{"id":28368,"date":"2025-01-24T19:23:07","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T18:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/?p=28368"},"modified":"2025-01-29T20:15:43","modified_gmt":"2025-01-29T19:15:43","slug":"david-lynch-the-filmmaker-of-the-uncanny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.luxus-plus.com\/en\/david-lynch-the-filmmaker-of-the-uncanny\/","title":{"rendered":"David Lynch, the filmmaker of the uncanny"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Lynch, 78, died in Los Angeles on January 15. While the world will remember him for his surrealist films, tinged with the stuff of dreams, he also left behind advertisements for the big names in luxury goods and, even more personally, the paintings and drawings he produced in his spare time.<\/p>\n

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A graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts<\/strong>, David Lynch came to filmmaking<\/strong> through drawing and painting<\/strong>, his graduation project consisting of creating a mini animated film around his pictorial works, in a way that was as innovative as it was amusing.<\/p>\n

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But already, his dark universe, as singular as it is disturbing but tinged with absurdist humor<\/strong>, is beginning to win over his fellow students and teachers. According to an equally Lynchian legend, it all started withan electric shock: his encounter with the tortured works of Francis Bacon.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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This sense of visual drama<\/strong> was to follow him through a dozen films over the next thirty years, <\/strong>some of which left a lasting impression on the retina, such as Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive<\/strong> and Blue Velvet<\/strong><\/em>. He was less fortunate on television, however, having created a television UFO in two seasons: Twin Peaks<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Freaks and false pretenses<\/h2>\n

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If David Lynch were a piece of music, it would inevitably be a song from the 1950s, the golden age of American consumerism. The Montana native retains a close link with his childhood memories of cherry pie, Drive-ins and Diners, retro fast-food joints with red neon lights serving burgers, fries and milkshakes.<\/strong> His work abounds in homage to this period, from the decor to the soundtrack. We might therefore tend to associate him with the light-hearted, innocent productions of the period. But that’s to misunderstand his taste for the bizarre<\/strong>, to the extent that Percy Faith’s Theme from a summer place<\/em>, as naive as it is eerie in its instrumental ritornello, (too) easily sums up his character. It’s a song that’s both the candy of an era and the sanitized music of an elevator.<\/p>\n

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His stories are full of characters who are, to say the least, strange and even disturbing<\/strong>, such as \u201cthe woman with the log\u201d and the dancing dwarf in the Twin Peaks <\/em>series, <\/em>the drug dealer Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) in Blue Velvet<\/em> or Bobby Peru and his mistress Perdita Durango in Wild At Heart<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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The woman with the log in Twin Peaks \u00a9 Showtime Networks – Rancho Rosa Partnership<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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As one of his favorite actors, Kyle MacLachlan (Dune, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks<\/em>), recalls, he retains very precise multisensory memories<\/strong> of this era, such as the time he liked to enjoy his milkshakes at Bob’s Big Boy, so that they were at a certain temperature. This same meticulousness <\/strong>can be found in the choice of music for his films<\/strong>, finding in Angelo Badalamenti his sonic double.<\/p>\n

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This taste for the strange and the \u201cfreaks <\/strong>\u201d (bizarre personalities both physically and psychologically, editor’s note) is said to have been born ofa visual shock<\/strong> in the presence of his brother: the sight of a naked woman in the middle of the street<\/strong>. Neither moved nor amused, he burst into tears, imagining that the worst must have happened<\/strong>, even in a small town that looked too perfect to be honest<\/strong>. He learned a lesson that permeates all his work, namely that even the most peaceful villages are home to disturbed people who do things they’d rather keep secret.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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He knowsthese small, uneventful<\/strong> towns well<\/strong>– at least on the surface – having experienced them time and again as his father<\/strong>, a USDA research scientist married to an English teacher, moved around<\/strong>. In the space of a few years, he and his family moved to remote towns<\/strong> such as Sandpoint, Boise (Idaho), Spokane (Washington), Durham (North Carolina) and Alexandria (Virginia). Little David could have felt uprooted and lost, but on the contrary, he manages to make friends easily.<\/p>\n

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Meeting the father of one of his classmates, a professional painter<\/strong>, was a revelation<\/strong>. David Lynch enrolled in painting studies at the Corcoran School of Arts and Design in Washington DC, before moving on to the Tufts School of Fine Arts in Boston, where he roomed with musician Peter Wolf. Here, he perfected his passion for music, but hated the content of his university courses.<\/p>\n

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Dreams and unusual liminal spaces<\/h2>\n

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Another shock in his life was his move to Philadelphia<\/strong>, his first metropolis of residence and a place he perceived as dirty and disquieting<\/strong>, where he discovered a passion for industrial environments and factories.<\/p>\n

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It was in this seemingly inhospitable city<\/strong> that he began his reluctant pursuit of filmmaking. His studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts<\/strong> revealed not only<\/strong> a new vocation<\/strong> , but also a wife and mother<\/strong> in Peggy Reavey, a fellow student.<\/p>\n

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Six Figures Getting Sick<\/em>, animated version of David Lynch’s pictorial works and first short film, 1967 \u00a9 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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It was here, too, that he made his first short film,<\/strong> Six Figures getting sick <\/strong><\/em>(1967), based on the animation of his works of art. The result is a world as amusing as it is bizarre<\/strong>. His film was featured at the Academy of Fine Arts’ annual exhibition, where he tied for first prize<\/strong>. His second short film, <\/strong>The Alphabet<\/strong><\/em>, won him funding from the American Film Institute<\/strong>. The script offers a condensed version of the Lynchian spirit: a neglected child plants seeds and literally grows a grandmother to take care of him. Fantastic and absurd, his inexhaustible sources of surrealist inspiration<\/strong> are already at work.<\/p>\n

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Los Angeles, dream or waking nightmare for Naomie Watts in Mulholland Drive (2001)? Touchstone\/Films Alain Sarde<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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From then on, he never ceased to offer dreamlike tales on the edge of dreams and their evil side: nightmares<\/strong>. In Blue Velvet, for example, you can hear Roy Orbison’s deliciously fifties-style \u201cIn Dreams<\/em> \u201d. Dreams are also at the heart of Dune’<\/em>s plot, as evidenced by the prologue sequence, with a real sense of narration and immersion. Using numerous subterfuges to lose the viewer<\/strong>, as in Mulholland Drive<\/em>, he manages to abolish all reference points between dream and reality.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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