The “crime” against cinema David Lynch refused to commit: “It’s going to lose”
Some artists love to talk about their art. They can’t get enough of it.
But to explain the backstory, the influences, and the intention behind something you’ve made can sometimes diminish the well-needed layer of mystique that keeps a piece of art afloat. To overanalyse something you’ve made is to topple it from its pillar; you’ve got to present it whole, for what it is, and nothing else.
This is something that David Lynch stood by, even when he delivered movies so confusing that you had to wonder what on earth was going on inside his mind. How does one conjure up something so seemingly nonsensical and make it work? Did Lynch actually know what everything he made meant? Many audiences aren’t convinced that the filmmaker could’ve possibly had a reason behind every bizarre creative decision, but of course, he did.
It doesn’t always come down to understanding what every single shot, line of dialogue, or piece of music means. You have to lean into how a film makes you feel before anything else, because that’s really the crux of art – how you feel, not whether you can decipher it.
Lynch understood everything that he was putting into his art, but he wasn’t going to explain that to anyone. That was a cinematic crime he could never commit. “I need to know for myself what things mean and what’s going on. Sometimes I get ideas, and I don’t know exactly what they mean. So I think about it, and try to figure it out, so I have an answer for myself,” he told the Guardian, before adding, “I don’t ever explain it. Because it’s not a word thing. It would reduce it, make it smaller.”
Art is a sacred thing. “When you finish anything, people want you to then talk about it. And I think it’s almost like a crime. A film or a painting – each thing is its own sort of language and it’s not right to try to say the same thing in words. The words are not there. The language of film, cinema, is the language it was put into, and the English language – it’s not going to translate. It’s going to lose,” Lynch so eloquently explained.
So, will you ever be able to figure out what Inland Empire means? Should you bother trying? When you let go of the pressure of trying to understand a film like that – one so full of surreal and absurd imagery – you surrender to feeling instead of meaning, which is what Lynch wanted.
At times, his actors don’t know what they’re getting themselves in for, like Justin Theroux, who admitted to the Village Voice, in regard to Inland Empire, “I couldn’t possibly tell you what the film’s about, and at this point I don’t know that David Lynch could. It’s become sort of a pastime — Laura [Dern] and I sit around on set trying to figure out what’s going on.”
Crafting such confusion within each of his projects, whether it be the erotic Lost Highway or the haunting Mulholland Drive (perhaps the most confusing part of the latter is how Billy Ray Cyrus got there), kept Lynch a compelling and adored figure. You can’t always wrap your mind around his ideas, but they leave enough of an impression to keep you coming back.
