David Lynch as a Cult Auter

David kill as a Cult Auteur David lynch has long been kn give for his abstract, surrealist, passing ambiguous, and often confusing celluloids. Since his first film, the gonzo and depressing Eraserhead, Lynch has become synonymous with the word baffled. He has been responsible for heady acid trips much(prenominal)(prenominal) as Lost High mien, Mulholland Drive, and Inland Empire. He has created a bizarre examination of sex and violence in Blue Velvet and a quiet, emotional character study in The Elephant Man.Lynch has always been the artsy type throughout high school, he was a keen painter, with a very abstract style, and later leaving school, he studied painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1964. However, he left after hardly a year, stating that I was not inspired AT ALL in that place. He then(prenominal) proceeded to travel around Europe to study the works of Austrian expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka. He re cancelled to America, however, after only 15 days. He then studied Fine Arts at the Pennsylvania academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, before moving to Los Angeles in 1971 to study filmmaking at the AFI Conservatory.It was at this beat that Lynch began winning grants in order to fund his films, including one for $10,000 which he received from AFI in 1970 to give birth his debut sign-length film, Eraserhead. Over his lengthy c argoner, Lynch has been nominated for foursome Oscars, but has yet to win. Four of his films give up been nominated for the Palme dOr at the Cannes film festival 1990? s Wild At cheek won the prestigious award, and Lynch also won Best Director at the festival for his 2001 film Mulholland Drive. Lynch, like many other burgeoning directors, started his audio visual career making short films.From 1966-1974, he created four of film historys arguably just about memorable shorts, leading up to his breakout, oft-critiqued feature, Eraserhead (1977). His style is delimit by the dark, the grotesquely physical, and the straight out bizarre. Many of his shorts included animation of his paintings. Sound and music for films was also of utmost importance to the paranoia-filled atmosphere of his works. The dark and the bizarre were aspects he would carry over to his video recording show, Twin Peaks, which aired for two seasons in 1990 and 1991.Lynch is valuable because he explodes conventions, both cinematic and psychological, but its not enough for him to be as strange as possibleeven an approach ground on throwing off the fetters of the conventional and the logical demands a kind of discipline. The trick is to exclusivelyow ones imagination free play, but to be able to recognize what is genuinely strange and unsettling, rather than but bizarre, to distinguish between the rare specimens youve unearthed from the darkness of the ocean floor and the seaweed clinging to you when you emerge from the water.Its a alone unscientific process, and one that cant be forced, so in a sense its achieve ment enough that Lynch has remained devoted to exploring his own subconscious, however in(predicate) hes been in conveying his findings to the screen. Leading film critics Le Blanc and Odell state that Lynchs films are so jammed with motifs, recurrent characters, images, compositions and techniques that you could view his entire output as one large jigsaw puzzle of ideas. nonpareil of the key radicals that they noted was the usage of dreams and dreamlike imagery within his works, something they related to the surrealist ethos of relying on the subconscious to yield visual drive. This can be seen in John Merricks dream of his mother in The Elephant Man, federal agent Coopers dreams of the red room in Twin Peaks and the dreamlike logic of the narrative piece in Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire. Another defining pattern of Lynchs films is that he tends to feature his leading female actors in multiple or split roles, so that many of his female characters cast off multiple, fractured identities.This practice began with his choice to cast Sheryl Lee as both Laura Palmer and her cousin M cast upy Ferguson in Twin Peaks and act in his later works. In Lost Highway, Patricia Arquette plays the dual role of Renee Madison/Alice Wakefield, while in Mulholland Drive, Naomi Watts plays Diane Selwyn/Betty Elms and Laura Harring plays Camilla Rhodes/Rita and in Inland Empire, Laura Dern plays Nikki Grace/Susan Blue. By contrast, Lynch rarely creates multi-character roles for his male actors.In a short film titled How to Make a David Lynch Film a group of young film makers explored just that. In the short, the group high weakly a number of definitive features found in Lynchs films. They computer address that the people who like David Lynch do so because he is the master of mood, or because hes solely about atmosphere and that the artsier the fan you speak to, the more(prenominal) they pretend to understand Lynchs nonexistent plots. Other Lynchian tra its mentioned in the short include * Unneeded tension brought about by melodramatic pauses between dialogue * at that place must be ominous ounds or music in each scene to create a mysterious atmosphere * There must always be a character that goes by the name of Mr. , followed by a common first name (eg. Mr. Jimmy) * When in doubt, add close ups of eyes and lips * Phone c every last(predicate)s to add suspense * Halfway through the film, change the actor/actress play the lead character * In between scenes always fade in and out of black * There should be nudity for no apparent reason * Random shots of out of focus political campaign * divide of kissing * Painted fingernails * Lesbian lamb scenes At least one sex scene, often overexposed * Infantilism (eg. Dennis grasshopper as Frank Booth in Blue Velvet) * Use of black and white * Abrupt endings and well-off ends Lynch is an established auteur in fact, not only does he write his screenplays, but he has been knotty with ever y take of his films production at one point or another sound institution, editing, tv camera work, lighting, casting, special effects, music, etc. His hands-on approach to every aspect of his films has helped to tie them all together with a common thread.Lynch has sufficient strength of identity within his work and peculiarity of world view to absolve his position as auteur, and David Foster Wallace, in his Premiere article for Lost Highway, said Whether you conceive hes a broad(a) auteur or a bad one, his career makes it clear that he is indeed, in the literal Cahiers du Cinema sense, an auteur, voluntary to make the sorts of sacrifices for creative control that real auteurs score to make choices that indicate either raging vanity or passionate dedication or a childlike desire to run the sandbox, or all three. As Orson Welles said, Cinema is the work of a single man, the director. Lynchs films, good or bad, successful or not, have been the work of a film-maker in control of his medium, aware of his position as auteur and automatic to assert it within his texts. Many of Lynchs works have developed a rage hobby over the years. Of note are Eraserhead, Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive.There are also many in the Lynchian religious cult who are not film specific. That is, they are fans and followers of David Lynch himself-importance, and are intrigued by all things Lynchian. The major reason that Lynchs films stand the test of time is due to their very temper because his innovative style is so surreal and cryptic, a selection of viewers are compelled to delve that into understanding his films.Thats the beauty of Lynch his films deeply intrigue his audiences, igniting a thirst in the niche, cult followers to decipher meaning in films where others see none. In most cases, a director cannot really foresee whether or not a film will develop a cult following over time. However, a further urge to make sense of his works is almost inherent of Lynchs style, and some may wall that Lynch has constructed his films with the intention of being labelled by corporation as weird, or strange.It almost gives his loyal followers an excuse to be self righteous of their involvement in the cult community Hey look at me, I study Lynchian films, arent I cultured? It can give them a sense of intellectual snobbery. Lynchs most recent feature, Mulholland Drive was initially scripted and filmed as a television pilot, however, the project was turned down by several networks, and so, after some deliberation, Lynch decided to finish the text as a feature film.As a pilot, the story didnt have a proper ending, and it took Lynch kinda some time to formulate an ending for the film however he says that it all came to him one night when he sat down on a chair and closed his eyes. In Mulholland Drive, Lynch dwells upon the theme of duality of identity, set in the world of Hollywood. After the failure of both her pic career and her love affair, the main prot agonist, Diane, imagines a fantasy of her as another character named Betty, by recreating her ruined career and failed family relationship with the woman she loves.To further expand on his main themes of identity, fantasy and reality, duality of things and Hollywood, Lynch uses contrasted filming techniques for each of the parts of the movie, creating a visual dichotomy between Dianes fantasy (where everything is embellished in a way, highly illuminated, colourful and visually striking) and reality (which is almost completely dark and uses very little lighting, making it bet quite surreal), thus blurring the edges between the two. In her fantasy, Diane loses her identity, as her dream presents another aspect of herself. One ight argue that this fantasy is actually Dianes attempt at self-identification, but it is also another representation of her own personality. In the end, Diane must understand that she is comprised of, and capable of, both light and dark, good and evil, naivete and deep mystery. Therefore, she cannot outflow or ignore the darker parts of herself her failure, her hatred, her jealousy. Lynch has explained duality in his films in this way You must have the contrasts. Films should have power. The power of good and the power of darkness, so you can get some thrills and shake things up a bit.If you back off from that stuff, youre shooting right down into lukewarm junk. You have to believe things so much that you make them honest. In other words, he argues that in order for films to be strong and powerful, they need to present both sides of a coin, an unrestricted view of life with all of its light and all of its darkness. However, according to him, at that place is no need to fear the darker side because it is a part of all of us Fear is based on not seeing the whole thing and, if you could get there and see the whole thing, fear is out the window.Hence he argues that once we come to terms with these darker things and aim them as a natural contrast in all of us, rather than try to hide and sidestep them, we will be able to face and understand them. In an interview with The Denver Post during the firing off of Mulholland Drive, Lynch says we know that when were walking around we see the surface of things, but sometimes we sense something more, sometimes what we sense approaches a kind of dreamlike state.Those feelings take on a life of their own they are just as real as anything else. This echoes Bretons lecture that these often dichotomous forces of inner and outside reality are the one and the same thing. However, Lynch does make note that we do approach these assorted layers of reality in different ways We have waking, sleeping and dreamingfor most people thats what we galvanic pile with. So all of them are real, though the brain functions in a different way for each. The final examination movement of Mulholland Drive asks its viewers to reinterpret the first 100 minutes of screen time as now being a univers e fabricated in the consciousness of small-time, failed-actor Diane Selwyn, who lies dying (or dead) somewhere in a run-down apartment in Hollywood. Linking the narrative material of the films final movement to the material that preceded it becomes critical in terms of how one understands the workings of the film. Of course, crucial as it may be to connect narrative information to the films internal structures, it is not this alone that makes Mulholland Drive such a unique experience.As in much of Lynchs other work, the film asks its viewers to take in to every aspect of its construction, from colour schemes to camera movement, from music and sound to performance, from lighting to editing patterns, from set design to costume and make-up. In short, every element of the films construction can be a container of possible meaning. Because of this, most viewers miss much of the films meaning, and walk out of the menage complaining that it made no sense. Others, however, may pick up on c ertain symbols or motifs, and are intrigued to decipher their meaning after viewing.Whats especially interesting in Lynchs films is the way the entire mise-en-scene is presented as meaningful and significant. The hierarchy of significance that we associate with most movies, where some things are to be attended to more than others, is abandoned. We can never tell while watching a scene at least the first time around what its most significant features are. Its possible that a patently minor detail will turn out be of critical importance. Everything is presented on the same level of significance.Over the years, Mulholland Drive has developed a cult following in a niche audience, and many of its solemn followers are continuously attempting to decipher elements of the film. The web berth mulholland-drive. net is an extensive database of information regarding the film, where the films loyal followers can discuss the film and share their understanding of certain elements of the movie. Since all of the posts on the site are by members of the niche audience, it gives everyone a chance to see what other people thought of the movie and their analysis of its meaning.The website epitomises the commitment of members of a films cult following. To conclude, it is fair to say that David Lynch has well established himself in society as a cult auteur to be reckoned with. His abstract style often leaves his viewers with more questions than answers, and for some viewers, a desire to learn more. It is this factor that has essentially led to Lynchs hoity-toity cult status. His followers are intrigued by his ambiguity. Although his time as a director will inescapably come to an end, the legacy of his films will last forever through their cult status. - 1 . Lynch and Rodley, 2005, p. 33 2 . David Lynch. (2013, March 16). InWikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia 3 . Le Blanc and Odell, 2000, p. 08 4 . Lynch and Rodley, 2005, p. 148 5 . Cook, 1986 6 . David Lynch On Mulholland Dri ve, DVD Extra 7 . Lynch and Rodley, 2005, p. 150 8 . Lynch and Rodley, 2005, p. 244 9 . Lynch composes cerebral symphony, Rosen, 2001 10 . Breton, ed. Fotiade 2000, p. 04