After I processed my own grief over David Lynch's passing, my sorrow turned to comfort as I saw his image flood my social media feeds, from both fellow film addicts and those I never would have pegged as Lynch fans. It is hard to walk away from a Lynch film or work unaffected. You may feel an irrepressible sense of hope, or you may be unable to shake a feeling of unease that you can’t quite name. I have been touched by the testimonies of several actors, such as Kyle MacLachlan, Naomi Watts, and Isabella Rossellini, who have shared what an important impact he had on their lives and careers. He demonstrated a radical approach to filmmaking, synthesizing his train-of-thought, surrealist style with an utter rejection of cynicism and fear. Many tried to pin down his artistry in a single word, and so often misused that word (Lynchian) as a catchall to mean "strange" or "unusual". Most of the time, people have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Lynch was so much more than strange (though he certainly was that). He was incredibly vulnerable, sometimes to a disorienting extent. He confessed his apprehensions about the state of the world and fatherhood in his cult classic Eraserhead. He laid his self-consciousness and insecurities bare in The Elephant Man. He told us stories with unsettling honesty in vivid, unobstructed imagery. In my experience watching his films in public, that kind of unapologetic sincerity makes people squirm and giggle in their seats. We aren't used to that sort of earnest attitude in filmmaking, especially now.
If we can look past the dark subject matter, we can see through his films that he was a very hopeful person who revelled in everyday pleasures. He thought the world was beautiful. He romanticized everything. He couldn't understand why, in such a special world, darkness could still exist, how people could do terrible things. He channelled his confusion through works like Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, unmasking the secrets of small-town America where bad things happened to good people. The only explanation that satisfied him was in the realm of the supernatural, something at play that we could only understand in dreams, something like Bob, something rotten in the wood, or something hiding in the darkness of the forest. But he couldn’t allow himself to be so fatalistic. As strong as these forces are, Lynch believed that love was stronger. The angels may not help you, but the robins will keep singing.
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