Film Fridays: On David Lynch

When I dream, it always looks and feels like I am living in a film. They always begin in media res. I never know what’s happened before, but I intrinsically know what to do next, even though I never make the physical choice to take that action. Things end and begin, and I know where I am, and I don’t. It feels like every ten minutes or so of my dream there is a brief cut to black before the next scene starts, wherever it may be. Despite my lack of personal travel within them, my dreams are always transitory. Almost every night I’m in the same big shopping mall. On the off chance that I’m not there, even my dreamscape version of my house or of SLU doesn’t feel correct. I’ve spent countless hours there, but as I walk through my dreams, I feel like an actor. I’m on set somewhere. I’m in costume, and I’m supposed to be experiencing certain emotions or doing specific actions, though I really experience nothing at all (or at least not the exact literal scenario playing out in my dream). Despite this, my hazy, vignetted dreams often leave me profoundly touched and sometimes exhausted, and I tend to carry them with me throughout my day.   

David Lynch and his films are sometimes called challenging. For me, though, I always felt a weird kindred connection with him, not in a “I’m so different and esoteric and just as cool as David Lynch” way, but more in a kind of (half) mutual understanding of how the world works way. I began watching “Twin Peaks” when I was in high school and fell in love with it, and I only fell deeper in when I began learning about the man behind it, who somehow was nothing like and exactly what I expected him to be. Now, as a senior in college, I’ve only loved David Lynch and his style more, and his films have more or less guided me (as close to guiding as they can get) through the extremely liminal, frightening, and beautiful time that is my early 20s. Despite how batshit they just initially seem (and they often are), I always and continue to find relatability and metamorphosis through watching them, especially through repeated viewings. His surreal, bizarre, intimate and human stories are the good version of getting the wind knocked out of you, and I think there is a lot more to be gained from appreciating his films as hundreds of reflections of hundreds of people’s dreams rather than just as that weird movie you saw in college.    

So, in my final review of the semester, let me put you on. If you’ve ever been even mildly interested in his work and have no idea where to start, have zero clue who he is, or hate his films with a passion, let this be what convinces you to give him a try (maybe again). I also don’t want to be someone who tells you what his films are about. So, in lieu of a traditional formal review, I am going to conjure some words and images for you that will lead to one of his films. Hopefully, if you’re intrigued, you should watch whichever film (or show, if it’s “Twin Peaks”) you’re led to, and I hope you do so without googling anything before.   

Love letters, small-town sadomasochism, picket fences, “Easy Rider,” endless atrophy.  

-“Blue Velvet” (1986).   

Stifled moonlight, recurring fever dreams, the rattling noise that comes from your heater when you’re trying to sleep. 

-“Eraserhead” (1977).   

Leather, true romance, interstates, up in flames, Nicholas Cage. 

-“Wild at Heart” (1990).   

Sleep paralysis, (un)dying love, imposter syndrome, method acting, where dreams come true 

-“Mulholland Drive” (2001).   

Saddle shoes, everyday tragedy, someone standing in the road, wood paneling, homecoming 

-“Twin Peaks” (1990-1991).   

Just as with my dreams, every time I watch and rewatch a David Lynch film, I’m simultaneously in a familiar and unfamiliar place, a place of quiet, calm, and the bizarre. Like Laura Harring’s character in “Mulholland Drive,” I’ve woken up here in this dream, and though I don’t know where I’m going, I always seem to end up in the right place (or at least a fractured version of the right place) after a nighttime of love, terror and confusion. I can only hope that maybe Lynch’s films will haunt you like that someday.