David Lynch as Auteur: Reviewed by Davis Rivera

In his ten feature films, numerous short films, advertisements, music videos, television shows, books, website, and roles as an actor and producer, David Lynch has emerged as one of the most important living auteurs in America. With a new Lynch film out in the theater, most people won’t have to decide which film to see. They will not read film reviews in newspapers, magazines, journals, or websites. Neither will they listen to their friends when they’re describing the return of Lynch’s ‘Rabbits’ segment in his newest feature. They aren’t going to see the film, no matter what critics or friends may say, because it features an obscure actor like Justin Theroux or Jack Nance. They are there lined up because they know that when you come to watch a David Lynch film, you will be seeing the work an established auteur. Lynch has reached a Fassbinder-like level where the word director is very seldom used when describing anything he’s involved with. Standing in line at the cinema, you will inevitably hear the echoing of, “not only does he write his screenplays, but he has been involved with every level of his films’ production at one point or another: sound design, editing, camera work, lighting, casting, special effects, music, everything!” His hands-on approach to every aspect of his films has helped to tie them all together with a common thread and provided tremendous girth to the awe surrounding his work ethic. Lynch is an example of how extreme auteurism can lead pass the so-called “director genre” and into realms of, not only expressing his distinctive vision to the world, but actually getting to live in it without actually being on camera.

David Lynch has created a style so inimitable that, unlike John Ford or Orson Welles who have each earned the right to an annoying adjective (Wellesian, Fordian) that is used to describe certain angles and characteristics of their work, he has created an entirely new genre that is cemented its place in cinematic history and, with a slew of burgeoning auteurs anxious to reach this status by appropriating his style (Michael Haneke, Eli Roth), will not fade into the darkness the way Hughesian did, unmissed and erased from the pantheon of filmic treasures. As the director of well over two-dozen films, both short and feature length, Lynch established all of the genre’s now familiar conventions. For example, arguably the most obvious technical element is cinematography. Lynch, whether attempting to create an unsettling mood or simply filming two people sitting in a diner, uses strange camera angles excessively. He will position the camera in an extreme long shot, usually in a far, overhead corner of the room; shoot the scene from under a table; or even through a crystal ball (as in his “The Wizard of Oz” tribute “Wild at Heart.”) He is splendidly very concerned with creating beautiful images and understanding the plenteous advantages of mise-en-scène. It’s important to note that Lynch was a prominent painter before he was a filmmaker, winning various prizes and attending college at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Lynch has always prefers preposterous images that evoke feeling to words that describe them. As a result, his cinematography can be viewed as a "moving picture."

Lynch’s most effective visual technique is probably his prevalent use of fadeouts and slow motion. They both contribute to the intangible, under-the-surface mood Lynch endeavors for. One of the more interesting and successful sequences is a flashback sequence in Lynch’s television show “Twin Peaks.” In the scene, the image of Mrs. Palmer running down the stairs under a ceiling fan was repeated many times in slow motion, a technique favored by many other avant-garde directors including Harmony Korine in his tour de force “No More Workhorse Blues.” However, in this case, the use of slow motion contributed a dream-like quality to the event, especially significant because it was right before she found out her daughter had been killed. Like his individual use of cinematography, Lynch’s frequent use of slow motion helps to create similar moods of dreamlike confusion, horror, or primal drives, all adding to his vision of his films being “moving pictures,” and giving the viewer an idea of what a floating Francis Bacon painting would have looked like, something that would surely satisfy Lynch, being an admirer of Bacon from an early age. An important addition to the list comprising the materials that make up the work of this distinctive auteur is his use of lighting techniques. Lynch, perhaps paying tribute to one of his heroes Franz Kafka, and the ending of his magnificent parable “Before the Law,” has an affinity for dark vs. light settings. Occasionally, this can resemble film noir techniques (as in “Blue Velvet” and “Lost Highway”), or it can suggest an obstinate world of darkness and chaos (“Eraserhead,” “Inland Empire,” “Industrial Symphony #1”), or, in what Lynch is probably most known for, it can hint at a seedy underbelly of an tranquil setting (“Blue Velvet,” “Twin Peaks,” “Fire Walk With Me”). Regardless of what the metaphor behind his use of lighting, the connoisseur of all things Lynch quickly gets accustomed to mysteriously shaped shadows, dark rooms, slats of sunshine, and strobe lights. One of the more interesting acolytes of Lynch, the Frenchman Gaspar Noe, recently contributed a segment to the collective work “Destricted,” attempting to utilize Lynch’s strobe light technique and one-up him by taking it to an unbearable level. The general consensus upon the films release, almost universally panned, is yet another testament to the ever-lasting power of Lynch’s stance as a master auteur.

Other examples pointing to the ubiquity of using a director to market a film are Lynch’s marketing scheme for promoting the release of his newest feature, 2006’s “Inland Empire.” Instead of going on television chat shows, radio shows, or going on a promotional tour, Lynch simply told the press that it was about “a woman in trouble” (which later went on to become the tagline for the film.) It is to Lynch’s credit that he was able to correctly sum up the entire three-hour film in four words and not have it turn out to be an exercise in torture like some of Rivette’s minor works. It is also to Lynch’s credit, and probably pleased the opponent of the auteur theory Kevin Cournoyer, that he eventually did go out and campaign, not for himself or the film directly, but for Laura Dern in the hopes that she would receive an Academy Award nomination for her outstanding work as Nikki Grace Król / Sue Blue. In the characteristically auteurist fashion of Lynch, he did this by campaigning in the streets of Los Angeles with a live cow. When the film was released on DVD in 2007, one could not escape noticing the larger-than-life words “DAVID LYNCH’S” centered at the top of the case, quite unlike his previous cases (and, especially, the cases of films he has produced such as Terry Zwigoff’s acclaimed documentary “Crumb”) where his name was in a much smaller print and either beneath the title or above the title but closer to the actual title and not separated in the manner usually reserved for names like Stallone or Deneuve. Seeing something like this at such a late period in an established auteur’s career is not an ego on parade. It simply shows how vastly respected Lynch is as an auteur, even reaching the commercial industry, that a mixed media filled three hour avant-garde film that was barely seen even in limited release can become a video success merely by putting a former Eagle Scout from Montana’s name at the top of the box.

It is written that the director’s cut solidifies the director as auteur, particularly commentary tracks where the director describes the film in detail. In this regard, it is worth noting that Lynch has never re-released any of his films labeled as a ‘director’s cut’ and has never recorded a commentary track either. Lynch needs neither of these things to clarify something he is already aware of and undoubtedly knows his fan base is very aware of. Though upon the DVD release of Lynch’s biggest hit “Mulholland Drive,” Lynch did object to having his film split into separate chapters, claiming that it “demystifies” the film. Without disputing the value of a director’s insight, this practice speaks to entertainment conglomerates’ ability continually to reap the financial benefit of the auteur as celebrity and brand name, now matter how many complaints they know this unusual practice will bring.

Coming back to the auteur approach providing the framework for locating consistent narrative patterns and determining their relationship to visual techniques, the narrative aspects of Lynch's works, including themes, characters, and situations, are all very similar. Case in point, Lynch is very taken with the theme of lightness/darkness or good/evil. A glaring example of this is the divided heart necklace Laura Palmer wears in “Twin Peaks.” Laura herself is a divided heart; she is a good person, was homecoming queen, and seems pure on the surface, but she is also into abnormal sexual practices, is addicted to cocaine, enjoys being a prostitute, and has slept with half the town (both sexes). A further lightness/darkness view of Laura Palmer can been seen when comparing Laura to her cousin Madeleine “Maddy” Ferguson. Maddy is an innocent and pure citizen, while Laura is not. Sheryl Lee plays the characters of Maddy and Laura, with the small difference that Laura is blonde and Maddy is a brunette. They can easily be seen as two sides to the same person. Lynch apparently liked that simple method of establishing duality so much that he used it again in “Lost Highway.” Patricia Arquette plays two roles: Renee, the raven-haired, jaded, adulterous wife of Fred Madison; and also Alice, the platinum blonde pornographic film star who begins a lurid affair with Fred's alter-ego, Pete. Each version of Arquette has strengths and flaws that the other character lacks; the two are polar opposites, yet nearly identical.

Proving that as an auteur, Lynch is not simply an egomaniac who is too stubborn to admit that filmmaking is a collaborative enterprise, he has been more than happy to have some fun with self-portrayal. The character of Henry Spencer in “Eraserhead” is obviously Lynch himself. At the time he was creating the film, Lynch was living in Philadelphia and hated it. He also had inadvertently fathered a child and got married. In “Eraserhead,” Henry lives in a dirty, trash filled city (which hasn’t changed much in thirty-plus years) and is forced into marriage when his girlfriend gives birth to a deformed baby. There has even been speculation about whether Lynch made Henry's baby a freak because his own daughter (Jennifer Lynch, also a director) was born with clubbed feet. Jeffrey Beaumont, in “Blue Velvet,” is another faithful depiction of Lynch. As mentioned before, Lynch grew up in a logging town in Montana, much like "Lumberton, USA." Jeffrey, like Lynch, is a mannered, selfless person who discovers that he has a dark streak that would provide the Marquis de Sade with jealousy. Possibly the finest (and funniest) self-reference is the character of FBI Agent Gordon Cole from “Twin Peaks,” whom Lynch portrayed himself. Cole has an exaggerated version of Lynch's famous pompadour hairstyle, shouts constantly because he's virtually deaf (Lynch is considered a very loud-spoken person), and has a "code." In “Fire Walk With Me,” Cole delivers an agent's assignment through a woman named Lil, who performs a complicated little dance. The agent must scrutinize the meaning of Cole's code, just as viewers often have to scrutinize the meaning of Lynch's symbolism. Although considering a film as part of a director’s oeuvre may be useful to interpretation, it is important to remember that no one interpretation – even one based on the director – is definitive. Though I’d like to believe that this interpretation of David Lynch as today’s supreme auteur will be.