David Lynch (1946-2025)

[Big Ben]

Speaking of which, the great "Vanilla Skynet" channel, which has been creating auteurist-themed playlists of all the Siskel & Ebert shows has a video devoted to the Siskel & Ebert reviews of Lynch's films, albeit it appears that Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me never turned up on their show.

Ebert hated it when he saw it at Cannes and he wrote a rather sharp dismissal about it in his notes. I imagine this is why it probably didn't turn up on the program. Speaking personally I'm glad to see public opinion on it has shifted and that Lynch lived long enough to see it happen.

[hearthesilence]

Same here. I'm reluctant to knock Roger Ebert because he was reportedly a genuinely good person and he did give an enormous boost to certain people and films that wholly deserved it, but there was a lot that he simply didn't get, especially Lynch, and even after Rossellini pushed back on his claims that she was exploited and unprotected, he doubled down.

[The Curious Sofa]

There are critics whose work I respect even when I disagree with their opinions or their sensibilities are fundamentally different from mine. I never felt Ebert went more than surface deep, but then that worked for someone addressing an audience on TV, with a thumbs up or down. What made him look good on the show was that with Roeper he was up against a true lightweight.I watched the Ebert documentary, agreeing that he comes across as a throughly nice guy, but I still don't like his writing. I find most of his opinions boring and some are downright bizarre.

[Peacock]

A lot of high praise for the third season of Twin Peaks above. Am I the only one who was somewhat disappointed by the last season?

I felt like there were strong episodes and some incredible set pieces (the casino floor scene with Dougie, the traffic jam after the accident, the young couple in the weird lab place in the first episode, the irate neighbour near Dougie’s home etc.) But the table bound chats between the FBI team, the Ben and Jerry Horne scenes and many of the other scenes involving classic Twin Peaks characters felt hokey… nostalgic old timers reminiscing about more interesting times. And the ending felt somewhat underwhelming as well; at least the conclusion of the Vegas casino owners, and the Twin Peaks police narrative involving the glove.

I’ve not seen the third series since it came out, and am a big fan of Lynch’s work, from start to finish. I’m also conscious that I seem to be the outlier here who wasn’t blown away by the third season… so I’m probably the problem here! I definitely need to give it another spin now that I know where the narrative leads and let it just wash through me.

But I definitely found myself more interested in the new characters than the old ones.

[The Curious Sofa]

I saw The Elephant Man last night. I was in my late teens when it was released. Already a fan of Eraserhead, I was blown away by how Lynch had managed to adapt his style to a more mainstream project without compromising his sensibility. I watched it many times then, but probably only once or twice in the 21st century. The last time I saw it, a few years ago, I had a few quibbles. Its depiction of class is somewhat problematic in a British context, almost all the working class characters are either coarse whores or opportunistic brutes. Michael Elphick's character feels like too much of a plot device to introduce conflict and danger later on, and is rather OTT in his villainy after the equally despicable Freddy Jones character (I had never realised until my last viewing that there was something genuinely perverse about Mr Bytes, as implied in his exchanges with Treves). But by last night's viewing I was almost 100% back on board with the film, even if the scenes with Elphick still make me wince.

At the time, there was often a wistful "Hovis ad" nostalgia about Victorian depictions in film and television. Lynch brings out something ugly and yet mesmerising in the grime and constant drone of industrialism. There is more of a "the past is a foreign country" approach than in other contemporary depictions of the period. Freddy Francis' stark black and white cinematography and John Morris' eerie, circus-like score help immeasurably, of course.

Some have complained about the film's perceived sentimentality, which they find manipulative; many of the characters burst into tears when they first meet Merrick (as does he), but there's such a pure-hearted sincerity that Lynch brings to these scenes. These overwhelming emotional responses feel like they are channeling another time. These scenes also always end with a fade to black, giving the audience a brief moment to reflect on these emotions. The scene where Treves invites Merrick to tea to meet his wife (a tentative Hannah Gordon, great in her small role) is awkward, tender and devastatingly sad. Only the scenes with Anne Bancroft fall a little flat for me, not much seems to move her and she seems to be in another, more modern film. It's very much a guest star performance.

The dream sequences involving Merrick's mother, which open and close the film, are some of the most powerful bookends to a film I have ever seen, taking it to another level. The former is a statement that this won't be your father's biopic/period drama, and the latter is a leap into the metaphysical, influenced by Charles Laughton and worthy of Thornton Wilder, that I still think is one of the most profoundly moving endings to a film.

The Elephant Man introduced me to Samual Barber's Adagio for Strings, and it still works, even though its use in fiction and documentary has become a cliché to underscore tragedy. I have resented its use in everything since.

The cast is great, of course, with a special mention for Wendy Hiller's no-nonsense head nurse who, after initial reluctance, emerges as the true conscience of the film, far more so than Treves. I love the scene where she confronts him. I always forget the early appearances by Pauline Black and Dexter Fletcher and the lovely cameo by Kenny Baker. The whole mainland sequence, an homage to Tod Browning's Freaks, is amazing.

I watched my old Studio Canal Blu-ray and wished I had upgraded since then, but there is a 20-minute fact-check against Merrick's real-life story and the film is closer to the truth than I remembered.

[Robin Davies]

A lot of high praise for the third season of Twin Peaks above. Am I the only one who was somewhat disappointed by the last season?

When it was first broadcast it was fun going on the dugpa forum and seeing the divided opinions of the long-time fans who had been eagerly awaiting it. Most loved it but a few really hated it right from the start. Clearly, it's a very different beast from the first two seasons but for me it delivered in spades what the previous seasons promised but only intermittently provided. It instantly consolidated Twin Peaks as my second favourite TV series of all time (behind the original series of The Prisoner).
For anyone who wants a deep analysis of The Return I would recommend John Thorne's book Ominous Whoosh: A Wandering Mind Returns to Twin Peaks.

[denti alligator]

Nice write-up. You’ve articulated beautifully most of what I felt upon rewatching this week. My wife noted that the opening—which is indeed an unadulterated Lynchian sequence—seems to suggest not so much the elephant knocking Merrick’s wife down as a rape a la Leda and the swan.

Having rewatched Eraserhead in the past few months, I figured now’s as good a time as any to revisit Lynch’s work in order, but I’m not so sure I want to watch Dune again, which I’ve only seen once and really disliked.

[The Curious Sofa]

I only re-watched Dune a few months ago, after watching Villeneuve's Dune 2, so I'll skip it in my current Lynch retrospective. I first saw it at the cinema on its release and found it a crushing disappointment. While I don't think it works as a whole (and Lynch agreed with that), I've returned to it over the years and found much to like.

[J M Powell]

many of the other scenes involving classic Twin Peaks characters felt hokey… nostalgic old timers reminiscing about more interesting times.

Hokey, yes—that’s a core characteristic of the Lynchian—but not nostalgic so much as exploring nostalgia as a theme rather unrelentingly, and leveraging the audience’s nostalgia for the first two seasons in a way no other sequel, reboot, or “revival” has ever dared. Even the very few moments that might activate nostalgia (home-pain) in an uncritical way seem to be there to remind us what it is that the thing is about. And the upshot would appear to be Wolfe plus Faulkner: “You can’t go home again” and yet “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

The Arm, in The Missing Pieces—mimicking Laura’s earlier line “There’s no place left to go, is there, James?”: “You are here. Now there is no place left to go…BUT HOME!” Lynch, from the Chris Rodley interview book: “The home is a place where things can go wrong.”

[hearthesilence]

Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, and Scott Coffey dropped in unannounced on a screening of Mulholland Drive at IFC Center yesterday on what would have been Lynch’s 79th birthday.

After Theroux, Watts, and Coffey each told personal stories about Lynch, Theroux read this poem that Lynch had given him to introduce past screenings.

[spectre]

A lot of high praise for the third season of Twin Peaks above. Am I the only one who was somewhat disappointed by the last season?

I felt then and still feel that it contained some of Lynch's best and worst impulses – and given the size of the canvas, there are plenty of examples of both. I also found the original series cameos a bit cringeworthy/indulgent at times (the David Duchovny scene being a case in point), but when the series embraced more abstraction – e.g. the first section of episode 3, the atomic bomb, the Phillip Jeffries machine – it was sublime, and in keeping with the radical direction Lynch was going in with Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. But there's a lot of filler to get through along the way.

[Finch]

Re: season 3, overall I think it's great if rough around the edges ( though that in turn makes it more interesting to think about and discuss). Parts 4, 9, 12 and 17 all have scenes or dialogue or comedy that don't land or frustrate me and I even cooled a little on Part 8 on repeat viewings. I don't remember which part (5 or 6, I think) Ike kills the woman with a screwdriver in but that rubbed me the wrong way too. But I'd also argue that some season one storylines are really dull and the season two flaws don't need further commenting on. The digital look and new tone took me some getting used to but part 3 fully sold me on The Return.

[hearthesilence]

01:13:30 into this, there's a pretty amusing description of what it's like to be randomly assigned to a table with David Lynch and Albert Maysles.

[tenia]

Excellent Lynch's impersonation !

[Yakushima]

If you, like myself, have missed On The Air series, here you can watch all seven episodes preserved from, apparently, the best existing video source, a Japanese Laser Disc. While watching the first episode last night, I started laughing so hard, I woke up my wife. Today she started watching it too, and I can hear her giggling uncontrollably.

[hearthesilence]

GQ interviewed Kyle MacLachlan about Lynch over the weekend, and it really does sound like he was doing as well as expected for someone with emphysema, adding that there was never a sense of "well, this is the last time" or "this may be goodbye," only "what are we going to do next?" He and Dern were even planning another visit to him, and when he heard the news, it felt very abrupt.

Dern herself just wrote a lengthy remembrance for the Los Angeles Times, and at the end she mentions he was planning his next "adventure" when he died, though she doesn't go into detail. Theoretically, it could be adventure in a spiritual sense, like in the great beyond, but I get the impression he really was planning another project of some kind, likely a film. To put it in perspective, just days before he had to evacuate his house, he tentatively scheduled a Zoom or remote lecture in mid-February with the next two graduating classes of the MFA writing program that bears his name. It really sounds like he thought he'd be around and active for a while.

[The Curious Sofa]

The next "adventure" in all likelihood was the series with Netflix he had planned. There were rumors about a film or TV project over the last year. When he got really ill with emphysema he insisted he could still direct something remotely via monitors. Now its been revealed that there were concrete plans for a series.

[Finch]

He was so full of life that I totally wouldn't have put it past him to live past 100 like DeOliviera did.

[JamesF]

I’ve wanted to contribute to this thread somehow for the last week but haven’t been able to find the time because of work stuff, so please forgive me in advance for just pasting my slightly woolly Letterboxd review of Fire Walk With Me, the first film I turned to after hearing the news, instead:

I had planned to rewatch this anyway having just finished rewatching the original series, but Lynch’s death made it that much more urgent. FWWM was, in fact, the first Lynch film I ever saw, when it aired on BBC2 in July 1998, two months before my 14th birthday. Not only had I never seen or heard (oh, that soundtrack!) anything like it before, I had never even seen an episode of the show, so was utterly without context - but it only served to make the film that much more terrifying and exhilarating.

Now, having seen the series quite a few times, it’s difficult to recapture that feeling of being totally unmoored from experience and expectation. That said, the nagging voice in my head pointing out all the retcons (nu-Donna not being as naive and inexperienced as her series counterpart, “Bobby killed a guy” literally happening and never being brought up again - drug-fuelled amnesia, I guess?) and frustrating non-sequiturs (just what the hell is garmonbozia anyway?) was near-silent tonight compared to more recent watches. I was hypnotised anew, forgiving of its excesses and simply spellbound by its symphony of colours and noise.

As I get older, I must admit to getting a bit more prudish and queasy about the series’ sexualisation of high school students, which seems to try and have its cake and eat it, its surprising frankness for network TV about the town’s underbelly as a drug-fuelled meat market where teenagers are exploited ameliorated by the goofy coffee-and-pie whimsy. That’s not a complaint; the tension between the two sides (light vs dark? White Lodge vs Black Lodge? Lynch vs Frost?) is part of what makes the series great, and as maddeningly inconsistent as it was, when it was at its best, it was the best.

There is no whimsy in FWWM, outside of maybe Lynch’s own cameo as Gordon Cole. (I don’t remember how much is in the Missing Pieces.) Some have called it a repudiation of the series, a corrective reminder that the plot catalyst for all the beloved oddball catchphrases was the rape and murder of a drug-addicted teenage girl by her father, himself inadvertently (or is he?) complicit in both the sex trafficking ring that has commodified her body and the occult otherworld that wants her soul. I don’t know that I buy that entirely, but it is a howl of anguish, and like Eraserhead, a film by a terrified father sharing his worst nightmares with us. It is also a very clear influence on two other confrontational (and equally divisive) abuse narratives by male directors made in the years since, Lukas Moodysson’s Lilja 4-Ever and Andrew Dominik’s Blonde. Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive may be Lynch’s “best” films - the most cohesive and successful fusions of his aesthetic and thematic concerns, most deserving of five-star ratings - but FWWM might be my favourite all the same. And holy hell, do Sheryl Lee and Ray Wise deliver extraordinary performances.

Now that Lynch’s filmography is finite and each of his films takes a greater individual resonance within his life and in ours, I felt closer to that first naive viewing than I had done in a long time. Time has collapsed - I am 13 and I am 40. I am in my childhood bedroom in Colchester and in my living room in London, just as the good Dale is in Philadelphia and in the Black Lodge. The film is the same, and it is not the same, just as I am the same and also not the same. David Lynch is dead, and David Lynch will never die.

Farewell David Lynch, and thank you for all the dreams. And since I’m not sure I ever took the appropriate time to mark their passings, thank you Angelo Badalamenti, thank you Julee Cruise. Oh yeah, and David fucking Bowie!

(Now I need to book a week off to revisit The Return, which I remember finding as frustrating inconsistent but occasionally brilliant as its predecessor.)

[hearthesilence]

Grace Zabriskie is still with us, but not Miguel Ferrer, Peggy Lipton, Catherine Coulson, Frank Silva or Harry Dean Stanton or Jack Nance who didn’t make the final cut but appears in the “Missing Pieces.” (Too many people gone too soon.) Regardless beautifully said!

[JamesF]

Whoops, think I got confused with Piper Laurie for a moment, sorry! And yes, I was trying to stick to recent passings, though Bowie is obviously painfully close to a decade ago now.

[isakorg2]

For the few of us (if any) who have seen the bulk of Lynch's film work, but have never seen so much as a single episode of Twin Peaks or any of the features associated with it, perhaps someone(s) on the site has a recommendation for which of the available Twin Peaks multi-disc blu-ray discs is the one to buy. I hadn't realized what a slew of them were available. I'm not a completist when it comes to Lynch, so it's the core Twin Peaks works I'm interested in. Thanks -

[The Curious Sofa]

That's not an easy one to answer. I think the least essential part of Twin Peaks is the uneven season 2, but that still contains some of the best episodes of the series, mostly those directed by Lynch. For me, The Return (Season 3) is the crowning achievement of Twin Peaks and possibly Lynch's career, but it's much more resonant if you've watched the two previous seasons and the movie.

The movie prequel Fire Walks With Me was once considered a disappointment. It focuses on Laura Palmer, ditches most of the show's characters and the quirky humor of the series and is the closest Lynch has come to a full-on horror film. Many fans would now rate it as one of Lynch's best films.

I'm a completist and have The Entire Mystery, which contains the first two seasons, the movie and the extra The Missing Pieces (cut scenes from the film which feature more of the supporting cast of the show) and also Twin Peaks - A Limited Event Series, which contains Season 3 - The Return. There also is The Television Collection, which contains all three seasons of the show, but not the movie or The Missing Pieces.

[domino harvey]

I'm pretty sure this upcoming rerelease has everything? From Z-to-A

[colinr0380]

Great appreciation of Fire Walk With Me above JamesF! I also caught it on television, on its BBC2 premiere in late 1995 but its weirdness did not strike me quite as strongly because I was being immersed in things like the Oliver Stone series Wild Palms (which I hazard a guess only exists becuase of the Twin Peaks phenomenon), Channel 4's collection of Shooting Gallery strand of short films, Dennis Potter's Secret Friends and Jan Svankmajer's Faust, which were all airing on television around the same time! In that company, Fire Walk With Me seemed like just another weekend movie!

Sometimes the Red Letter Media guys can have strange takes on films, but they really nailed Fire Walk With Me (and how to approach Season 2) a few years back when they revisited it just before Season 3 was released.