David Lynch: The Art Life **** (2016, David Lynch) – Movie Review

Director Jon Nguyen’s 2016 biographical documentary is fascinating, informative, entertaining and richly enjoyable.

It throws much light on David Lynch’s art, which is remarkable and much less well known than his films.

Lynch proves as weird and enigmatic as his movies, compulsively chain smoking and creating art, while talking evasively to a microphone about his life, family and times. That is, he is not talking candidly to an interviewer who could ask awkward question that might demand revealing, over-candid answers. After all, Lynch is a film director. He wants to stay in charge, to stay in control.

Still, thus he ever so reluctantly reveals just a little of himself and gives us little glimpses into his early life in Lynchian small-town America and the events that shaped his career. The glimpses are a bit obscure and ambiguous, as he wants them to be, but they are real enough. Talking of his parents, wives and children, he draws out some lines you can readily read between.

He went to high school, then to Boston to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and in 1977, released his first film Eraserhead (1977) with the support of the American Film Institute. Just when the film gets most fascinating for movie buffs, it abruptly and frustratingly ends. We could do with so much more, but this is all we can get.

For mostly, Lynch is evading celebrity (even though he’s famous) and asking you to see and appreciate the art itself, and this film is a very good introduction to it. This may be superficial, but it helps that Lynch has a unique, endlessly fascinating face to look at and try to penetrate. It is expressive, but only just, like Mount Rushmore is expressive.

Lynch also has unique hair, too, that is well worth watching. It reminds me of Christopher Walken’s hair and his funny phrase ‘my hair was famous before I was’.

Though 71 on 20 January 2017, Lynch has a young child, who runs around curiously while Lynch is rabbiting on. Lynch’s interacting with his child is sweet and quite revealing. Curiosity killed the cat but this child is encouraged in a lifetime of creative curiosity by Lynch.

Olivia Neergaard-Holm and Rick Barnes are credited as co-directors. Jon Nguyen, Neergaard-Holm and Barnes have done a grand, heroic job of prising a tiny little bit of revealing stuff out of Lynch.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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