David Lynch was the creative force behind Eraserhead, Twin Peaks, and many more iconic works. (Supplied : Scott Dudelson/Getty Images : Showtime)
American filmmaker, writer and artist David Lynch — who has died, aged 78 — was truly one of a kind. With a career spanning six decades, his dark, subversive visions earned him a dedicated cult following and he was held in high esteem by critics.
His influence was so far-reaching that the term 'Lynchian' was commonly attributed to anything that loosely resembled his distinctive mood and aesthetic. However, though deeply inspirational, his style was impossible to imitate.
Consistently treading the line between dream and reality, his surreal work juxtaposed the comforts of everyday Americana with disturbing themes and nightmarish imagery, a universe where innocence and perversion were closer than you'd think.
Here are some of our favourite moments from David Lynch's illustrious career.
Mulholland Drive (2001)
There's an amount of mental preparation necessary when undertaking Lynch's cinema, but the beauty of Mulholland Drive is how it lures you into its labyrinth. It's a psycho-sexual, avante garde thought experiment on Hollywood's dark underbelly, disguised as a classic noir mystery.
The set-up is compelling and, crucially, comprehensible: An aspiring actress fresh to L.A. (Naomi Watts) befriends a woman (Laura Elena Harring) suffering amnesia after a car crash.
Laura Elena Harring and Naomi Watts brace for the bizarre in a scene from Mulholland Drive. (Supplied: Universal Pictures)
But then the curveballs come thick and fast, with branching, brain-bending plot points that plunge the viewer into a maze of nightmarish hallucinations and atmospheric intensity… and it's all the better for it.
Boasting impressive technical craft, dynamic performances and uncomfortable yet unforgettable scenes, Mulholland Drive offers a vertical slice of Lynch's bracingly strange pie, making it a great introduction for first-timers.
— Al Newstead
Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)
The original TV drama series, set in the titular Pacific Northwest town, follows an FBI investigation into the murder of local teenager Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). It ended in 1991 on a cliffhanger that prompted decades of theorising. But, as promised by Palmer herself, ("I'll see you in 25 years"), Twin Peaks made a surprise return for a third season.
While Lynch reunited with co-writer Mark Frost and the majority of the TV show's cast, The Return was — even for Lynch — a dark, distorted portrait of the quirky Northwest town millions first fell in love with. A place where bizarre, transcendent beauty and great evil bloomed in equal measure.
It also withheld fan service, best typified by actor Kyle MacLachlan, who spends most of the series bumbling wordlessly as salaryman Dougie Jones. His Dale Cooper — Twin Peaks's enigmatic, endlessly optimistic FBI cop hero — is nowhere within his body, a light bulb burned out. And where was Laura Palmer? Is Audrey Horne okay?
Twin Peaks's third season arrived 26 years after the second, continually teasing audiences who hoped it would solve the show's biggest mysteries. (Suzanne Tenner/Showtime)
The Return eschewed answers and tipped the scales into evil's favour, instead interrogating the fear underneath all of Lynch's work, voiced by a minor Twin Peaks character: "The possibility that love is not enough."
Part 8 contains the most singular moment of the series, a largely black-and-white, wordless exploration of humanity's point of no return: Trinity, the US government's 1945 nuclear bomb test. From afar, we see it explode before its cloud reaches the camera, prompting a many-minute journey through its fires and flames, set to the discordant 'Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima'.
Even though he was beloved by millions, Lynch's work always felt like a secret code whispered just to you, indecipherable, bypassing the conscious for the transcendental. But occasionally, out of the blue and in the most irreverent, silly scenes (of which, despite the darkness, there are countless), there were direct calls for kindness and resistance to the forces of pain out of our control. As Lynch's own character would say, "Fix your hearts or die."
— Jared Richards
Eraserhead (1977)
I don't know what to make of Lynch's debut feature. I don't even know if I like it. I just know that ever since I rented it on VHS back in high school, it's a particular nightmare that's never going to completely let me go.
It's a black-and-white surrealist film about a man who must confront and reckon with his monstrous, sperm-like baby. (An inspiration to Etsy craft-makers everywhere, it would seem.)
Umm… Cute? (ABC: Google Image)
The film's nightmarish body horror will hit you hard in the face, but it's the unsettling, layered sound design (by Lynch, along with frequent collaborator Alan Splet) that keeps you trapped in this unpleasant dream, not allowing even a moment's respite.
But let's get back to the baby. Because it's really about the baby. I'm not going to lie, during the birth of my eldest son, I thought about the Eraserhead baby.
Is that weird? Probably. But I'm sure I'm not alone there.
— Christian Harimanow
Dune (1984)
Lynch's adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi epic is mind-boggling, deeply weird, at times troublingly bad, and truly unforgettable.
Lynch consistently disavowed Dune — and in a scathing one-star review, film critic Rogert Ebert called it "a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time." Jeepers.
But over the years, Lynch's Dune has become a cult classic for exactly those reasons. Imagine the Blue Velvet auteur making a creepy, surrealist version of Star Wars, but with a fraction of the special-effects budget, and you get the idea.
If your primary exposure to the world of Arrakis has been Denis Villeneuve's sweeping, big-budget, sandworm-infested, Zendaya-and-Timothée Chalamet-filled epics, it's worth your while delving into the historical oddity of Lynch's version and, with the benefit of hindsight, appreciate that it ever got made.
You'll be rewarded with a young Kyle MacLachlan as Paul Atreides, doing his best to make bad sfx work; Patrick Stewart charging into battle with a pug; and Sting as a deranged ginger Harkonnen nephew in a blue cod piece that you can never unsee.
Weird is wonderful. Battle pugs 4-eva.
— Beverley Wang
Lost Highway (1997)
Lost Highway parked itself in front of David Lynch fans five years after the end of Twin Peaks. It was a bold return to form — a hypnotic film that sinks into the shadow life of Los Angeles.
Bill Pullman plays Fred, an experimental saxophonist married to Alice (Patrcia Arquette), who begins to suspect foul play in their home. Fred meets the eyebrow-less Mystery Man (Robert Blake, who was tried for the killing of his wife) at a party. Madness descends. Let it fall over you, feel your way through it. Decoding the narrative puzzle, as with much of Lynch's work, is not really the point.
Robert Blake as the sinister Mystery Man in Lost Highway. (Supplied: Universal Pictures)
Because the director always recommended watching the film over having a take on the film, I will instead leave you with this quote from Lynch's book, Catching The Big Fish — a rare, explicit insight into his inspiration:
"At the time Barry Gifford and I were writing the script for Lost Highway, I was sort of obsessed with the O.J. Simpson trial. Barry and I never talked about it this way, but I think the film is somehow related to that … What struck me about O.J. Simpson was that he was able to smile and laugh. He was able to go golfing with seemingly very few problems about the whole thing.
"I wondered how, if a person did these deeds, he could go on living. And we found this great psychology term — 'psychogenic fugue' — describing an event where the mind tricks itself to escape some horror. So, in a way, Lost Highway is about that. And the fact that nothing can stay hidden forever."
— Bhakthi Puvanenthiran
Dark Night of the Soul (2010)
Music was at the heart and soul of so much of David Lynch's art. Whether flipping Roy Orbison for a haunting Spanish rendition ("Silencio!") or working closely with composer Angelo Badalamenti and dreamy vocalist Julee Cruise, his unique musical choices were about so much more than mere soundtrack.
He famously tapped David Bowie to feature in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and enlisted Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor to produce the Lost Highway soundtrack. He also directed music videos for Moby, Interpol, and Chris Isaak's 'Wicked Game'.
Lynch explored his musical side on several solo projects (most recently, last year's Cellophane Dreams with US singer Chrystabell) and contributed to many more as a lyricist, producer, guitarist and keys player.
A look into David Lynch's key musical moments
Photo shows A close-up of David Lynch's face
An underrated gem in his discography is Dark Night Of The Soul, a collaborative album made with revered producer Danger Mouse and the late, great Sparklehorse.
Richly layered, often melancholic but deeply beautiful, the record features a star-studded roster of vocalists — including members of The Strokes, Flaming Lips, Pixies, The Shins plus Iggy Pop and Suzanne Vega.
Lynch compiled an accompanying book of photography and sang on two album tracks: the dusty, noirish title track and 'Star Eyes (I Can't Catch It)'. The former would fit snugly in one of his movies, but it's the latter that hits different in the wake of his death — an abstraction of simple words ("Sun. Shine. Be. Mine. Come. Back.") delivered with wide-eyed optimism, but landing with disarming poignancy.
— Al Newstead
The endlessly quotable David Lynch
While it's obvious to honour a film legend of David Lynch's calibre with the cinema he gifted us, it's important to recognise his creative influence outside of film, too. We'd be remiss not to recognise how his meme appeal is deeply entrenched in his legacy.
With his unabashed nature to tell it like it is — from consumerism in film to the weather outside — his quips and quotes were always deeply relatable, even if they were a little cryptic most of the time.
One of the best Lynchian memes was born from a 2007 BAFTAs lecture. When asked to elaborate on why he believed his 1977 surrealist body horror, Eraserhead, was his "most spiritual film", Lynch simply replied: "No."
Giving absolutely nothing when asked an interrogative question, Lynch continued to subvert expectations. Can you ever truly know what's going on inside that enigmatic brain? A person who — as longtime collaborator and Agent Dale Cooper, Kyle MacLachlan, put it — was "in touch with something the rest of us wish we could get to". There's relativity in the absurd, and thus, a meme was born.
There are endless quotes from Lynch's time on this plane of existence that we get to take joy in for eternity, but it's this one, quoted by his family at the news of his death, that hits the hardest:
"Keep your eye on the donut, not the hole."
— Courtney Fry