David Lynch, a painter turned avant-garde film director. Its fame, influence, and uniquely skewed worldview extend far beyond the movie screen to television, records, books, nightclubs, an array of organic coffees, and a foundation for consciousness-based education and world peace. It has spread to. , passed away. He was 78 years old.
His family announced the death on social media on Thursday, but did not provide further details. In 2024, Lynch announced that he had developed emphysema after years of smoking, and as a result, his future films would have to be directed remotely.
Mr. Lynch was a visionary. His flamboyant style and macabre perspective were introduced in earnest with his first feature-length cult film, Eraserhead, which was released at midnight in 1977. His approach remained consistent until his failed blockbuster Dune (1984). his small-town erotic thriller “Blue Velvet” (1986) and its spiritual spinoff, the network television series “Twin Peaks” (aired on ABC in 1991 and 1992); Considered his masterpiece, Mulholland Drive (2001) is a poisonous valentine to Hollywood. His last full-length feature, Inland Empire (2006), was shot by him himself. video.
Mr. Lynch so admired and could be said to have synthesized the work of Frank Capra and Franz Kafka, two very different 20th century artists, that his name became an adjective.
In his book David Lynch: A Man from Another Place, Dennis Lim writes that Lynchians are “easy to recognize but difficult to define.” Made by a man who has long devoted himself to the technique of Transcendental Meditation, Mr. Lynch's films feature dreamlike visuals, concise sound design, and exaggerated mantra that pits sweet innocence against depraved evil. It was characterized by stories of teaching.
Mr. Lynch's style is often described as surrealism, but in fact, with its troubling juxtapositions, the bizarre and unrealistic, and its erotically deranged take on the mundane, the Lynchian style is similar to classical surrealism. have a clear affinity for But Lynch's surrealism was more intuitive than programmatic. If the classical surrealists celebrated irrationality and sought to liberate the fantastic in the everyday, Lynch used the everyday as a shield to avoid the irrational.
The normalcy of the performance was evident in Lynch's personal presentation. His trademark clothing style was a dress shirt without a tie, buttoned up at the top. For years, he regularly dined at Bob's Big Boy, a fast-food restaurant in Los Angeles, and raved about it. He often spoke in commonplace terms, distrusting language and seeing it as a limitation or hindrance to his art. Like Andy Warhol's interview, Mr. Lynch's was as bland and understated as it was brief and quirky.
This inexplicable feeling led Mel Brooks or his colleague Stuart Cornfeld to help make Mr. Lynch's first Hollywood film, “The Elephant Man'' (1981), portraying him as “a man from Mars.'' Jimmy Stewart. Perhaps in response, Mr. Lynch decided to call himself an “Eagle Scout from Missoula, Montana.”
The full obituary will be published soon.
Ash Wu contributed reporting.
