David Lynch, where to watch his films (and Twin Peaks)

David Lynch it’s no longer there. It’s absurd just to think about it. Even if it was the director and screenwriter of Missoula, Montana, who taught us what the absurd is. He did it through unreal cinematography, bizarre as clear, very vivid dreams can be. The dream nightmares, generators of monsters, which in his filmography have taken on the strangest forms. They have been desert worms, pink fairies in wild lands and charming and magnetic night club singers, so much so that they were scary. However, saying goodbye to David Lynch, who for several years had emphysema at bay that didn’t allow him to stay on set, is not a definitive goodbye, just a goodbye. The awareness that we could find him in any stream of smoke, in the thickest fog, behind a red curtain. Imagine him there, in fantastic and wonderfully scary universes, which we relive together through an excursus of his cinema.

Eraserhead (1977)

Available to rent on Prime Video and Google Play Film

It was 1977 and David Lynch was just thirty-one years old. Its protagonist Jack Nance, played by Henry Spencerin his debut film Eraserhead – The mind that erases he is dressed as we would often see the director in the years to come. In a suit, a knotted tie, disheveled hair and a thoughtful, sometimes disoriented look. The author’s horror and experimental debut was made in five/six years and entered the National Film Registry’s preservation as a culturally significant film in 2004. And the story of Jack’s character and his unlikely fatherhood certainly is. It was for the career of the director and other filmmakers, present and future. In fact it is said that Stanley Kubrick he projected continuously Eraserhead during the filming of The Shining to keep the sense of restlessness high in the hearts of his actors. While Danny Boyle, in 1996, mentions it in a scene from the cult Trainspotting.

The Elephant Man (1980)

Available on Mubi

It’s the eighties and the surreal of Eraserhead David Lynch moves on to the human pain of the elephantine Jospeh Merrick, played sublimely by John Hurt. The Elephant Man it is not only the story of the Victorian era Briton who really existed, but it is the manifesto of all those who are different and are looking for their own place in a hostile, bad, violent world. A horrifying melodrama, a cinema of attractions like the figures in the circus who called the spectators to them, with which Lynch then delivered the final blow by telling about a man with a malformation that made him different from the others and which conditioned him to his entire existence. One of freak of David Lynch’s cinema, which the director and his audience loved deeply and irremediably.

Dunes (1984)

Available to rent on Prime Video, Google Play Films and AppleTV

Among the most opposed films of his career, Dunes he is also, in his own way, the bravest. Because David Lynch attempted something that anyone thought or knew he would fail at. It’s too easy to arrive in 2021 and use the means that exist today (although we recognize Denis Villeneuve for having done an excellent job). His version of the science fiction epic based on Frank Herbert’s fictional imagery was limited by a running time that required several cuts and a reduction to two hours of film which made the story even more chaotic and agitated. Despite this, the Dunes by Lynch remains an example of philological coherence with his own poetics, as well as having the merit of having united Max von Sydow and Sting in the same film.

Blue Velvet (1989)

Available to rent on Prime Video

It is 1986 and Lynch begins to theorize a leitmotif that will often return in his filmography. The concept of glossy American society and life, the prerogative of a dream born in the 1950s which could only hide a muddy rot behind its brilliance. It is then released in cinemas Blue velvet, title which takes its name from the song of the same name by Bobby Vinton and which from that moment on will remain attached to the film. A thriller that starts from an ear found in the garden near the house by the protagonist Jeffrey, played by his fetish actor Kyle MacLachlanand which leads to the acquaintance of the languid singer Dorothy Vallens, played by a disturbing Isabella Rossellini.

Wild at Heart (1990)

Available to rent on Prime Video

We arrive at the nineties, which roar thanks to Wild heart. Nicolas Cage’s animalier jacket, Laura Dern’s pink dress. Beautiful and very young, together. A film that is a snapshot of what it means to feel free, independent, in love. It’s a fairy tale and like all fairy tales, you often have to run away from an antagonist. So Sailor and Lula, the protagonists of the film, speed in their car, determined to reach Texas, determined to escape justice and destined to encounter a thousand bizarre and crazy obstacles along the way. Knowing that we can overcome them all, thanks obviously to strength of love.

Secrets of Twin Peaks (1990-2017)

Available to rent on Prime Video, the third season on Sky and NOW

1990 is also the year when TV has changed forever. And let’s not exaggerate: when we say forever, it is forever. The world, perhaps not yet ready for what was about to happen, saw the TV series par excellence arrive on the small screen, the serial jewel that it didn’t know it was looking for, that it didn’t even believe was possible. In a senseless yet hypnotic mix of soap opera and thriller, in a world where strong feelings prevailed while a hint of death hovered, The Secrets of Twin Peaks comes to stay with the murder of Laura Palmer’s timeless character and the image of her body wrapped in plastic that continues to haunt us after all these years. A mystical, impalpable work, divided between the white lodge and the black lodge. A return, in 2017, which sets another timeless date in the calendar: the release of episode eight of the third season of Twin Peaksthe prolonged mushroom cloud that explodes on the screen, ready to wipe out everything we have ever known.

Fire Walk with Me (1992)

Available to rent on Prime Video

In the wake of the television past of Twin PeaksDavid Lynch ventured into a prequel which was presented in Cannes during the 45th edition of the festival and which was mixing the plots of the series released a couple of years earlier together with the novel The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer written by daughter Jennifer Lynch. Fire walk with me it was not enthusiastically received by the public, considered an impenetrable and indecipherable work, especially by those who were not familiar with the show it was inspired by. A film that nevertheless managed to gain the title of cult over the years, and of which it is impossible to forget the surreal and magnetic interpretation of David Bowie as Phillip Jeffries.

Lost Highway (1997)

Available to rent on Prime Video, Google Play Films, AppleTV and TimVision

It’s 1997 and with Lost roads the director and screenwriter – writing together with Barry Gifford – outlines the stylistic features of modern noir with the work starring protagonists Patricia Arquette And Bill Pullman. An intercom, a call, a videotape. Moments and objects destined to alarm the spectator from then on to the rest of his days, always keeping in mind the darkness into which Lynch’s film led him, exactly like those highways traveled at night with only the headlights on to do a little of light. An overused and overused image in cinema from that moment on. The story of a mysterious murder and of a presumed innocent destined for prison, while femme fatales, mechanics and mafiosi stand out in an endless nightmare.

A True Story (1999)

Available to rent on Prime Video

It’s ironic that one of David Lynch’s films has that title A true storygiven that there has always been very little truth in his filmography. The feelings were real. Emotions and fears too. But, ultimately, also the story of Alvin Straight, played by Richard Farnsworthhas a good dose of imagination on its side. The protagonist, in fact, decides to venture on a journey on his own lawnmower to reach his brother who had a heart attack. Along the way he will meet everything: motorcyclists, a priest, a pregnant young woman who has run away from home. And, as a backdrop, the immensity of the American landscape.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

Available on Mubi

The film about Hollywood par excellence. The vices, virtues and doubles that live, over-live and re-live among the streets of the city of angels. Mulholland Drive takes its title from a famous street in Los Angeles, the same one where an accident occurs that changes the trajectories of the lives of the protagonists Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn and Rita/Camilla Rhodes, even if they don’t have a real trajectory. The work, among the most fascinating of his entire filmography, is the desire for love and fame that reaches its most extreme peaks. It is a complete immersion in Lynchian cinema, from the melodious and terrifying song of No Hay Band.

Inland Empire – Empire of the mind (2006)

Available on Mubi

We are in 2006, the last year of David Lynch’s film production, as well as his longest film in terms of duration – with another 75 minutes of deleted scenes available on the DVD edition in the original language thanks to the special content More Things That Happened. Inland Empire – The empire of the mind it is the definitive descent into the soul, psychology and the metaphysical world built up to that point by Lynch. Another criticism of the universe of the show, another analysis of the double and another negative turn on the direction that dreams could ever take. A film in which the limits become increasingly subtle and in which the actors in the story they can no longer set a boundary between what they are experiencing and what they are acting. The final fusion of the cosmos that have always revolved around David Lynch: one completely authentic and one completely unreal.