Like many, I've been doing a pretty thorough David Lynch rewatch lately. David Lynch's death last month hit me pretty hard, and I have been heartened by how many friends and mutuals and internet strangers have been experiencing the man's work and finding themselves very affected by it. I am a bit surprised, however, by the number of people commenting on how, while it's an overall rewarding task, it's leaving them in a somewhat unpleasant headspace. I can sympathize, because Lynch's films are frequently nightmarish visions of sex and violence, and can carry some truly bad vibes. Some of his films, such as Eraserhead, are actively trying to make you uncomfortable. Or at the very least share in the discomfort of it's main character. Yet I find myself having an almost opposite reaction; watching Lynch's films have calmed me somewhat, have been an act of celebration rather than mourning.
The first David Lynch film I saw theatrically was Lost Highway in 1997, when I was 19. I saw it at least four times in its original theatrical run, and had wildly different discussions after each screening where, in the end, I had to admit I had no idea what was going on. What I did know is that the film had chilled me, confused me, scared me, amused me, saddened me, and left me in the end credits with the exhilarating feeling of my brain being rewired. It felt like my consciousness was trying to expand in order to make room for this utterly new (to me) way of telling a story, of presenting art. When I say that David Lynch has done more to shape the man I am than most, I'm not exaggerating. Lost Highway influenced the way I process art, and the world, in ways that are still with me.
Distressing and inexplicable imagery abound in David Lynch's works, and his films do not often lend themselves to traditionally happy endings. When they do appear to end positively, the audience is distrustful. After all that darkness, something feels intentionally false about happiness, as if there must be some deeper understanding we must come to. The ending of Wild At Heart, where Nicolas Cage's Sailor and Laura Dern's Lula go their separate ways, only for Sailor to almost immediately have a sudden change of heart and run to rejoin Lula and their child. The ending of Blue Velvet where the robins (symbols of happiness and peace, as voiced by a character earlier in the film) have returned, but the robin we see is so blatantly a chintzy animatronic. Can we trust that those are meant to be happy endings?
The thing is, David Lynch has never struck me as an ironic filmmaker. Nor does it feel like he sets out to torture the audience or insult their intelligence. If he were to state that the end of Wild At Heart were a dream or fantasy, that would be insulting the audience's intelligence, it would be a betrayal of trust. In the original script for Wild At Heart, Sailor and Lula do not end up together. Lynch read that and thought it stunk, so he had Barry Gifford rewrite it. He felt that those two characters should end up together after everything they had been through. He didn't do this ironically. His vision of the film was what if you found true love in hell?
The animatronic robin in Blue Velvet seems on its face to be an obvious punchline, but if you listen to Lynch talk about the things that about that film that seem kitschy or ironic, he doesn't seem to see it that way. He truly loves those things. He loves the white picket fences, true love, vintage cars and pre-Beatles rock and roll. He genuinely loves the small towns his films are often set in. The characters in Blue Velvet treat the animatronic robin with almost rapturous elation, but I don't think we're supposed to feel this is wrong. I do believe Lynch feels these characters can and possibly will be happy, only now they must exist with the knowledge of Good and Evil. The robin is holding in its beak a beetle, the same type of beetle we saw in the opening moments of the film as the camera burrowed deeper into the picture perfect small town setting to show the rot and grime beneath. A symbol of purity eating a symbol of pollution. The happiness is manufactured, but that doesn't make it less valid. Maybe it makes it stronger, in a way.
David Lynch's films clearly show an obsession with violence. They show a man trying to work through his own anxieties and insecurities about sex. They show a man trying to figure out how someone could harm another as grievously as we often do. What is the source of this negativity in the world? Where does evil come from? What does it do to both its victims and its perpetrators?
There are very few examples of the banality of evil in David Lynch's filmography (excepting, perhaps, Ben Horne in Twin Peaks). His films are often explicitly about capital-E Evil. We see it with Bob as 'the evil that men do,' as one character describes him. We see it cemented in Episode 8 of Twin Peaks The Return, where Bob is shown to be the result of the atom bomb birthing pure evil into the modern world. Inland Empire begins with a story of a little girl who leaves home and through that action inadvertently allows evil to be born. Jeffrey in Blue Velvet asks 'why are there men like Frank?' about a character who seems a walking manifestation of the seven deadly sins. Lost Highway is about a crime so great that it brings about cosmic retribution and warps all reality around it. Evil exists, and Lynch frequently portrays this in ways that are beautiful and seductive, or at the very least compelling. And yet the beauty and humanity in those films is no less genuine.
David Lynch had an apparent belief in the beauty of all things. To hear Lynch describe the industrial wastelands of Eraserhead, the pervading melancholy of Twin Peaks, the loneliness of the outsider in The Elephant Man, he continually uses the word beauty. Lynch's films are all beautiful. Bruised, yes, but beautiful. Lynch believed that the world could be cruel, and evil was often victorious, but just as deeply he felt that the world was beautiful and wondrous. His films continuously show a belief that grace can be found even in hell.
I once told a friend that I felt like I understood Lynch's films on an emotional level long before I understood them on any sort of intellectual level. He expressed surprise at that notion because he felt Lynch was too esoteric and cerebral. Not as cold as Kubrick but certainly operating at some sort of remove from normal human emotion. I could not disagree more. Lynch is a shockingly emotional and empathetic filmmaker. Think of Mulholland Dr. and the Club Silencio scene. Right now I couldn't even give you a concrete answer as to what it's supposed to mean, but I do know that I share in the overwhelming despondency of those characters in that moment.
There are three scenes in Lynch's later filmography that rank among some of the most emotional I've ever seen. Two of them come from Twin Peaks The Return, and one of them comes from Inland Empire. I'm about to spoil them here, so if you have any cares for that sort of thing, be warned.
The end of Inland Empire (again, spoilers if you care, I'm about to discuss the ending of this film) has Laura Dern shooting a frightening gremlin of a man who has been seen at various times throughout the film and is at that moment approaching her menacingly. As she shoots the man, he begins to change, until finally his head has been replaced by a nightmarish distortion of Dern's own face, and then he dies. After this Laura Dern (I'm avoiding using character names because there is some question as to what character she's meant to be at this moment) appears in the doorway of a hotel room we've seen repeatedly in the film, where the Lost Girl is locked away and watching the events of the movie on an old television. The girl stands, Laura Dern approaches, they embrace and kiss and then Laura Dern fades out of existence and the Lost Girl is finally allowed to leave the room.
Inland Empire is a film I couldn't find an entry point into for a long time. Often I love a Lynch film even if I have no idea what is going on, but something about Inland Empire held me at a distance. It wasn't until my third viewing that I started to see the outlines of the door. My fourth viewing (and first in a theatre) opened that door completely. To me (I say redundantly, as any interpretation of Lynch's work can only ever be 'to me' to the person doing the interpreting) Inland Empire is, among other things, Lynch's ultimate statement on how people try to make sense of trauma, and the ways in which the human psyche tries to escape those traumas. The film continually turns inward, shifting the specifics of the story of "a woman in trouble" while offering echoes of what we've already seen. The film suggests a mind escaping darkness only to find patterns repeating, until finally discovering a way to stop them. The ending is an obliteration of self, a destruction of the nightmare part of yourself that keeps tormenting you, followed by absolute self-acceptance, love, and forgiveness. Inland Empire is a three and a half hour nightmare that ends in a stunning display of empathy. And a dance party.
To a lot of people, Episode 8 of Twin Peaks The Return is the high water mark for that show, and while it definitely deserves all the praise it's been given I find the most memorable and impactful episode comes later. In Episode 15, we get two scenes which bring me to tears. the first comes from the resolution of Big Ed and Norma's ill-fated, decades-long romance. Ed, finally granted the divorce from Nadine he had long been too cowardly to ask for (I could go on and on about how much damage Ed does to poor Nadine in the belief that he's protecting her, but that's a rant for another piece), heads straight to the RR Diner to give Norma the good news that they can finally be together. Norma, in the midst of her own personal crisis, is too overwhelmed to accept the offer, and a dejected Ed goes to sit at the counter and mope. The camera holds for a long time on the sorrowful Ed, until finally he closes his eyes and breaks into a tentative smile. A hand comes from offscreen as Norma gently strokes Ed's shoulder. They embrace and profess their love in front of the diner patrons who have apparently been as invested in this romance as we have. All this as Otis Redding's Monterey Pop performance of I've Been Loving You Too Long plays on the soundtrack. It's possibly the most outwardly joyous and swooningly romantic moment of the entire series, maybe even of Lynch's career.
The next scene I'll highlight comes later in the episode, and has a much different emotional intent. One of Twin Peaks' most memorable characters is the Log Lady, Margaret Lanterman, played by Lynch's longtime friend and collaborator Catherine Coulson. The two met in 1971. Coulson acted in some of Lynch's short films and performed various behind the scenes duties on Eraserhead. In episode 15, the Log Lady dies. She does this after a phone call to Deputy Hawk (Michael Horse) in which she talks directly to camera about her impending death, and the fear she has. I think about this scene a lot, both the emotional gut punch it provides in the show itself, and the reality of how it was filmed.
Catherine Coulson's scenes were some of the first shot for The Return, maybe even the first shot, essentially right after the deal was made but before everything was finalized and regular filming had begun. Catherine was terminally ill at the time, and Lynch wrote some dialogue for her to deliver over the phone, and then filmed it himself. I think about these two lifelong friends, I think about Catherine facing her own mortality while David gives her dialogue about her impending death. I think about her lines, spoken in a desperate strained voice to Hawk: "You know about death, that it's just a change, not an end. Hawk, it's time. There's some fear, some fear in letting go." ... "Hawk. My log is turning gold. The wind is moaning. I'm dying. Good night, Hawk." I think about Lynch guiding his friend towards accepting the inevitable as it rushed towards her. I think about how, before he even knew for sure Twin Peaks would return, two years before the show would be seen, Lynch gave his friend a chance to say goodbye. Another chance to be remembered. I think about David and Catherine, who started this journey together on the set of Eraserhead, alone together at the end, and the incredible love that must have been between them at that moment.
Catherine Coulson died a few days after filming what would be her final screen moments.
David Lynch saw the world like no one else, and spent his entire life trying to teach us how to do the same thing. He devoted his life to art, and used it to expand the consciousnesses of himself, and his viewers. His films were puzzles, gifts, clues for us to follow and get lost in, the first steps to mapping the inland empires of our own.
I keep using the word 'gift' a lot in regards to Lynch's works, especially now as I'm fully immersing myself in everything the man was part of. Everything he made was a gift. It was not meant to be confusing or ironic or punishing, it was meant to introduce the wonder of mystery. Twin Peaks The Return was not only the final longform artistic work from the master, but also a sort of defining statement on his entire career. When the show aired in 2017 I don't think any of us expected to get closure on all the show's mysteries. When Twin Peaks once again ended not with an explanation, but with a question, I couldn't stop smiling. After 20+ years of obsessing over Twin Peaks and spending years in the 90s on message boards debating theories. After decades of looking for clues, after all the merchandising and tie-in books and fan festivals, David Lynch and Mark Frost did the best thing they ever could have done for us; they gave us a mystery. One we'll all be puzzling over for at least another 25 years.
What a gift.
