Born on January 20, 1946 in Montana (northwest), David Lynch grew up in a Presbyterian (Protestant) family of five children. His father, a scientist at the Ministry of Agriculture and his mother, an English teacher, moved regularly depending on his father’s assignments. After uneven studies, he found his happiness at the Fine Arts of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. The city, in full industrial decline, will permeate his imagination. The atmosphere of the series Twin Peaksof which he sets the scene in a small town populated by strange characters: the woman with the log, a dwarf who speaks backwards… testify to this.
Released in 1990, it revolutionized the genre and will haunt for a long time the many viewers who immersed themselves in the investigation of FBI agent Dale Cooper. A character with difficult to understand motivations played by Kyle MacLachlan with whom he already collaborated in 1986 for the captivating Blue Velvet. A dive into a sanitized suburb where sadomasochistic orgies take place. Certainly one of his most beautiful films in which we also find Isabella Rossellini and Dennis Hooper.
Director David Lynch has died
A hypnotic power
His obsession with dreams is also reflected in dreamscapes. Mulholland Drive et Lost Highway. Two hypnotic feature films that have fueled many movie buff forums.
Impossible to summarize, Mulholland Drive – which won him the César for best foreign film – features two women in Los Angeles who meet and seem strangely linked.
This was, in a way, the power of David Lynch, managing to hook the viewer with stories whose meaning escapes them. To appreciate his works, you have to agree to let go. In any case, this is what he was trying to do, as he reveals in the intriguing documentary The Art Life released in 2016.
David Lynch, also a painter, photographer and musician, confides in particular about the enigmatic dreams that have populated his nights since childhood. David Lynch was therefore not only a filmmaker honored by his peers – he received, among other things, a Palme d’Or at Cannes for Sailor et Lula in 1990 – but a complete artist. A character who mixed in his films a touch of unease and disturbing contours, mystery and humor. Withdrawn from the cinema industry after the commercial failure of his last film Inland Empire (2006), he devoted himself to his other artistic passions. Which did not prevent him from making an appearance in The Fabelmans the Steven Spielberg and John Ford bourru and 2023.
