Much has been written and discussed to interpret the surreal work of director David Lynch. Some of his most notable films include Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Mulholland Drive. He is also known as the co-creator of the television series Twin Peaks. Dreams, alternate timelines, and questionable realities lend his work to a wide number of interpretations. The documentary David Lynch: The Art Life is essential viewing for a richer understanding of the Lynch canon.
The Art Life focuses on Lynch as a painter and some of his earliest film work. Before Lynch even thought about film, he was a passionate painter struggling to find his place in the world. Directors Rick Barnes, Olivia Neergaard-Holm, and Jon Nguyen structure the documentary chronologically from Lynch’s early childhood up until he began working on Eraserhead. In the present day (then 2016) Lynch is interviewed at his home and is shown working on various mixed media paintings. His paintings are used extensively along with archival photographs and footage from his earliest films.
Unexpectedly, this is a rather traditionally structured documentary. At first I was disappointed in this straightforward approach and somewhat slow start. But it would be futile to try to recreate the style of a great filmmaker. An attempt to mimic Lynch was made in a few of the documentary special features of Twin Peaks Season 3, and it was not successful. The simple approach of The Art Life paid off as it progressed. Lynch’s stories from his life become increasingly engaging and strange. As the viewer we can observe and draw our own connections between Lynch’s biography and his oeuvre.
Before watching the documentary, I had just finished re-watching Twin Peaks and could see several parallels between the series and Lynch’s biography. The Twin Peaks universe consists of two seasons (1990-1991), a film Fire Walk With Me (1992), a collection of deleted scenes called The Missing Pieces (2014), and a third season Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). The series is set in the idyllic small town of Twin Peaks in Washington state. The story centers around the murder of a high school student Laura Palmer and the possible dark forces involved. Lynch spent a large part of his childhood in Spokane, Washington. He describes his family life as good and expresses gratitude to his loving parents for supporting his interest in art. But a few incidents foreshadow the dark side of small town life and Lynch’s unease of having multiple identities as a teenager. This warm home life is a stark contrast to the mental health challenges Lynch has when he first moves away and his visceral encounters with a frightening world. The juxtaposition of wholesomeness and evil is what makes Twin Peaks so thought provoking, and hearing Lynch’s stories you can see the seeds of this strange, wonderful series.
The most compelling parts of the documentary are Lynch’s paintings and early films. We see him working on several different pieces – always taking a non-traditional approach. Sometimes he is painting a creepy clown, stretching a gooey substance onto the canvas, or sculpting artificial bloody flesh. His paintings are very different visually from his films, but they share similar dark themes. Lynch’s original intention was to be a painter, but his desire to see and create more led him into filmmaking. There are some brief rough clips of Lynch’s very first attempts at filmmaking and then a student project called The Alphabet. This experimental short features a white-painted woman in an eerie minimalist setting with black curtains. It is exciting to see and learn about this first iteration of Lynch’s unique style.
Despite the darkness of Lynch’s artistic work, this documentary is inspiring and offers hope to struggling young artists. Lynch followed his passion to create despite personal challenges and criticism from others. The Art Life makes clear that Lynch would have continued to create whether he “made it” or not in the film business, because being an artist is so essential to his identity.
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Stream for free on Kanopy in the US and Canada.
This is the first part of a series of articles on David Lynch. Stay tuned for a review of the documentary Lynch/Oz and a deep dive into Twin Peaks.