i have this theory
that David Lynch's films are actually pretty damn straightforward.
It's just that they're not necessarily linear as we expect linear
storytelling to be, and often the storytelling is more about emotion than
ticking off a list of events in the order that they happened. The nonlinear
thing especially seems to trip people up and frustrate them. To me, for
example, INLAND EMPIRE is one of his more linear films, even when it's being
really really nonlinear, because you can view it as the polish girl at the
beginning experiencing her fugue as the character played by Laura Dern, and
her fugue/dissociation/meltdown, whatever you want to call it, is
experienced nonlinearly. Until near the end, when she and Laura Dern
embrace, and Dern disappears. The story can be read as pretty
straightforward in that way, though there are other more complex ways of
reading it.
Similarly to Lost Highway -- I think it's about the POV character actually
experiencing/remembering events in a non linear fashion, so that we are
experiencing the nonlinear events of the film in the same order the
character experiences/remembers them -- therefore the film is paradoxically
linear.
DOES THAT EVEN MAKE SENSE? It makes more sense in my head.
Several of his films deal with memories or events that the main character(s)
are avoiding, don't want to remember, have repressed. But these events keep
recurring anyway, popping up in nonlinear, symbolic ways until the character
has to face them. It's a bit like how you can experience memory: maybe you
start to remember something specific and then jump back to try to think
about how it all started? But this raises other memories that may be
connected in some ways, and may not be linearly remembered.
I wish I could explain this more coherently. It's a bit like the scene where
Laura and BOB/Leland are fucking in Fire Walk With Me -- clearly Laura has
no idea her molester is her father, until she does... but at the same time,
she must have known all along, but not allowed herself to know. And it's the
same for Leland. I think Lynch has been exploring that line between what you
know, what you think you know, what you allow yourself to know, and what you
know but deny/repress, for years, and it makes for some really abstract
storytelling sometimes, to get to the emotional truth of that feeling,
rather than just the plot of it. He makes the audience experience this
knowing/not knowing in the same way the character experiences it. and that
is frequently what's so horrifying about the films.
It's just that they're not necessarily linear as we expect linear
storytelling to be, and often the storytelling is more about emotion than
ticking off a list of events in the order that they happened. The nonlinear
thing especially seems to trip people up and frustrate them. To me, for
example, INLAND EMPIRE is one of his more linear films, even when it's being
really really nonlinear, because you can view it as the polish girl at the
beginning experiencing her fugue as the character played by Laura Dern, and
her fugue/dissociation/meltdown, whatever you want to call it, is
experienced nonlinearly. Until near the end, when she and Laura Dern
embrace, and Dern disappears. The story can be read as pretty
straightforward in that way, though there are other more complex ways of
reading it.
Similarly to Lost Highway -- I think it's about the POV character actually
experiencing/remembering events in a non linear fashion, so that we are
experiencing the nonlinear events of the film in the same order the
character experiences/remembers them -- therefore the film is paradoxically
linear.
DOES THAT EVEN MAKE SENSE? It makes more sense in my head.
Several of his films deal with memories or events that the main character(s)
are avoiding, don't want to remember, have repressed. But these events keep
recurring anyway, popping up in nonlinear, symbolic ways until the character
has to face them. It's a bit like how you can experience memory: maybe you
start to remember something specific and then jump back to try to think
about how it all started? But this raises other memories that may be
connected in some ways, and may not be linearly remembered.
I wish I could explain this more coherently. It's a bit like the scene where
Laura and BOB/Leland are fucking in Fire Walk With Me -- clearly Laura has
no idea her molester is her father, until she does... but at the same time,
she must have known all along, but not allowed herself to know. And it's the
same for Leland. I think Lynch has been exploring that line between what you
know, what you think you know, what you allow yourself to know, and what you
know but deny/repress, for years, and it makes for some really abstract
storytelling sometimes, to get to the emotional truth of that feeling,
rather than just the plot of it. He makes the audience experience this
knowing/not knowing in the same way the character experiences it. and that
is frequently what's so horrifying about the films.