As a life long fan of Lynch, I took the trip last year to go through his entire back catalog of content, from his student films, shorts, commercials, TV shows including On The Air, behind-the-scenes clips and of course main movies. Such a great journey, everything he crafted carried something more than what you saw and heard, there's always a thread or the power to make it feel like there was a thread beyond the frame.
Outside of all the typical Lynch stuff, one thing I always suggest people watch is The Straight Story. It's such a wonderful movie, one I hoped at release would find a much bigger audience as it really deserves to be seen and shows that Lynch wasn't a guy who just made weird things, he made great things.
> The Straight Story
That indeed was a nice movie. It stands out exactly as it's not like any other Lynch movies.
I always wondered what that meeting with Walt Disney Pictures looked like. "-Ok, David, please, just can you not do your Lynch thing? -What do you mean, a Lynch thing? -Oh you know..."
A particularly memorable short review of "the Straight Story" suggests that he did end in fact end up doing a Lynch thing, however I suggest people don't read this review unless they've seen the film first [1].
> Lynch lives in a very troubled world. His pictures are characterized by being presented through the mind of the protagonist. Here, the protagonist is a simple old man, who thinks slowly and simply. So that's what we get. He has long erotic meditations on fecundity on the path of life (14 kids!), so that is what we see.
> Lynch must be laughing into his gasmask at those who think this is a Hallmark card. Consider these Lynchisms...
[1] https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0579859/?ref_=tturv_perm_18
I had no idea! Thanks for sharing. Those are definitely more subtle. I had never caught on to those when viewing the movie.
I've watched Twin Peaks many times, and still the series dazzles me. The depth and originality of his mythology blows me away. And, it was such a treat to get the third season. I personally would not have gotten a third of what's happening in the earlier seasons, if I had not watched the new one. I can really say that his vision changed mine.
> he made great things.
Read https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090756/parentalguide
Anyone who calls that great enjoys the perversion of mankind, and it is nothing less than that.
It's a sickness, and lots of people have it, and they're so sick they think they're just perfectly fine.
But everyone's choices are theirs to make, for good or ill, and we are all running up a tab, and we all must pay our bill. Some lucky few of us have a positive balance, because we embrace compassion with the art of our lives.
There are people whose going is the only time they're going to make the world a better place, for their simply no longer being a persistent negative influence.
Why is portraying perversion in art bad? I suppose you also hate Dante's Inferno for similar reasons?
This just seems a little strange to me, even the Bible portrays the dark aspects of humanity. What makes you think that in Blue Velvet they are portrayed for our enjoyment specifically?
You can't have a good philosophy, or as you say, have a "good tab", without understanding the bad. David Lynch is more ethical than you, I think, because he did not run away from the depraved but wanted to understand it
> I suppose you also hate Dante's Inferno for similar reasons?
I don't hate anything or anyone, because hate and rage are solely negative, but, I didn't bother reading that middle ages tripe any more than I read "Wuthering Heights".
That said, reading it is just one dimension, seeing and hearing it on a giant screen being portrayed by attractive people is three or four dimensions.
> David Lynch is more ethical than you, I think, because he did not run away from the depraved but wanted to understand it
I've seen "The World at War". The "Genocide" episode is the last time I wept, seeing a dumptruck full of bodies get dumped into a trench.
I understand it better than you, my friend, because I also know how to get to "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God." I'm certainly not there yet, but I've made some bit of progress, after much trial and error.
David Lynch and TM are literally the antithesis of that attainment. He wrote and directed BV and profited off it. I think Marc Maron once described a "comic" that took a shit on stage; that ain't art, that's just disgusting.
"What a fool believes." --Michael McDonald
I’m not sold. I think I’ll stick with my Godly ethics and I’ll leave you to your sin
I found the aforementioned elements of Blue Velvet to be very uncomfortable to watch, but I also don’t think it was necessarily a work of obscenity on Lynch’s part. It always struck me that the film’s violence was intentionally framed in suburban noir. Or, that way the audience might wonder about the darker parts of 20th century Americana around them, much like Lynch did as a child.
That said, I’m on the fence if whether or not the violence in the movie felt earned to me or not.
It's not obscene, IMO, it's DEPRAVED. It is disgusting, it is unnecessary, and it was made to make money.
That it was written, directed, and produced by a huge industry and then made available to be watched in a movie theater is all one needs to know about the machine that is Hollywood, the same machine that produced (no pun intended) Harvey Weinstein.
That is no coincidence, my friend.
> Or, that way the audience might wonder about the darker parts of 20th century Americana around them, much like Lynch did as a child.
I can't stand anything about 1950s America, but 2020s America makes it pale in comparison, and Lynch's America was on that horrible descent from "does good for the world" to "embraces totalitarians for profit".
How we make our money is a bellweather of the soul, as is the art we produce and/or appreciate. The question is, "Does it elevate humanity? Or not?"
Learning about evil is necessary on the path to wisdom, but profiting off titillating the impressionable is foolish and detrimental to society.
There are many ways to tell the story of Jeffry Dahlmer, and the choices a writer and director makes in that regard show those folks' character, or lack thereof.
Which movies by David Lynch have you seen?
Lynch, by the way, was an outsider in Hollywood and in the wider movie industry. He didn't make large budget movies nor did his movies bring in a lot of money. When he was promoting his last movie, he didn't even have money for proper advertising and had to rely on publicity stunts like sitting in a director's chair next to a live cow in the middle of Los Angeles to draw attention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9gVoSiXup0
His struggles were largely due to his refusal to trivialize violence or turn it into something easily digestible. Many of his characters (such as Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks) are highly moral and good-natured people who encounter incredible evil. This evil is depicted in an exceptionally disturbing way to amplify Lynch's message about genuine love, compassion and human connection. Lynch did not exploit or glorify violence. He presented it as something deeply unsettling to highlight its emotional and psychological impact instead of using it for shock value or cheap entertainment.
It seems like you are very angry about something you don't know much about.
> Some lucky few of us have a positive balance, because we embrace compassion with the art of our lives.
I assume you mean hypothetical "we" here because given your comment you are unlikely to be in that group :)
Welcome to the rest of us! It's more fun here, anyway.