There were numerous false starts on an adaptation in the years leading up to Lynch taking the project, including one from Lynch's stylistic forefather Alejandro Jodorowsky, whose struggles with Herbert's novel and the major studios were documented in the excellent Jodorowsky's Dune. In adapting Frank Herbert's beloved science-fiction classic, Lynch made something of a mess, but the source material has a history of being difficult. In honor of Lynch’s return to the small screen, I decided to rank his ten features, each one of which quickly disarms traditional analysis and opts for overwhelming, visceral experience over familiar storytelling or even narrative clarity. This is as true of the midnight-movie classic Eraserhead as the latest run of Twin Peaks episodes, which begins this coming Sunday on Showtime. Early on in Lost Highway, Bill Pullman’s fearful saxophonist opines that he doesn’t want to remember things as they were but how he remembers them, no matter the factual inaccuracies, and one can feel those ethos bubbling up and burping underneath nearly every scene he’s shot. Any attempt to fit Lynch into an established genre is a fool’s errand and undermines the mesmerizing effect that his dreamscapes evoke in their messy, illogical, and intoxicating style. The ugly and the perverse weigh equally with violence in Lynch’s mind but it’s in the bloodied acts – and the dubious memory of them – that Lynch often reveals the lacerating emotions of the confused artists, lunatics, and demented loners he has created.ĭespite this, it’s wrongheaded to consider Lynch simply in horror terms. And needless to say, the ecstatic, near-unbearable terror of Laura Palmer’s death hangs like a neon glow-in-the-dark bull skull over the happenings in Twin Peaks and Fire Walk With Me. Nicolas Cage’s Sailor doesn’t say more than a few words before he beats a would-be hitman to death in Wild at Heart. The brutal butchering of Patricia Arquette’s femme fatale fuels the identity crisis at the heart of Lost Highway. A severed ear uncovers a world of drug-addled maniacs in Blue Velvet. Indeed, horror is a crucial part of Lynch’s imagery and points toward his fascination with the corrupting element of repression.
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