Five times David Lynch went too far
There are few modern filmmakers out there as beloved as David Lynch. Since the 1970s, he has enjoyed cult status thanks to his mind-bending, bizarre films that have cemented him as a master of the surreal.
With his debut feature, 1977’s Eraserhead, Lynch boldly stepped onto the scene, welcoming viewers into a world of darkness, isolation, suffering, fear, and grotesqueness. Finding popularity through the midnight movie circuit with his unusual yet beautiful first film, he soon found greater opportunities to advance his filmmaking career.
1980’s The Elephant Man demonstrated Lynch to be one of the era’s most astounding directors, and, despite the critical and commercial failure of Dune, he continued on with movies like Blue Velvet and the series Twin Peaks, reasserting himself as a cinematic master.
As the decades have continued, Lynch has made some highly celebrated works, such as Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks: The Return, never compromising his artistic visions. While his movies are so strange that nothing seems off-limits for Lynch – his debut was about infanticide, after all – there have sometimes been occasions where it feels as though he has taken it a little too far. Discover our picks below.
Five controversial David Lynch moments:
All of Dune
While some people out there will argue with you that Lynch’s Dune is actually a masterpiece – “you just wouldn’t get it” – the general consensus is that it firmly isn’t. There is a lot wrong with Lynch’s bizarre adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel, from the acting to the visual effects, that makes us wonder how Lynch made that after something as good as The Elephant Man.
Sadly, this is a rare instance of Lynch’s over-ambition not paying off. Even most diehard Lynch fans won’t defend this one. This is also a rare case of a remake being far better than the original film.
His off-topic PlayStation 2 advert
When Sony approached a bunch of filmmakers back at the turn of the new millennium to help them market their brand new video game console, they surely knew what they were getting in for. Still, even they were surprised when Lynch produced The Third Place, a superbly insane monochrome short film that presumably was made to introduce teenagers to a strange new world of bewildering surrealism.
The advert isn’t ‘bad’ by any stretch, but it is terrifying and entirely off-topic, having literally nothing to do with Sony’s new console nor any of its launch titles, such as SSX or Ridge Racer. His advert might not have harmed the sales of the PlayStation 2, but it surely scarred quite a few kids for life.
The Pink Room – Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Acting as a prequel to Lynch’s hit television show Twin Peaks, Fire Walk With Me is a devastating look at the last week of Laura Palmer’s life. The movie was rather negatively reviewed upon its release in 1992, although it is now considered one of the filmmaker’s most emotionally devastating works.
There are many uncomfortable scenes in the film, but the Pink Room sequence, in which Laura, topless, flirts and dances with older men, is one that Lynch could’ve perhaps filmed more sensitively. These characters are meant to be teenage girls, yet the whole scene feels overwhelmingly male-gazey – we even see Laura receive oral sex under a table, her face filmed in close-up as she gives in to pleasure.
Inland Empire being three hours long
Very few movies need to be three hours long – sometimes, two and a half hours can feel like a drag if the pacing is not executed well. For a movie to be three hours long, it helps to understand what we’re watching, but with Inland Empire, clarity was out of the question. Many viewers struggled to find a sense of cohesion in the narrative, which simply seemed never-ending.
We’re not saying Inland Empire is a bad film – it is undoubtedly the most Lynchian of all the filmmaker’s work – but there would probably be few complaints if 45 minutes to an hour were shaved off the runtime. If Lynch had made the movie shorter, people might have been able to make more sense of it. Yet, if Inland Empire was easier to wrap our heads around, then it wouldn’t have felt like much of a Lynch film.
The rampant nudity in Wild at Heart
Of all of Lynch’s movies, 1990’s Wild at Heart is his closest to being a straight-up love story, following Nicolas Cage’s Sailor and Laura Dern’s Lula as they fight for a relationship despite the whole world seeming to be screaming ‘no’. Much of the film is a phantasmagoric joyride that incorporates a fantastic soundtrack, yet as it nears its conclusion, Lynch clearly gets a little too overconfident in his own style.
Shoving utterly gratuitous female nudity at the end of his film spoils the tone of the world he had done so well creating. It makes sense within the whacky world of Lynch, but it also just feels a little sleazy.
