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Blue Velvet (1986)
Blue Velvet is the first major David Lynch film proper. We've taken a left turn from the films prior to this and now we're travelling down a new road with many twists and turns and detours. Kyle McLachlan stars as a high school kid with a nose for intrigue. The start of the movie finds him walking through the woods on his way home from school when he stumbles across a human ear. He takes it to the local police station and next thing you know he's embroiled with the local psycho gangster - a disturbingly convincing performance by Dennis Hopper - and all sorts of other shady goings on. This is the first of many explorations of twisted sexuality and the evil that lurks under the surface of the most unassuming places, and people. It's a midnight rollercoaster of a movie that will have you on the edge of your seat wondering what madness lies round the next corner, once it's been established that all is not what it seems. |
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Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
Lynch decided to expand on the television series with this full length feature which traces the story of Laura Palmer up to and including her death. Most of the cast returns in some capacity and as it's a feature film there's scope for being much more explicit about the sex and violence hinted at in the TV show, and there are some exquisite set-pieces that just wouldn't have been possible on television. The scene in the nightclub with the subtitles is inspired - nobody has ever tinkered with sound to such great effect as David Lynch - and the scenes in the Black Lodge are exceedingly disturbing. We're also afforded a truly terrifying glimpse into the details of how Laura Palmer came to end up wrapped in plastic and floating down the river of Twin Peaks, where the television series first began. Often dismissed as one of Lynch's weaker films, this has so many powerful and innovatively shot scenes I actually think it's one of his best efforts, ranking right up there with the likes of Blue Velvet and Inland Empire. |
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The Straight Story (1999)
David Lynch directs a Disney film. Nobody saw that one coming. It's a more conventional, and strictly linear film, and an oddity in Lynch's filmography in that the folksy atmosphere and nice people we meet are not revealed to be evil under the guise of normalcy. Nope - what you see is what you get this time around. It's the true story of Alvin Straight, a man who decides to make peace with his estranged brother who lives a few states away. The only problem is that he is unable to get there by conventional means so he sets off in his riding mower on a journey that will thus take him quite a while. As it turns out Richard Farnsworth, the actor who plays Alvin, was dying of cancer while this movie was filming and every emotion you can imagine is written up there on his face. He gives a magnificent performance as a man who's lived a full life and has learned a lot of things in his time, and wants to be at peace with the world and those close to him before he dies. Although not typical of his work - there are little touches of oddness here and there, but nothing unsettling - it's one of Lynch's best films, not least because it has a degree of subtlety that's rare in films, and which serves to makes the moving scenes more moving and the gentle comedy more satisfyingly amusing. |
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Mulholland Drive (2001)
This is what we've come to expect from a David Lynch film: Fun with sound, disturbing imagery, strange characters saying strange things, one character turning into another - or maybe not. I thought this film was excellent. It was nominated for an Oscar, but the chances of it winning were slim to say the least. It's about a young woman who comes to Hollywood to become an actress and there seems to be two versions running simultaneously of what happens to her once she arrives; one where she quickly becomes happy and succesful and one where she struggles and is unhappy, but there are some very strange goings on in both versions. There are a couple of scenes which stuck with me; one at the back of the diner with the homeless bum, and one with the nightclub singer. I get the feeling Lynch got closer than he's ever been to getting what's in his head on to film with this one. |
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Inland Empire (2006)
Lynch continues his journey of the mind with this horrific tale of madness, obsession, murder, revenge and ghostly dreamscapes. Laura Dern is astounding as a fading Hollywood actress given a part in a film which will surely signal her comeback, but there's a catch: the script was from an old Polish film where murder was afoot and prduction stopped - rumour has it it's haunted. We follow Dern's descent into madness over three hours of the most bizarre mainstream cinema you'll ever encounter. Lynch filmed this entirely on digital video over the course of four years, and has intercut his internet feature 'Rabbits' throughout. If this is what's inside David Lynch's head - and I believe he's managed to convey what's in the musty recesses of that brilliant but confusing mind of his one hundred percent this time around - then that's a pretty scary, but thoroughly fascinating place to be. This is his biggest and most dangerous mystery to date, and a fitting end to a brilliant career. |
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