The worst way to watch a movie, according to David Lynch: “You’ll be cheated”
The best way to watch a film is with total focus and concentration, no pausing to get a snack, chatting over the plot, rustling popcorn, or checking your phone, which might be hard to practice in the modern age, hence going to the cinema is probably your safest bet, as long as no one pulls stunts like they did for A Minecraft Movie.
With the advent of streaming and home video, though, most of us are going to watch movies on our TVs or laptops, forgoing a huge screen and surround sound (well, unless you’re lucky enough to have your own home cinema). This might not be the most ideal way to watch a movie, but it’s pretty much the only way to watch something that isn’t a new release these days.
Yet, there are many cinema lovers out there who are particularly snobbish about the way a movie must be consumed, and David Lynch was one of them. He was adamant that watching a movie on a small screen was no way to do it, even if it’s your only option, because you’re not going to get the real, authentic experience that the filmmaker intended.
In a bonus feature included on the Inland Empire DVD, Lynch said, “Now, if you’re playing the movie on a telephone or on your computer, you will never in a trillion years experience the film. You’ll think you have experienced it, but you will be cheated. You’ll be experiencing weakness and extreme putrefaction of a potential experience in another world.”
He continued, “Don’t let your friends or some television advertisement trick you into accepting weakness. It’s such a sadness. Power in that world is critical, everything has been worked on to be a certain way and if you don’t have a setup for your films it’s a joke. It’s just the most sickening, horrifying joke and this world is so troubled, and it’s a such a sadness that you think you’ve seen a film on your fucking telephone. Get real.”
You certainly can’t watch something like Twin Peaks: The Return, especially that atom bomb scene, on a tiny phone screen. The beauty of something like Mulholland Drive or Lost Highway just isn’t going to have the same effect on a little pocket-sized screen; you’re not going to appreciate the full beauty of every scene, which is instead compressed for the sake of accessibility.
So, whatever you do, don’t watch a Lynch movie on your iPhone, because you might cause the surrealist auteur to roll in his grave and attempt to haunt you. Later in his career, he did come round to the idea of watching stuff on a smaller screen, never a phone, though, when he realised you could tailor your experience to make it as cinematic as possible.
Talking to Cahiers du Cinema, he once said, “If you watch Twin Peaks on your phone or tablet, above all you have to put on headphones, so as not to hear other exterior sounds and be truly immersed in what you are watching.”
He seemed to acquiesce and find a middle ground where he commented that if the distance from the screen of the computer or table can be adjusted correctly, it can feel like sitting at the back of a cinema hall, “So if you’re in a quiet, dark room, it can be a good experience”.
