1. People of the say about David Lynch that he was “uncompromising”, by which they mean that he followed his own vision, that he never sold out, that he never made movies to appeal to the industry and its standards.
Thank you! I remember opening night of Dune and we each were handed a double-sided sheet of the terminology. I already knew the terms, but was so held in the world Lynch made. Thank you for this reflection and the comparative world-shaping out of Lynch's use of the occult! The box!
Yes! I have mine in my office, but here is a website that shows what it looked like front and back. You know you're in for a ride when they hand you a sheet of terminology!
This connection between economics and art made me think of how Faulkner claimed to write Sanctuary primarily to make money and that it was a “cheap idea,” but it’s one of my favorite Faulkner novels—super-compressed, enigmatic and tense. It’s almost as if writing from a “cheap idea” freed him up in some ways, so that the grotesqueness just speaks for itself (unlike many of his later novels, where there’s an ongoing commentary alongside the events).
And the idea of how some of Lynch’s films/TV shows have their climax near the middle instead of the end is really intriguing. I think Blue Velvet could arguably be thought of along the same lines, with the scenes at Ben’s brothel followed by Frank beating up Jeffery (“You know what a lover letter is?”) being the moments where the story takes the deepest plunge into the weird. In the following scenes, it’s almost as if Jefferey “wakes up,” and the movie returns to a certain amount of normalcy again (though Lynch’s normal is still really damn strange).
This way of putting the climax in the middle runs counter to a movie like 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the trajectory is progressively towards the fringes, or most supernatural horror films, where the occult manifestations increase as the movie goes on. I wonder if this has something to do with the Mobius strip quality of Lynch’s sensibility. The “half-twist” isn’t towards the end but towards the middle to emphasize a loop versus linear effect, and the weird/strange becomes not a finale (a eureka moment) but instead a moment of transition into another form of reality.
For example, in Mulholland Drive, one usual interpretation is that the Betty storyline from the first part of the movie is Diane’s wish-fulfillment dream, and that the Diane narrative is the “real” narrative. But the Diane narrative includes some very dreamlike scenes (the fucked-up dinner party, for example, or the elderly couple who barge into her apartment), which contradicts the idea we’re in “everyday reality” mode once we encounter Diane.
To me, a more interesting approach is to see both sides as “real,” with Betty/Diane as two branches of reality continually haunting one another (a bit in the style of Borges’ “The Garden of Forking Paths”). The first approach (Diane dreams up Betty’s storyline) implies a psychological approach to Mulholland Drive, while the other (both Diane and Betty are “real”) leans in on the metaphysical side.
This dynamic relates to The Return too, I think. Even after Cooper “wakes up,” the last episode suggest “Cooper” is no longer the cheerful, quirky character we knew from the original series, but a figure that’s displaced, unmoored. He barely smiles in that last episode (very un-Cooper-like!) and he himself doesn’t seem to completely understand why he wants to take Laura (in this world, “Carrie Page”) back to her family’s house in Twin Peaks.
To complicate this further, as you point out, the climax of The Return is Episode 8. I think some viewers (myself included) thought Episode 8 would operate like the blue box in Mulholland Drive, and become the hinge moment where Dougie turns into Cooper (as the blue box is the hinge moment where Betty morphs into Diane). But we’re still a long way off from Cooper appearing again.
Instead, Episode 8 could maybe be the Mobius twist in The Return itself, the “twist” placing us in the zone of a highly stylized past (to the 50s, to the nuclear test, maybe even to Laura Palmer’s mother, Sarah, if the teenage girl is her, as some viewers argue) before we’re abruptly brought back to the “present” in the next episode (a “present” that splits apart again in the last episodes). Here, the twist is less character related (Betty/Diane) and more narrative related, becoming an cryptic and free-associative "backstory" for the series as a whole so that it's impossible to watch the remaining episodes without the magnetic pull of episode 8.
Anyway, again, really thought-provoking post! The Lynch/Anger connection is interesting too. Different as they were as filmmakers, I think they had an underlying similarity in how they approached the artistic process, even if they seem to be coming at it from opposite angles.
Thank you! I remember opening night of Dune and we each were handed a double-sided sheet of the terminology. I already knew the terms, but was so held in the world Lynch made. Thank you for this reflection and the comparative world-shaping out of Lynch's use of the occult! The box!
You got a handout in the movie theater??
Yes! I have mine in my office, but here is a website that shows what it looked like front and back. You know you're in for a ride when they hand you a sheet of terminology!
https://www.openculture.com/2014/08/glossary-david-lynchs-dune-1984.html
Wow i had no idea, thats incredible.
never seen Premontions Following An Evil Deed before, loved it
Yeah I think its incredible. Esp when you watch the others in the series. Hes able to do so much in such a short time.
Great post, Johannes!
This connection between economics and art made me think of how Faulkner claimed to write Sanctuary primarily to make money and that it was a “cheap idea,” but it’s one of my favorite Faulkner novels—super-compressed, enigmatic and tense. It’s almost as if writing from a “cheap idea” freed him up in some ways, so that the grotesqueness just speaks for itself (unlike many of his later novels, where there’s an ongoing commentary alongside the events).
And the idea of how some of Lynch’s films/TV shows have their climax near the middle instead of the end is really intriguing. I think Blue Velvet could arguably be thought of along the same lines, with the scenes at Ben’s brothel followed by Frank beating up Jeffery (“You know what a lover letter is?”) being the moments where the story takes the deepest plunge into the weird. In the following scenes, it’s almost as if Jefferey “wakes up,” and the movie returns to a certain amount of normalcy again (though Lynch’s normal is still really damn strange).
This way of putting the climax in the middle runs counter to a movie like 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the trajectory is progressively towards the fringes, or most supernatural horror films, where the occult manifestations increase as the movie goes on. I wonder if this has something to do with the Mobius strip quality of Lynch’s sensibility. The “half-twist” isn’t towards the end but towards the middle to emphasize a loop versus linear effect, and the weird/strange becomes not a finale (a eureka moment) but instead a moment of transition into another form of reality.
For example, in Mulholland Drive, one usual interpretation is that the Betty storyline from the first part of the movie is Diane’s wish-fulfillment dream, and that the Diane narrative is the “real” narrative. But the Diane narrative includes some very dreamlike scenes (the fucked-up dinner party, for example, or the elderly couple who barge into her apartment), which contradicts the idea we’re in “everyday reality” mode once we encounter Diane.
To me, a more interesting approach is to see both sides as “real,” with Betty/Diane as two branches of reality continually haunting one another (a bit in the style of Borges’ “The Garden of Forking Paths”). The first approach (Diane dreams up Betty’s storyline) implies a psychological approach to Mulholland Drive, while the other (both Diane and Betty are “real”) leans in on the metaphysical side.
This dynamic relates to The Return too, I think. Even after Cooper “wakes up,” the last episode suggest “Cooper” is no longer the cheerful, quirky character we knew from the original series, but a figure that’s displaced, unmoored. He barely smiles in that last episode (very un-Cooper-like!) and he himself doesn’t seem to completely understand why he wants to take Laura (in this world, “Carrie Page”) back to her family’s house in Twin Peaks.
To complicate this further, as you point out, the climax of The Return is Episode 8. I think some viewers (myself included) thought Episode 8 would operate like the blue box in Mulholland Drive, and become the hinge moment where Dougie turns into Cooper (as the blue box is the hinge moment where Betty morphs into Diane). But we’re still a long way off from Cooper appearing again.
Instead, Episode 8 could maybe be the Mobius twist in The Return itself, the “twist” placing us in the zone of a highly stylized past (to the 50s, to the nuclear test, maybe even to Laura Palmer’s mother, Sarah, if the teenage girl is her, as some viewers argue) before we’re abruptly brought back to the “present” in the next episode (a “present” that splits apart again in the last episodes). Here, the twist is less character related (Betty/Diane) and more narrative related, becoming an cryptic and free-associative "backstory" for the series as a whole so that it's impossible to watch the remaining episodes without the magnetic pull of episode 8.
Anyway, again, really thought-provoking post! The Lynch/Anger connection is interesting too. Different as they were as filmmakers, I think they had an underlying similarity in how they approached the artistic process, even if they seem to be coming at it from opposite angles.
Yeah such a good point about Blue Velvet. Some people seem to treat it as a ”well made” marrative but that makes no sense.
And yes amen to the real/fantasy divide. Im inclined to believe the movies - ie that in the occult space of the movie, personhood is unstable.