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Remembering David Lynch (1946-2025)

Writer's picture: Zachary ZanattaZachary Zanatta

The word visionary is tossed around quite a bit these days. It seems like any two-bit director who successfully makes a movie marginally against the grain is slapped with the label of "visionary" or "revolutionary." But in reality, the number of true trailblazers cinema has seen is relatively low. However, in my lifetime I was lucky enough to witness a filmmaker who defined the word visionary: David Lynch.

David Lynch was many things, ordinary was not one of them. From the horrifying analog of his debut, Eraserhead, to the behemoth genre bending of his swan song Twin Peaks: The Return, Lynch’s career was defined by bizarre films that pushed the medium to its limit. His films often dealt with themes of the unconscious, existing in a bizarre liminal space between dreams and reality. Despite possessing the distinct “Lynchian” feel to them, Lynch’s filmography is both vast and unique. Each presents a wholly distinct style and experience, and they continue to unravel their mysteries the longer they ruminate in your mind.

I first encountered Lynch when I was 16. I watched Eraserhead. It was the first movie I logged on Letterboxd. I was a film fan by then for sure, but this was something new. Here was a movie that did not put entertainment first. I was meant to dig into this movie, think about why it made me feel the way it did. It was confusing and uncomfortable, strange and morbid, it was unlike anything I had seen before. And I wasn’t a fan.

It didn’t sit well with me at that age. My favorite movies ended with a nice bow; this was decidedly not that. The end of this film ties nothing up. It ends with its contents spilling out in an uncontrollable mess, becoming even more vague than it initially presented itself. I moved on and watched more movies, leaving that unresolved ending with all its loose threads billowing in the wind. But it never left my mind. Eraserhead had burrowed in my brain, and it wasn’t going anywhere. I decided to venture back into the uncanny world of Lynch. I tried Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, but they left me similarly underwhelmed. Something about these movies wasn’t clicking, and I was fascinated as to why.

Around a year later I decided to take the plunge and explore the warped little town of Twin Peaks, and something shifted. Here was something distinctly Lynch. It was sprawling, confusing, and weird, and I didn’t “get it” the same way I got other movies. But I was infatuated. I needed to return to this town again and again. However, this was not like how it used to be. I was not exploring Twin Peaks with my mind; I was exploring it with my heart. Suddenly the surreal images blossomed into unforgettable experiences. I was a 17-year-old who discovered that sometimes film was not made to traverse from plot point A to plot point B, it was to traverse from soul to mind, from conscious to subconscious.

Lynch redefined the way I saw film. Soon many of his films became personal favorites and I gained a new appreciation for the ones I previously wrote off. Now I can safely call Lynch a personal favourite, and I look forwards to continuing to pick apart my personal interpretations of his always enigmatic work.

The best part of my little story is that I’m not alone. David Lynch is not merely a defining artist of the critical cinematic landscape, he’s an intensely personal one too. As I continue to meet new people in the film community, I’m often greeted by their undying allegiance to the work of Lynch. Despite an oeuvre so difficult and indecipherable, Lynch remains a staple of the cinephilia handbook.

His chameleonic work remains not only influential, but deeply personal. Beneath the bewildering, dreamlike fugue are stories of grief, sorrow, hope, and fear. Stories that resonate deeply because they don’t provide any answers. They’re a psychological shot of pure feeling. The story may not make sense, but the acute sense of overwhelming emotion is unavoidable.

Cinema has lost a titan. A visionary who melted the medium and reshaped its gooey remnants into beautiful dreamscapes with his own bare hands. Since the arrival of his radical debut, Lynch consistently challenged what movies could aspire to be, and now that he’s gone, cinema will never be the same again. He not only changed the mechanisms of what the medium could do, but how it could be received. Inspiring generations of film lovers to think with their heart and feel with their mind. The outpouring of personal stories emerging after Lynch’s death is a devastating yet beautiful testament to the power of cinema.

Movies are art, and they have the profound power to change lives when painted with the right brushstroke. In that regard, nobody has ever possessed the deft hand and universal eye of David Lynch. Lynch was a mystifying cosmic artist, spurring us to delve within the thorny brambles of our mind and shape our humanity by questioning it. His loss is devastating. Both to old cinephile and new, Lynch represented a wholly unique and exciting facet of cinema that will forever remain vacant. However, we are lucky to have been graced with a body of art that will continue to morph and mutate for as long as people watch movies. And in that way, Lynch will remain immortal.

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