Style and Influences of the Filmmaker David Lynch - Essay Example

David Lynch: Movies that do more than Make you Think To say that David Lynch is a creative film director and innovative writer falls so short of the truth that it borders on being an insult. From Lynch’s first full length feature film Eraserhead, released in 1977, to his creation of Twin Peaks in the early 1990’s, the work has been bizarre and almost painful in its exploration of all that is dark and distorted. Lynch has said that “In that disturbing thing, there is sometimes tremendous poetry and truth” (Sheen, Davison, and Lynch 5). This is distinctly true in all of his work, but most specifically in his three films Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, and Mulholland Drive. Having written and directed these films, his work reveals a complete focus on his own vision and has developed an almost cult like following. Lynch has been quoted to have been highly influenced by the paintings that were done by Francis Bacon. The work of Francis Bacon is fragmented and without a clear narrative. His work was described in a book by Gilles Deleuze that he titled Francis Bacon: logique de la sensation. The work is has a disjointed sense of time and space, with the aspect of fragmentation that defies a logical narrative, but strikes the emotional palate. Lynch has said that “If Bacon had made a movie, where would it have been and where would it have gone? And how would the cinema translate those textures and those spaces?” (Sheen, Davison, and Lynch 140). To see the work of Lynch, that same sense of fragmentation can be observed, seeming to sometimes have no reason, but eventually coming together to have a cohesiveness that admittedly not all viewers will understand. Lynch’s work is found within the theater of the strange. He devotes great amounts of time within his work to disjointed imagery that has a defining point that is difficult to grasp. In his film Eraserhead, a great number of themes are explored through bizarre and sometimes incomprehensible events. The story surrounds Henry Spencer who, after loosing into the world a strange bit of tissue and strangeness from his mouth, finds that he has impregnated his girlfriend. After a very short pregnancy, she has a mutated child. The film is set in a world that is in urban decay with the close proximity of great machines to emphasis this industrialized deterioration that is representative of the mutation that has developed with this child. A great number of difficult to understand events and imageries make this film engaging and frustrating. However, it exemplifies the disjointed and fragmentation of the narrative that is suggested by the work of Bacon. The central figure of the film is Henry, but the baby is the defining balance against which the many metaphors bounce. The baby is only a baby because the word has been attached to the creature, the reactions of those around Henry treat it as such, and because it is formed into such by a wrapping that gives it a similar appearance (Nochimson 151). However, the baby is a symbol of how the thing is not often the same as the reality. The social commentary is rife with the confusion and distortion of the world and suggests that the created reality of society does not always meet the truth. According to Landa, Feller, and Descola, one of the most interesting aspects of the influences that helped to create the world of Eraserhead within Lynch’s mind might have come from his father. The film is focused in several scenes upon different soil samplings, one of which had him walking over small, mounds of very smooth soil and another that shows a conical mound of soil. As well, there are piles of a material that seems to be pine litter on his floor and on his radiator. Lynch’s father was an environmental researcher, much of whose work surrounded the study of soil and growth. Landa, Feller and Descola suggest that the uneasy feeling that is achieved by the appearance of dirt where it is not expected and in ways that are unexpected are directly associated to the career of his father (p. 89). According to Derry, Lynch found direct influencing factors from the following four creators: Walker Evans who photographed depression era America; Michelangelo Antonioni who filmed alienation within contemporary urban landscapes; Diane Arbus who photographed American misfits in their home environments; and Stanley Kubrick whose work 2001: A Space Odessey began an era of creativity that was perfect in which Lynch could explore his own work (209). One of the ways in which the portraiture was relevant to the work was in the way that Lynch created portraits of his characters. The Lady in the Radiator, Mr X and Mary X (whose facial expressions are reminiscent of silent film actors), and of Henry Spencer after his head is removed are all defined by their sense of portraiture of those characterizations. Lynch, whose own educational history included a great deal of work in art and specifically painting, uses the portrait within his work as a way of capturing moments of humanity within the grasp of what is mostly without humanity (Derry 210). Blue Velvet is a strange film that echoes the film noir with its type of drama and mystery, but takes the genre to a whole different level and universe. The film has a narrative that is a bit more distinct, but is still a series of events and insinuations that take a final gasp to have fully drawn in all that is within the work. The dramatic and appalling imagery assaults the senses, throwing the viewer off his mark at many moments and revealing a side of the truth that is beyond what seems comprehensible within the instance in which it is viewed. According to Drazin, three of the most influential films for the work are Rear Window, It’s a Wonderful Life, and The Wizard of Oz. The small town in which the story takes place is reminiscent of the town of Bedford Falls where George Bailey is trapped and where his story is most relevant within the movie It‘s a Wonderful Life. This version of Bailey is encapsulated by the character of Jeffery Beaumont, who also stays in his small town and takes care of his family. The romance that exists between Jeffery and the small town good girl, Sandy, is similar to that of George and Mary, but is in contrast to the dark world in which he meets Dorothy and becomes enamored of her. Where Frank Capra’s world is full of morality that is defined by black and white, Lynch’s world is morally textured and layered with even its darkest villain eliciting a sense of compassion (74). Lynch was a big fan of The Wizard of Oz and the most obvious tribute that he makes is by naming his femme fatale Dorothy and the imagery of the red shoes. As well, the dream like quality of the film is attributed to the influence of this cinematic classic (Barney 115). However, there are other influences of the film on Lynch’s work that are more profound. In fact, according to Bronfen, it is possible to take Blue Velvet into a comparative reading of The Wizard of Oz and match the scenes as if one was a darker, more obscene version of the other (281). However, we have seen that this can be done with Pink Floyd’s, The Wall, thus making this adaptation theory suspect as it might just be that Jeffery Campbell’s Hero’s Journey is the foundation of how the story is developed and paced. None the less, it is well known that The Wizard of Oz had a great influence on Lynch and his work. Richardson criticizes the elements of surrealism that appear in Lynch’s work, suggesting that Lynch, along with a great many other directors, have taken the concept of imagery surrealism and used them within their work without taking the essence of surrealism into the films. The influence of Un Chien andalou are evident, but the true surrealism never fully manifests. According to Richardson “the will to change life and transform the world - seems absent…What I find especially lacking….(is) the sense not simply of looking into the world created, but also of the world of the film…looking out” (73). The criticism of Lynch as a surrealist is that the complexity does not exist between the viewer and the work in a way that it is both the work and the viewer that are looking at each other. Richardson suggests that he uses surrealistic images, but does not have them in a surreal context (73). This criticism, however, is not shared by all critiques of Lynch’s work. Lynch recreates the absurdity of life within his films, drawing the understanding that he sees within the American population of how the world itself is a surreal creation. He suggests that you can go anywhere in the United States and into any town and find people with stories that directly comment on the counterbalance between the perception of reality and actual reality. Stories of the absurd are everywhere, and his work creates a surreal eruption of these types of tales as they are woven together to challenge the viewer to examine what is real and what is created to seem real (Rodley 199). The comments that Lynch makes on his perspectives on surrealism suggest that he does what Richardson has suggested he does not do. He has a relationship with his audience and understands what they see and feel, using his imagery to reveal the off-balance sense of the world that the culture within the United States already embraces between the truth and what is perceived. It is this sense of the culture, this surrealistic point of view of the social context of the story within the American landscape, helps to set the stage for Mulholland Drive. Using his attraction to the classic American Cinema, Lynch uses the appeal of the film noir once again within this work. According to Beck and Grajeda, the film’s “structure of dream reality can be heard as an audible expression of Lynch’s vexed relation to classical Hollywood cinema”, suggesting that the film offers an homage as much as a critique through it’s style (10). Within this realm that he creates, he is able to once again interject surrealistic qualities into a mainstream sense of narrative in order to once connect to his audience through the surrealistic aesthetic that he believes exists within the American culture. Commentary on surrealism, such as that made by Richardson, suggests that surrealism in popular film may not be taken seriously. However, the concept of surrealism is intended to incite the viewer to see the world from a distorted point of view in order to create a lens with which to see more deeply under the surface. In other words, to say that this is what we believe to be true, but when we pull back the skin, this is what really is the truth. Hitchcock, according to Harper and Stone, Hitchcock was the first Hollywood director to bring surrealism to the modern audience. His use of strange images to denote the underlying meaning of his intentions opened the door as much as influencing the work of Lynch and others who would use these concepts to reveal something to their audiences (115). Mulholland Drive is not necessarily seen as Lynch’s greatest work. The film was originally intended to be a pilot for a TV series, but executives at ABC refused to screen it (Allon and Labute 340). Recreating the film into a big screen feature may have affected its overall effect, however, the film still stands as a well crafted commentary on the illusion of the Hollywood world and the dream like quality in which those who take on that culture often find themselves drowning. A possible connection to that culture that might be made to the film happen through the experiences of Rita Hayworth and her namesake within the film who has lost her memory. Hayworth had early onset Alzheimer’s that most likely came on at the age of 42, but went undiagnosed until 1980, leaving her alone in its grip for twenty years without any real help (Sheen, Davison, and Lynch 181). The Rita in the film is suffering from amnesia, leaving her vulnerable and alone without a tangible past and having to cling to those she knows in the moment, rather than being able to understand the world through her experience of it. Whether or not David Lynch truly captures the true nature of surrealism is immaterial to the level to which he reflects and reveals both the essence of classical Hollywood and the sense of the American culture as it is revealed in the stories that can be heard across the United States on most any front porch. Whether it is your Uncle Harry telling you about how his mother was holding onto a grave stone and her body was fully extended horizontally on the day that they lowered the casket of his father, or it is Old Man Gray down the street telling you about the catfish he landed that was so big it broke the side of the boat trying to get out, landing with such a splash that the water scuttled the boat, the absurd and the bizarre exists deep within the culture. The work of David Lynch uses this type of exaggeration and scope from which to retell the societal point of view with its sense of reality distorted enough to reveal the truth. The influences that most affected David Lynch reside deep within the cinematic history of Hollywood. Lynch used the beautifully crafted tales about little town America in order to frame his work. Then he peeled back the surface to reveal the dark twisted truths that could be found within their boundaries. The nature of Eraserhead touched upon an industrialized, urban culture that could create a creature that was defined by hope (as a baby often represents) but burdened by the affects of that culture. Blue Velvet took the concept of ’small town America’ and twisted it under the surface, revealing the criminality and sexuality that is often hidden. Mulholland Drive is a running commentary on the world within the world that is Hollywood where reality is layered with so much illusion that peeling back the layers often reveals both the viewer and the inhabitant as living in a dream like state. The work of David Lynch opens the eyes of the viewer, touching on nostalgia and then blossoming into shock, poking at reality in such a way as to occasionally wake it from its dream. Works Cited Allon, Yoram, and Neil Labute. Contemporary North American Film Directors. A Wallflower critical guide. London: Wallflower, 2002. Print. Barney, Richard A. David Lynch: Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009. Print. Beck, Jay, and Tony Grajeda. Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in Film Sound. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Print. Bronfen, Elisabeth. Home in Hollywood: The Imaginary Geography of Cinema. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2004. Print. Derry, Charles. Dark Dreams 2.0: A Psychological History of the Modern Horror Film from the 1950s to the 21st Century. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2009. Print. Drazin, Charles. Charles Drazin on Blue Velvet. New York: Bloomsbury, 1999. Print. Harper, Graeme, and Rob Stone. The Unsilvered Screen: Surrealism on Film. London: Wallflower, 2007. Print. Landa, Edward, Christian Feller, and Philippe Descola. Soil and Culture. Dordrecht: Springer, 2010. Internet Resource. Nochimson, Martha. The Passion of David Lynch: Wild at Heart in Hollywood. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 2003. Print. Richardson, Michael. Surrealism and Cinema. Oxford [u.a.: Berg, 2006. Internet resource. Rodley, Chris. Lynch on Lynch. London: faber and faber, 2005. Print. Sheen, Erica, Annette Davison, and David Lynch. The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions. London: Wallflower Press, 2005. Print. Read More