David Lynch: The Significant Mystery of American Cinema

      Simon Thompson examines the career of the late, legendary David Lynch…

      To begin this article in the simplest way possible, David Lynch, one of the most distinctive directors in American cinema, has passed away. Though I was aware that his health had sadly declined since 2020, it still feels nearly impossible to accept that an artist of Lynch’s extraordinary talent and originality is no longer here to provide his deeply sincere yet surreal, unyieldingly visceral portrayals of a nuanced and twisted Americana—so much so that fellow filmmaking icon and executive producer of two of his films, Mel Brooks, once described him as “Jimmy Stewart if he were from Mars.”

      While he may not boast the extensive filmography (ten films and one groundbreaking television show) of other greats in American cinema, each of Lynch’s projects symbolizes a triumph of his artistic integrity over the formulaic and predictable fare that Hollywood produces in mass quantities.

      David Lynch was born in January 1946 in Missoula, Montana to Donald and Sunny Lynch. Due to his father’s work as a research scientist for the USDA, the Lynch family relocated frequently during his childhood, living in various states including North Carolina and Washington.

      Despite being an intelligent student and an Eagle Scout, Lynch found the educational setting creatively suffocating. He began to engage with cinema and painting, with his favorite film, The Wizard of Oz, serving as a continual reference point for his future work. The young Lynch was also captivated by the works of W.C. Fields, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Jacques Tati, and Billy Wilder.

      Lynch’s passion for painting and drawing developed during his time in Virginia when he met a friend of his father’s who was a professional painter. After realizing that one could earn a living through art, Lynch immediately chose to pursue an artistic career. When he turned 18, he enrolled at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design in Washington, D.C., but later transferred to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, where he shared a room with guitarist Peter Wolf.

      However, Lynch found the School of the Museum of Fine Arts uninspiring, leading him to drop out after just one year. Freed from college obligations, he traveled to Austria with his friend Jack Fisk, aiming, as he mentioned in Lynch on Lynch, to study for three years under expressionist painter Oskar Kokoschka without much research or a clear rationale. Upon arriving in Salzburg, they discovered that Kokoschka was not teaching there as they had thought and only ran a workshop. Disillusioned by Salzburg's "clean" ambiance, they returned home after fifteen days of traveling on the Orient Express. Following this unsuccessful trip, Lynch returned to America and enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

      His time in Philadelphia marked a period of both social and creative growth for the young artist, who described the environment as being filled with “great and serious painters, inspiring one another in a beautiful time.” At the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he met his first wife Peggy, with whom he had a daughter named Jennifer.

      Living in the crime-ridden neighborhood of Fairmount in Philadelphia and supporting his family through various odd jobs, Lynch began making short films that would highlight the unique vision he eventually became known for. His newfound interest in filmmaking prompted a move to California, where he enrolled at the AFI conservatory and directed his debut feature Eraserhead.

      Initially conceived as a 42-minute short, Eraserhead was primarily an exploration of Lynch’s experiences living in a less desirable area of Philadelphia alongside his wife and child. The film follows a mild-mannered young man named Henry (Jack Nance) living in a futuristic yet dilapidated urban landscape. After unexpectedly learning that his girlfriend is pregnant, she gives birth to—then abandons—a deformed baby (inspired by Lynch’s real-life fears regarding his daughter's health), compelling Henry to confront his anxieties about fatherhood and raising a child in such a dreadful setting.

      Produced over three years from 1974 to 1977 during weekends and financed by Lynch through a combination of a $10,000 AFI grant, a loan from his father, and a paper route, Eraserhead became a deeply personal endeavor for Lynch. Following an amicable divorce from Peggy, he even lived on sets constructed for the film to immerse himself in the project as much as possible.

      Shot in stark black and white and filled with disorienting, surreal, and grotesque imagery, Eraserhead possesses an elegiac yet oddly whimsical quality that distinguishes it from almost any other film. Lynch’s incorporation of German Expressionist angles and scale, along with a repetitive industrial score, establishes a suffocating atmosphere that echoes the beleaguered environments depicted in the film, creating a thematic dichotomy between the idyllic image of America and the harsher realities of life—an opposition shaped by Lynch’s idyllic Norman Rockwell-esque childhood and his