Though not yet released on disc, Criterion is
offering David Lynch: The Art Life on digital platforms like
Amazon and iTunes.
One wouldn’t expect any portrait of David Lynch to be all
that straightforward, but the straight story is exactly what you’ll get when
watching David Lynch: The Art Life. Building a narrative
from an extended monologue by the auteur, directors Rick Barnes, John Nguyen,
and Olivia Neegaard-Holm put together a pretty clear path from Lynch’s early
life to his first film, Eraserhead, backing the anecdotes
with home movies, personal photographs, and images of Lynch’s art, as well as
contemporary footage of the man at work in his home studio. David
Lynch: The Art Life is both insightful and surprisingly unassuming.
Those expecting Lynchian digressions into uncharted weirdness will be surprised
to find there are none here. Rather, the artist looks back with clear eyes at
the building blocks and stepping stones that led to his cinematic career.
Those also expecting behind-the-scenes gossip or
explanations about Lynch’s challenging filmography are going to be more
disappointed than surprised, however; The Art Life is not
about that. Nor is it about taking Lynch’s formative memories and looking for
their reoccurrence in his fictions. There are some things you might infer for
yourself--the tale of the naked woman emerging on his suburban street when he
was a child brings to mind Isabella Rossellini’s nude escape in Blue Velvet; his time growing up in Spokane may have been the origin of
Twin Peaks [review]; etc.--but the documentarians instead
work with Lynch’s fine art, finding images that match his words and juxtaposing
the two in provocative ways. David Lynch: The Art Life is a
lesson in the other side of the director’s creative life, the one not seen as
regularly.
The greatest revelation here is just how average Lynch’s
experience seems. But then, isn’t that also thematically in tune with the cinematic
stories he would eventually tell? Beneath the most innocuous surface lurks
darker thoughts. It just takes a willingness to look behind the veneer to find
them--and that’s exactly what David Lynch: The Art Life
does.
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