David Lynch has been charged with making incomprehensible films. In fact, they make perfect sense, but not necessarily to us. An exemplary scene in "Fire Walk with Me" (1992) shows this: Two investigators are to receive their assignment from a very...
[more]David Lynch has been charged with making incomprehensible films. In fact, they make perfect sense, but not necessarily to us. An exemplary scene in "Fire Walk with Me" (1992) shows this: Two investigators are to receive their assignment from a very odd-looking woman named Lil. What they receive from her, however, is merely a series of incomprehensible movements and gestures. But as the investigators drive away, discussing the assignment, we learn that Lil's body language has very specific implications, which both of the investigators apparently understand. We see right away that oddities are relative; they obviously make sense in certain contexts. Unfortunately, it's usually the viewer who's left in the dark.
The main characters are often left clueless as well. In "Lost Highway" (1997), a jazz musician in L.A. mysteriously metamorphoses into a young gas station attendant. Neither the beleaguered character nor the audience can account for this strange event; his parents, however, allude to some unspeakably horrific event. Lynch's films hinge on the discomfort of not knowing, the anxiety of the secret. They hold both their audiences and their principal characters in the unease of the surreal, the grotesque, the undecipherable.
Those who try to understand the nature of this twisted world inevitably find themselves caught up in it. In "Blue Velvet" (1986), the innocent but inquisitive Jeffrey Beaumont comes home from college only to find himself in the middle of a criminal investigation. As he becomes obsessively embroiled, his own high-school sweetheart cannot help but wonder if he's a "detective or a pervert." In fact, we can make no such distinction in Lynch's world. To enter it is to become unwittingly implicated in its perversions.
Lynch does like to leave us with the hope of escape, however. The road is an image that appears in many of Lynch's films, revealing at least the possibility of an exit from the perverse labyrinth. In fact, his recent film "Straight Story" (1999) seems to find this exit: everything takes place on the road, as the ailing Alvin Straight drives some 350 miles on a lawnmower to see his brother. Coming from Lynch, this film is quite a surprise. Despite a few trademark quirks and the admitted weirdness of the protagonist's quest, it is a straight story indeed. Its shocking earnestness allows Lynch's twisted world to unravel itself at last into an exquisitely beautiful line.
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