Following auteur director David Lynch’s death on 16 January, many have come together to recognise and respect the legacy of filmmaking he left behind. Known for his unique surrealist style and stubborn refusal to explain any aspects of his work, he leaves behind an untouchable artistic legacy, with a depth we can only attempt to skim the surface of in this article.
Eraserhead (1977)
Anyone, filmmaker or not, would be lucky to have their debut work to be as revered and important as Eraserhead. Often cited as launching the idea of the ‘cult movie’, the film follows Henry Spencer, played by lifelong collaborator and friend Jack Nance, who has been left to care for a strange new baby. While in some ways it stands alone in Lynch’s filmography, it also introduces so many themes and fascinations he went on to showcase across the next 40 years of work. For all its cryptic reputation, at its heart, it is a film trying to understand things about life that seem inexplicable — perhaps the central thesis for Lynch’s entire career going forward.
The Elephant Man (1980)
After the underground success of Eraserhead, Lynch went straight into what was probably his most critically and commercially successful film with The Elephant Man. The film follows the story of the real-life John Merrick, the titular elephant man, expertly portrayed by John Hurt. While standing out as Lynch’s most mainstream work, it still features all the hallmarks you would expect from Lynch’s films.
The key to its success is the deep sense of empathy he fills this film with. The Elephant Man marks him as one of the most empathetic filmmakers of all time, treating his subjects with such care and kindness even in the face of the most extreme human cruelty. This, to me, is most central to what made his work so special going forward.
Dune (1984)
Since its initial release in 1965, Frank Herbert’s Dune has been widely regarded as an ‘unadaptable’ novel. Lynch spent about two years getting the script right and was eventually given the green light to begin shooting in 1983. The resulting product, however, has become a renowned outlier in Lynch’s filmography and is a total catastrophe of a film. On many occasions, the director has cited the edit as the cause for this, but the film’s flaws extend far beyond just the final cut.
Visually, it is nothing short of a nightmare and is a testament to the quality of the CGI and practical effects used in Star Wars, which was released 7 years prior but is infinitely better when standing the test of time.
For all of its faults, Dune was a majorly important lesson for Lynch, proving to him that his artistic vision was simply not compatible with the production of blockbuster films. Additionally, it introduced him to lifelong collaborator, Kyle MacLachlan, who starred as Dune’s protagonist and went on to feature in many of Lynch’s following works.
Blue Velvet (1986)
After the failure of Dune, Lynch made an effort to return to his roots in the form of another outlandish but deeply personal script. The outcome of this was Blue Velvet, a nightmarish crime-thriller that follows bright-eyed adolescent Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), as his unrelenting curiosity surrounding the tragic life of a local singer launches him into a covert world of corruption, exploitation, and sadism.
This was the first film in David Lynch’s catalogue to thoroughly harness themes of explicit sexual perversion, and as a result, was met with wary reception, both in pre-production and upon its release. It has since, however, come to be recognised as one of his greatest features, and for good reason. With an impassioned soundtrack, a lingering, uncanny sense of dread, and a visceral exploration of abuse and vulnerability, this masterpiece marks a point in Lynch’s career where he truly is working in a league of his own.
Twin Peaks (1990)
After these early works had generated significant intrigue and established him as a force for change in the industry, Lynch was approached by producer Mark Frost. The two began sharing creative ideas in 1986, and it was during one of their meetings that Lynch described the image of a lake in Washington state, and the corpse of a dead girl wrapped in plastic washing up on its shore. Frost was instantly on board, and this inkling of an idea later sprouted into the web of mythology that is Twin Peaks.
Grounded between swarms of pine trees and atypical townsfolk, this radical series followed Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) and told a fable of sublime, supernatural scale, rooted in the unanswerable question: who killed Laura Palmer? The intertwinement of surrealism and American domesticity both sculpted and affirmed Lynch’s signature style and marked a reformation in the history of fictional television, shattering barriers that audiences didn’t even know existed. The sheer depth and brilliance of Twin Peaks has provided fertile ground for a thriving, ever-growing fan base that immortalised Lynch’s legacy.
Despite this widespread appraisal, the show was cancelled in 1991 after its second series. However, Lynch returned the following year to direct the sensational prequel, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and then again in 2017 with Mark Frost for 18 episodes of Twin Peaks: The Return. This third and final series fulfilled Laura’s haunting promise that she would see Agent Cooper again in 25 years, but refused to sacrifice a drop of substance for the sake of nostalgia or homage. Instead, The Return plunged even further into the depths of perplexity surrounding the origins and consequences of the mystical happenings that took place all those years ago.
Wild at Heart (1990)
Mid-way through shooting the first season of Twin Peaks, Lynch left to direct Wild at Heart. Laura Dern stars opposite Nicolas Cage, as the film follows the couple (Lula and Sailor, respectively) taking a violent road trip after Lula’s mother, played by Dern’s own mother Diane Ladd, orders a hit on Sailor.
Lynch describes the film as one “about finding love in Hell” — it’s an intensely romantic film. The chemistry between Cage and Dern is phenomenal, played up to the extreme while always feeling emotionally true. Even with a backdrop of occasionally brutal violence, Lula and Sailor’s love for one another remains front and centre, representative of Lynch’s eternal refusal to ignore humanity in the face of overwhelming violence.
Wild at Heart is a film I adore; Lynch gets captivating performances out of all his cast, including an unhinged young Willem Dafoe. He uses his flare for striking imagery throughout to make a wholly unique film.
Lost Highway (1997)
After multiple unsuccessful attempts to launch new TV projects, Lynch returned to film with Wild at Heart scribe Barry Gifford to co-write Lost Highway. While it is personally one of my lesser favourites in his canon, and almost certainly his angriest, there is still much to love with Lost Highway. You get absorbed in Lynch’s strange construction of LA, something that he’ll only build on in subsequent films, especially with the way he shoots rooms.
So many spaces have a distinctly uncomfortable aura, feeling removed from reality. Patricia Arquette does a magnificent job playing dual roles, and the character of The Mystery Man is one of the freakiest guys in a filmography jam-packed with freaky guys. The fact that a film as memorable and fascinating as Lost Highway could be considered in the lower echelon of Lynch’s films points to a truly excellent body of work.
The Straight Story (1999)
This is the filmmaking equivalent of when you get an abstract artist to draw a realistic bird and they do it perfectly, proving that their style does not result from a lack of artistic talent, but rather from an excess of it. With The Straight Story, Lynch departs entirely from his abstract tendencies and instead retells the true story of Alvin Straight’s six-week lawnmower odyssey across Midwestern America.
In 1994, at the age of 73, Straight made headlines when he travelled from Pocahontas County, Iowa, to Southwest Wisconsin via lawnmower to reunite with his estranged, ailing brother. This 1999 dramatization of the tale is unwaveringly emotive, with touching dialogue written by Lynch’s long-term collaborator, Mary Sweeney, and a faultless performance from Richard Farnsworth. The film also features a cameo from Harry Dean Stanton, who, despite occupying less than two minutes of the runtime, delivers one of the most gut-wrenchingly moving cinematic appearances of all time. I could cry just thinking about it.
The Straight Story may not be nightmarish and mystifying, but I would challenge anyone who declares it is therefore not ‘Lynchian’. The way I see it, the director’s signature style extends far beyond his implementation of indecipherable plotlines and graphic obscenity. The Straight Story is Lynchian because, through a surreal utilisation of the mundane, it tells a story of herculean scale.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
Arguably David Lynch’s most popular, Mulholland Drive truly is the Mona Lisa of ‘what-the-fuck’ movies. Set in Hollywood, it depicts a turbulent relationship between two aspiring actresses (Naomi Watts and Laura Harring) and the elusive underground ‘powers-that-be’ who dominate the film industry.
A large part of the film appears to take place in some sort of hallucination or dream, but the question of exactly which parts of the film are dreams and which parts are reality has been widely debated since its release in 2001. Lynch, of course, refused to comment but asserted that the importance of the film comes not from any exact definition, but rather the feeling that it evokes.
Mulholland Drive is emotionally charged at every point, but includes certain scenes that have become cinematic landmarks, seeming to possess an unequalled quality of vividness and intensity. One of these moments, possibly the most renowned part of the film (and Lynch’s wider discography) is the Winkie’s Diner scene. This scene is unimaginably simple, but many cite it as one of the scariest moments in film history and a testament to Lynch’s mastery of the craft.
In 2016, Mulholland Drive was named the best film of the 21st century so far by BBC Culture’s critics’ poll, and scenes like this make that decision (which puzzled many audiences at the time) so easy to understand.
Inland Empire (2006)
Despite being Lynch’s final feature film, Inland Empire has remained relatively side-lined in writing about Lynch. It has a bizarre production history, being shot without a complete script, Lynch shooting much of it himself on a digital camera, and the overall shape of the film only coming together in the editing booth. The result is the most confusing film in a confusing career, operating on bizarre dream-logic with no real sense of what is happening from scene to scene.
Vaguely, the plot follows Laura Dern and Justin Theroux playing actors who perform in a remake of a cursed Polish film, but how much of the film actually revolves around this is up to interpretation. Still, it delivers a central thesis of something being cursed that follows the rest of the action. Things feel off, often nightmarish. The film’s tagline, “A woman in trouble”, is the pervading feeling throughout the film.
Although undeniably hostile to watch, once you give up trying to follow a narrative too closely the film opens up. Individual sequences shine through and have become some of my all-time favourites. These can be absurdly comic, like Lynch playing a deaf lighting tech off-screen, or downright terrifying with a sequence close to the end being possibly the single most unsettling sequence I’ve ever seen on film.
Dern is incredible and proves why she is the actress Lynch came back to time and time again throughout his career. But above everything, what makes this film such a special end to his film career is how bold and new it is. It’s unlike anything he’d done before, experimenting with new technologies, new ways of filming, and bypassing the need to make sense — something he’d clearly been pushing against his whole career. Inland Empire has now taken on a whole new brilliance, a marker of someone who never stopped pushing the boundaries of the medium to create results that will truly never be replicated.
There is so much to say about the work of David Lynch in such a small amount of words. We haven’t even mentioned his music, writing, or his extensive art career, all of which he seemed just as passionate about as his filmmaking. He leaves behind a remarkable artistic and personal legacy, with his passing bringing an astonishing outpour of tributes from those who knew and worked with him. Kyle MacLachlan, one of his longest-serving actors, memorialised the man most beautifully, “I will miss my dear friend. He has made my world — all of our worlds — both wonderful and strange”.
Words by Tom Swift and Jacob Howard
