Josiah Rodriguez
*This Article Contains Spoilers For: Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks: The Return, & Inland Empire*
On January 15, 2024, contemporary artist David Lynch passed away, a mysterious man who carried a quirky yet insightful strangeness rooted in ideas of consciousness and meditation. Lynch was somewhat of a Renaissance man, and while he specified in many mediums of paintings, music, and Internet content, what he was most renowned for was his movies. Through his films, Lynch used surrealism to create examinations on how unchecked darkness can consume humanity, diving deep into the roads our psychologies can take us to with ambiguous detail. The world of dreams was a field that fascinated Lynch, and it was with this influence that he shaped his art, making movies that never felt grounded within reality’s bounds, distorting our common nature by using eerie, off-putting sound design and mise-en-scene to create unstable yet engrossing tones.
With Lynch, his creative process was inspired by his passion for transcendent meditation, a daily exercise of deep, relaxed awareness that allowed for navigational insight into the small corners of silence within the mind. Through this personal form of discovery, Lynch formed his films through the same attributes of this practice and the flow of dreams, creating not clean-cut narratives, but instead mysterious, symbolic feats where visuals and mood are utilized in streams of the subconscious. In his movies, Lynch allowed for moments not just to be told through story, but also through atmosphere, replicating the meditative pace of his own thoughts to set the tone. While he has an incredible filmography, these traits are most abundantly found in the movies he released in the 21st century, showcasing not only some of his best work but also an accurate depiction of how he operates, both as a storyteller and as a man.
On January 15, 2024, contemporary artist David Lynch passed away, a mysterious man who carried a quirky yet insightful strangeness rooted in ideas of consciousness and meditation. Lynch was somewhat of a Renaissance man, and while he specified in many mediums of paintings, music, and Internet content, what he was most renowned for was his movies. Through his films, Lynch used surrealism to create examinations on how unchecked darkness can consume humanity, diving deep into the roads our psychologies can take us to with ambiguous detail. The world of dreams was a field that fascinated Lynch, and it was with this influence that he shaped his art, making movies that never felt grounded within reality’s bounds, distorting our common nature by using eerie, off-putting sound design and mise-en-scene to create unstable yet engrossing tones.
With Lynch, his creative process was inspired by his passion for transcendent meditation, a daily exercise of deep, relaxed awareness that allowed for navigational insight into the small corners of silence within the mind. Through this personal form of discovery, Lynch formed his films through the same attributes of this practice and the flow of dreams, creating not clean-cut narratives, but instead mysterious, symbolic feats where visuals and mood are utilized in streams of the subconscious. In his movies, Lynch allowed for moments not just to be told through story, but also through atmosphere, replicating the meditative pace of his own thoughts to set the tone. While he has an incredible filmography, these traits are most abundantly found in the movies he released in the 21st century, showcasing not only some of his best work but also an accurate depiction of how he operates, both as a storyteller and as a man.
Starting things off was 2001’s Mulholland Drive, a neo-noir following two lost women in Los Angeles as they maneuver through a nightmarish enigma of conspiracies, romance, and Hollywood. From the opening minutes alone, the movie is clear of its author, building an atmosphere of dread through the whirring sound design. Furthermore, the film opens in a boldly odd choice, starting with a wacky musical number of composited dancers across a gradient background. It’s abstract, but it creates an immediate statement of what is to come in the film, one unnatural to our world and packed with a dark sense of whimsy and confusion. It’s this feeling that lurks over the entirety of the runtime, channeled through plot loops, switched perspectives, and uses of characters not as people, but as imagery for the plot’s thematic explorations.
We watch the film through the subconscious of the protagonist, Betty, as she wrestles with envy, anger, lust, and guilt through her dreams and nightmares. The film capitalizes between these two realities, and as we watch these internal conflicts brew within a cinematic form, we can not only understand Betty through the script and performance, but in how we view the world from her perspective. By emulating her emotions into the characters, the film externalizes every issue she faces into a scene, acting both as a therapeutic compensation to Betty’s desire for control, but also as a downward spiral into madness. Throughout the two-and-a-half-hour runtime, we experience Betty’s aspirations and pains from the inside and out, and once the movie reaches its end, we find her as nothing more than a shallow corpse, dead from suicide after every facet of her agony caves in on her psyche, ending the dream and the film itself with a silent dread. With Mulholland Drive, Lynch showcases a fable of how unstable emotions can corrode a person to destruction, and by taking us through this unpredictable dream, we are able to be fully engrossed in the foreboding feelings she suffers with. It’s a dark experience, but with his final film, he creates a world far bleaker.
We watch the film through the subconscious of the protagonist, Betty, as she wrestles with envy, anger, lust, and guilt through her dreams and nightmares. The film capitalizes between these two realities, and as we watch these internal conflicts brew within a cinematic form, we can not only understand Betty through the script and performance, but in how we view the world from her perspective. By emulating her emotions into the characters, the film externalizes every issue she faces into a scene, acting both as a therapeutic compensation to Betty’s desire for control, but also as a downward spiral into madness. Throughout the two-and-a-half-hour runtime, we experience Betty’s aspirations and pains from the inside and out, and once the movie reaches its end, we find her as nothing more than a shallow corpse, dead from suicide after every facet of her agony caves in on her psyche, ending the dream and the film itself with a silent dread. With Mulholland Drive, Lynch showcases a fable of how unstable emotions can corrode a person to destruction, and by taking us through this unpredictable dream, we are able to be fully engrossed in the foreboding feelings she suffers with. It’s a dark experience, but with his final film, he creates a world far bleaker.
Twin Peaks: The Return is a struggle to categorize. On one end, it was released as an 18-episode miniseries for Showtime back in 2017, yet many critics and audiences deem it as a full film due to how the episodes connect in both narrative and execution, with the British Film Institute even listing it within the top 250 films ever made (a list that contains four Lynch films altogether) Despite its massive nature, Twin Peaks: The Return served as more than just a new piece of art, but a follow-up to the groundbreaking 1990s television series Twin Peaks. This was a series that signaled a new era for the medium of TV, not only establishing an overarching story across seasons, a trend that was uncommon at the time, but also creating work that pushed the boundaries of mainstream cable entertainment. While the show had lots of romance and mystery for audiences to adore, the series was still bound in the dark surrealism of Lynch, creating a fascinating piece that was both entertaining to the common public but also firm in its subject matter and dreamlogic. Studio interference eventually caught up however, and Twin Peaks was cancelled on a cliffhanger, and while Lynch did release a follow-up prequel film, Fire Walk with Me, many audiences still craved to see a revival to this beloved work. While Twin Peaks: The Return eventually came to fruition, it was far from the audience-friendly narrative of before, crafting a maze of storylines through unrelenting yet magnificent surrealism.
Throughout the film, we are put into the same dreaminess of Mulholland Drive, but unlike this predecessor, Lynch challenges his audience to face not just the stunning confusion and visuals of a dream, but also the mundanity of sleep, crafting scenes that draw you into this atmosphere through a lingering spontaneity. One scene might be an uncanny argument about furniture, another a slow montage of bustling elements scattering across the screen, creating a dense piece where we can experience firsthand a flowing overlap of plot and mood. The story’s progression is unsettling compared to common blockbusters or dramas, and while Mulholland Drive presents the cinematic dream of the protagonist, Twin Peaks: The Return deems the audience as the dreamers, using filmmaking to soak us in an immersive dream of our own. However, the emotional results of this film are further austere than Mulholland Drive, for while that previous work showcases how consuming emotions can drive a person to destruction, this work creates an insight into the pitfalls of dissatisfaction.
Throughout the film, we are put into the same dreaminess of Mulholland Drive, but unlike this predecessor, Lynch challenges his audience to face not just the stunning confusion and visuals of a dream, but also the mundanity of sleep, crafting scenes that draw you into this atmosphere through a lingering spontaneity. One scene might be an uncanny argument about furniture, another a slow montage of bustling elements scattering across the screen, creating a dense piece where we can experience firsthand a flowing overlap of plot and mood. The story’s progression is unsettling compared to common blockbusters or dramas, and while Mulholland Drive presents the cinematic dream of the protagonist, Twin Peaks: The Return deems the audience as the dreamers, using filmmaking to soak us in an immersive dream of our own. However, the emotional results of this film are further austere than Mulholland Drive, for while that previous work showcases how consuming emotions can drive a person to destruction, this work creates an insight into the pitfalls of dissatisfaction.
By the end of the film, the branching plotlines tie together beautifully, leading to a cathartic climax where the characters triumph over their adversary with great celebration. Yet, the moment is never set in stone. Over the whole scene, a transparent still of Dale Cooper, the central protagonist of the Twin Peaks storyline, holds over the sequence; the sound design never reminiscent of happiness, but the same whirring emptiness that we find in other works of Lynch. Even with everything perfectly wrapped together, in Cooper’s perspective there is still much to be done, seeing himself and his accomplishment as incomplete. Not knowing when to quit and unwilling to accept the success of his task, he ventures back in time to prevent the inciting incident of the story, the brutal murder of high schooler Laura Palmer, in hopes that this will actualize a true win of gratification. Through this, his choice goes wrong, creating a new universe where every event within the Twin Peaks canon is retconned out of existence. When Cooper confronts the Laura Palmer variant of that new world, their meeting sends her into an instant pain, the movie ending on the screams of this innocent newcomer as the torturous memories of her alternate self flood into her consciousness.
David Lynch had a filmography of terrifying works, but none have ever finished on such a bleak note, ending as a newly freed woman is instantly struck into a lifetime of horror without any hope in sight. Mulholland Drive showcases a personal failure, but with Twin Peaks: The Return, we see how when blinded by dissatisfaction, we cause vast catastrophe, bringing not just ourselves but the people we care about to the bottom. With these two examples, it is clear to see how grim Lynch’s films can be, yet is this all he creates with his works, designing gut-punches to our common behavior? While these films are the only examples I’ve shared so far, it is important to note that despite the unorthodox method to his stories and the dark themes he handles, Lynch’s filmography is quite wholesome. See, Lynch showcases evil in its rawest form, as from murder to rape, his films contain some absolutely disturbing sequences, portraying the dirtiest lows that our species can stoop to. But it is always darkest just before the dawn. In some of his older films such as Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and The Elephant Man, we see characters dragged through hell and back with the hardships they face, yet through this pain, the light still comes through, allowing for Lynch to showcase no matter how dire the situations may be, the goodness of life can always persevere through the shadows, shining a hopeful beacon to both the characters and us as we face the brutality of life. While Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks: The Return end in misery, they still serve as poignant cautionary tales overall, allowing us as viewers to learn where we can grow in our faults. However, there is another film that David Lynch created within this century, and while it aligns much more with his older films in their treacherous paths to joy, it is a complex beast.
Inland Empire was released in 2006, and if you had gathered a full theatre, shown them the movie, and asked the audience what the story was, you would have gotten a wild variety of different answers. The format of the film is akin to creepypasta internet trends and analog horror with its nonsensical approach, simply giving us a protagonist to cling to as Lynch blurs the lines of reality, sleep, and cinema through a murky odyssey. Inland Empire follows Nikki Grace, an actress who, after accepting a controversial film role, is thrown into a dark path of time loops and parallel memories, where we are unsure whether this is literal, a dream, or simply the film she’s making in the narrative’s context. Through the journey, the dreamlike elements are more than just the character’s psyche or a subversion of our minds, but a blend of the in-between of sleep, that hazy feeling where you can’t even tell if you’re awake or in slumber, simply drifting in existence as your mind wanders blankly. That is the motion and atmosphere of Inland Empire. For three hours, the film succumbs to this thick environment, yet through the unfolding insanity on display, the movie showcases an arc of not defeat, but self-discovery and escape.
Nikki overcomes assassins, past lovers, and monsters throughout the runtime, and despite the film having an unclear narrative, we are still placed in every emotion of the character. Lynch uses handheld closeups and tracking shots to lure us into Nikki’s sense of confused emotions, all while the film is captured on grainy, pixelated digital footage as we’re weaved within the surrealism at hand. It keeps a consistent throughline of feeling and tone that drops an anchor among the digital storm of the feature, giving us a beating heart to grasp against this pitch-black sorcery. With Nikki, we track alongside her as she makes her way through this labyrinth via her ups and downs of emotion and turmoil, but when she eventually escapes, she escapes with glee. This is not a film with a negative final note, but instead finishing in a full-blown musical number, scored to Gospel Jazz as we watch Nikki rejoice in happiness alongside dancers, a lumberjack, and a capuchin monkey. This bizarre finale is a perfect fit to cap off this epic, for it not only allows for a cathartic end but also one that encapsulates the entire piece. What is the choice for such an ending? What is its deeper meaning? Is it really one of joy or simply a disguised pain? The execution of Inland Empire allows for every interpretation to be different from the other, letting us filmgoers open our minds and come to our own personal search on not only what the film might be, but also its deeper nuance relating to where we are as people. It’s a riveting feat of art, and through its ability to challenge audiences, it makes for something extraordinary.
Nikki overcomes assassins, past lovers, and monsters throughout the runtime, and despite the film having an unclear narrative, we are still placed in every emotion of the character. Lynch uses handheld closeups and tracking shots to lure us into Nikki’s sense of confused emotions, all while the film is captured on grainy, pixelated digital footage as we’re weaved within the surrealism at hand. It keeps a consistent throughline of feeling and tone that drops an anchor among the digital storm of the feature, giving us a beating heart to grasp against this pitch-black sorcery. With Nikki, we track alongside her as she makes her way through this labyrinth via her ups and downs of emotion and turmoil, but when she eventually escapes, she escapes with glee. This is not a film with a negative final note, but instead finishing in a full-blown musical number, scored to Gospel Jazz as we watch Nikki rejoice in happiness alongside dancers, a lumberjack, and a capuchin monkey. This bizarre finale is a perfect fit to cap off this epic, for it not only allows for a cathartic end but also one that encapsulates the entire piece. What is the choice for such an ending? What is its deeper meaning? Is it really one of joy or simply a disguised pain? The execution of Inland Empire allows for every interpretation to be different from the other, letting us filmgoers open our minds and come to our own personal search on not only what the film might be, but also its deeper nuance relating to where we are as people. It’s a riveting feat of art, and through its ability to challenge audiences, it makes for something extraordinary.
These three films are perplexing to witness, portraying the essence of dreams in provoking yet resonant forms that still stand tall today. David Lynch’s artistry is that of a genius in the marvels he conjured, as by capturing the subconscious he designed cinematic journeys that are impossible to forget with their trippy yet reflective principles. While David Lynch may be gone, his films will live on, both on the screen and in our sleep.
