David Lynch

Now I had seen various Twin Peaks episodes before understanding who Lynch was, and it came of no suprise that he was the creator of the T.V programme when I saw, or sampled other works of his.

Firstly I will briefly mention Eraserhead. From what I can decipher of the film, I quite like it. A mix of the unexplainable, the unrealistic, the unbelievable and the damn stupid makes this film something that seems to has had a lasting effect on me. Namely, the most recognisable feature of the film is the look, black and white highly contrasted and exposed footage of darkly lit rooms and weird tormented figures. The overall black and white feel of the film adds to the suspense and the tension, along with the storyline of course, the film noir like feel present in the film adds a lot more scare and creepiness to the film than what there would be if it was filmed in colour. I myself found it hard to pull myself away from the style and look of the film, looking deeper into the shadows and closer and the dark twisted shapes that lurked around the characters, rather than the storyline not that that there is much of one present. I find his use of character the most interesting feature of his work/s. Eraserhead for example has such peculiar and such outlandish characters, or more accurately creations, which build up and away from human emotion and personality and juxtapose various forms of the human life into their own new forms of emotion and personality. He seems to create completely new versions of the human being. Henry Spencer, the lead to Eraserhead seems vaguely familiar to the human form, but has such deformity and disfiguration, not literally like his mutated newborn, but in the way that his actions and speach make him quite scarely different to any normal human being. The film as well follows down into his darker side with the poor lighting and shadowed edges to the screen. I found myself more disturbed by Spencers otherworldy presence and the dark and depressing locations he lurks and fits so well into.

'Mulholland Drive' is another example of how Lynch manipulates our basic understanding of human emotion, to create a more dramatised film which appears more like an early Shakespearean play with the actors switching role throughout the film. You cannot follow any basic understanding of the actresses or even of the characters they are portraying, you have to let yourself watch the film for the characters and events inside of it, rather than looking to closely at the people who are playing them. Even then it is confusing and the switch of roles in the film makes no complete sense to the plot and even more so, Lynch seems reluctant to this day in revealing the true meaning and reason behind the film.

Even when you look at Lynch's earlier works, namely 'Dune' and 'Elephant Man', you begin to see his enforcise on character and the bond between audience and text. He attempts to make you feel more involved with the characters and especially in 'The Elephant Man' the audience feels hugely emotional toward the protagonist and engaged and apart of the characters life. Even here you can see his use of odd and peculiar human qualities exaggerated and expaded beyond normal realistic ways. 'Dune' to a certain extent also has this regular fourth wall between text and audience broken, with the deep and philosophical character backgrounds and histories. Frank Herbert's mastery skill at writing science fiction stories is mainly rewarded for this deeply historical and vastly detailed family tree/s in Dune, and it is unfair how the film slightly lacks the vastness of the book. However saying that, Lynch still manages to bring the audience closer toward the characters through the believable characteristics and also the overworldy ones, you may have to strain to understand the complexity of the families history but this undoubtedly just brings you closer to the characters.

His works seem so similar to where he was born, "the kind of small-town American setting so familiar from his films." - (IMDB, David Lynch 2010). Although I am unaware of his early life, according to IMDB and also Wikipedia he was born in a small town in America and was moved quickly from state to state. This reflects so heavily in his work, the small out of the way towns that nobody knows of which are perfect communities, created by the strong bonding inhabitants, for something odd and out-of-this-world to happen. It is completely believable as nobody has ever seen these small towns and their traditions or beliefs.

The strongest thing I have learnt from Lynch's work, is his extensive use of the character and emotion and personality within them. He creates such strong bonds between the audience and the characters, protagonist and antagonists, that the audience begins to believe the stories tellings and relate and believe the characters emotions. This strong bond and break down of regular audience and character relations, is something that I would love to pay homage to in my own piece. Being a short film however the bond must be made quick if I am going to attempt to create them, and they must also be elaborared, or more likely destroyed quite quickly.