about the process of creation being the goal. Mistakes are part of of the process. Makes you wonder how many other mistakes made it to the final cut, and then triggered decades of speculation about their meaning.
I was fortunate enough to watch Twin Peaks when it originally aired, and to revel in the delightfully creepy, weird unpredictability of it. Speaking only for myself, I didn't do a lot of speculating about it (other than trying to figure out who killed Laura Palmer - I had a "clever" but totally wrong guess that it was Ronette Pulaski). I just enjoyed it for what it was.
He's not the tightest film maker - but he's very clever at normalizing the idea of ritual sexual abuse.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 You're a bit of a crazy person, aren't you?
That crew member was BOB! Initially BOB wasn't supposed to be a character at all but after Frank Silva accidentally appeared in a shot in a mirror, David decided to create BOB. I wonder what the series would have been like if he hadn't slipped into the shot
@@guen4413 The series would have been pretty much the same with the framework already established leaving room for developments like that.. BOB was always a representation of that particular demonic form but they just never cast a human at that point. he looked greasy enough to fill the role I am guessing. Very creepy pasta guy around the corner selling speed to kids vibe.
The Denny's scene in Mulholland Dr. is one of the greatest in cinema history. The sense of dreadful dreaminess, the anticipation and anxiety; it's unmatched.
Peak moment, like seeing the guy in the corner in Blair Witch or the granny eating the girl in the Taking of Deborah Logan... I guess
Don't take the Mark of the Beast! (666)
It was one of the few scenes in all of cinema that legitimately scared me
And worse still - the figure revealed in that scene is played by the same woman who played the nun in The Nun (from the Conjuring series of films).
Winkies…!
Dude yeah, that freaked me out.
Not a Denny's lol
It’s an absolute shame that we will never see David Lynch at the head of a video game project. I feel like video games are a medium that’s due for a mind like David Lynch to blow open and explore the limits of the art form.
Maybe he could team up with Kojima
Remedy’s game Control has some cool Twin Peaks inspired stuff in it, imo it’s worth checking out.
@@matthewamaya3967 oh..yeah. I had played it 2 months ago. Totally forgot about it
He doesn't know shit about games. A collaboration could be interesting, but I don't think he'd be into that. He's often talked about the benefits of full creative control; good luck to the game developers in that situation.
@@parrish8854 he was supposed to make some game in the 90s
Twin Peaks The Return has a vibe consisting of deep joy that you will not find in most art. This, constrasted with the horror element makes it one of his grander masterpieces in the landscape of art.
Part 8 is probably the greatest artistic creation of all time
I was saying to my rmt the other day that Twin Peaks The Return is probably the only good return of a show after he told me how bad Friends return was. 👍
The Return is the greatest work of American art in the last decade.
There are a lot of moods and emotions throughout The Return but I would not put joy as one of those.
@@dog-eared6991 I thought it just me (not to say I don't love the return)
One of my favorite quotes of all time is a Lynch quote:
"Closure. I keep hearing that word. It's the theater of the absurd. Everybody knows that on television they'll see the end of the story in the last 15 minutes of the thing. It's like a drug. To me, that's the beauty of 'Twin Peaks.' We throw in some curve balls. As soon as a show has a sense of closure, it gives you an excuse to forget you've seen the damn thing."
Love the guys works, but he says alot of nonsense lol. Verbal diarrhea and gymnastics to say a whole lot of nothing.
@@alec57ive not heard much of him talking but this particular quote makes perfect sense
@@alec57 You say that it's "nonsense", yet you provide nothing to back that up.
@@alec57I dunno how this particular quote didn’t make sense to you. I know we’ve dumbed down English/writing classes in the last 10 years something fierce though, so I’ll assume it’s the fault of poor schooling.
Watching and reading about Lynch and his work made me truly realize that not every piece of art is a puzzle to be solved.
Sounds like you’ve solved a puzzle.
True...VERY TRUE....that being said,this link does have meaning...it means we are small in the universe yet larger than we think...the universe goes inward AND outward infinitely czcams.com/video/V6djMa0SGHY/video.html
@@mobiditch6848 czcams.com/video/V6djMa0SGHY/video.html
Many times I find art to be a mystery to behold, rather than a riddle to be solved.
You understand
In the documentary *David Lynch: the Art Life* , he reveals that as a child, one late afternoon, he saw a completely naked, bruised and bloodied woman come out of the woods near his house and sit down on the curb not far down the street. He said that was the first time he ever saw a nude woman, and that it made an impression on him.
I believe that’s where he got the scene in Blue Velvet where Dorthy is in Jeffery’s front yard.
I believe that’s where he got a lot more than that!
this for me explains very deeply his every movie.
this is intensely sad. Yes, sad for David...but that poor woman.
YES! That stood out to me as well. Not just the scene in Blue Velvet, but Ronette Paulaski bloodied and in her underwear running across a train trestle in Twin Peaks, The victim of the car crash in Wild at Heart, the amnesiac woman at the beginning of Mulholland Drive, wandering through the woods and down into the streets of L.A....all women in trouble.
@@cinemaocd1752 Dang I don’t know why I forgot about Ronette, but yeah definitely left a mark in his brain
Lynhc is all about sound design. I wish you mentioned his special and amazing use of sound and sub- soundtracks.
100% agreed. This was a pretty good watch but not mentioning Lynch's use of sound is a pretty major omission.
He calls himself "a sound man"
Eraserhead especially. God how crazy
His camera angles, volumes of sounds make his style. He definitely gets people to walk of different surfaces and then puts that over the original. Little things like this make you feel uneasy. I love it
Great films but I'm not that good to understand those movies until watching the explaining videos in CZcams.
“To understand his films you have to feel them” - never have I heard a more accurate statement about the work of David Lynch. One of cinema’s true masters still living today.
director andrew dominik said it best about lynch: "he makes the mundane threatening"
i hadn't heard that. That's good.
Willem Dafoe's teeth in wild at heart are so horrifying
Horrifying in terms of character or the actor?
be careful whose real teeth you alienate when you're trashing fake teeth ʘ‿ʘ
I thought I was the only one who felt that way.
@@xXluluchanelXx u must be bri'ish
It's in the gums.
God, just that one clip of Cooper driving his car makes me want to rewatch Twin Peaks
While I definitely don't subscribe to the idea that anyone who doesn't like Lynch's films simply doesn't "get" them, I think the criticism that gets leveled at his work most often does reveal a narrow view of the point of film in general. The most common complaint, that the films don't make sense and don't "go anywhere" and are therefore a waste of time, seems to imply that the point of a film is to tell a story with a clear point A, a clear point Z, and that everything in the film should be working toward getting from one to the other, and if not, it's a waste of time. I have always been of the opinion that any amount of time spent doing something you enjoy or that touches you is never wasted.
Think of it this way, most children make up games that often have no real point, no way to keep score, no end goal, no winner and loser, just the game. Even as adults, most if not all of us have things we enjoy doing that don't have a "point" to them, it's just something we enjoy. Lynch's music analogy is really fitting, actually. There's no real point to listening to music. There's nothing really to be gained by listening to music other than enjoying the experience of listening to it. The difference is that songs haven't been solely narrative-driven in a long, long time, so people's expectations have changed. People's expectation of films is still that they should all tell a story, rather than allowing for the option to simply convey a feeling.
I'm not saying that changing that expectation would necessarily make you enjoy those types of films, but sticking to that expectation definitely doesn't help.
I enjoyed reading your comment. I understand and agree with your point of view.
I think he is one of the most interesting people ever.
Dude has an awesome hair too even many decades after,
He’s right up there with Bjork ❤
Absolutely
not really, bjork is talented @@maevemaiden
@ytcommentdude4155 two legends can coexist simultaneously
At first I was frustrated watching his films, trying to make sense or them, until I realized that I was completely facinated by them even if I did not understand his craft. His films are an emotional experience, not an intellectual experience. Being an actor myself, I would LOVE to have the chance to experience working on one of his sets!!!!!
Yes indeed
I looked for weird movies that made enough sense and connection I got hooked , he owns that strangeness like its inherit inside our dreamscape
the return as well as twin peaks were a meta critique of the medium, it's kind of goofy to imply they're not intellectual experience.
Lynch is a fine artist, it's a shame the broader public lacks the visual vernacular to understand art
@@tuggerI think it’s perfectly okay for people to enjoy it on an emotional level and not necessarily understand it intellectually. The main point of art, especially lynchian art, is to evoke feelings, not to fully explain everything
I would love the opportunity to witness his directing process for the duration of one of his films. That would be a very highly treasured and beautiful experience and then memory.
What I love about Lynch his films is that there are a lot of things that seem symbolic or rooted in a deeper meaning. They really are like a dream, something you desperately try to figure out even though there is no final explanation. That's why they stick with you and why it's so fun to theorize about.
I think he's just straight up "enlightened" or "ascended" or whatever you wanna call it. He's fully aware that he is an observer separate from his mind, so he can look at his own creativity from a clearer, external perspective. "Ideas come and string themselves together." "I wish I could explain, but the film ends up being the explanation."
He's not David Lynch, he's experiencing life as David Lynch. Most people have to do a lot of meditation to fully detach from their ego, but it seems like he never got fully attached in the first place.
Interesting psychoanalysis
He just puts his daydreams to film, that's really all.
My main thematic takeaway from his weird works, is the futility of trying to understand everything. No matter how many answers we come up with in life, they will always lead to more questions. We will never see the full picture, because a full picture does not exist.
Sometimes it's better to let mysteries be mysteries, as they are often more captivating than plain facts.
When you think about it, it’s a truly wonderful gift that David Lynch has given us. Essentially, he is completely committed to the Death of the Author. This allows us, as the audience, to be the final arbiter of what his work means for us. I love that. I don’t necessarily mind hearing what an auteur thinks his work means. But I don’t always need it.
I'm not sure he's that committed to Death of the Author at all; he just believes the author lives inside the work and has no place offering material extraneous to it. The Monica Bellucci dream scene in The Return is a better explanation of what I mean than any further exegesis I could provide, except to say his works clearly have intention and personality. But I like your comment about allowing the viewer to be the 'final arbiter' - that's profoundly true.
@@jungatheart6359 Call it what you will, with zero input from the author, we effectively have Death of the Author, with identical outcomes.
I saw an interview in which he, Stuart Cornfeld, and Mel Brooks all that about Brooks seeing Eraserhead before approving him to direct The Elephant Man. As Cornfeld (or maybe Jonathan Sanger) tells it, Brooks saw it as "an adolescent's nightmare of responsibility." Lynch never weighed in on whether that was right or wrong, as far as he's concerned if the audience enjoys it and has some takeaway from it, then it was a worthwhile experience.
Death of the Author is a terrible idea and Roland Barthes was a prick. It degrades the concept of communicating via art because of the anti-individualist ideas of postmodernism. Essentially, Barthes did not believe that an artist could be "credited" for their own work, he states as much elsewhere (cannot remember the title of that particular essay at the moment).
When the author dies, you get today's "critical theory" that ignores the multitudinous and complex, layered messages that art can give us, and instead just tries to find in what ways a work is offensive and a product of patriarchy or whatever you want. It makes all interpretation of art political, again reflecting the postmodernist obsession with power dynamics.
I feel like it's a very disingenuous interpretation strategy to willingly ignore the intention behind an artistic work. Obviously it's good to remember that an artist's statement on their work does not need to be the ONLY interpretation - but there is no reason to ignore it, unless we should all start to ignore the intention behind every form of communication. It shows a sad opinion on human beings: as symbols of power rather than individuals with thoughts, wishes, feelings, and intentions. Again, postmodernist anti-individualism.
Now take all of this with a grain of salt. I don't hate postmodernists, or even Roland Barthes - they have brought along many interesting and important ideas. However, I do hate when their perspective becomes too dominant, and people forget the somewhat playful nature of a lot of these thinkers. People get too obsessed with these anti-individualist ideas and feel like, for example, authorial intention is something that should be ignored, rather than seen as one of several possible tools of analysis - the irony being that they're making the same mistake in their belief in the "absolute" correctness of their perspective, just as the authorial and biographical interpretation previously tended to fail because it was seen as the "absolute" correct method of interpretation.
@@viljamtheninja I’m guessing you didn’t know Roland personally, which makes what I’m about to tell you even more pertinent…
Your need to start your diatribe by calling the man “a prick” says far more about you and your insecurities than it says about Roland Barthes. Maybe you have good points, but I’ll never know, because starting the way you did makes anything you have to say on the subject completely irrelevant to me. In other words…
What people say about you is a reflection of their own insecurities.
Eraserhead scarred me for life. That is not hyperbole - no other movie has affected me like that. Some images are etched on my brain ("They don't know if it's a kid yet!").
Finding out he has a CZcams channel feels positively... Lynchian
I wish I could forget all of Lynch's films and rewatch them again for the first time.
Why they suck anyway besides Eraserhead
@@Dxivion i get his movies are hard to watch, my wife finds them confusing... but its a vibe for me.
Also, you're saying Elephant man wasn't good?
The Atomic Bomb sequence in Episode 8 of The Return (and that entire episode) is some of my favorite filmmaking ever. He always tries to do something different, which is DESPERATELY needed in today’s cinematic landscape.
To say episode 8 of The Return was a wild ride would be an understatement
@@UkuleleVillain I don't think Lynch is trying to do something different each time. He is simply expressing his art, his ideas and lucky for us he has more than one idea.
Yes, the reason why I prefer his movies over Scorsese and others, is his visceral sense. I prefer a film with striking visceral scenes over one that is stylistically toned down and intellectually complete. Just think of Laura Palmer's elation in the final scene of Fire Walk With Me, the hobo scene in Mulholland Drive, the scene where the director explains how to kiss, Eraserhead's father in law grinning at him for what seems to last an eternity, Judy punching at the door relentlessly in The Return... Lynch has a stunning sense of the visceral and of dreamy beautiful aesthetics. Even some of his music I love (I'm waiting here, Hey Pinky)
Episode 8 was a masterpiece. I couldn’t believe what i was seeing and hearing.
Different inventive unique... doesn't really sell in this day and age... and so we are stuck with marvel movies and remakes😒
I think that Mulholland Drive is his magnum opus. A masterpiece of modern filmmaking. Definitely on my top ten of all time.
I certainly concur, there was so much thought provoking detail involved. How Naomi is dreaming of being a successful actress, she dreams she’s living on 16-12 Havenhurst (which doesn’t exist) but IRL Havenhurst ends where Hollywood boulevard begins. IRL where her apartment should be there is the Chateau, a famous Hollywood star apartment 🤔
I thought the same until he released Twin Peaks: The Return
@@MasDouc would i have to see all of the original twin peaks to be able to watch "the return"?
@@increase9896 yes, especially the movie
@@increase9896 No
The reason I love David Lynch's films are because they're insanely IMMERSIVE. Often I don't care that I don't completely understand what is going on, because I'm already into the world of the film. I do like to think what it could've meant afterwards, it's a fun process. I love abstract, confusing movies.
Yes, yes! I always thought of Lynch's movies as purely emotion driven, meaning that the end objective is not a realistic narrative, but an emotional journey.
My take on Mr Lynch’s work: he begins with traditional stories, meditates and dreams on them and lets his unconscious provide images, concepts and characters (eg ‘moth-frogs’) which he then films. As these are often loaded with symbols and cultural connections, he is often labelled as a post-modernist. Like life, his films take place inside people’s heads. His use of dreams lead him to be (wrongly) labelled as a surrealist. He has a genuine love and empathy with people, and he is clearly fascinated with the reasons why people can often exhibit ‘evil’ behaviour. He is compelled by his creativity and he treats his audience as smart and comfortable with the paradoxical, the irrational and the absurd.
I don't think Mr. Lynch should explain any of his work! He adheres to the idea of "the author is dead". By giving us an answer(s) to his work, the work may become faulted and less magical. He wants us to come up with our own interpretations and answers, thus keep that magic alive.
so he doesn't have any faith in his own work?
No idea. He wouldn't tell you either way, and neither will I.
@@plasticweapon surely it would be quite the opposite? He has so much faith in his work that he feels no need to explain it any further than what the audience experiences on screen.
@@plasticweapon He’s said he’s extremely proud of every single work he’s done except Dune
If we wanted to freely interpret something, we’d make our own thing. The least he can do is say what his take is, even if he has a further goal of that thing taking on a broader open interpretation. Otherwise, who’s to say he didn’t just splatter paint on a canvas just to collect a paycheck? I really hate the “you decide for yourself what it means” excuse when a movie is devoid of plot and cohesion. There are a metric ton of movies that are just as visually artistic and atmospheric and have a cohesive plot. Lots of movies with spider web plots, that get you to think and evoke emotions. His method is either simply laziness, or completely random. In either case, for what purpose?
Of his films I’ve seen, Lost Highway is the least guilty, and Inland Empire is the most guilty.
The former was an interesting movie that I could make some sense of. The latter was complete, purposeless, sensory overload. If his goal was for me to be angry with him, he succeeded. Is that the plot of Inland Empire, because that’s my interpretation of it.
Lynch is all about associations, emotions, moods. All of his work explores the world of dreams. Not dreams like, I dream of being a dancer, but the deep, mysterious, intertwined things we experience in sleep, the mind roving free of its "rational" constraints.
When my better half and I were in our mid-30s circumstance had us take in a teen foster daughter. This kid had a very insular upbringing, she knew only the small city in which we lived, her only travels were through film.
She was entranced by "Wild at Heart," absolutely spellbound. When it ended she immediately asked me to watch it again with her.
After the re-view she quizzed me about everything. To her it was the closest analog to her life she'd ever seen on film. She believed that my better half and I were like Lula and Sailor but grown up, and that we knew how to deal with that kind of world but still appear normal.
It made sense to us, life _is_ but a dream. Wild at heart, and weird on top.
i started watching twin peaks about a year or two ago with no idea about what i was getting into. I had just heard that it was different and had a sort of cult following. man was i underprepared for how odd and surreal that show turned out to be. it was something i couldnt take my eyes off of because of that "feeling" that it radiated, while also having no idea what the hell was going on in certain scenes.
"Beautiful blues skies and sunshine All along the way." As always thanks for the thoughtful analysis Thomas.
No blue skies in Eternal Hellfire
I think Lynch had a texture obsession and applied that to everything, visual, audible, just every aspect of life is textured to an absurd extreme and that’s what truly is the root of his “style” or “mood”
There's a lot of Lynchian influence in Anime, too. I don't think its unusual that FWWM was a hit in Japan and a flop in the US. I've always felt Paranoia Agent and Evangelion are very Lynchian in the way Anno and Kon will establish things visually first, cryptically or poetically reference them later, and leave you to piece the meaning together. There's a clear story, yet no two viewers will arrive at the end the same way. The process is the connection, as Lynch himself says.
Perfect Blue is an anime movie thats 100% influenced by Lynch.
Wtf is FWWM
@@davidjones8043 Fire Walk With Me
just because somethings has surrealist aspects doesn't make it lynchian...the certain brand of existential horror in evangelion is much more in line with other anime and the visual and emotional language from the genre than it is with anything lynch ever made (yes this is probably the most pretentious comment I have ever written)
I’ve always appreciated the opening sequence of Blue Velvet, where we see the rose-lined picket fence and the camera pans down to the decaying darkness just under the soil... an example of the entire movies analogy within the first few camera shots. The American dreams decrepit state just below the skin
I just re watched it. It changes it’s meaning when you see it at different stages of your life as well. His works are endlessly fascinating
I know that there's a thing called writer's block. But it’s just that term - if it becomes kind of reality, if you believe in that term you could maybe really get writer's block. Fearing it you would bring it to yourself. - David Lynch
He’s the best at tapping into the dark confusion of the city.
Some years ago I had the thought that there is something almost Lovecraftian in Lynch's work - not in terms of the content of course (there are no eldritch horrors in his work), but in the pervasive sense that the world we think we know is a veneer, and that the true underlying structure of the world is strange and unknowable.
Excellent essay. The analogy to other mediums like songs and paintings, from which we don’t necessarily demand concrete narrative sense to appreciate, is a beautifully succinct way to express what Lynch’s films are like. “The feeling is the meaning.”
In dreams, I walk with you…
Hey Thomas. I've been a subscriber for a while, but this popped up right after I told my artist wife her most recent piece was Lynchian. She's been grappling with an artist statement, and we both love her dream like work, and her process is pretty similar to how you (and the man himself) describe Lynch's work. I've always been obsessed with his work, and hearing him describe-not describe his process is amazing. Thank you for putting this together!
Who can carry this man's torch in the filmmaking world? He's truly one of a kind.
I loved the analogy of his films as music with little to no lyrics. That one sentence completely summarized the video in a way that made the point very visceral!
Here's a challenge: make a movie with Nicolas Cage doing the Elvis voice for half the screentime (Wild at Heart). Try not to make it ridiculous. Only Lynch can pull this one off.
To be fair, that movie was ridiculous haha
Lynch knows our universe is an explosion in progress, where everything is coinciding, especially dark and light.
We grow lawns and flowers for a sense of nicety and order, and suddenly we find an ear in the grass. THAT's Lynch's beauty.
I think the one time Lynch (perhaps inadvertently) revealed one of his inspirations was when he talked about the OJ Simpson case around the time he started to write Lost Highway. He was very fascinated by how, if he did do it, he was able to go out and smile, play golf, shake people’s hands, etc., seemingly unperturbed. It made him think very deeply about the cognitive dissociation that would be required to avoid such guilt, and a couple of years later, Lost Highway came out.
Been going down the David Lynch rabbit hole recently and this is the perfect video to introduce my friends to him and his work.
So grateful that this man is still on this Earth, he is the coolest man alive.
Your video essays are so well done. You make me think about things I already know and bring a new sense to it (as well as all the new things I learn here). Thanks for this.
Since i first got into his art, my answer to the question "if you could sit at a table with anyone past or present who would it be?" Has always been david lynch. He's such a role model, intensely interesting, scary, intelligent, and very very weird.
Yes, certainly the most interesting person I could think of.
But I have no idea what I would ask him.
The problem with having a discussion with Lynch, based on all the interviews he's done is that he almost always leaves his interviewers very frustrated, unless they know this going in and only wish to demonstrate to an audience how complex and inscrutable the man is, just like his work.
I think what is most unique about him is his approach to sound design. He has this low growling low fi sounds that if you're experiencing it in the theater it's really immersive.
I've always been a fan since I saw Eraserhead on cable in '79. What I dig about Lynch is he's got the courage to be weird. Not weird for the sake of it, but if something is weird, or a bit offbeat, it's okay. One thing that's very clear in his work is we can't escape our own psychology, our own mind. Blue Velvet in the hands of any other director would have just been another murder mystery. In Lynch's hands it's a coming-of-age epic in Smalltown, USA. It's set in the 80s, but it's also set in the rockabilly 50s. It's about the ugliness behind the veil of American life, but also the beauty in everyday life.
Lynch’s work is intended for people to not figure out, it is surrealism, which is a mix of real story elements and elements that are not real (a dream or imaginary world). If people would just watch his movies with that in mind, they wouldn’t be tearing their hair out trying to figure out what happened in his movies.
I don't comprehend how I missed this for a whole year, but I'm very glad I've seen it now. Great work! Thanks.
David Lynch is brilliant. I cant put into words how much Twin Peaks means to me just the theme song brings back such emotions and memories. This is an excellent breakdown of his work and character. I really enjoyed it!
Might be a good time to honor the recently departed Antonio Badalamanti,who created the haunting score for Twin Peaks. R.I.P Antonio.
@@mrreg *Angelo
@@deegee8645 Thankyou! I stand corrected.
Yeah boi! My favorite director
Here's my ranking of his work
1- Mulholland Drive: 10/10
2- Twin Peaks: The Return: 10/10
3- Eraserhead: 10/10
4- Twin Peak: Fire Walk with Me: 10/10
5- Blue Velvet: 10/10
6- Lost Highway: 10/10
7- Inland Empire: 10/10
8- The Elephant Man: 9/10
9- Twin Peaks Season 1 and 2: 9/10
10- The Straight Story: 8/10
11- Wild at Heart: 7/10
12- Dune: 4/10
Pretty much agree with this list, although I'm not too big a fan of Lost Highway. Great film but definitely one of Lynch's "lesser works" imo.
They all stink. Unwatchable drivel.
@@metroidxme6470 Yes, I think it's the most intriguing conceptually but not the best realised. The performances, sound and editing are just not 100%. Arguably it had to made for Mulholland Drive to be possible, with the perspective of hindsight on Lynch's creative process and development.
@@w12ath040211 cool story, bro!
4/10.... See you got trash taste
This is beautiful, thanks for putting this together. Loved the quote at the end. Livin in the moment
I first watched Twin Peaks when it was released in the early 90s. I was very young & prob should not have been watching it but it had a huge impact on me. The music the lighting the characters & the surrealism. It scared me & I loved it. I grew up in a very rural location on a farm in the north west of Ireland surrounded by trees, Trees with owls in them 🦉 trees that creaked & swayed in the breeze. A beautiful scenic place yet at times a haunting lonely place. Twin Peaks ignited a spark in me, it stirred my imagination & senses. I have loved that show ever since & alot of his other works but Twin Peaks has always brought me back to that time & place ever since. It is dear to me & i cherish it. Thank you so so much Mr Lynch 👍
Great video! Coincidentally enough, I just posted a video talking about his second film, The Elephant Man, just a few hours ago. (I have to say, this one is much better, though!) I've been a fan of David Lynch for a while and so I'm glad you used this format to do a deep dive into his work! You've clearly done an insane amount of research for this and the narration and editing are spot on!
I had no idea David Lynch did The Straight Story. It's such an underrated wholesome gem.
One of my favourite movies.
Your ability to accurately analyze and coherently translate your conclusions into sound, easy to understand arguments is incredible
10/10
This might be the most concise explanation of Lynch's style ever put together. Thank you for taking the time to make this.
He's like an Aphex Twin for movies.
I love this man so much and I am so grateful the he staunchly refuses to explain a thing. 💗 He guards the joy of the mystery for us. It is ours to explore though our own mind and that is the beauty. Awesome video!! Very well done👍💙🌹
Great video. I’m a musician and David Lynch is a huge inspiration to me. I love hearing him talk and the way he sees the world. It’s special and beautiful
This is one of my favorite videos to come back to. Fantastic work.
Watching anything by David Lynch is totally fascinating because you're subconsciously experiencing what would make perfect sense during a dream, and consciously intrigued by the bizarre narratives & uncanny-valley aesthetic
I think abstraction in art is always intended to provoke emotion from the viewer and not be explained in any way. I think Lynch’s films are just that. It’s entirely about the emotions they provoke and not the logic behind the plot. I think Lynch is an eccentric guy, but I think he’s just a really creative individual - I don’t think he’s the strange messiah people perceive him as. That isn’t at all to belittle the quality of his work, I love him and I think he’s fairly normal under the surface.
What draws me to his work is the same thing that draws me to Salvador Dali work. They both capture the surreal quality of life. Sometimes one cannot make sense of a situation and canvas, film... Needs to be used to express the captured ideas that the event facilated
I personally love the David Lynch version of Dune and consider it superior to the 2021 version. It's the most faithful movie adaptation of a book that I have seen.
the ending is completely changed and the "weirding modules" are an absurd addition that's not attested at all in the book. lots of good things about the movie; but nothing faithful about it
It's crazy how many visual cues the 2021 film 'borrowed' from Lynch's version. And while one can simply say that both films are obviously based on the same source material, there are many visual inventions that Lynch created from the book that could be done in a myriad of ways, as far as translating the more vague written descriptions, and Villenueve often chooses to just replicate the Lynch visual motif.
And I actually rather liked the new Dune....
But for all of the shortcomings of Lynch's version, many of it's scenes have never fully left my mind.
His view on authorship is, in my opinion expressed in the character he played in Twin Peaks. He has critical agency and influence on the events but is still somehow «deaf» to what is really happening. I like to think the character wasn't a cameo but a cinematic self-portrait as a director.
Thanks for a really awesome and engaging look at one of my all time favourite creative geniuses - David Lynch!
I was 10, or maybe younger, when I saw Dune on a rental VHS tape, sometime in the late 80s. My late father was a fan of Frank Herbert; he somewhat irresponsibly let me watch the movie when I was too young for it. He told me to close my eyes during what I later learned was the heart-plug scene.
In my teens I read the Dune novels and have re-read them all several times over as the years have gone by. I always picture Paul as Kyle McLachlan, Piter as Brad Dourif, etc. Herbert's prose doesn't need Lynch's visuals - the novels are SF classics - but Lynch's movie had such a powerful atmosphere, such arresting imagery, that it quickly established a stranglehold on my young imagination and drove me to read the books for the first time. I seem to remember my father taking me to the VHS rental shop and telling me I could choose any movie "except Dune for the millionth time".
I saw Denis Villeneuve's version in the cinema. I enjoyed it, just like I'd enjoyed Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. I enjoyed it as an SF movie, and I enjoyed it as a Villeneuve movie - but I didn't enjoy it as a Dune movie. It didn't have the baroque dread and grotesqeurie of Lynch's version. It didn't feel like a "used future", which Lynch's version does, although I know that is an odd statement to make when nothing about Lynch's version fits the definition of the "used future" trope. Maybe I simply mean that Lynch's assembly of operatic tableaux has a strange form of verisimilitude that Villeneuve's accessible naturalism oddly lacks.
Of course, the memory cheats. Childhood nostalgia can't erase the faults of Lynch's version. Cringe-inducing dialogue. A brutally rushed and truncated final act. Yet I will always prefer Lynch to Villeneuve because the former creates and sustains a mood, and the latter does not.
His visual style is just so unique from other directors. Sad that some of his work doesn't get full recognition.
The most recent and best example of "Lynchian" work is episode 8 of Twin Peaks' Season 3. It such a wonderful triumph of his work, with unique images, sounds and "experiences" it brings to the world. In a time where movies and TV shows are mind numbingly simplistic and formulaic, this episode, while I was watching it, made my brain smile. Although I had many ideas of what it could mean, even after a second viewing I had no definitive answer. But, that is why the episode stayed with me for weeks after seeing it. I was constantly thinking about it, trying to make connections to the story, trying to decode it's symbols, knowing all too well my conclusions are probably not correct. But, I think Lynch's work is meant to be exactly like that. It is intentionally vague so that everyone can draw their own conclusions and find their own connections, AND THAT EVERYONE CAN BE RIGHT AT THE SAME TIME! If his work makes you think about it, if you feel changed by what you've seen, it has already succeeded in it's intent, and Lynch would say you were right, no matter what you concluded from it. He wants the viewer to have his own experience, his own thoughts and his own interpretation of what he had seen. Because that is what art should do...MAKE EVERYONE FEEL SOMETHING DIFFERENT, BECAUSE WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT (with our own, unique logic, life experiences, feelings, ideas and thoughts)! If you are someone who expects David Lynch to give you clear answers about the exact meaning of his work, then you maybe shouldn't even watch it. Because he enjoys the diversity of interpretations of his creations, as much as he does making them.
this is an amazing essay, how you related his cute little youtube video to the whole point of his work is so cool
Great video! Some inspired editing there at 10:50 when Laura Dern comes in out of the dark as Lynch is describing the origin of ideas.
I only finally got a chance to watch Mulholland Drive this year after hearing so much about it. I think in this one year I've now seen 4 times and every time I do I get something new out of it and the fascination is just as tangible with each rewatching. (I think I finally have if figured out?! Lol) It's absolutely in my top 10. Maybe even 5? There's so many incredibly intricate and 'creepy' details, and his pregnant pauses are so awkwardly delicious. The whole dinner gathering scene near the end, from the limo stop onwards, is just so rich in palpable disorder. From Betty's agony, to (forgot his characters name..) the directors goofy charisma....the cowboy that makes his 2nd good appearance *hehehe*...etc... It's just a brilliantly shot tapestry of these actors bringing everything to the table and chewing the scenery with a big old 'we love you, Lynch!' performance. I can't imagine better casting for one single character in that film. Right down to the hotel clerk and poor girl that accidently gets shot....orrr, bitten?
Bravo to you Mr.Lynch. Your movie making madness will leave a everlasting legacy never to be equaled.
When I feel disturbed I want to know why. What has unnerved me, what have I seen or heard that has so rattled my psyche that I need an explanation. Lynch is a master of this effect just as Malik makes me feel spiritual with his images and soundtrack.
Who can possibly fill these shoes when they both stop making movies, will anyone have this kind of freedom again? I doubt it somehow and we will live in a far more mainstream movie scene. Enjoy these times as artistic freedom will become a thing of the past.
I'm also such a fan of Malick, even though I've only seen Tree of Life once, but that film is so profound I can never forget how it felt, even for a long time. Same with Lynch's short films like The Alphabet, Six Men Getting Sick and Grandmother.. I've only seen Eraserhead and Blue Velvet. I think the idea is to be true with your art. Being true with the very idea, its feeling. And not reduce it by the rules and laws of filmmaking.
The Alphabet is my favorite among Lynch's work. It has many elements films have and don't have. It's only a nearly 4 minute short film but it felt like an assault to my subconscious, something I never experience to any film.
when you said "people want to know what kind of childhood trauma Lynch must have endured to produce such a bizarre and often disturbing body of work," I was like "but it's not even that bizarre or disturbing" and then i remembered that I endured childhood trauma lmfao
He seems to like strange misshapen characters dancing on stage. (Eraserhead,Mulholland Drive,Twin Peaks)
great job on the editing!
I WROTE THIS THING HERE: I believe - that he believes the human world to be beautiful, and uses such a world to base his art upon, say while others tend to move toward the posthumous heaven or hell. He finds beauty in and explores structure with humanity as the aesthetic. Within the human world rather than existential - or being existentially reaching from out of that world. Some would think humanity to be too animal or too mundane but in fact it is a good base to work from because in fact it is the base we all work from, and you can play off of that, no added essence - and love is assumed real in his universe rather than being too analytical about its structure. Humanity, spirit, art, especially art, but not always that world of man double or triple meaning to a thing - art as in it creates a mood, thusly armed with all this simple stuff he could reach beyond the world and touch us as only he can. Or I dunno, maybe I'm way off.
This man is my favorite creator of all time, he is a genius. I continue to be inspired by him ever since I watched twin peaks in 1993 as a kid.
Recently discovered your channel and it is wonderful!!! I love david lynch. Great content!!
This is a great video essay. Has really helped my own paper I'm writing on what makes a film Lychian
Blue Velvet's set up is TOTALLY inspired by his childhood. It's a story about the loss of innocence and the character that Kyle plays is very clearly him. Lynch's films are extremely personal, except the Elephant Man, Dune, Wild at Heart and The Straight Story. The topic of the loss of innocence and the femme fatal is always present in Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway. And Eraser Head is strongly related to his parenthood anxiety and experiences in Philadelphia (also a sort of coming of age thing there).
Also, it is much more revealing watching his interviews a few years back when he wasn't so militantly obsessed with TM. Now he seems to force all the narrative to fit into this belief.
Prove it
You Nailed it. This is a perfect intro for those who "don't get it" just yet.
Thanks for such a great exploration of Lynch. More great content as usual! Now to go immerse myself in Lynch films.
Lol that baby duck being cleaned with dawn ad played before the video and I legit thought "wtf David lynch movie is this from?"
Poetry is a medium that completely washes over me, and I have never minded.
Inland Empire is one of the greatest movies of all time and also probably the least watched movie by David Lynch fans.
Unfortunately it's super hard to find (in the US at least). Not streaming anywhere and most physical copies are region locked. Such a shame too, it's one of the few movies of his I haven't seen
@@willowj3267 not really that hard to find, if you know where to look
If you say so.
I'm watching _Twin Peaks_ for the first time. I already know a lot about it, but I love your point that knowing the ending really doesn't matter that much. The beauty of watching Lynch's work is observing the process.
As someone who worked in the town that Twin Peaks was filmed in, it's very funny to me that Cooper says he's five miles from the border and 12 miles west of the state line.