“It’s A Strange World”: David Lynch is dead

Visionary filmmaker David Lynch is dead. His family announced this on his Facebook account on Thursday (January 16).

Lynch revealed last year that he had been diagnosed with emphysema after a lifetime of smoking and would likely not be able to leave his house to direct. It was not initially known whether his death was related to his illness.

It said on Facebook: “There is a huge void in the world now that he is no longer with us. But, as he used to say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not the hole’.”

David Lynch, born on January 20, 1946 in Missoula, Montana, suddenly became known in 1977 when he created one of the defining films of midnight cinema with “Eraserhead”. Lynch had worked on it for years, even sleeping on the set. The grotesque story tells of a young man who is the father of an indefinable being and who despairs about it.

Lynch, who had several artistic talents, had already started painting. He enrolled at several art schools, but it was only at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia that he discovered film. During this time he created his first short film, Six Men Getting Sick (1967). Lynch often describes his time in the city as dark and the city as a formative inspiration for his work.

Dark film debut “Eraserhead”

“Eraserhead” quickly became a cult film. Stanley Kubrick is said to have shown it during the filming of “Full Metal Jacket” and described it as one of his favorite films. The notoriety of his debut helped Lynch gain a huge reputation straight away. Producer Mel Brooks wanted him for the film “The Elephant Man” (1980). The humanistic fable about a severely disfigured man who has a heart of gold and is more cultured than many of his fellow human beings became a great success. The film was nominated for five Oscars. Lynch also received several Academy Award nominations for Best Director throughout his career.

Lynch then had the chance to turn one of the great sci-fi fantasy stories in literature into a film, “Dune” (1984). An experience that was not entirely easy for all parties and that the director later described as unpleasant. But in leading actor Kyle MacLachlan he not only found the ideal cast, but also a kind of actor for life. He also became the hero of Blue Velvet (1986), a sparkling neo-noir coming-of-age film with a perverse edge. All the themes that make Lynch films distinctive – the dominance of secrets, dreamlike imagery, the uncanny play of sexuality, kitsch and violence – can already be found here.

Just a few years later, together with the screenwriter and producer Mark Frost, he found a clever variation of some of the motifs from “Blue Velvet” with the epochal TV series “Twin Peaks”. Within a few episodes, the series developed into a hybrid of basically all genres of cinema that was incomparable to anything in the early 90s. Half the world was wondering who killed Laura Palmer. That same year, the director also released “Wild At Heart,” his rough take on “Wizard Of Oz,” which was considered postmodern at the time. The film won the Palme d’Or at Cannes – but was booed at its screening.

He was also successful as a painter, musician and furniture designer

Lynch took a creative break and made a panorama of madness with “Lost Highway” (1997), which merged several narrative levels into an LA nightmare. Because Lynch used a Rammstein song for the film, the band became an international phenomenon. “Straight Story” seemed like a salutary exception to all the disturbing material in 1999, but the spiritual core hidden in this melancholic brothers’ tale can be found in all of the director’s films. Lynch early on became known as an advocate of Transcendental Meditation and later became one of its most famous ambassadors.

With “Mulholland Drive”, actually planned as a TV series like “Twin Peaks”, Lynch found the key in 2001 to bring all of his themes and motifs together into a clever genre variation. The director made Naomi Watts a movie star. Initially received very mixed reviews by film critics, the modern version of “Sunset Boulevard” developed into a favorite among cineastes. In “Sight And Sound’s” list of the 100 best films, chosen by critics every 10 years, the film is ranked eighth. In 2006, Lynch followed up with “Inland Empire,” a digitally filmed experiment for the first time that was entirely dedicated to his “Blue Velvet” actress Laura Dern.

It is no longer possible to determine whether Lynch became increasingly less interested in cinema (as he himself said several times) or whether no films were produced anymore. The artist subsequently concentrated more on painting and creating furniture. He also found a field of activity that filled him as a musician – most recently there was another album with the singer Chrysta Bell. But a stroke of luck arose when the opportunity arose to stage a kind of sequel to “Twin Peaks”. 18 episodes, all directed by Lynch himself, a retrospective and meditation, so to speak, on everything that held the material together at its core.

David Lynch, who was married four times, leaves behind two daughters and two sons – and an incomparable artistic work.