The Films of David Lynch: Making it up as you go along

David Lynch is one of the most aesthetically distinct and influential directors of a generation. His work has such an immediately recognisable style that he has his own adjective, Lynchian. Lynchian means macabre, absurd, uncanny, defined by films such as Eraserhead with their oppressive atmosphere and the duality of people and environments as explored in Lynch's Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive. There's something about the macabre nature of the Lynchian aesthetic which really appeals to me as a creator. The man has a brilliantly imaginative eye for aesthetic, brilliantly blending the surreal and dreamlike with the mundane and dual natured.

Just watch any interview with Lynch and nine times out of ten he will mention how dreams play a role in his creative process. A lot of Lynch's later films have a distinctly dreamlike nature, an aesthetic Lynch owes to his time working on Twin Peaks. Lynch is a master at making it up as he goes along, reincorporating his suggestive imagery in more meaningful contexts later down the line and I do not in any way mean that in a negative way. Lynch famously left Twin Peaks once the infamous Laura Palmer murder was solved, as Lynch was insistent the murder never be solved. After this, Twin Peak's quality took a nosedive as the plots and themes meandered, before Lynch returned in the final two episodes to salvage the themes and get the show back on track before a cliffhanger ending which was never resolved. For Lynch, Twin Peaks was always about the suffering of Laura Palmer, so when the show left her behind, so did Lynch. The feature film follow-up Fire Walk With Me refocuses the story of Twin Peaks back on the character of Laura Palmer, with an extremely unsettling depiction of abuse and the duality of man in a way that almost has you believe this was Lynch's intention all along.

Lynch has also delved into the world of animation on occasion with his short animated internet series Dumbland. Dumbland is stylistically similar to the work of illustrators such as David Shrigley, with crude line drawings that probably wouldn't pass in a primary school art class, but Lynch uses this to explore macabre subjects, with graphic violence in a sort of crude variation on Looney Tunes or Bob Godfrey's Rhubarb and Custard.