Amongst his surreal imagery and esoteric sense of humor, David Lynch’s films always valued the necessity of goodness. Robert Flynn looks back on some of Lynch’s most iconic filmography.
“Fix your heart or die” is perhaps the most widely shared quote from David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: The Return (2017). It’s an incredibly abrupt and pointed piece of dialogue that stresses the necessity of acceptance and poignantly rang through social media after the director’s passing last month. While it has proven to be an especially prophetic and resonate quote in recent years, it is also a phrase that encompasses what Lynch sought to convey throughout most of his filmography.
In The Elephant Man (1980), one of Lynch’s earliest films, we see the director showing what would become his most strikingly veridical and uncompromising views of reality before becoming fully embroiled in crafting his surrealist milieu. It depicts a physically disfigured man who has been stripped of his humanity from the moment he was born, forced into a world that will never learn to accept his unavoidable differences. If approached by any other filmmaker at the time, the film would presumably be unwatchable by contemporary standards. As with many of Lynch’s films, he made the tragic feel truthful but never exploitative, he showed the humanity in even the most tortured souls.
It can be difficult to watch Lynch’s convivial weather reports where he would cheerfully announce the daily “beautfil blue skies and golden sunshine”, that had once more greeted him in his Los Angeles home, and then watch his opus Mulholland Drive (2001): a nightmarish and nefarious portrait of life in L.A. The two appear diametrically opposed to each other but Lynch’s films were never as polemical as some interpretted. His characters were typically forces of purity or symbols of goodness that would become enraptured in scenarios that were beyond their control or even their comprehension. Where Lynch best synthesized the eternal battle between good and evil was in his highly influential and delightfully esoteric series Twin Peaks (1990).
Rather, Lynch’s vision of evil was something that was abstract and unspecific. He never correlated this force with a type of person, an institution or a location, though, he always depicted a struggle against evil as something that was personal and universal.
The fictional town of Twin Peaks was iconic for its autumnal landscapes, cosy log cabins and its indelible cherry pie. Similar to the comforting and simple depiction of the suburbs in Blue Velvet (1986), these depictions always seemed to espouse the view that Lynch used these specifically American milieus as a facade that concealed a hidden evil. Though this interpretation feels incongruous with the man who giddily exclaimed that he felt “phenomenal!” after indulging in “two cans of coke and a cookie!”. His adoration for a simple life that found love in nature, black coffee, and the idiosyncratic rhythms and personalities that build a small town are unavoidable in his construction of Twin Peaks. It is no surprise that after only spending a day in Twin Peaks, F.B.I. Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), the character which Lynch had always seen as a projection of himself, belives that he may never be driven away from this town.
Rather, Lynch’s vision of evil was something that was abstract and unspecific. He never correlated this force with a type of person, an institution or a location, though, he always depicted a struggle against evil as something that was personal and universal. Fred (Bill Pullman) in Lost Highway (1997), Laura (Sheryl Lee) in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) and Nikki (Laura Dern) in Inland Empire (2006) all face inner turmoil that is thrust upon them by a force that is often inscrutable and persistent. To David Lynch, how evil is let out into the world correlates to us all on an individual basis. We must fix our hearts and live by what we know to be true or live to create a world that is opposed to an accepting and progressive force.
It can feel distressing to continue on into a world without David Lynch. However, it is important not to lose sight of what his contribution to art stood for. While filming one of his warmest and most poignant films, The Straight Story (1999), the film's lead actor Richard Farnsworth struggled with a terminal illness that few were aware of. It’s a quietly evocative film about an elderly Iowa farmer named Alvin (Farnsworth) whose brother, whom he had not communicated with for years, has fallen ill after suffering from a stroke. Despite the fact that he has no car, Alvin travels several weeks on his small and slow tractor in order to see his brother in Wisconsin, knowing that he may never get the opportunity to see him again. Farnsworth was aware that he would struggle throughout the production of the film and yet decided to go through with it. His performance, as well as Alvin’s actions, are testament to everything that David Lynch stood for.
Despite what has happened, or what will happen, the act of forcing goodness into the world will always be eternal.