Lynch, who spent a lifetime making wild, uncompromising art that explored the darkest corners of the human psyche, died at 78 on January 15th. He rejected conventional storytelling to produce some of the most gleefully mystifying, surreal, and disturbing films found in the American canon. In an interview with the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, Lynch explained how he embraced ambiguity as a means of furthering creativity and inspiration.
“The film is the thing," said the director. "You work so hard to get – after the ideas come – to get this thing built, all the elements to feel correct, the whole to feel correct in this beautiful language called cinema. And the second it's finished, people want you to change it back into words, and it's very, very saddening. It's torture. It's the film, the language of cinema. When things are concrete, very few variations in interpretation- But the more abstract a thing gets, the more varied the interpretations.”
University at Albany film professor Rick Barney has taught courses on Lynch’s approach to moviemaking. He spoke with WAMC just after Lynch’s death.
“Lynch is always interested in things that take us out of ourselves, our typical way of seeing things, our habits of mind, our assumptions, even our preferences," said Barney. "And I think that he brings that over to the camera as well. The camera becomes, if you will, inhabited by something that's going to be more than us. In a sense, the camera becomes more than just a tool or a thing we use, but a thing that may, in fact, use us or bring us places we don't have any desire or plan to get there.”
For Williams College senior and aspiring filmmaker Zoe Hoffmann Kamrat, that exact dynamic is what makes Lynch one of her favorite directors.
“He has this like capability of building a story without building a story, if that makes sense," she told WAMC. "With a lot of other films, it's very narrative driven, very dialog driven, and this is very visual. There's just a ton of scenes where you don't really know what's going on, and that kind of makes you fill in a lot of the blanks in the story. For me, when I rewatch the films, I have a completely different experience every single time because there's so much room for you to draw your own connections, and I think that's something really unique about his films.”
Hoffman Kamrat is also the programming and outreach coordinator for Images Cinema, the indie movie house that has served Williamstown in various incarnations for over a century. She assembled the Lynch retrospective that kicked off Friday with his 1986 classic “Blue Velvet.”
“It's devastating to the film community that he passed away, of course, and I think a large part of that is just the fact that his films sparks so much discussion," Hoffman Kamrat said. "And I think it's particularly important that we do a series at Images, because there's something that's really unique about watching his films in a theater and having a collective experience with other people, rather than just viewing them at home on your TV or even on a laptop.”
Alongside pillars of the Lynch filmography like “Wild at Heart” and “Inland Empire,” Hoffman Kamrat has selected some of Lynch’s short films like “Six Men Getting Sick” and “Premonitions Following an Evil Deed” to screen before each full-length picture.
“They're an experience to watch, I will say," said Hoffman Kamrat. "They're like kind of psychedelic feeling, and pairing them with a film that is – especially the ones that are popular, like ‘Blue Velvet,’ ‘Mulholland Drive’ – it just gives something about David Lynch I think a lot of people haven't experienced.”
She’s eager for filmgoers new to the Lynch universe to see some of his less celebrated features. Released in 1992, the director’s “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” stripped away any kitsch from his iconic television series and instead drew a harrowing portrait of a young woman’s hellish suffering, both supernatural and manmade. While poorly received at the time, its visceral portrayal of pain and loss has gone on to be celebrated as a masterpiece.
“That one kind of has a lot of themes that are applicable to a lot of people, and it's very difficult to watch, and I think watching it in this collective setting is really important, because it can spark conversation about a lot of the issues that it brings up,” Hoffman Kamrat told WAMC.
Images Cinema’s David Lynch tribute is currently underway and continues through March.
