David Lynch - Classic or Dud

hm yes i guess you’re right that is part of it

but this suburbia is also connected to like hollywood blvd and poland

one of many chords he’s playing

The actual IE is not suburban L.A.

like even identifying and observing the nature of "evil" through this prism can feel like an implicit critique of systems and all the jungian shadows that form when people try to align themselves with systems

otm

the bad, or dangerous, or violent, or haunted, or maybe only transitional place in IE-- "the marketplace", the place where the "chemical factory" makes it so you can't "think straight"-- is a place in the mind, some kind of trauma castle (with its one-way doors and scenery flats and narrow alleys and opaque windows and dark stairwells and extreme closeups of porous material signaling shifts from one layer of perception to another while sitting on suburban carpet setting a small fire in the late afternoon, this is the lynch movie that most seems to take place in the brain, like a whole movie in the black lodge) but that's exactly why it also works as broader social critique, w palimpsestic resonance beyond-but-including hollywood/america/capitalism, instead of only being a movie about how glad lynch is that his career after dune found+followed a back alley.

Can you connect the dots? It’s also a broader social critique because…?

...because people see many revealing things in Rorschach tests?

...because vague omens and portents have a way of portending whatever significant event the future eventually delivers?

Interesting thoughts. His view of systems of power is always conflicted, because on the one hand he has a lot of kind of classic "good guy" archetypes who are representatives of those systems — the FBI most obviously, but also Sandy's cop dad in Blue Velvet, e.g. — but then also those systems are often shown to be corrupt or corruptible. There are crooks in the police forces in Blue Velvet and The Return, and Dale Cooper himself obviously is corrupted by the Black Lodge. These don't feel like political critiques per se so much as acknowledgements of the corruptible nature of people. It's true that his grotesques are often poor people, but he's also fascinated by the decadence of the rich and powerful. (Lost Highway has a lot of that.)

It’s also a broader social critique because…?

because its anchor inside laura dern's skull is what allows it to drift around in space/time/class without getting lost, overlaying various kinds of trafficking atop one another as episodes in "the longest-running radio play in history"-- as brad notes:

the environment of flagrant abuse and trauma that hollywood is just an inch below the surface, and depicts these cycles of abuse as a story that's being told and retold with different people in different positions

people see many revealing things in Rorschach tests

tailored dresses are code for drugs. but did you notice what was pinned to it?

xp I’ve only seen Inland Empire once, and my thoughts on it were… fragmentary (they’re in the thread), but I guess I didn’t see H’wood as as a source of abuse or trauma in the movie… sort of the opposite, in fact.

maybe i'm off course

I mean, what do I know… there’s obv a ton there

(fwiw, I saw it as Dern’s actress character identifying so radically with abused/exploited characters, that her own identity was disrupted… to me it felt in the end like a highly “affirmative” movie about the power of art, or something less cheesy than that sounds, lol)

(although not TOO much less cheesy; as it does end with that almost proudly corny dance party in the hotel lobby scene)

that's def what it's about imo! hollywood is a place where art happens but it is also a violent and haunted place where the artistic impulse is threatened with exploitation/control/imprisonment. so are other cities; so is the mind. that the terrain of grace zabriskie's fable-- the marketplace; the alley; going out to play, pursued by your shadow-- is interior mental/spiritual terrain (faintly buddhist even) is exactly what makes it as mappable onto "old europe" as onto hollywood boulevard and suburban backyards.

"that's def what it's about" = "it's def a highly 'affirmative' movie about the power of art"

i'll admit btw that while hollywood boulevard and the suburban bungalow are both v vividly felt in this movie, "old europe" is p much just a gesture or symbol-- lynch is way out of his material universe in these scenes and you can tell. but they cast this (gendered!) creativity-and-domination struggle as something old and metamorphic, a struggle in the mind that's taken material form after material form.

For my current Twin Peaks rewatch, I’m starting with just the episodes of the original series directed by Lynch (which feels like an interesting way to get the heart of things). The first episode of S2 is so damn good… I think it rivals the pilot in terms of quality.

The Straight Story was his best-reviewed film since Blue Velvet fwiw.

I would sure hope so!

(I mean, I've done a 180 on FWWM, but it took years and some commitment... I'd like to revisit the other two at some point)

Lynch's reputation for most of the '90s was basically ...

https://external-preview.redd.it/5d2-ab4gqRdTQCSNRDuLjHrGYMgpx00WyHruoSz_cU8.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=7b6d1f472bdc9d0b93b91598cda33a9105c0b790

I just started watching all of Northern Exposure, and there was a pleasant little Twin Peaks nod in Season 2 which I wasn't aware of. Made me smile anyway

erm season 1

Back to the ruminations on evil: watching Blue Velvet with students two months ago, I noted how Sandy's dad seems implicated in the corruption. We only know thanks to stricken reaction shots and his insistence on Jeffrey's not telling Sandy about what he learned, but I appreciated Lynch wasn't heavyhanded about it.

And the 90s coincides with his most determined efforts to work within the system as it was at the time. Making TV shows, or trying to, being an A-list name even if everyone thought he was a super weirdo. The ultimate failure of all of that was when ABC killed Mulholland Drive as a TV series, which from this perspective feels like a great liberation for him.

xp

I don't think he's implicated in it, I think it's more like he knows his partner is crooked, which on the one hand fucks him up, but on the other hand he has to tread very carefully if he wants to see justice served

where are you watching Northern Exposure? I heard it wasn't streaming due to music rights like lots of other shows. Yes it started as kind of a ripoff on the innocuous and quirky side of Twin Peaks; I enjoyed it up to a point.

Yeah I thought Sandy's dad was investigating his partner, not that he was in cahoots with him.

xp akm, I bought the dvd box set

he had a beard last year!? scroll down to 6/1/2021 here while being impressed by the list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videos

ok then youtube . com/c/DAVIDLYNCHTHEATER/videos

I'm on to the final two eps in the Return, which I've saved for some Friday night viewing. So far the re-watch has been totally worth it, had dreads that it wouldn't be as good second time round thankfully proved wrong. I'm still trying to figure out what the fuck that vomiting girl in the car with screaming mad woman was all about. i love you david.

They were very late iirc

lol

They had miles to go.

watched Eraserhead again, can see it was the genesis of his obsession with zigzag-patterned floors and curtains

it was an interesting experimental film, I still don't love it though

I think the films he made after that brought the viewer in more, bit by bit.

I want to rewatch The Elephant Man

I’ve actually never seen The Elephant Man, need to rectify that.

It’s very good. Sorta like The Straight story in that it is remembered as one of his more mainstream movies but it’s chock full of Lynch nuggets.

also his saddest film by a mile

It has an amazing ending.

Remember watching it with my roommate years ago and we were both trying not to blubber.

My brain has wanted to think about Twin Peaks lately, but I don’t have the time/patience for podcasts (so not sure how to really scratch the itch). I’ve been doing a sort-of TP rewatch by watching just the episodes that Lynch directed himself, followed by FWWM/Missing Pieces (and I guess eventually The Return again, it’s been a year or so since I first rewatched it).

The Diary of Laura Palmer is probably the best off-the-screen TP work and it works as a Twin Peaks object. The audiobook is supposedly excellent but I don’t know if I can do it.

I just finished a rewatch of OG Twin Peaks - trying to work up the courage to do Fire Walk With Me. Have never seen The Missing Pieces and I guess I may as well?

Don’t know when I’ll redo The Return - the first time through was one of the absolute greatest screen experiences of my life and I’m kind of afeared that it might lose some of its power the second time round.

Would definitely want to do it on Blu-ray with a decent sound system tho. Watching it on streaming I did get a bit annoyed by compression artefacts in the dark parts of the screen. Want my TP blackest ever black pls.

The Missing Pieces are really interesting and feel (to me) like integral, if less essential, parts of the story. I understand why none of them were in the final cut; though there are a few that I could make an argument for including.

Re FWWM, Missing Pieces, and courage: there's a fan edit out there that combines the two pretty well, making the movie a bit easier to take.

I'm slowly rewatching for the first time, and for some reason started with my first watch of the actual movie. I'm into the Return now and decided to leave the famous episode 8 until I'm done the rest. See what I can see in it after Cooper biffs it.

My favourite fan content is our own Simon's The Lodgers podcast and this guy's videos which I'll probably watch again later.

Haven't checked out the diary yet. Is the "Diane.." Cooper tapes book or audiobook worthwhile too?

I have listened to the two Mark Frost books which are pretty fun, and further the lore a bit and wrap up some minor storylines. But I feel like they'd be out the window if Lynch decided to make anything else.

emsworth: I'm enjoying The Return the second time through. Not looking at everything as a potential "clue" and just letting it wash over, it's different and good.