The hours since the death of artist and film director David Lynch on January 16 have seen a huge outpouring of love. Tributes have come from those who worked with him, including actors Kyle MacLachlan and Naomi Watts, and other directors such as Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard and Edgar Wright. But they’ve also come from his legion of fans, who have taken to social media to share personal stories of how his films have profoundly touched their lives.
From his debut feature Eraserhead (1977), Lynch revealed himself as a filmmaker with a unique and singular vision. Describing the film as “a dream of dark and troubling things”, Lynch drew from his background in painting and experimental film. The slight narrative provided an opening into a strange new world that followed a twisted dream logic but still seemed familiar.
Lynch was renowned for his steadfast refusal to provide answers as to what his films mean. When asked in a Bafta interview to elaborate on his claim that Eraserhead is his “most spiritual film”, for example, Lynch abruptly answered: “No.”
In his book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity (2006), Lynch wrote: “The world in the film is a created one, and people sometimes love going into that world. For them that world is real. And if people find out certain things about how something was done, or how this means this or that means that, the next time that see the film, these things enter into the experience.”
While Lynch marked himself as a true auteur, whose films express a very specific and personal worldview, there is space for each audience member to bring their own dreams and desires into the viewing experience. Perhaps this is why his work inspires such devotion as his fans become attached to the work, filling the gaps in meaning with parts of themselves.
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Lynch’s ‘art life’
From a young age Lynch wanted to become an artist, to live what he called “the art life”. This involves complete dedication to creative pursuits, at the expense of all else.
Part of this process involves “diving within”, which for Lynch was closely linked to the practice of transcendental meditation. In an interview with Sight and Sound in December 2024, Lynch explained that by diving into this “ocean of consciousness”, people can experience “unbounded creativity.”
It is from this “ocean” that Lynch also spoke of “catching the big fish” – that is, catching an idea, whether it be for a film, a painting or a story. Unlike filmmakers and screenwriters in the Hollywood mainstream, Lynch did not follow typical narrative structures.
This is why his one attempt at making a Hollywood blockbuster, the 1984 film Dune, was a failure. Lynch was forced to compromise his vision and denied his final cut.
Yet this disappointment led the way for his 1986 film Blue Velvet which, although made on a much smaller scale, had a significant cultural impact. It garnered him his second of three Oscar nominations for best director. His first was for The Elephant Man in 1980 and his last was for Mulholland Drive, in 2001.
Nodding to his roots growing up in towns in Montana, Washington, Idaho and Virginia, Blue Velvet exposed the dark underbelly that exists beneath the white picket fences of suburbia. This darkness was both frightening and attractive to protagonist Jeffrey Beaumont, played by Kyle MacLachlan, who mimicked Lynch’s speech and mannerisms.
MacLachlan and Lynch teamed up again for the television series Twin Peaks, which aired on ABC in 1990 and became a cultural phenomenon. Like Blue Velvet, it revealed a secret world underneath the quotidian, using the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) to uncover a true darkness residing in the heart of the American home.
Associated Press/Alamy Stock Photo
‘No one really dies’
The same year that Twin Peaks debuted, Lynch also won the Palme d’Or at Cannes for his film Wild at Heart and appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. But the bubble burst in 1992 when his prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me received a hostile reception critically and commercially. Fire Walk with Me has since been reevaluated as a film that presents the shattering effects of the trauma of abuse. I wrote a book about it in 2018.
In his later films Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006), identity is similarly fractured, expressing the fluid nature of reality. This related to Lynch’s belief in a unified consciousness that connects all things in a constant state of flux.
His swan song Twin Peaks: The Return (the final season, which aired in 2017) is marked by passing of time and ever-present spectre of death. Many of the series original cast had already died by the time the series aired.
Yet, for Lynch death was part of a “continuum”. He believed: “No one really dies, they just drop their physical body … we’re all going to be fine at the end of the story.”
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