David Lynch

[John Cope]

Despite the fact that it is clearly not his best film I have returned more to Dune over the years than any of the rest. I'm not sure what to attribute this to. It's not some simple guilty pleasure formula, though there must be some of that there, too. It is, probably, a confluence of things. The incantatory language and the way it is delivered exerts a unique and hypnotic hold. Many of Lynch's prominent, central themes are here and coded for epic fantasy, which gives them an explicit heft they don't ordinarily carry. But beyond this is the way in which the film fails and the way it fails against the presumed intentions of Herbert's original source text. I think much of the appeal for me resides in that strange dissonance (the fact that Lynch is so obviously disinterested in the battle spectacle, for instance, and how the film is convinced of Paul's deity even while Herbert's book is not). Lynch's work is catalyzed by the idea of receptivity and yet it is also all very rigorously created. Here, for once, the normally fatal compromises of big budget studio filmmaking are not so because they allow for a film that truly is out of its auteur's control which, in certain respects, is the ideal open space of possibility to which he aspires.

On a side note, I just re-watched Matthew Chapman's awesome Heart of Midnight and have to say that that is the only other film I can think of to match FWWM for the sheer audacity of combining super-stylized melodrama with blunt, confrontational personal trauma based in ritualistic sexual abuse.

[colinr0380]

It has to be the trifecta of Mulholland Drive, Fire Walk With Me and Dune for me as well! With Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man honourable runners up. I'd likely place Eraserhead in this second group too, but I found the film far too traumatic on my one viewing to have worked up the courage to see it again so far! And I'm still too astounded by Inland Empire to even think about where I would place it in the canon yet!

I do agree with Tommaso that I think of Wild At Heart as his worst film (or perhaps, more accurately from my perspective, as his most flippant) but with interesting moments.

I agree with your assessment of Dune, John Cope. I love the film, even though it is obviously deeply flawed (often I think I like it so much because of the flaws) and feel that maybe the studio aspect and needing to accommodate the Frank Herbert material interestingly pushes (or mutes) the main Lynchian themes (of abusive, indifferent or kindly but unable or unwilling to protect parents destroying their children to fit them into their proper place and into their conception of what their children should be or aspire to; and a dawning awareness of the self and where the characters now fit into their wider society with this new awareness) both further into the background and makes them far more obvious and extreme at the moments when they burst through.

I think much of the appeal for me resides in that strange dissonance (the fact that Lynch is so obviously disinterested in the battle spectacle, for instance, and how the film is convinced of Paul's deity even while Herbert's book is not).

I find all of Lynch's films fascinating for the way that they deal with a kind of egotistical main character (even before he made the films explicitly dealing with characters actively manufacturing their own worlds in preference to reality), and the way that the medium of film is often used to become complicit with them in allowing them to retreat into their fantasy. In that sense I guess Dune trades the general Hollywood sci-fi battle fantasy for the much more personally impacting egotistical one (and the one we are seeing far more of in superhero films at the moment) of the world totally revolving around you, because you truly are the most special quasi-deity, resistance leader kind of being that this oppressed world has been crying out for.

Looking at the rest of Lynch's 'unconstrained' films this egotism is often brutally undermined by a realisation of personal flaws, total cosmic insignificance, or of having committed atrocious acts, while Dune instead ends at the point of celebration of this new dawn - albeit a celebration of its new terrorist leader who may potentially undermine the whole carefully balanced struture of mutual dependence and oppression that the galaxy has been formed around. This could be another reason why the initially off-putting long, dry opening introduction to the planets and their backstories actually works better on a repeated viewing - it is the boring 'old world', presented in a 'just the facts' style (as well as in retrospect by Virginia Madsen's character, adding a kind of fable quality) that is about to be thoroughly undermined by the following events.

In a way Inland Empire is a film where the artifice falls away and the character has a realisation of their 'true' place in the (various) world(s), but instead of being destroyed by it they instead come to terms with the point at which life has now led them (or, from the point of view of an actor, they find the continually changing core of truth about the many artificial roles they are called upon to play and find a way to commit to each performance).

There are the extremes of total artifice and total awareness but they are both dangerously self-destructive and egotistical in isolation. Perhaps the major Lynchian theme is about how a combination of each, and a constant shifting between them, can help to inform and illuminate the other.

[Finch]

First (I think) review of Optimum's Inland Empire Blu (It is locked for Region B):

http://www.blu-raydefinition.com/review ... eview.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Max von Mayerling]

While I'm not nominating it as his masterwork, I just gotta be the lone voice saying that I adore Wild at Heart. I'd be hard pressed to express the shock and awe I felt when I first saw it in the theater and the good fairy appeared at the end. But I suppose I'm just a sap.

[Nothing]

I just gotta be the lone voice saying that I adore Wild at Heart.

Not lone, I'd place it third, after Fire Walk With Me and Blue Velvet.

p.s. Yes, this image is clearly of equal quality to the 35mm cinematography in the above three films, it is obvious to anyone...

[lady wakasa]

p.s. Yes, this image is clearly of equal quality to the 35mm cinematography in the above three films, it is obvious to anyone...

That image is also throwing a 403 (i.e., is asking for permission to view)...

[dadaistnun]

Even though it's my least favorite film of his (mostly because that particular brand of sci-fi just isn't my bag), I'd love to see Lynch re-edit Dune into near-abstractness -- something along the lines of Inland Empire where you really have to intuit who people are and what is really happening. It's sort of confusing already (I'm assuming especially so to those like myself who haven't read the novel), so why not remove half of the dialogue, turn it into a collage of silent glances and pregnant pauses. The Eno-scored spice tripping sequences are sort of what I'm getting at, though it's been ten years since I last saw the film.

[James]

First (I think) review of Optimum's Inland Empire Blu (It is locked for Region B):

http://www.blu-raydefinition.com/review ... eview.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That's hilarious.

[mfunk9786]

Oh, and since I'm the person who asked the question to spark up this thread, I figure I should weigh in:

Mulholland Drive is his masterpiece, but Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me might just be the most underrated film of the 1990s, and it's an absolute horror masterpiece that puts watching one and a half seasons of Twin Peaks whilst eating spicy food and then falling asleep on film in a way that I would have never expected to be possible before I saw it. An absolute masterwork. But still. Mulholland Drive is so great.

But when CNN is reporting his eventual death, Blue Velvet, another five-star classic, is sure to be the film that'll be associated with his name before any other.

[Michael]

-

[Finch]

Beaver on the UK Blu-Ray:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDRevie ... empire.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Cde.]

...whether he’s making a new film or a sequel to Mulholland Drive, I don’t know. I know that there’s another film that’s going to manifest soon. That’s my impression anyway.

It's about time. Good news.

[John Cope]

Well, of course there's always his upcoming doc on the Maharishi Yogi. Till then, here's his Dior short. Couldn't have been made by anyone else.

[Finch]

The handbag with the flashing lights reminded me of the box in Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly. Thanks for the link, John.

[Peter-H]

Inland Empire to me is like a dark poem. It moves me in a way not many films do. After watching it I feel like I have just been in a dream. That's why I love it, it gives me haunting images and atmosphere, and that's what film is about, plot is good, but the images and the FEELING you get from it are the most important things, as that is what stays with you most after you watch it. I don't want to just see illustrated text, I want to see haunting images. All of Lynches films do this. Inland does it the most though and that's why it's my favorite of his.

[Noiretirc]

Eraserhead is the film he will be remembered by, ....

Sorry, I just cannot see that at all, even though I love it. It's just so "obscure", compared to Blue Velvet.

I really do think his Ultimate Masterpiece is INLAND EMPIRE though.

[Noiretirc]

If I may, um, I'd like to just add that, er....

In 1986 I watched Top Gun, and I thought it was wonderful. Highway to the dangerzone, the best of the best, and all that. A few weeks later, bored, adventerous, I stumbled into Blue Velvet, AND IT COMPLETELY FUCKING CHANGED MY PATHETIC FUCKING LIFE. It absolutely bashed my head in. I sat there, mouth open, drool flowing, "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?"

Thank you Mr Lynch.

[domino harvey]

Goose rules though

[Roger Ryan]

If I may, um, I'd like to just add that, er....

In 1986 I watched Top Gun, and I thought it was wonderful. Highway to the dangerzone, the best of the best, and all that. A few weeks later, bored, adventerous, I stumbled into Blue Velvet, AND IT COMPLETELY FUCKING CHANGED MY PATHETIC FUCKING LIFE. It absolutely bashed my head in. I sat there, mouth open, drool flowing, "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?"

Thank you Mr Lynch.

I've loved Lynch's work from the beginning - well, ERASERHEAD, anyway (I won't pretend I was hip to his short films in the 70s). THE ELEPHANT MAN struck me as a very pleasing way for Lynch to work with a more mainstream product, but DUNE depressed me considerably; apart from the occasional visual oddity, he might as well had been directing ICE PIRATES. I figured I knew this guy's trajectory and we'd probably see something like MANHUNTER from him - a slick thriller with some edginess to it.

Then, one day I see the man himself on CNN talking about this special world he created called BLUE VELVET and politely suggesting that viewers might like pay it a visit. Lynch's enthusiam seemed real, not just another junket appearance. I bought my ticket that weekend...and was so happy to have David Lynch back and uncompromised!

I think BLUE VELVET remains my favorite, although MULHOLLAND DRIVE is its equal in many ways. This latter film is so remarkable in how it is sensuous, comic, haunting, horrifying and satirical all at once, not to mention that the finished work was made miraculously whole even though it started its life as a TV pilot.

[John Cope]

A.O. Scott on Blue Velvet. I agree with Scott on his assessment of what makes this film works so well. I think it really does come down to the fact that the details of the mystery, the details Lynch privileges, aggressively resist the settled nature of any resolution to the surface story, any actual "solving" of the mystery. There is an excess of available meaning, in other words, and any singular narrative reading is inadequate to address it. Mulholland Drive obviously does something similar but Blue Velvet is clearer, less distracted by its own design, and, for me, more potently satisfying.

Do we actually not have a Blue Velvet thread, btw? That doesn't seem right.

[Mr Sausage]

I think it really does come down to the fact that the details of the mystery, the details Lynch privileges, aggressively resist the settled nature of any resolution to the surface story, any actual "solving" of the mystery. There is an excess of available meaning, in other words, and any singular narrative reading is inadequate to address it.

How so? I myself find the surface, narrative mystery not over complex, that is to say, the available meaning seems clear and the plot can be pieced together without much difficulty. It's the depth and strangeness of the emotions and the consequent motivations as revealed by the mystery which become increasingly difficult to settle or resolve, and the nature of the film's good and evil symbolism that resists any singularity in meaning, which is a real triumph given how it presents itself as manichean while refusing to clarify the distinctions among either its characters or its locations (example: Frank's motives concerning Dorothy are pure, but his actions impure; Jeffery's motives concerning her are impure, but his actions pure--Sandy wonders if he's a detective or a pervert, and the answer is a resounding "both!"). That being said, I welcome a change of mind on this.

I just saw Blue Velvet on the big screen in 35mm this Friday, and while I'd seen it half a dozen times before on DVD, the experienced overwhelmed me, as tho' I were watching for the first time, unprepared. I don't think I've ever had another theatre experience quite as intense, and this is for a movie I know very well. What a treat.

[John Cope]

I think we agree and are, perhaps, just describing what we agree about differently (or else accessing it differently). You're absolutely right that the mystery plot can be discerned and understood easily; its meaning is clear enough. What I'm saying is that the constituent elements that make it up--what you refer to as what is "revealed" by the mystery--are exactly what cannot be subdued or subordinated to its eventual resolution. The explanatory meaning does not do justice to or suffice to comprehend or engage with these elements, which the actual investigation of the mystery reveals as intrinsic to its very existence.

[zedz]

I just saw Blue Velvet on the big screen in 35mm this Friday, and while I'd seen it half a dozen times before on DVD, the experienced overwhelmed me, as tho' I were watching for the first time, unprepared. I don't think I've ever had another theatre experience quite as intense, and this is for a movie I know very well. What a treat.

I had the opposite experience, really, when I finally tried to watch the film on DVD after having only seen it in 35mm (probably half a dozen times over the years). I had to stop after about fifteen minutes. I found it all but unwatchable, a completely different experience from the theatrical one.

[chizbooga]

i find it hard to believe/accept the fact that the four-hour cut of Blue Velvet is nowhere to be found. Should i just move on?

[Roger Ryan]

i find it hard to believe/accept the fact that the four-hour cut of Blue Velvet is nowhere to be found. Should i just move on?

Judging from the script/stills of the cut material, I feel most of the lost footage was pretty expendable. Now the poolhall scene looks demented enough and I would love to see it as a DVD extra, but I could imagine it would unbalance the film and reduce the impact of later scenes (such as the trip to Ben's). Personally, I think eliminating all of the expository scenes showing Jeffrey hearing of his father's stroke while at college was an excellent choice; introducing that character as he walks through the desolate field is perfect.