Despite not often being sure of what Lynch might be trying to say through his work, let alone what influenced him, I always get the sense that he is trying to say something, and that everything which occurs in his films has some kind of reasoning behind it. It is equal parts fun to just let his films sort of wash over you, or to try and puzzle them out, though this is very difficult indeed, not least because Lynch himself always remains a firmly closed book regarding the meanings behind his films, encouraging ambiguity. His reasoning for not talking about his films is justified by his opinion that films operate as a different language, and therefore it is useless to attempt to translate them back to words because, in fact, the film is able to say it better whether the viewer can understand the specifics of it or not.
This desire to use cinema to express precisely things which perhaps cannot be expressed through language make it very hard (for me anyway) to put the strange quality his films have into words.
"I love the dream logic. Cinema can say a dream logic, which is an abstraction. It can say things that are difficult to say in words. Just like when you have a dream, so much understanding for you, but when you try to tell your friend, it's very difficult to say in words something that would give your friend the same experience you had. But cinema can be the dream, can give that thing. Still, there's different interpretations." (David Lynch)
Lynch's films certainly have that dream logic, whereby the narrative seems to float through all these, often seemingly disparate, vignettes but with a deeply surreal sense of cohesion. In the same way that in dreams, familiar people you know which would never really move in the same circles in real life pop up at the same dinner party or whatever, or you get the strong sense of being in one place, despite the environment in fact being somewhere entirely different. One of countless examples of this idea is how in 'Mullholland Drive', around two thirds of the way through, all the actors/actresses switch roles to different characters, some entirely new, some ones we've encountered before.
In a much less over arching sense, many individual scenes from Lynch's films display the same strange quality independently. In particular the way he uses sound, from the industrial, clanking soundtrack to 'Eraserhead' to the reversed but also right way around talking in the 'Twin Peaks' dream sequences which I for one found very disturbing. Also, the way his characters interact and talk to each other often seems clunky and awkward. The inflection in some of the speech seems off, and there might be long pauses between each line of a conversation. It's as if the acting is really poor, but the context it's sitting in creates an otherworldly effect rather than an amateurish one. The winkie's diner scene from 'Mullholland Drive' is one of the most unnerving things I've ever seen in a film, and considering it takes place in a busy place, in daylight on a sunny day, it's a testament to Lynch's ability to create an immersive, truly surreal environment. I've included it in a few Youtube links at the end of this post. 2.52 to 3.00 has got the exact quality of a deja vu. I used to get deja vu maybe three times a day for a period of about 8 months about a year ago, often coupled with a strange sense of dread and it felt exactly like that little bit of this scene.
"All it takes is for a couple of normal things to collide in an abstract way, and something happens." (David Lynch)
Whilst i haven't been influenced by David Lynch's films in specific ways, it's more his general approach to film making, and thinking, whereby he attempts to use the medium of cinema to express something which couldn't be expressed in another way, which has affected me. Also, the desire to create something which is abstract or weird in the same convincing way, whereby it is born from something which is authentic. I have become predominantly interested in the abstraction of ordinary, everyday things, whether it be exaggerating a possible strangeness to a scenario through omitting certain elements from an interpretation of it (as with much of the work in my COP journal), or finding a way to make a familiar scene or object unfamiliar and abstract, through selecting certain, unusual perspectives to view it from, or processes through which to render it. The best example of this being the picture book brief, where I really began to hone in on this conceptual angle, beginning by simply attempting to keep observational drawings interesting to me, I began thinking about how framing a certain view point, though lens, perspective or just looking can flatten the view into a 2D composition. In the same way Lynch uses film to express things which cannot be expressed any other way, I was attempting to use drawing/image making to express flatten 3D space, something which cannot be achieved better through any other medium.
I think my best work comes from my endeavours to just keep drawing interesting, and to keep drawing an essential step in translating ideas.
How can I illustrate the way in which I'm thinking about what I'm looking at, as opposed to illustrating what I am looking at?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UozhOo0Dt4o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5ntFAqhK5M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqlqp3OT13U&t=260s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okoOe5ho3VM
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