David Lynch - Classic or Dud

Unrecorded Wisteria

I watched The Straight Story, on Disney+ (based on a recommendation in the Inland Empire thread). What a remarkable movie. Really glad I saw it (I really had a misconception of what it would be like).

hey morrisp, what age kids do you think would appreciate the Straight Story?

It's sounding like a new film may be debuting at Cannes

So the answer is Blue Velvet / Wild at Heart and Twin Peaks (I'm glad to see so many people are as excited as I am about a new David Lynch film) - Variety have just run an article about Lightyear https://t.co/31du84ygoc

— Kaleem Aftab (@aftabamon) April 11, 2022

In related news, I'm planning to catch Inland Empire at Austin Film Society the 2nd week of May

xp I'd say older preteen or teenager; it's not very "kid"-oriented, despite the much-discussed G rating.

xp (to myself)

Don't know who this guy is, but –

David Lynch just told me in no uncertain terms he does not have a new film at Cannes this year. Take that for what it’s worth.

Also, um I just had David Lynch on the podcast.

Coming soon. pic.twitter.com/1GnPftrqBA

— Josh Horowitz (@joshuahorowitz) April 12, 2022

david lynch is the kinda guy who says "film" and "television" and ne'er the twain shall meet so

doesn't seem like he is dissembling. was really looking forward to something new

hopped back into rewatch of TP The Return last night, episode 5, so so so good

I've been watching arguments about this tweet for a while now, so you should see it.

instructive comparison on "dark suburbia" might be david lynch vs thomas pynchon: for lynch the dark stuff is all incursions from some supernatural and/or criminal outside, for pynchon suburbs are basically little nazi factories

— joolsd (@joolsd) April 15, 2022

everyone is replying “this is a misreading of lynch” and they’re all right

I was indifferent at first but it's been going for a while now so I'm gonna back it.

I know a ceiling fan that begs to differ

suburbs in the return a blasted wasteland full of isolated people in addicted trances an inch from gun violence iirc

what he's sentimental about is "small towns", but still the rot is inside. (the only transmission project blue book ever receives is from the woods.) and the traditional reverse of the reactionary coin-- the corrupt city-- doesn't really appear either, not even in eraserhead (tho maybe on giedi prime): his vision of j. edgars from philadelphia is of knight-errants. (but still the rot is inside.)

(well of course there's hollywood lol. he likes it tho.)

Lol

yeah yeah suburban concupiscence allows the extra dimensional demons to enter your brain and force you to commit atrocities https://t.co/mYSV0eN2Ih

— joolsd (@joolsd) April 17, 2022

I'd say he also gets moist-eyed thinking of the rot.

I mean if he wants shots fired, why not just say Lynch is Mike Love with better aesthetics?

better hair

Reads more Freud.

Wild that anyone could watch fwwm and take away that Leland is “forced to commit atrocities” lol

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNjZjNjIyYjgtMjc2ZS00MWY2LWFiZmItOTM3YzFlZDRkNTNkXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjUxMjc1OTM@._V1_.jpg

It’s funny cause the idea that “dark suburbia” is lynch’s thing really only comes from blue velvet & twin peaks, & in the latter more developed work it couldn’t be clearer that the suburban middle class home is THE site of evil in this story even if you insist on being thuddingly literal about “supernatural entities” or w/e

I watched The Straight Story, on Disney+ (based on a recommendation in the Inland Empire thread). What a remarkable movie. Really glad I saw it (I really had a misconception of what it would be like)

After bringing up The Straight Story on that thread we watched it a couple of days ago. It had been a long time since I last saw it - I always liked it, but now I think it's a major work of his. I can't think of a better depiction of regret and forgiveness. It's not underrated; I've been underrating it.

My dad is a vietnam vet in his 70s and I finally made him watch the Straight Story. He watched all of it which means he must have liked it.

It holds up amazingly well.

The scene in the bar where Straight reflects on his war experiences is arresting (especially b/c it kind of comes out of nowhere).

Farnsworth and Spacek’s performances are terrific… I see the film won and/or was nominated for various awards (including an Oscar nom for Farnsworth), which were clearly well deserved. All I remember from the “discourse” at the time was — “David Lynch made a G-rated Disney film about a guy on a tractor! hurr hurr hurr”

Looks like Mary Sweeney had a lot to do with the film as well

In re Lynch and suburbia, his work doesn’t really have a lot of suburbia in it. As noted above, mostly small towns and cities, tho The Return does have that great Vegas subdivision. But if I’m parsing the original tweet right, it’s more saying that Lynch’s portrayal of evil doesn’t have a political agenda (or even political awareness), which I think is pretty much true. His villains and dark forces are rooted in more primal, individual desires and appetites. In that sense, settings aren’t that important, because those things are everywhere.

i guess but also that tweet is trying to say that the supernatural incursions come from *outside* whatever environment or person he's depicting, which is basically the opposite of the truth, it's always from the inside

inland empire made me reflect on this further bc as with most lynch work it has nothing to do with suburbia but does i think contend with the environment of flagrant abuse and trauma that hollywood is just an inch below the surface, and depicts these cycles of abuse as a story that's being told and retold with different people in different positions

starting to think of fire walk with me, mulholland dr., and inland empire as a loose trilogy of films all about the same thing (with lost highway like an uneven sketch of the space between fwwm and md), only one of them taking place in suburbia

you can still argue that this is apolitical but idk i can easily shape it into something political through reading, like even identifying and observing the nature of "evil" through this prism can feel like an implicit critique of systems and all the jungian shadows that form when people try to align themselves with systems

lol I was totally conflating suburbia with “small towns” upthread wasn’t I (I think the point stands, neither are hugely a focus)

Isn’t the actual inland empire part of the suburban sprawl around la (along with Pomona which also comes up)? I am v bad with this stuff (need to reread city of quartz but I will only forget it all again) but that seems potentially interesting ito placing the site of dread on the margins - but again not not political

There’s definitely some sort of class dimension in how many of the terrible uncanny figures in lynch code as poor & itinerant: drifter Bob, the hobo-like woodsmen, world of truck drivers, man behind the dumpster, the travelling circus in IE; but there are different ways to read this & the reductive takes don’t quite fit (many of the dreadful underworld figures are rich, many of the benevolent figures are poor (Shelly & the homeless ppl in IE spring to mind))

I have to quibble a bit with the idea that it has nothing to do with suburbia. Once she has her mental break about an hour into the film, doesn't she find herself trapped in suburban limbo? Isn't that what On High In Blue Tommorrows is about, suburban trysts? And isn't the title of the film a reference to suburban Los Angeles?

Lol, in other words, wins otm

hm yes i guess you’re right that is part of it

but this suburbia is also connected to like hollywood blvd and poland

one of many chords he’s playing

The actual IE is not suburban L.A.

like even identifying and observing the nature of "evil" through this prism can feel like an implicit critique of systems and all the jungian shadows that form when people try to align themselves with systems

otm

the bad, or dangerous, or violent, or haunted, or maybe only transitional place in IE-- "the marketplace", the place where the "chemical factory" makes it so you can't "think straight"-- is a place in the mind, some kind of trauma castle (with its one-way doors and scenery flats and narrow alleys and opaque windows and dark stairwells and extreme closeups of porous material signaling shifts from one layer of perception to another while sitting on suburban carpet setting a small fire in the late afternoon, this is the lynch movie that most seems to take place in the brain, like a whole movie in the black lodge) but that's exactly why it also works as broader social critique, w palimpsestic resonance beyond-but-including hollywood/america/capitalism, instead of only being a movie about how glad lynch is that his career after dune found+followed a back alley.

Can you connect the dots? It’s also a broader social critique because…?

...because people see many revealing things in Rorschach tests?

...because vague omens and portents have a way of portending whatever significant event the future eventually delivers?

Interesting thoughts. His view of systems of power is always conflicted, because on the one hand he has a lot of kind of classic "good guy" archetypes who are representatives of those systems — the FBI most obviously, but also Sandy's cop dad in Blue Velvet, e.g. — but then also those systems are often shown to be corrupt or corruptible. There are crooks in the police forces in Blue Velvet and The Return, and Dale Cooper himself obviously is corrupted by the Black Lodge. These don't feel like political critiques per se so much as acknowledgements of the corruptible nature of people. It's true that his grotesques are often poor people, but he's also fascinated by the decadence of the rich and powerful. (Lost Highway has a lot of that.)

It’s also a broader social critique because…?

because its anchor inside laura dern's skull is what allows it to drift around in space/time/class without getting lost, overlaying various kinds of trafficking atop one another as episodes in "the longest-running radio play in history"-- as brad notes:

the environment of flagrant abuse and trauma that hollywood is just an inch below the surface, and depicts these cycles of abuse as a story that's being told and retold with different people in different positions

people see many revealing things in Rorschach tests

tailored dresses are code for drugs. but did you notice what was pinned to it?

xp I’ve only seen Inland Empire once, and my thoughts on it were… fragmentary (they’re in the thread), but I guess I didn’t see H’wood as as a source of abuse or trauma in the movie… sort of the opposite, in fact.

maybe i'm off course

I mean, what do I know… there’s obv a ton there

(fwiw, I saw it as Dern’s actress character identifying so radically with abused/exploited characters, that her own identity was disrupted… to me it felt in the end like a highly “affirmative” movie about the power of art, or something less cheesy than that sounds, lol)

(although not TOO much less cheesy; as it does end with that almost proudly corny dance party in the hotel lobby scene)

that's def what it's about imo! hollywood is a place where art happens but it is also a violent and haunted place where the artistic impulse is threatened with exploitation/control/imprisonment. so are other cities; so is the mind. that the terrain of grace zabriskie's fable-- the marketplace; the alley; going out to play, pursued by your shadow-- is interior mental/spiritual terrain (faintly buddhist even) is exactly what makes it as mappable onto "old europe" as onto hollywood boulevard and suburban backyards.

"that's def what it's about" = "it's def a highly 'affirmative' movie about the power of art"