R.I.P. David Lynch

He leaves behind an incredibly dazzling, complicated, funny, frightening universe. He and his creations will be greatly missed.

R.I.P. David and thanks for everything. I hope it's blue skies and sunshine all along your way.

What It's Like To Get Old

“Inside, we are ageless and when we talk to ourselves, it’s the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It’s the body that is changing around that ageless center.”
--David Lynch

“I love getting older. My understanding deepens. I can see what connects, I can weave stories of experience and apply them. I can integrate the lessons. Things simply become more and more fascinating. Beauty reveals itself in thousands of forms.”
--Victoria Erickson

https://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/
https://www.victoriaerickson.com/

"Curtain's Up" with David Lynch

From Stella McCartney, the David Lynch Foundation, and Tête-à-Tête, David Lynch holds forth on abstract cinema and bringing peace to the world.

https://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/

BEAUTY: Painting--Hugo Alonso

Maybe it's that I have been intently watching "Twin Peaks: The Return" but I swear the airbrush-on-paper work of Spanish painter Hugo Alonso looks like film stills from a David Lynch film!

Top to bottom: Good Boy; Kids Playing; Laura; Mirror; Miss Giddens; Sisters; Believers; Carla; Regan; Renee; Sunday

http://www.hugoalonso.info/

"Bird of Flames" by David Lynch and Chrysta Bell

"Bird of Flames" by David Lynch and Chrysta Bell directed by Chel White.
Wow.

https://chrystabell.com/
http://www.chelwhite.com/

Speaking of "wow" and Lynch, are you watching "Twin Peaks: The Return" (Chrysta Bell plays Special Agent Tammy Preston)? Episode 8 was one of the most frightening things I have ever seen in my life.

http://www.sho.com/twin-peaks

And to tie it all together, here is Chrysta Bell performing a marvelous, darker version of "Falling," the original "Twin Peaks" theme.

David Lynch at Idem éditions

For the last several years, David Lynch (filmmaker, artist, composer, singer, photographer) has been making lithographs at the famed Item éditions lithography atelier in Paris, home to Solnhofen stone slabs (used in the printing process) and historical presses that have printed such artists as Picasso, Matisse, and Miró. Lynch works with wet drawings, where the black ink is dissolved right onto the limestone, producing an image with depth, akin to watercolor. Lynch says, “For me, at the present time, I’m feeling that color weakens the image. In lithography, it is not just black and white or the off-white of the paper. There can be a huge range of grey colors between the black and the white. For the time being, this is thrilling to me – just working with the black ink on the stone.”

The pieces are as dark, dense, and enigmatic as his films... and like his films, they feel like they spring from a pre-verbal place, a place of dreams, a place of the subconscious.

Top to bottom: This Is My Dream; Mister Jim Studies Abstraction; It was at Night when the Hands Reached Out and Gathered the Clouds from the Eyes and I Saw Myself; Murdered Woman In Burning Car; The Season Of The Witch

http://www.itemeditions.com/catalogue/lynch/index.html

Art publishing group Hatje Cantz has published a collection of these lithographs:
http://www.hatjecantz.de/controller.php?cmd=detail&titzif=00002673&lang=en

And visit Lynch's own site to experience his other work:
http://davidlynch.com/

Currently listening to...

...the gently percolating "Star Eyes (I Can't Catch It)" from the album "Dark Night Of The Soul" by Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse, featuring David Lynch (yes, the director). It is compelling, enigmatic, layered, shifting, elusive, peculiar, beautiful...

Sparklehorse, or Mark Linkous, was an alternative singer, songwriter and musician. He recorded "Dark Night Of The Soul" in the late 2000s with Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) and the film director David Lynch. Linkous committed suicide by shooting himself in the heart on March 6, 2010. Due to legal problems, the album was not released until after Mark's death.

http://www.sparklehorse.com/

Just RE-watched...

...David Lynch's enigmatic "Mulholland Drive."

Let's see... what can I possibly write about this superb David Lynch film that has not already been written? There are entire books and websites dedicated solely to uncovering and unearthing the mysteries and meanings of this highly enigmatic tale. The Wiki page itself is pretty extensive.

As with so many of Lynch's films, we have two stories going on, possibly at the same time, with two sets of characters. And like so many of Lynch's films, the story seems to be cyclical, with realities inside realities, or rather realities giving rise to realities. The events and characters circle around themselves, causing a chicken-or-egg conundrum. Is Betty Elms (played by Naomi Watts) a fresh-faced girl from Canada arriving in Hollywood or is she jaded, grizzled, bitter actress Diane Selwyn? Is Rita (played by Laura Elena Harring) an amnesiatic mob mistress or is she calculating, fame-seeking, cruel actress Camilla Rhodes?

Filmed in his usual Gothic, decaying-Los Angeles style (the title itself is a reference to the famed road in the Santa Monica mountains that looms above and looks down on Hollywood), the narrative is symbolic and dream-like without becoming abstract, unlike Lynch's last film "Inland Empire." We are still left with questions at the end of "Mulholland Drive," but at least we know the questions. "Inland Empire" relies heavily on a pre-verbal, pre-conscious method of story telling that works better the less one attempts to impose order. Although "Mulholland Drive" may share some of the same kind of dream logic, it plays much more like a metaphysical mystery. Since the film is divided into two sections, we must ask ourselves if we are watching Rita's dream of Diane and Camilla... or are we watching Diane dream of a better life as Betty and her girlfriend Rita? I'm not sure there are any answers... and I am not sure Lynch wants there to be answers either. Considering how his films spring from a subconscious place, one simply needs to experience it on a subconscious level. Don't ask questions, don't look for answers. Just let it exist and sift down to your subconscious.

In the original 2002 DVD release of "Mulholland Drive," there is a card entitled "David Lynch's 10 Clues to Unlocking This Thriller". The clues are:

1) Pay particular attention in the beginning of the film: At least two clues are revealed before the credits.
2) Notice appearances of the red lampshade.
3) Can you hear the title of the film that Adam Kesher is auditioning actresses for? Is it mentioned again?
4) An accident is a terrible event — notice the location of the accident.
5) Who gives a key, and why?
6) Notice the robe, the ashtray, the coffee cup.
7) What is felt, realized and gathered at the Club Silencio?
8) Did talent alone help Camilla?
9) Note the occurrences surrounding the man behind Winkie's.
10) Where is Aunt Ruth?

Recommend? Certainly. But as with so many films I recommend here, this comes with a caveat: this is not a typical, popular-at-the-Cineplex film. It requires attention, patience, powers of interpretation, and a willingness to work with ambiguous psychological states.

http://davidlynch.com/

The Unnamed Mystery

“Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.”
--Haruki Murakami

“The more unknowable the mystery, the more beautiful it is.”
--David Lynch

“The way you can go isn’t the real way. The name you can say isn’t the real name. Heaven and earth begin in the unnamed.”
--Lao Tzu

Ghost/ Sleepwalk

"Ghost of Love" by David Lynch from "Inland Empire," 2006.

"Sleepwalk" by Santo and Johnny, 1959.

Currently listening to...

..."Good Day Today" by David Lynch.
Yes, the director.
Yes, it's good.

Lynch has always been involved with the soundtracks for his films. I quite liked the song he did for INLAND EMPIRE.

"I've always loved sounds and so I built a studio where I can experiment with sound, and gradually I started experimenting with music. I'm not a musician, but I love to experiment and try to make music," Lynch said in an recent interview for the release of this single.

http://davidlynch.com/

Just watched...

...David Lynch's 2006 film "Inland Empire."



After my previous post about “Meshes Of The Afternoon” by Maya Deren and her influence on David Lynch, it seemed like the perfect time to view and write about Lynch’s 2006 epic “Inland Empire.”
But writing about “Inland Empire” is proving difficult because the film exists in such a pre-verbal, pre-conscious state, but I have come up with a few things I want to point out.

First, the facts.
The film is three hours long. And I must hasten to add that I did not care.
It is about—and saying the film is “about” something is a little bit of a stretch—a Los Angeles actress (played by the phenomenal Laura Dern) cast in a remake of a cursed Polish film that was never completed due to the death of the two lead actors. As she shoots the film, she begins to lose herself in the role she is playing… quite literally. That is what “Inland Empire” is “about” in a very general sense. At least those are the lucid plot points that stick out, that one can grab onto.

Lynch shot the film in southern California and Poland over a three year period on a small hand held digital video camera (he has vowed never to work on film again). He had no finished script to work from. Instead, over this three year period, he would think up a scene, write it down and film it quickly. Using only a small hand held camera allowed him to work in this free, spontaneous way, translating what was in his subconscious directly to a finished product without a cumbersome crew and the traditional time-consuming method of Hollywood filmmaking.

The film is an interesting, deliberate mix of shaky, almost amateurish-looking hand held camera work, and, by contrast, long slow tracking shots that must have been filmed from a dolly. And here is another shocking fact: he often used available light—a no-no in traditional filmmaking—along with odd, unconventional lighting techniques like ordinary flashlights and strobes.

Now, on to the important things.
Lynch has created this film in his established and substantial Gothic, decaying-Los Angeles style. And like many other David Lynch films, the characters morph into other characters as the story twists and turns. But more than any other David Lynch film, and more than any other film I can think of period, “Inland Empire” captures the texture of dreams. It is the blueprint of a dream—of what it is to dream, what it feels like to dream. The action in the film is cyclical. Things happen again and again, perhaps slightly different from the last time they happened, but they circle around themselves nonetheless. And exactly like a dream, some of these things end up happening before or after other events that preceded or followed them the last time. Each segment has a life of its own and can be re-arranged; time in “Inland Empire” is malleable, just like a dream.

In films, dreams are traditionally shown as a dreamer floating through a foggy ground staffed with an odd assortment of people or objects. Often a dream sequence in a film can be some sort of obvious, heavy handed take on what the dreamer is thinking. Only one other time have I seen the medium of film get the texture of a dream correct: in an episode of the HBO series “The Sopranos” called “The Test Dream,” we see a twenty-minute dream sequence that accurately recreates dream logic and the succession of places, situations, feelings and people that dreams can present.

Here in “Inland Empire,” Lynch has captured these non-sequiturs, or rather what seem to be non-sequiturs to our conscious minds. The only way our subconscious minds can communicate with us is by showing us pictures…symbols. It can’t come right out and tell us something. The concept or the word for a thing is useless to the subconscious. That is not how the subconscious works. Everything—characters, events, places—is related in “Inland Empire” in this symbolic, picture-showing, pre-verbal, pre-conscious way. All these things are all linked, despite time and location shifts.

In this symbolic vein, he uses another element to conjure the feeling of a dream: dream logic. In one sequence, Laura Dern is told to “light a cigarette, burn a hole in the silk, fold it over and look through the hole.” She does so and is granted a view into yet another reality within this film. These cryptic instructions are exactly the kind of symbols our dreaming subconscious deals in.

Lynch fashions this dream of "Inland Empire" into a nightmare. Again, I have never seen a film so accurately capture the feeling of a nightmare. And this nightmare is about the psychological states of anxiety, confusion, despair and dread. He steeps his story in claustrophobia—his characters exist in small, tight spaces. He even manages to make a cavernous sound stage into something closed and pressing. Laura Dern is trapped in sparse, squalid rooms dimly lit by a single old table lamp or in long dark hallways with a faint sconce. As the film progresses, this claustrophobia, this feeling of being trapped gives way to a feeling of being imprisoned. Characters inexplicably cry throughout this film, infected with a sense of something wrong but not knowing exactly what. It’s the feeling you get when you are alone in an unfamiliar place, perhaps in the dark… the feeling that something is behind you. I felt this unease, this sense of something wrong as well as the claustrophobia. I had a subconscious recognition of these states and was tense and frightened during this film.

I must also mention the sound design and music since it contributed greatly to the free-floating anxiety and terror in the film. The far away howl of a mournful train, muffled and menacing machinery, echoes, and downright frightening, unidentifiable sounds swirl through “Inland Empire” ratcheting up the confusion and fear. And it should be noted that David Lynch composed sections of the film score himself.

Like a dream, I perceived “Inland Empire” as a whole, but the individual elements that make it up—the symbols—somehow remain greater alone than their sum.
I think David Lynch created the film in that same way. The ideas might have come to him one by one, but his subconscious was always in charge, weaving together seemingly unrelated fragments into a compelling, mysterious, tapestry of pictures and symbols. Just like a dream.

Recommend? Yes. Yes. Yes. The more I reflect on “Inland Empire” the more I am drawn into it, and the more amazed I am by it. But this abstract film is not for everyone. It is something that needs to be experienced, not “watched.” And it needs to be experienced for what it does, not what it is about or what it means. Indeed, I believe it cannot be interpreted or understood in a traditional sense. In this way, I think this is a truly revolutionary film… the first film in history that is not really a film. It only works if you encounter it out of the corner of your eye. If you look directly at it, it fades. Just like a dream.

Trailer for "Inland Empire"

"Meshes Of The Afternoon"

On a visit to the Tate Modern in London in 2008, I was fortunate enough to encounter a showing of Maya Deren’s short film “Meshes Of the Afternoon” shot in 1943. I had never heard of Deren before but as I stood in the museum and read about her and her work, I learned that she was a key figure in the evolution of The New American Cinema and a very influential experimental filmmaker who influenced a slew of talented directors, including David Lynch.

“Meshes Of The Afternoon,” seen here, is a strange, cyclical story about a woman who is dreaming within a dream (considering my recent viewing of “Inception,” this seems apropos), starring Deren and her then-husband Alexander Hammid. Rife with symbolic imagery and objects such as a key, a flower, a knife, a Spanish-style Los Angeles house, and a cloaked figure with a mirrored face, this study of psychological states presents doubled characters and a sense of dread. A particularly favorite moment in the film comes when Deren floats up to the ceiling, seemingly unable to control her ascent (see “Inception”) which is absolutely dream-like. This version below does not feature the original Japanese-inspired soundtrack used by Deren. Any copies with the original score seem to be targeted for removal on any site. Instead, it has been left intentionally silent.

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David Lynch lifted Deren's story pretty much intact—with some typical Lynch-ian additions—to make his 2001 film “Mulholland Drive.” The idea of split or doubled characters that Deren employs to great effect in “Meshes Of the Afternoon” can be seen not only in Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive” (Naomi Watts plays Diane Selwyn and Betty Elms) which I reviewed here, but also in his films “Lost Highway” (Patricia Arquette plays double characters), “Inland Empire” (Laura Dern playing two roles) which I reviewed here, and the television series “Twin Peaks” (Sheryl Lee playing doomed Laura Palmer and her cousin Maddy).

Deren’s film also spawned remakes in the medium of pop music videos! Below, we can see model/ singer/ actress Milla Jovovich in her 1994 video for her song “Gentleman Who Fell.”

Kristin Hersh recorded “Your Ghost” with REM frontman Michael Stipe in 1994 and the video features motifs and images from “Meshes Of The Afternoon” including a key in the mouth.

Turns out that Deren and Hammid were greatly influenced in the creation of “Meshes Of The Afternoon” by one of my all-time favorite avant-garde films, the legendary and brilliant surrealist short “Un Chien Andalou” (or “An Andalusian Dog”) made by Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel in 1929.