no shot
for 1 reason
he does not care about anything but his own vision
he doesn’t want to explain it
and he wants your experience with it to be personal
so what is it about? It’s your call
That’s fine. It also explains why I don’t get anything from his films. I would think he should want others to gain something from his vision, but it hasn’t worked for me as of yet.
I’ll partially agree. Eraserhead was original, but it is not great by any means. Blue Velvet didn’t do anything that Peyton Place didn’t do 30 years earlier. It just had quirkier characters. However, I do enjoy Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr., and even Inland Empire. Sure, he doesn’t offer any explanation or even many helpful hints, but I’m a sucker for the dream logic he uses. I always feel like I’m on the verge of coming to some great realization while I’m watching them, but I can never quite grasp it fully. It’s the elusive quality that keeps me coming back for more.
Remember—Lynch has only started go get some hype in recent years—he went quite unnoticed for years—especially following Fire Walk With Me. I do believe he has become his own brand to generate income in the past five years (coffee, DVD box sets, cartoons, Lynch.Com etc…)—and his TM (transcendental meditation) lectures are often like Ross Perot Brainwashing Infomercials—but he is truly an icon of cinema. For better or worse Lynch has created his very personal world where 1955 meets 3037. I do not believe he has ever wanted to be Bunuel—or anybody else for that matter (except possibly Billy Wilder or Nicholas Ray).
But I will say that Blue Velvet is pretty damn amazing as the long lost sequel to Rebel Without a Cause (The origin of Frank Booth)…..
His films are certainly interesting to watch and I can appreciate what he is trying to do. However, I feel the reason I don’t get anything from his films is because they don’t actually add up to much. I don’t know if it’s as simple as style over substance, but his so called mystique I feel is just covering up a director with not a lot to say. At least nothing that resonates.
Eddie Muller has a pretty interesting take on Mulholland Dr., for anyone who wants to give it a second chance.
http://www.eddiemuller.com/lotusland.html
Mulholland Dr. is pure brilliance. It’s one of my favorite films of all time! No film has left me thinking so much and flip flopping ideas, and saying “OOHHHHHH!!!! THAT’S what that meant!” Yes, it’s a little hard to understand, but if you’re willing to sit and think about it (like I did at work) it really comes into realization that it’s a fantastic film.
I remember going to the 20th Anniversary showing of Blue Velvet and Lynch was there before the show to be interviewed. He mentioned Inland Empire, shooting on digital for the first time, declined to give any insight into any of his films multiple times and spoke about his inspirations. Mainly Jacques Tati which he said he grew up on. I have yet to get into Tati’s Films even though they are sitting on my shelf but I will be sure to look out for any material that inspired Lynch.
Hey Chris, I remember finally figuring out Mulholland Dr. after a weekend of watching it over and over and it felt like I had conquered the world. Even though there is much I still don’t understand it was an amazing film and a great experience.
I think “Blue Velvet” is a full-blown American masterpiece, but the comparison to “Peyton Place” isn’t entirely silly. “Blue Velvet,” like so many films, is about innocence and experience — it’s about what happens when your own pornographic imagination turns into a reality, when you enter a situation where you can actually realize your own darkest desires, as well as the pain and terror that come with them. It’s about the interior and exterior of people, the outer life and the inner, the well-manicured green lawns and the nightcrawlers beneath it, the well-ordered hometown society and the severed ear out in the woods — and the relation all these things have to do with each other. The good boy Jeffrey Beaumont wants the Polly Purebred good girl, Sandy, but, like the evil creep Frank Booth, he also desires Dorothy Valens, and she desires to be not just possessed but abused. Jeffrey is in a situation where he has to defeat Frank, but he also finds he has to be like him, as well, because for Dorothy love, at some level, is violence. It’s a creepy, nasty film, and it’s also very funny.
I certainly don’t think he’s overrated as an artist, and I’m a David Lynch fan, but I think he’s made two of the most overrated movies of the last 30 years; Blue Velvet and Inland Empire.
I think some of you just haven’t been watching movies very long. David Lynch has been a major filmmaker for over 20 years, and in the 80s was among the most famous directors in the world. The buzz surrounding ERASERHEAD, which was one of the most sought after midnight movie cult classics ever, and the ELEPHANT MAN were astounding if you were paying attention in the early 1980s. Even DUNE had a huge media release, regardless of what anyone thought of the film itself. BLUE VELVET, TWIN PEAKS, and WILD AT HEART were among the greatest movies made during that time. It wasn’t until the malaise of media saturation set in with some of next few movies, which while at times excellent, were often considered simply weird for weirds sake, cuz they were Lynch movies. But with the return to form with INLAND EMPIRE, which is simply outstanding, it just confirms my view that he’s far from over-rated, but rather under appreciated, especially by those who didn’t experience his salad years firsthand. David Lynch will be remembered as one of the true mavericks of American cinema, even 100 years from now. It’s just too bad that not more artist/film makers can or are willing follow their muse no matter what path it takes them, regardless of the critics and the arm chair cineastes think.
I’m not arguing that Lynch is not a major figure in cinema. He is truly an original who makes interesting films. I just don’t think they’re as good or as important as many claim them to be.
PRUDENCE:
You said so much. Thank you.
Brad.
Very well-stated Prudence.
I think that Lynch is a difficult director to crack. Or at least for me he was. But once I saw Blue Velvet, I was sold, and went and had another look through his films, to a completely different effect.
Inland Empire is utterly brilliant in my opinion.
Inland Empire was just so silly. I love Lynch, but that coffee he makes for himself and markets for his fans, probably tainted his brain, and he made such mess of a film. Some great Lynch moments lost in all the head-scratching lack of logic or purpose. It seems he was having fun with it, but at 3 hours 20 minutes and shot on DV is quite an ask for an audience…the deleted scenes on the dvd doesn’t make things any clearer. “Blue Velvet” is his greatest work, which a film like “American Beauty” could only emulate a tiny amount of in terms of exposing an underbelly of either violence or family or American dream shattering. Where’s his much speculated “One Saliva Bubble”? He was talking about that in the mid 80s. I’ve loved Lynch since I sneaked into “Blue Velvet” in 1986 doubled billed with “Now Voyager”. I just think “Inland Empire” was a Lynchian step too far, with far too many people intellectually masturbating about all the supposedly clever and interpretive moments. Sometimes the joke is on the audience.
I like surrealism, open endings, unanswered questions and palpable atmosphere, so Lynch is right up my alley. Sure, some of his work is overrated and some of it is frustratingly abstract and weird for the sake of being weird, but in my opinion the strengths of his filmmaking far outweigh the weaknesses. I’d also like to point out that he proved he could direct a no-nonsense, straight-as-an-arrow, family-friendly film with The Straight Story. The only film of his that I didn’t care much for was Wild at Heart, but that’s mostly because I just happen to strongly dislike the two leads. Lynch is a master of conjuring up moods and getting inside the viewer’s head, no matter how confusing the plot might be. Eraserhead is an all-time favorite. I’ll never forget the night when I first watched it alone, in the dark. It haunted me for weeks until I had to own it so I could watch it as often as I liked. The sound design in his films is top-notch. Anyway, I get why some call him overrated and pretentious. His style is not for everyone. But I can’t agree about not thinking much about his films once they’re over. Quite the opposite! He’s one of the ultimate thought-provoking directors still working, in my opinion.
i think david lynch is a true original, and a brilliant director. to quote the opening line from one of my favorite pieces of film criticism, “america doesn’t have that many auteurs to spare that it can afford to let david lynch slip through the cracks.”
“blue velvet” is a masterpiece. i have to rank it among my top 5 films. for me, true originality can never be overrated.
David Lynch makes meretricious camp movies. I’m sorry but there’s nothing challenging about his work. Throwing out arbitrary violence and sex for gut reactions is not challenging, it panders just like any Michael Bay film, but for a different kind of restless viewer. Blue Velvet was interesting but no masterpiece. If you feel he’s noteworthy for establishing an eerie atmosphere and stark pathos I think David Cronenberg does the same and is usually more substantive. I think Dead Ringers deserves far more accolades than Blue Velvet or Muhalland Drive.
I haven’t seen Eraserhead so maybe that would rock my world but Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me really put me off discovering any more of his stuff, I was like, “David Lynch, no thanks.”
Wait, a few people have said Inland Empire is overrated…how can that be? It’s gotten very little attention. It certainly has some rabid fans—I’m one of them—but it’s gotten very little attention even critically. If anything it’s completely underrated (it’s also underappreciated, but that’s a different issue).
By the way, Kubrick once referred to Eraserhead as one of his favorite films—that’s one gold seal of approval for sure.
Who curated a Now Voyager/Blue Velvet double-bill? That person is really insightful whoever he or she was.
I feel close the to TS’s stance
It took me a long time to embrace Lynch. A few years ago, I made it a mission to watch his body of work and although many of the films I have to force myself to sit through, I can admit, he brings a lot to the table and I pull from his cinematic palette in my own work. Like any art form, I can admit, I can appreciate his work and do dabble in that technique.
Blue Velvet is my favorite of his films.
Overrated is such a vague term….is money overrated for a millionaire?….is food overrated for a fat person?……is breathing overrated to a suicidal person?……….is pepperoni overrated on a sub but not on a pizza?…………is sex overrated to a woman that’s never had an orgasm?….
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To me,no..because I just paid 100 bucks for his new boxset..
The problem with David Lynch and an American audience is that I don’t think we really have many instances in contemporary American cinema of filmmakers working in the same vein of ambiguity as European art-house directors. (Terrence Malick might be a rare example of a similar American filmmaker.)
Compounding this, Lynch travels in highly recognizable and highly American visual tropes and genres: the detective tale, the suburban 1950s, the noir, the femme fatale, rock and roll, etc. Being unused to an “American art-house” style and seeing and recognizing many of the motifs and structures Lynch uses, I think many viewers instead of pursing his films from the angles of strangeness and uncertainty from which they come, treat them as “weird” and “unexplainable” films that are full of self-indulgence and weird-for-the-sake of weird. The conventionality of the tropes they recognize don’t match up with the unexpected angles Lynch is pursuing, and instead of trying to put them together, viewers dismiss his work because they see this gap.
Treat a Lynch film like one would a Bergman film would make it more rewarding than treating a Lynch film simply as an American movie with an unusual imagination.
I don’t believe Lynch is overrated. He has become a little over saturated it would seem (an above post mentioned his own brand of coffe and the whole TM thingy) and a little self indulgent (INLAND EMPIRE was a 3 hour escapade into all that makes lynch, lynch) however the term “Lynchian” was coined as a way to describe in other films the moods and imagery that although he didn’t invent he most certainly popularized.
However in all honestly i do find myself going to Cronenburg more than Lynch (two very different film makers but often compared) but i suppose that is just my own personal tastes.
If a kid sees a picture as long as can be and as weird as it could and he likes it—- then it’s daring.
If a kid sees a picture as long as can be and as weird as it could and he doesn’t like it—- then it’s self-indulgent.
Any and every bit of art is a self-indulgence. You NEED to tell that story to your friend as much as he wants to hear it and you’ll give him flourishes and tangents to keep on seeing your pal smile or cry or whatever crazy expression he’s does when you tell it.
That cluster of a word has no place in cinema. Boo. David Lynch is most certainly doing things for art’s sake and for those who love his work. Why not give us a 3 hour video installation if we love him?
Self indulgence insn’t necessarily a bad thing especially for fans of the artist’s work. Inland Empire wasn’t a terrible or bad film in my view (i am a fan of lynch’s work, and went out of my way to watch it when it came to the art house). Your point on that any artist is self indulgent is a very valid and intellegent observation (although your analogy of the kid i can’t quite understand) however there are levels of indulgence that in my opinion can leave a viewer disengaged. When it has reached that level in all honesty the “cluster of word” is the best description for it in my eyes.
Death Proof is my best personal example of how self indulgence of the artist (and an artistic choice of style) left me honestly disappointed and bored. I liked Inland Empire far more than Death Proof in that sense.
Richard Deming:
The “Blue Velvet” and “Now Voyager” double billl was shown at the Gate Cinema, Notting Hill Gate, London, in the late 1980s. London had a lot of great double-bill programming back then. “Blue Velvet” was also double billed with “Crimes of Passion” and “Betty Blue” around the same time and in other venues such as the Scala and Everyman cinemas- Films for the Lynch mob.. true indeed. Another inspiring bit of programming was a 1989 anti Valentine triple consisting of “Eraserhead”, “The Fly” (1986) and “The Forth Man”. Fiendish minds….
Iliveinfear
While I think he is very talented, I’ve never gotten anything out of his films. He can’t do surreal as well as Bunuel, and he can’t do creepy as well as Cronenberg. I appreciated what he was trying to do in Eraserhead, but thought the story was poorly executed. I enjoyed Blue Velvet, but I don’t think it’s the masterpiece many say it is. Lost Highway was interesting, but not as good as it should of been. Mulholland Dr. is probably his most overrated film. I usually don’t think about his films much after I see them, which shouldn’t be the case if he is supposed to as great as many claim he is. Although, someone can’t be all that bad if he features Naomi Watts and Laura Harring as lovers!