David Lynch, giant of American cinema with immense influence, director of “Twin Peaks” and “Mulholland Drive”, has died at the age of 78, his family announced Thursday in a press release published on his Facebook page.
“It is with great regret that we, his family, announce the death of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” notes the press release. The director, author of ten feature films released between 1977 and 2006, had captivated a cohort of admirers fascinated by the disturbing strangeness of his films.
“There is a big void in the world now that he is no longer with us. But as he said: keep your eyes on the donut, not on the hole,” adds his family, an allusion to one of the humorous traits of the artist.
“It’s a beautiful day with a golden sun and a big blue sky,” adds the message, which does not disclose the causes of death and asks for respect for family privacy.
Born in 1946 in Montana (northwest), David Lynch is considered a master of cinema who revolutionized the image and marked this art with the disturbing and haunting atmosphere of these films.
From the black and white zombie story “Eraserhead” (1977), his first feature film financed by odd jobs, to one of his consecrations with “Sailor and Lula” (1990), Palme d'Or at Cannes, most of his works have become cult.
– Honorary Oscar –
Another critical masterpiece, “Elephant Man” (1980), a moving film, and one of his most accessible for the general public, about a man with a deformed face in Victorian England. With John Hurt and Anthony Hopkins as headliners, it received eight Oscar nominations and won the César for best foreign film (1982).
In 1990, he created “Twin Peaks”, a legendary series which revolutionized the genre and transformed millions of viewers into detectives haunted by the mysteries it unraveled over two seasons. A quarter of a century later, he did it again with “Twin Peaks: The Return” (2017).
Nominated several times for the Oscars, this inveterate smoker, recognizable by his slim appearance and his blonde puff, received an honorary statuette in 2019 for his entire filmography.
In France, where he is revered, he won another César for best foreign film for “Mullholland Drive”, a distressing, enigmatic thriller full of hallucinations, which plays with the pretenses of Hollywood and its ill-intentioned producers . Naomi Watts plays the role of an actress meeting a mysterious woman suffering from amnesia, before everything is reversed in a twist that fans are still debating today.
He ended his career with the less notable “Inland Empire” (2006) and then devoted himself to transcendental meditation and other forms of artistic expression.
“Things have changed a lot in 11 years, especially the way people view cinema films,” he confided during an interview with AFP in 2017, on the occasion of the return of “Twin Peaks” .
“And the things that are successful at the box office are not the things I wanted to do,” he added.
“I always repeat this Vedic expression: + a man only has control of action, never of the fruit of actions +”, he continued, always enigmatic.
“When you finish something, you lose control and it’s fate that decides.”
