Greetings, reader!
One week ago, the world of cinema said goodbye to a giant. I have considered David Lynch to be the greatest filmmaker of all time ever since I became obsessed with his work and watched through his filmography with my best friend Atte around 2017-2018. I've already released my ranking of his films on my blog, as well as a ranking of every Twin Peaks episode and a list of my top 10 theories/takeaways about Twin Peaks - so now, in order to pay tribute to an artist who I owe so very much to, I'm ranking the top 10 most significant reasons for why Mr. Lynch inspired me so much, and caused deeper admiration in me than any other filmmaker.
Here are my honorable mentions: His influence on countless filmmakers; Inspiring a cult-like devotion/obsession/culture in his fans that I'm proud to be a part of; The specific brand of bizarre and nuanced humor in his films; The way in which his directing brought out the very best in actors like Kyle MacLachlan and Laura Dern; Twin Peaks in general being the probably greatest television series of all time.
10. A signature style, yet an awe-inspiring range within it
It's no accident that the word 'Lynchian' has become such a cultural staple, whenever someone is describing something bizarre, surreal and otherworldly in a specific manner. Lynch's art really did have a feel to it that no one else can quite match, and it's great fun to notice certain tropes and patterns when watching through his works. Some of his signature tricks are harder to recognize, while others are insanely specific - about half of his films (as well as his big TV series) feature a sequence of a beautiful woman, singing in a shady nightclub or theater, in front of red curtains.
As much as Lynch liked to use elements of his trademark touch, none of his works were generic or typical, even by the standard of his own brand of baffling oddball cinema. The range in Lynch's filmography is amazing: in terms of arthouse weirdness, it ranges from critically acclaimed and popular movies with enough of a mainstream style and coherent plot to attract wide audiences, like The Elephant Man (1980) and The Straight Story (1999), through films that are run-of-the-mill weird and semi-challenging to follow and interpret, like Blue Velvet (1986) and Mulholland Drive (2001), all the way to films that are among the most out-there batshit bizarre experimental art ever made, like Eraserhead (1977) and Inland Empire (2006). Genre-wise, the dude dabbled in crime, mystery, drama, romantic comedy, fantasy, science fiction, horror, and whatever the f**k Lost Highway (1997) was. His career was the very embodiment of 'never let them know your next move'.
9. Not afraid to fail
I can only imagine the pitch meeting for Twin Peaks - 'How about financing this show that we've got cooking - it's like a murder mystery whodunit, but really it's an exploration of small town America and the underlying secrets in outward idyllic communities, but also it's a soap opera with everyone having an affair and a complicated relationship to everyone else, and sometimes it'll be the most disturbing psychological horror you've ever seen but the very next scene will be endearing and wholesome fun for the whole family, and it's definitely supernatural but that won't be obvious at first, and it'll all feel like a fever dream'. Thank God they took the chance. Because really, that pitch is what made Mr. Lynch so great - in a world full of over-careful artists, who turn their art more mediocre because of prioritizing profit or being afraid to take a risk, he showed us that the very best art comes from a visionary who trusts his vision, no matter how crazy it might be.
As a megafan of Lynch's work, I'll be the first to admit that whether you're talking about his Dune (1984) adaptation or certain episodes in Twin Peaks's second season, some of his works suck. But that's not only okay, it's necessary - all of his greatest works are possible because of his attitude of just throwing every idea out there, trusting that something will stick, as it did for a vast majority of the time. And honestly, the addition of Dune makes his filmography a lot richer, more interesting and more fun - I'll take a director whose films range from trainwreck to masterpiece over a director who only makes safe and decent films without big risks any day of the week.
8. His fusion of cinema and music
Music is one of the very few things that I'm even more passionate about than cinema, and the various ways in which films utilize music always factor into my cinematic opinions a lot. Very few filmmakers showed as deep of an understanding of music, and utilized it in such a multi-faceted way in their works, as David Lynch.
His collaboration with the late great Angelo Badalamenti has gone down in history as the arguably greatest director-composer partnership in cinema - Badalamenti scored over half of Lynch's feature films, as well as coming up with the legendary music for Twin Peaks, and his compositions were such a key component of Lynch's films, with the music always playing a big part in the atmosphere.
Lynch had an ear for the use of existing songs as well, and for hiring artists to write songs for his films, and these coupled with Badalamenti's compositions made for a rich infusion of music and cinema in his works. It's impossible to imagine Wild At Heart without the use of Wicked Game, Mulholland Drive without the heart-stopping Club Silencio singing sequence, or Dune without the lovably cheesy Toto soundtrack. I mean, the dude was so into music that he hired people like David Bowie and Sting to act in his movies, not to mention the fact that his greatest film Blue Velvet gets its name from Bobby Vinton's classic 1950 song that plays in the opening sequence!
7. Messed up in a glorious fashion
Lynch's films aren't for everyone, and one of the reasons for this is just how brutally violent, psychologically disturbing and visually f**ked up they could be at their darkest. Mind you, it's never gore for the sake of gore, but rather these aspects always had some artistic reasoning behind them, which is why viewers like me don't mind. When I got tickets to a David Lynch photography exhibit in Helsinki as a Christmas present from my brother a few years ago (the dude really knows me), I witnessed how Lynch's 'mad genius' and tendency to make disturbing art was perhaps even more evident in his photography than in his films.
Mind you, his works are also beautiful, magical and inspiring - and in some way, the depths of how bleak his art could be at its bleakest makes that side work even more (more on that later). But, yeah, no one made messed-up and disturbing art quite like David Lynch, and that most definitely is a part of his recipe for success.
6. His deeply personal and unique relationship to cinema
Lynch seems to have understood cinema as an art form, with all its potential on many layers, on an exceptionally deep level. This can be seen in how his more conventional films (like The Straight Story) are beautifully shot, Oscar-worthy pieces of visual beauty and sharp precision in a manner anyone could agree with, but also in how his unconventional films (like Lost Highway) have inspired endless debate and analysis of its themes and meanings, with the gloriously weird imagery sticking forever in the minds of viewers.
When listening to Lynch talk about his work, you get the idea that he was the very embodiment of the Walt Whitman quote "Be curious, not judgemental" - he never presumed to know it all or to be better than anyone, but rather his works were fuelled by an endless curiosity and desire to explore. Twin Peaks isn't as much a soap opera / murder mystery as it is a philosophical rumination of "What even is a soap opera / murder mystery" - the genres were clearly of great interest to Mr. Lynch, and he wanted to explore their conventions and tropes through his work instead of merely making a series belonging to said genres. The same goes for Dune and sci-fi blockbusters, Wild At Heart and romantic comedies, Eraserhead and whatever the f**k Eraserhead is, et cetera.
5. Cinema as a visual art, to the maximum
As mentioned, Lynch was a photographer and visual artist before he decided to go into filmmaking - and it shows. His unique eye for aesthetics can be seen in any and all of his films, with shots ranging from 'I could frame this and hang it on my wall' to 'Jesus Christ, what twisted mind would come up with this, I guess I'm not sleeping tonight' and everything in between.
I don't have the strongest eye for aesthetics, but Lynch was one of those filmmakers whose movies were so visually beautiful that even I could really find a strong appreciation for it. No other film has grabbed my attention in its opening seconds, on a visual level, quite as strongly as Blue Velvet - the shot of the red roses, in front of the white picket fence, to the backdrop of a blue sky, is just so perfect.
4. Very few artists have made me so obsessed with their work - or made me feel so much
Hyperfixations are nothing out of the ordinary for me - but some hyperfixations are stronger than the others. And the amount of thought that went into obsessing over David Lynch's works during the year or so when me and my best friend went through his filmography, well, that's a rare amount, rivaling the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien's books when I was 11 or the time I only read Stephen King throughout 2023. It takes a very special kind of genius to make me that hyperfixated about their work.
It's not just the endless theories and interpretations either - one of the reasons I was (and will probably always be, on some level) hooked on Lynch was how deeply his films made me feel. I cried my eyes out at the moving story of The Elephant Man, I laughed my ass off to the surreal hilarity of Wild At Heart, I was anxious as hell throughout Eraserhead (in a good way - I'm the f**ked-up kind of viewer who enjoys when a film does that), and I can't really name the emotion I felt when watching Mulholland Drive but it was specific, magical and special. Of course, Twin Peaks goes beyond all this, as it caused so many larger-than-life experiences throughout the spectrum of human emotion. Very few artists have moved me as much with their works as David Lynch.
3. The light within the dark
And here we have one of the director's core themes, one that has moved me immensely throughout the years. Appearing in some shape or form across pretty much all of Lynch's filmography, the contrast of light and dark, good and evil, happy endings and sad realities, beauty and brutality, is just a constant theme that he always knew how to deal with in a powerful manner.
If Blue Velvet was comprised only of its darkest parts, it would be one hell of a bleak and upsetting film. If it was narrowed down to only its lighter side, it would be cheesy and boring - it's the specific way of working the balance between the two so well that makes it work. The depressing moments in Lynch films hit so much harder because they're not just sad without context in a void, but because there's an underlying sense of magic, inspiration and beauty to be felt, which makes the losses feel like there really is something to lose. Similarly, the payoffs work so insanely well because the stakes feel dramatic and high due to the bleakest moments being so bleak. Once again, without taking anything away from Lynch's movies, Twin Peaks is the absolute GOAT at this - that one series can be so disturbing yet so uplifting is an achievement for the ages, and this balance is a big part of why it works so well.
2. He took us into other worlds
One of the very best things that art and/or fiction can do is expanding one's world, or even creating the feeling of entering something beyond it. That's a huge part of why I love the otherworldly art, from Mahler's symphonies to Rush's prog rock epics, from Tolkien's fantasy realms to King's Dark Tower mythos, from Kubrick's infinity-crossing 2001: A Space Odyssey to the mysterious island on Lost; especially in times like these, when the real world feels so incredibly bleak as our planet's resources are dwindling and hatred is given a chance to dictate our society, one of the most therapeutic things one can do is escaping once in a while into a different, more imaginative world, made possible by inspiring creative minds. And David Lynch sure was a master of that craft.
'Other worlds beyond our own' is a central theme to a lot of fiction, especially anything magical or supernatural, and Mr. Lynch would quite often take it literally - you can see already from his passionately crafted photography that he was obsessed with doorways, gates, mysterious entrances, anything that might make the person experiencing the art feel that they're being transported somewhere else. It's even more evident in his filmography - the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks takes characters someplace where the very laws of physics work differently and time moves in a strange way, the plot of Mulholland Drive features a sudden shift in the main character's reality when everything is suddenly different in a way you can't put your finger on, the line between a fictional film being made and the 'real world' outside of the film is blurred throughout Inland Empire, and various witch sequences interrupt the mundane in Wild At Heart.
Creating this sense of other worlds is a major part of Lynch's legacy, as his art and fiction is made infinitely richer by these profound ideas. It also made it easier to deal with his passing as a mega-fan; as someone with a slightly magical worldview and who got a lot out of Lynch's works, it honestly doesn't feel like he's dead and gone, like a mere mortal. I'd like to think that his soul has transcended to somewhere out there, whether it's the blue skies above Twin Peaks, Washington, the dreamlike reality of Lost Highway, or the room from Eraserhead where the Lady In The Radiator sings 'In heaven, everything is fine'. I know I'll still sense Lynch when looking for inspiration in my own art, walking by a mysterious-looking doorway on a strange night, or enjoying a cup of damn fine coffee.
1. David Lynch was, above all else, authentically f**king weird
My fiancée's dad is a music teacher (runs in the family), and he's fond of telling the bizarre story that Elvis Presley died on the day before his first-ever lesson as a music teacher ("I killed Elvis", he likes to joke). Now here's where the story gets weird - after graduating as a drama teacher via my minor studies a few years ago, I've read up on the theory of directing, worked as an assistant director on a youth play and practiced directing individual scenes, but I hadn't done any work as an actual #1 director on a project until I decided to write and direct a musical a while ago - and as fate would have it, the very first rehearsal for the musical, my first time actually directing, was last week's Friday. One day after my all-time favorite director passed away.
In addition to the bizarre coincidence with Martta's dad's story, the timing felt powerful - I was admittedly nervous about how the practice would go, but Lynch being on my mind made for one hell of a dose of inspiration and confidence. I was worried if my vision for the musical, which is admittedly strange on many levels, would feel too strange for the people involved, and if I'd have the conviction to defend my vision if anyone questioned it. But Lynch was on my mind, and that helped so much - the reason for his work hitting me harder than that of any other director is precisely because he had the courage to be his weird-ass self, to make his art just as interpretational and odd and insane as he wanted to, audience reactions be damned. He never apologized for Mulholland Drive being too hard to follow, or for Twin Peaks not sticking to the conventional whodunit-formula that mainstream America would've wanted. Keeping this in mind really helped me find my voice as a novice director: this is my vision, and it's a bit weird, but we're f**king doing it.
Lynch's films weren't for everyone, but they certainly were for me. I've never understood why some people use 'weird' as an inherently negative word, as I've always found endless fascination in all things different, exceptional, and bizarre. Lynch's films stuck out of the crowd - mind you, I have nothing against the mainstream, and I enjoy conventional action flicks and Oscar-bait dramas as much as the next movie buff, but what I enjoy even more is films like Lynch's, largely because of how delightfully fresh and different they were. They had the courage to defy norms, the capacity to make me feel more and think more than any archetypical film could, and the ability to eternally burn their key moments into my brain because how unique they were visually and thematically.
Thank you, David. I'm a better artist, creator and director because of the endless inspiration from your works and persona. You may be physically gone from this world, but me and millions of other creative minds will feel you with us whenever we imagine and create, and wherever you are, I hope you know that.
Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for my nominations of my annual 'awards', celebrating the best movies, TV and music of 2024. The winners will be announced in the following week.
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