Tribute: David Lynch

It is tribute time once again. Rachel, over at Top Horror Movies Club, contacted me a few weeks ago. Rachel wanted to know if I would be interested in doing a guest review for each others blog. I'm always happy to work with other bloggers, so I jumped at the chance to do so. I haven't really decided what I will do for Rachel's blog yet, but once I do, I will let all of you know so you can check it out. In the mean time, feel free to check out what Rachel herself has posted there. Since my last guest review was in the form of a tribute post, I asked Rachel if she would be interested in doing the same. I gave her the choice of doing a review for her favorite director, and she chose to do a review of one of David Lynch's films. The only problem I had with that is that I don't know his films very well. Once I got done with The Eye series review, I threw myself into some research for this post. It took a little longer than I was hoping it would, but I feel ready to do the write up now.

David Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana on January 20, 1946. He was raised throughout the Pacific Northwest and in Durham, North Carolina. An interesting thing about his childhood is that on his 15th birthday, he served as an usher at John F. Kennedy's Presidential Inauguration. Lynch intended to become an artist, and attended classes at Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., while finishing high school at the same time. From there he enrolled in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He was there for a year before deciding to go to Europe with friend, and fellow artist, Jack Fisk. Lynch planned on staying in Europe for a few years, but came back after only fifteen days.

In 1966, Lynch moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Even though he was still taking classes to be an artist, Lynch purchased his first camera while there. That same year, Lynch completed his first short film, Six Men Getting Sick. It won the best short at the Academy's film festival. In 1970, Lynch made the move to focus entirely on film. He directed The Grandmother, which is said to have many of the benchmarks that show up in his later films. In 1971, Lynch got a grant and started filming Eraserhead. Only problem is, he was unable to finish the film on the grant money alone, so it sat in limbo for a while. His friend, Jack Fisk, helped him out with the money. With that, and money that he earned from a paper route even, he was able to finish the film, which was released in 1977. Eraserhead was said to be unreleasable though, until distributor Ben Barenholtz picked it up to show at the midnight slot that many theaters were showing films for. Like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Eraserhead became a cult classic thanks to the midnight show times.

In 1980, Lynch was hired by Mel Brooks to direct The Elephant Man. Around this time, George Lucas tried to get Lynch to direct Return Of The Jedi, which of course we know that Lynch turned down. Lynch felt that film would be more Lucas's vision instead of his own, which is why he decided to turn it down. That is too bad in my view, maybe the Ewoks would have been more interesting if Lynch was directing it. Instead of directing for Lucas, Lynch went on to direct Dune. Lynch decided to direct Dune, which flopped at the box office, in order to get a deal to direct a film that he would have complete control over. That film was Blue Velvet (1986), which is the subject for Rachel's guest review.

As I said above, I haven't really watched any of David Lynch's films, but I keep being told I need to watch them. I have watched parts of Dune, but have yet to watch it from start to finish. The only film I can say that I have watched completely would be Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, which also flopped at the box office. The reason I watched that film is because a friend of mine got me into watching the TV series, that another friend put on VHS for us. I got about half way through the first season. I enjoyed watching it, and really got into it, but for some reason I never finished it. What I liked about it was the sense of the underlying weirdness and odd events that took place. As I understand it, that is a benchmark of Lynch. When Rachel told me she wanted to do a review of one of Lynch's films, she had this to say as to why, "I prefer movies were the atmosphere is the strongest element and he was pretty good at that." I will stop talking here, and turn things over to Rachel for her review of Blue Velvet.

David Lynch is one of my favorite Cinematographers.

Someone once said that the as you grow older the things that scare you change. When you are young - dismembered zombies or violent ghosts or things that go bump in the night might be the things that cause you insurmountable fear, but as you grow older you discover that the scariest things of all are right there, in front of your face in your very own reality.
That is why, although many of his films do not fall under the official definition of horror, but are called surreal or twisted or art, I find that at least some of David Lynch's films could easily be categorized as horror movies.

Blue Velvet, for example or Eraserhead, Lynch's very first feature that speak about real life from a nightmarish point of view.

Blue Velvet occurs in perfect picket fence small town America. A young man, Jeffery, is on the way home from visiting his father in the hospital, and finds a severed ear in a vacant lot.
He immediately takes it to the police, but is not satisfied with their progress in investigating whose ear it was. Along with the detective's high school daughter (Laura Dern), he starts playing boy detective to try and solve the mystery himself. This leads to meeting one of the suspects, Dorothy, a Femme Fatale of sorts, (played by Isabella Rossellini) who unlike the usual femme fatale who is both sexy on the outside and knows exactly what she wants and how she is going about to get it, Dorothy is very sexy externally, but internally has many tormentors and is generally sad and a bit pathetic.

Meeting Dorothy leads to meeting Frank, Dorothy's perverted sadistic lover , which leads into a whole lot of darkness, horror and fear, all of this behind the perfect white picket fences of your everyday small town America. (I will not go into spoilers - if you want more see the movie)

The movie is very graphic in its depiction of all the perverse sexual and violent happenings, and not at all easy to watch, much more difficult to me than your regular slasher movie.

The way Lynch creates the fear is very subtle, for example one of the people he murders in the film is left standing near a lamp, with half his scull blown away. For the whole scene of the discovery of the bodies, the lamp, whose light bulb was blown away in the process of the murder, it seems, emits a dull electric buzz that is both eerie and annoying for the entirety of the scene.

Dennis Hopper, who plays Frank the psychopath, got the role after years of substance abuse and of a bad reputation as a result, plays the part of a lifetime in this movie - subsequently reviving his acting career.

This movie is certainly not for everyone. The faint of heart (of which I can't imagine many among the Mermaids readers) should stay away, and the lovers of great cinematography should rush to see if they haven't yet.