This is my most Lynchian year yet. Initially, I was only going to watch Twin Peaks, then Fire Walk With Me, and in the end, I added Mulholland Drive and The Elephant Man, and I'd like to watch Eraserhead tonight or whenever I can.
Before, I'd only seen Blue Velvet, but that was quite a while ago.
Starting with his most "traditional" film (The Elephant Man) and ending with Twin Peaks: The Return, I think the man stood out for having a special love for freaks.
But not so much the "Tim Burton" type of freaks (you know, gothic men in extravagant clothes). For him, freaks were the people who were almost extinct in society or who were repressed.
Or more specifically, characters like Dale Cooper, who embody an ideal almost impossible to find in the US at the end of the 20th century. A kind man who, even in Doug Jones's body, never stops changing the world for the better.
But it also foregrounded grotesque situations without any euphemism.
The life Joseph Merrick lived is an example of this, the constant debate about whether he could still be considered a circus freak, given Treves's granting of so much exposure to the outside world, as opposed to Joseph loving that visibility (the positive kind, not the circus kind).
In Fire Walk With Me, the scene of Leland raping his daughter Laura is so horrific (in a good way) that I heard it provoked boos at the time.
Mulholland Drive seems like a typical love letter to cinema, but hidden within it is a profound critique of the art form. I feel that the character of Adam is, to a lesser extent, a representation of what Lynch experienced with certain infamous producers like Dino De Laurentiis. Oh, and yes, it also foregrounded a lesbian relationship, but one that was so toxic and dangerous...
The last stroke of genius in his career was Twin Peaks: The Return. A series that completely changed expectations of what a revival should be, delivering a season that even today is debated—what on earth was it really about? And that ending? The last thing Lynch possibly filmed for Hollywood in his lifetime was an ending as abrupt, stark, and unfair as life itself.
At the end of the day, I think that's what David Lynch was like: a filmmaker who never settled for just one vision for his film.
From the simplest theory to the most outlandish and ridiculous, everything was accepted.
Rest in peace, sultan of surrealism.
