The unlikely movie that made Roger Ebert fall in love with David Lynch’s work
To many, David Lynch was one of the finest directors of his generation, crafting surreal and strange worlds that many fans felt themselves deeply connected to. From the psychosexual horrors of movies like Blue Velvet and Lost Highway to his obsession with troubled women, Lynch’s cinematic world was rich with emotion and intensity, allowing him to generate a dedicated following.
However, not everyone was as charmed by Lynch’s work. The iconic American film critic Roger Ebert initially hated most of the director’s films – that was until he saw a certain movie that drastically altered his opinion.
While people herald many of Lynch’s early films as groundbreaking and era-defining works, Ebert wouldn’t be inclined to agree. Reviewing The Elephant Man, Ebert called the film “shallow,” writing, “I kept asking myself what the film was really trying to say about the human condition as reflected by John Merrick, and I kept drawing blanks.”
He concluded his review by adding, “The direction, by David (Eraserhead) Lynch, is com-petent, although he gives us an inexcusable opening scene in which Merrick’s mother is trampled or scared by elephants or raped, who knows?, and an equally idiotic closing scene in which Merrick becomes the Star Child from 2001, or something.”
He disliked Blue Velvet even more, believing that the intensity of certain scenes were let down by “a story that’s marred by sophomoric satire and cheap shots,” suggesting that Lynch “is either denying the strength of his material or trying to defuse it by pretending it’s all part of a campy in-joke.”
In fact, Ebert had a real problem with the way Lynch treated his female characters, a topic that has been debated by critics and fans for years. The women in Lynch’s work are often troubled, abused, and shown in an overtly sexual light, and Ebert felt as though these actors were often humiliated as a result. “In Blue Velvet, [Isabella] Rossellini goes the whole distance, but Lynch distances himself from her ordeal with his clever asides and witty little in-jokes. In a way, his behavior is more sadistic than the Hopper character. What’s worse? Slapping somebody around, or standing back and finding the whole thing funny?”
Ebert also had his issues with Wild at Heart and Lost Highway, but by 1999, the critic’s opinion on the filmmaker shifted. Lynch released a movie that many fans were surprised to see – a Disney-distributed movie without the violence, sex, and surrealism that defined his earlier work. The Straight Story felt like a new chapter for the director, with Richard Farnsworth playing a man who takes a 240-mile journey on a riding mower to visit his estranged brother, portrayed by Harry Dean Stanton.
The tone of the film felt considerably different to Lynch’s other works, but it maintained his interest in the complexity of human relationships, which Ebert appreciated. “You’d think it was a fantasy, this kindness of strangers, if the movie weren’t based on a true story,” Ebert wrote.
“The faces in this movie are among its treasures,” the critic explained, while also praising the “last notes” of the film. It seems as though Ebert was simply more drawn to Lynch’s stories of hopefulness and human goodness rather than his more tragic and haunting projects.
