5 scenes that define David Lynch’s ‘Lynchian’ vision

Director David Lynch’s thumb gave birth to his adjective decades ago, probably coined by writer David Foster Wallace. Posted by Premiere magazine in Lynch’s film “Lost Highway” in 1997, Wallace gave a definition of Lynchian: “a special kind of irony in which the very scary and everything in one way to show the eternal sealing within.

Put it this way: “Lynchian” evokes the stark beauty of the American Midwest, wrapped in an unnatural evil — the sight of five moles wandering into a tuna casserole. A man who kills his wife? Not Lynchian. A man who kills his wife because she is unfaithful to the peanuts he bought her? Pretty Lynchian. If the police are standing at the crime scene, talking about some kind of nut and admitting that the killer guy has an idea – well, that’s pure Lynch.

Lynch wasn’t just interested in bad behavior; he is sure that humans are capable of doing good and love as well as violence. “Lynch’s movie characters aren’t bad,” Wallace explained. “They are clothed with evil.” It clings to the backs of boring ordinary people and just won’t let go, an immovable suit of screaming leather, a ghostly apparition you didn’t call and don’t want to see.

Evil threatens all logic. The world has meaning and it also has no meaning. Radioactive hail can fall from the sky at any time. In all this there is a wry sense of humour, a sense of absurdity. Which may explain why, in recent years, his work has begun to feel like the only key to understanding the deep Lynchian world of modern life.

Blue Velvet (1986)

Ear mold on a sunny day

Near the beginning of “Blue Velvet,” Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), a college student back home in North Carolina, walks through an empty lot. He slows down near a pile of debris in the grass, picks up a rock and throws it. sunny day. Everything is fine. But, on the grass, he saw something.

He bent down and saw what appeared to be a human ear, broken and lying on the ground, covered in stray ants and covered in mold. Jeffrey took the earpiece and put it in a brown bag he found nearby, and took it to the local police station. The officer seemed unfazed. “It’s a human ear, that’s right,” he says, with a calmness he might reserve for a frog’s skeleton, for example. A broken ear means not just a freak accident or a crime, but a person, or corpse, who has not had an ear for a long time. It’s probably the perfect Lynchian moment: violence, sure, but it’s also hard not to laugh a little.

Twin Peaks (1990-91)

A disturbing word in a meaningless place

The famous Red Room in Lynch’s ABC show “Twin Peaks” is a kind of waiting room, a portal to a mystical dimension where everything is not what it seems, and where the a mystery that will never be revealed. In this sequence, the little man (played by Michael J. Anderson) is a spirit known as The Man From Another Place. He talks, and dances while Agent Cooper (MacLachlan again) looks on. What is happening? Who knows?

The Man from Elsewhere speaks clearly, not in tongues; subtitles describe his words for the audience. To achieve this amazing effect, Lynch created a simple but very disturbing technique. Anderson recited his lines into tape. Lynch then replayed it, and Anderson replayed the speech backwards on the tape; was reversed again. The effect is strange and uncomfortable and oh, Lynchian: these are just words, but something, your brain screams, is very wrong.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Cowboy with a warning

In “Mulholland Drive,” Justin Theroux plays Adam Kesher, a Hollywood film director who is having a really bad day. The mob has threatened to kill him unless a certain actor plays the lead in his new film. When he refuses, he withdraws his funding. Then she found out that her husband cheated on her, and her lover threw her out of their house. Now he is drawn to meet a cowboy (Monty Montgomery) in an empty rodeo arena.

The cowboy seems to have wandered into a completely different movie, a kind of old western – and there are Lynchian moments again, in a movie full of them. Standing in front of Kesher, the cowboy looks like the soul of Hollywood Americana, faceless blond and handsome. But he gives Kesher a clear warning: Release that actor, or there will be hell to pay. He never threatens force, just a threat. You will see me again, if you do the right thing. You will see me twice, if you do bad things,” he said. Something sinister lurks beneath.

Twin Peaks: The Return (2017)

Bad cigarettes

When “Twin Peaks” returned for its third weird season, 26 years after the show’s original run, it felt like a giant Lynchian moment. From the beginning, it wasn’t really clear what was going on, what was really going on, or what was going on in the world of the original show. But it all came to a head in episode eight, titled “Gotta Light?” It’s hard to even pin down the plot, but early in the episode, a doppelgänger for Agent Cooper is shot, and then his body is mutilated and dismembered by a character often referred to as “the lumberjack.” “.

Later in the episode, the hunters return, which is near the end. The episode is a kind of villainous origin story, which finds him at a location where the first atomic bomb is detonated in New Mexico, in 1945. At the end of the episode, it was 1956, and an elderly couple was driving their car home. on the empty road when the hunters descended upon them. One held out his cigarette and repeatedly asked, “Would you like a light?” It’s a silly request, of course, one that’s often made from one smoker to another – but the more it’s repeated, the more alarming it seems. The man and his wife fled in terror, and we are no nearer to figuring it all out than before. Which seems, anyway, to be right.

Lost Highway (1997)

Mysterious Party Guest

“Lost Highway,” Lynch’s third collaboration with writer Barry Gifford, has some terrific moments. There are tapes sent to Fred Madison, played by Bill Pullman, showing him and his wife sleeping in bed, filmed by the intruder. Even the bloody ones, some would say dangerous, saxophone solos that seem like Fred’s own.

The film’s diversity is heightened when Fred and his wife attend a house party. Fred is approached by a stranger, a man with receding hair and a Dracula-like widow’s peak whose keystone is a powdery white face and glowing teeth. The man is dim-witted and has no eyebrows, and is ultimately unknown as the Mystery Man. (Played by Robert Blake, who has real world problems that reinforce his evil presence.) The man seems out of place and out of sight, and claims to be in Fred’s house at that very moment. “Call me,” he said, handing Fred the phone. The same voice answered, “I told you I was here.” Fred’s anxious face is visible to all who watch the film. — Rumsey Taylor

Video: De Laurentiis Entertainment Group (“Blue Velvet”); ABC (“Twin Peaks”); Universal Pictures (“Mulholland Drive”); Showtime (“Twin Peaks: The Return”); CiBy 2000 (“Lost Highway”)

Produced by Tala Safie