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I would say that I love David Lynch, but it doesn't seem like I come from the most informed place, seeing as I've only watched Mulholland Drive, Blue Velvet, The Elephant Man and Twin Peaks. Still, that's several hours of Lynch-stuff, and probably more then enough to figure out whether or not you like his style. I also heard his music before I'd even seen any of his films, and I quite like it, even though Lynch is an acquired taste as a singer. First Lynch film I saw was Mulholland Drive, and I think I was expecting Lynch's style to be more...body horror, like Cronenberg. I guess people had told me his work was nightmarish, and I interpreted nightmarish in the wrong way. But I loved the visuals and the sound design and it just stuck with me. I'm now a video reviewer of LGBT films - so if you're interested, here's my thoughts on Mulholland Drive (as it compares to Black Swan) and a little bit about Lynch in general, and then my thoughts on how gender and sexuality is treated in Blue Velvet. The latter link also features what's essentially Lynch cosplay, so if anyone finds a 20something year old woman dressing up as David Lynch amusing, there you go. If you like Lynch's visual style, I'd also recommend the work of Gregory Crewdson, the photographer. There's a great documentary about him on Netflix called Brief Encounters.
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Jan 17, 2015 22:19
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I'm also recommending Mysteries of Love, the documentary about the making of Blue Velvet. It's a great insight into the film and the process of making it, although in a sense they didn't address something I wanted them to address. (Frank's sexual harassment and possible sexual assault of Jeffrey Beaumont.) It also didn't align entirely with my interpretation of the film, but that's fine. I think Picnic at Hanging Rock is a bit Lynchian. The way that Peter Weir makes inanimate objects and bland scenes become terrifying matches up, and the theme of the missing girls aligns pretty well with the themes and mood of Twin Peaks.
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Jan 18, 2015 09:50
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Wisconsin Death Trip is like a lynchian docudrama, about the absolutely horrible poo poo that happened in a small town in 1800s era Wisconsin. I don't think the documentary is 100% successful, but god it has mood. Along those lines, The White Ribbon has some intriguing nastiness to it. Music-wise, Julee Cruise is a long-time Lynch collaborator, and an obvious choice, as is "Silenco: Music inspired by the work of David Lynch."
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Jan 18, 2015 22:34
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:(For newbies) Here's my rough list of the order I recommend you should watch films in: I watched Mulholland Drive first, and I think that's a pretty good starting point, although Blue Velvet would be an equally good place to start from. What are the lost scenes? I heard that Frank rapes Jeffrey in the original script, that, but that could just be a rumour that I read on imdb or something.
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Jan 19, 2015 23:20
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I think I would have liked Fire Walk With Me more if I'd somehow been able to divorce it from my experience of watching Twin Peaks. It's a very well made stand-alone movie, but if you view it as a continuation of Twin Peaks, it simply shows you what we already know. So I wasn't upset because the tone was dark, I think the tone was great. I was more..well, not upset, but mildly unsatisfied, by the fact that it wasn't offering anything new narrative-wise. Still, my expectations were very low, since everyone had told me it was horrible, so I was pleasantly surprised. Josef K. Sourdust posted:Yes, that scene you mentioned is in there but it is only explicitly hinted at after the fact - not shown on camera. For some reason it was cut - more artistic than length, I think. I didn't think Lynch cut it because he was too scared to show it or anything (although it's possible the MPAA might have been on his case about it), more that he cut it for length reasons. As it stands, you can interpret the scene in a couple of ways (the violence was sexual, or the violence wasn't sexual), and both of them fit the narrative. But the scene of him waking up in the gravel lot reminded me of Boys Don't Cry, so it definitely led me more in one direction rather than another. What do other people think about the way Lynch handles gender roles and sexuality? I've admittedly only watched 4 Lynch projects (5 if you count FWWM as separate from Twin Peaks) but the way he writes gender roles is interesting. Jeffrey could have been a girl, and the story would have played out very similarly, since it shows him as a scared kid who's prayed upon, out of his depth and who defeats the bad guy more or less in self defence. All of these are attributes which one might stereotypically associate more with a female heroine. And both Rita and Betty could have been two men, or a man and a woman, and the story could have been more-or-less the same, since there's no explicit reference to them being unusual/discriminated against/whatever else due to their sexuality. Hell, even the line "I've never done this before" could make sense for a straight woman if she were as much of a naive ingenue as Betty. Twin Peaks plays on stereotypical gender roles a lot more, but many of the characters don't necessarily perform straightforward "male" or "female" roles. I guess what I'm saying is while Lynch is aware of roles and stereotypes, he tends to play off them, and give his characters far more to do and far more to be than just simply being a woman, or a love interest, or a generic male hero.
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Jan 20, 2015 01:31
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