David Lynch

Has died, aged 78. He was one of the great ones - the greatest American director since Hawks and Capra, I'd say - and absolutely central to how I came to love the movies. Blue Velvet, I think, might have been the first film I saw that made me think that films could be as completely satisfying, emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically, as a great book or piece of music. He was one of the first directors I noticed as a director - along with Kubrick, Eisenstein, maybe Godard, Kurosawa, Scorsese. I was an odd cinephile - I started as an auteurist art film snob, and moved from there to a much broader love of movies. (Though I suppose I am still an auteurist art film snob, if push comes to shove.) Still - Lynch was definitive. 

There was a stretch, mid 90s, where he slipped back some in my estimation. I moved away from some of my youthful formalism - I fell under the sway of the Capras and Cassavetes and Altmans of the world. Then I saw Elephant Man at Coolidge Corner one day, the first time I'd see it on a big screen, and saw it on the Coolidge's gorgeous big screen - that changed things. The beauty of that film, its humanity, its clear moral and ethical positions, its empathy - it snapped me back to paying attention to what Lynch put on screen. Straight Story followed, and sealed it. Gorgeous films; lessons in empathy - which most of his films are. 

The later films finished the process, won me back, pushed him to the top. I loved Mulholland Drive; I worship Inland Empire. It came out and I saw it twice in two days, then again a couple weeks later. I kept returning to it. It sealed his place at the top of the pile - even if I'd still say Blue Velvet is his masterpiece. All that happened against when the Twin Peaks continuation happened - I loved that almost as much. I didn't write about it as much - I haven't been writing much on this blog in the last few years. But it holds up. And gets right at what I think makes him so great - the artistry, the surrealism, the dadaism, the formal brilliance of his work; but also its empathy - and the way it weaves empathy and horror together. 

Lynch is uncanny, unheimlich, as the Germans might have it. Horror comes from the home, the family, the everyday - what destroys us comes from what sustains us and protects us. It's there is all his films - homes that are poisoned, coming apart from within - but with a real sense of possibility and loss. They are all about families being ripped apart - Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, all the Twin Peaks iterations, Lost Highway, Straight Story, Inland Empire - family as comfort and horror. It's a theme a lot of my favorite filmmakers share - Ozu, Capra notably - and Lynch is worthy of them. 

He was, in short, one of the great ones. And every bit as interesting as a person. I will miss him.