It's a strange movie in Lynch's canon, but I love The Elephant Man. It could be very well the movie David Lean could have made. The other one is A Straight Story. Maybe you can tell I don't car much for Lynch's tast for everything macabre and Freudian.
Mulholland Dr. for me, without a doubt. The thing that's most interesting to me about Lynch is the way that he seems to be obsessively going over and over the same basic plot in movie after movie: the woman in distress. To me, it seems like he's trying to work something out on an unconscious level.
9 years since his last film, Inland Empire. Depressing. I went with Mulholland Drive. Possibly my favourite film of all time. Definitely top 5.
Couldn't have said it better myself. Saw it 5 times when it came out, a masterpiece. My second favorite is 'Fire Walk With Me' , probably the second-weirdist movie he's made so far. After seeing the premier (where 90% of the audience walked out) I was filling out my score-card & there was the question "would you recommend this movie to your friends & family?" and I penciled in 'hell no!'
He did a fine job with it but it's a rare "work for hire" movie in his filmography, so i don't think fans really see it as a core Lynch movie.
He's done some great stuff, but he's also a bit of a one-trick pony, which is probably why he hasn't made a film in so long (or he's sick of making movies). What is David Lynch except someone who brings the grotesque element to films as high art. As an art student, he traveled to Europe and became enchanted with German artists Otto Dix and Georg Groszman (sp) and their grotesque caricatures. I'm sure at the same time he was exposed to Brechtian and avantgarde/experimental theater, which is really what he's all about. There are lots of famous people working in the theater -- Richard Foreman, the Wooster Group -- who have been doing for decades what Lynch does on film. I think that's what makes him stand out as a director, he's bringing the avantgarde theater, along with his predilection for grotesque art, to film. It's something most directors don't attempt because its a)non-commercial and b) at odds with the nature of filmmaking, which is anti-theater in many ways. It's also limiting and that's why I think Lynch's later films branched out into more "normal" territory and why they also began feeling tired. Lynch was lucky he wasn't pidgeon holed early on as an "art director," his horror film debut and jump into mainstream cinema prevented that. If "Eraserhead" hadn't caught Mel Brook's eye, he probably would have soon vanished making low-budget indie art films no one had ever heard of. Some people here are fans of his "straight" work aka "The Straight Story," while others love his film "Mulholland Drive" which I personally feel is a sign that Lynch was running out of steam, and the result was so uneven and unfinished he had to go a step further and employ a "Wizard of Oz" escape plan or Nietzschian eternal recurance theme to tie up the loose ends and give it any semblance of being a complete story. Who is the famous filmmaker that said, "Once the critics figure out your tricks, they start to hate you"? I think even Lynch realized this by the time "Mulholland Drive" came around and he had to kick the film into the realm of pure "art film," which most audience won't stand for, to at least hold his core audience or bring in new fans who weren't yet weary of his style. Since then, he's pulled back on making films possibly for wont of a new approach to his next. I guess I'm just one of those critics who have "caught on" to his tricks, because I loved him early on but by the time "Lost Highway" rolled around, I realized he was floundering to make sense of his own ouvre, or it had become so obtuse he began to sense the emptiness disguised as high art that his own work had become. On the other hand, I was never a fan of "Twin Peaks" and find it annoyingly mannered; a silly, a watered down version of his grotesquery for television. So is he a great filmmaker? Absolutely, he's put some marvelous stuff on film. But did he burn out on his own highly stylized vision, I think so.
Wow, considering how often I've disagreed with you before, I'm surprised how much of this I agree on! Are you a professional critic, chadbang?
The problem he had with Mulholland Drive was that he had to come up with an ending for a rejected TV pilot that after an hour and a half had only barely begun telling a story... hence the radical solution of upending the whole thing instead of trying to extend and complete the original storyline (which he had never even come up with any plans for).
I'm pretty well in line with the norm here: I view Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive as his finest accomplishments. I find Lynch to be a little frustrating. At his best, he's amazing, but at his worst (Inland Empire, I'm looking at you), he's painfully bad. We'll see if he's able to regain his mojo with the return of Twin Peaks.
I'm hoping the new Twin Peaks is a creative resurgence rather than a desperate rehash of an old success or a cash grab. I feel like Lynch isn't generally motivated by money or acclaim so I have my fingers crossed that he actually has a good idea. It may have been the only way he could get a decent budget to work on something though... chadbang speculated above that he has stopped making movies because he ran out of steam creatively but I think it was more that his work was too uncommercial to attract much in the way of funding. Even Mulholland Drive with all its acclaim barely made a cent at the box office.
Best film ? The Elephant Man. Hard to believe Mel Brookes was involved in this film. Cult movie choice'Wild At Heart'.
My favorite is Wild at Heart. 'Best' is probably Blue Velvet (recently screened the Blu and was stunned by how good it looks) but WaH is both coherent and completely unhinged.
It's close between Mulholland, Fire Walk and Inland Empire but went with IE. Yes, it is a bit of a mess but an engaging mess. Love the soundtrack.
While I don't disagree with anything you're saying here as far as it is actually a valid opinion of his work and/or evolution, I have to confess this is spoken like a true lukewarm Lynch fan at best. Of course he has a distinct, arguably repetitive style because he's one of the most idiosyncratic visual artists since Picasso or Dali or Warhol or even Kubrick (who was also a contemporary I know). Maybe that same cinematic style is slightly more redundant than the previous artists mentioned, but on the other hand the uniqueness of his vision is practically its own genre (plus he's all over the board-writing, music, painting, carpentry, directing, etc, etc). The very fact that time and again Lynch is able to infuse his distinct artistic sensibilities into relatively accessible, popular films (or shows) is in and of itself a tremendous feat, but beyond that he still brings plenty to the table with each new work even if they aren't all masterpieces. So while I can't say that your assessment of his career is inaccurate because in a way he does often make films that can't be labeled as "masterpieces" or even "something totally new", I would counter it by saying as opposed to the notion that he simply "recycles" a certain style, he actually explores his personal aesthetic to its fullest extent and that the differences between all his major films are substantial enough to label no single one of them as derivative of the other. They're similar films with similar themes because Lynch is such a unique, brilliant artist, not in spite of the fact. And there is no disguise--the man is quite blatantly a once-in-a-lifetime artist regardless of how good his films are.
And as a quick follow up, I should add that your knowledge of his influences is impressive, but ultimately everyone has their influences. It doesn't make Lynch's style any less "Lynchian" even if it was done before on stage in Europe or in painting. Nevertheless, again I don't really disagree with your assessment, the one exception possibly being Mulholland Dr. When I first saw that film, my reaction was actually similar to yours. But over time I've come to view it as more a culmination of everything he represented as an artist who blended surrealism and popular culture on film, and a true counterpart to Blue Velvet, arguably his only other "masterpiece" as far as films go (some might disagree, others might say Eraserhead is also a masterpiece).
