“I don’t think that people accept that a film is a dream, yet it makes perfect sense to them when they’re dreaming. It’s just that we want to translate a film into words, and words hold things back. They’re not deep enough.” - Lynch
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” – Wittgenstein
David Lynch died on Jan. 15, 2025 from complications of emphysema, a chronic lung disease, at the age of 78. He was known primarily for his direction of surreal and dreamlike movies, such as “Eraserhead,” “The Elephant Man,” “Blue Velvet,” “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me,” “Lost Highway,” “Mulholland Drive” and his popular TV show: “Twin Peaks.”
In this eulogy I want to offer a defense/interpretation of Lynch’s films. While a restatement of facts about Lynch’s life in poetic fashion may be a more noble route to honoring Lynch and his body of work, hopefully the following short defense and minor insertion of writer ego can give an as bright and interesting testimonial.
Upon watching “Mulholland Drive” for the first time, I thought it was postmodern gibberish. The plot had no linearity or narrative sense, and everything was covered in a level of symbolism. After I watched the movie, I went to the internet in order to get a clearer idea of what Lynch was trying to say. To my annoyance at the time, I learned that the DVD set had a series of 10 cryptic hints that one seemingly needed to decipher in order to comprehend the movie. Furthermore, upon learning what the symbols referred to, I didn’t think the ‘complexity’ or depth of the plot at all warranted the annoying layering.
I decided to watch the movie again last summer, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, albeit by looking at the film differently. I attempted to hold no preconceptions and attempted to “feel,” as Lynch prescribed, the film.
Words and language are our vehicle for communicating the truth. Since our youth, it’s been ingrained in us that the only way to prove the understanding of a concept is to replicate the definition of the concept with a series of words that are true about it. The brilliant subversion of Lynch comes from the fact that he denies the human impulse to tie concepts into a logical string. The strength of Lynch’s film is not in the manner in which he ties together his symbols into a coherent plot. The beauty of his film is not in the underlying meaning obtained through a sort of puzzle solving gnosis. It’s the film itself that makes the film special. The colors, the actresses, the music, this amalgamation of sensory splashes, eerie dialogue in combination with scene structure, etc., are what make this film and the rest of Lynch’s films so entrancing. It’s the combination of all its elements, the dreamlike feeling that he invokes that points to nothing beyond the film. But even my attempted summary above is a sort of affront to him, my words do little justice to his art itself.
But before heeding the quote from Wittgenstein, considering how high the barrier to entry is to direct high budget movies — higher even if the intended movie is at all experimental, and even higher considering the rarity of anyone to have Lynch’s level of commitment to their style — Lynch might be one of the last true artists to work in cinema and we should forever cherish what will remain of him.
