David Lynch is a man of extraordinary talent. A gifted artist specialized in picture, sound, figure and words. He choosed to unite these expressions for making movies.

In 1977 his official debut Eraserhead, a movie which centralizes distance and seclusion, was released and is generally considered to be a cultclassic. Lynch was becoming serious business with his second movie The Elephant Man which was rewarded by divers Oscar nominations. At that time Lynch was “the next big thing”. Rumours were taking place that he will be the director of StarWars: The Return Of The Jedi. That tempation he could resist, but in the end he collapsed for the filming of the sci-fi epic Dune, a megaproduction with high commercial expectations.

When Dune had become a big succes, undoubtedly Lynch would have been swallowed by the big Hollywood-machine. But fortunately Dune did not become the succes everbody wished for. Instead Lynch delivered a fully transformed story that no human being understood. It has to be said: Only because of Lynch Dune did not turn into a second variety of StarWars-movies with predictable endless pre- and pro-sequels lusted for mass amusement. From then on a certain moviecompany and author (three times guessing who they are) continue to hate Lynch for what he did, namely to blow a 100 percent hit (including merchandise) into millions of pieces.

In 1986 he made the movie Blue Velvet which received unsurprised recognition and again an Oscar nomination.

His biggest commercial succes in the US was the television serie Twin Peaks. In the high-days of the serie even telephone lines were being set up only to be able to give tips concerning the murder of Laura Palmer. But slowly the quality went downhill. The last season Lynch contributed less effort into the serie (with the exception of the final episode).

In the years after he made a couple of movies (like: Wild At Heart, Twin Peaks: Fire walks with me, Lost Highway) which all of them received highly variable feedback from press and public. Seldom the last 15 years Lynch’s movies have been appreciated on an equal level. Too confusing those associative story structures, logic that straightly comes from the lawes out of a dream, and what to think about the disorderning argument that reconnoiter the dark side of the human soul in which good an evil are hardly identifiable.

His latest movie Mulholland Drive (2001) has been produced to become a television serie like in the tradition of Twin Peaks. But the television producers did not like the pilot Lynch delivered at all. It did not fit into any format, they concluded. ABC decided to cancel the serie. This must have been a big dissapointment for Lynch. Fortunately the French company Canal Plus did not agree. They liked it a lot and offered Lynch an opportunity to finish the pilot. But not for television, but for the moviehouse. Lynch was surprised, but he did not fail on them. All typical Lynch ingredients are abound: Anxiety, love, cruelty, humor, ambiguous personalities, mysticism, but mainly the dark side of the human soul.

Mulholland Drive is a fascinating road with a lot of little side streets of bizarre events, appearing dubious persons, eccentric behaviour and femme fatals. In other words a movie that makes you get lost. All this makes it impossible to explain in a few simple words what the movie is all about. Therefore we definitely should not try this.

But to make it perfectly clear David Lynch has produced (and written) a movie of which I am convinced that it will be remembered as a filmclassic. Already Lynch’s Mulholland Drive has been rewarded by Best director at the Cannes festival 2001 and a Oscar 2002 nomination. But also it has to be said that all actors made a terrific performance what makes the high standard of the movie automatically even higher.

Everyone, who calls himself a movielover, is forced to see Mulholland Drive. Despite what you may think of it, a special movie experience shall it surely be in which dream and reality fits seamlessly into each other to evolve a surreal world.

- April 2003 -

Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn   -   Naomi Watts

Rita/Camilla Rhodes   -   Laura Harring

Adam Kesher   -   Justin Theroux

  Written and directed by: David Lynch

Back